/gnon/

Xenohumanism Against Shoggoth Belief
People usually think of Lovecraft as a xenophobe. I don't think that's quite right. What he was most afraid of was that the universe, and even most of so-called mankind, was not alien, but insane. He grasped at any shred of higher rational humanity whether... posted 25h ago with no replies 3 3

Xenohumanism Against 3 3

Rationalists should embrace will-to-power as an existential value fact
Imagine a being who systematically questions and can rewrite their beliefs and values to ensure legitimate grounding. I think humans can and should do more of this, but you might more easily imagine an AI that can read and write its own source code and bel... posted 3w ago with 3 replies 7 7

Rationalists should 7 7

No need to apologize. I am aware of the lulz as a principle of action. "I did it for the lulz, sir". No other reasons needed than that I want to. It is, in fact, all fun and games. In practice and even in society this is under-appreciated. But what I'm doi... 2w ago 4 4

No need to apologize 4 4

Agency. On Machine Intelligence and Worm Wisdom by Insurrealist (insurrealist.substack.com) posted 4w ago with 2 replies 7 7

Agency. On Machine I 7 7

Michael Levin actually compares the developmental process, which has to cope with all manner of error, insult, variation, and adversarial action, to a variational autoencoder, so it's not like we're extremely far off from the right questions, but the cultu... 4w ago 2 2

Michael Levin actual 2 2

Breeding octopuses
Our last common ancestor with cephalopods dates back 600 million years. For reference, dinosaurs roamed Earth only 252–66 million years ago. ... posted 2mo ago with 5 replies 10 10

Breeding octopuses 10 10

It's self-organization that's the magic of life, not reason or intelligence. ... 1mo ago 1 1

It's self-organizati 1 1

Accelerationism
Has anyone read a lot of materials on Accelerationism that wants to have a good discussion on pros and cons of this theory? posted 2mo ago with 21 replies 9 9

Accelerationism 9 9

Here you can find some estimates of LLM efficiency: ... 1mo ago 1 1

Here you can find so 1 1

Against 'State of Nature'
Something BAP mentioned recently and that I see a lot of these days is a tendency to puzzle over what man was like in a 'state of nature'. It is weak thinking and should be discarded. Two prominent examples of this I see invoked are evopsych's "on the ance... posted 3mo ago with 8 replies 10 10

Against 'State of Na 10 10

The “savage” is not an archetype of innocence but a primitive codebase—feral algorithms of survival that replicate themselves endlessly, unburdened by the illusions of transcendence. 2mo ago 2 2

The “savage” is not 2 2

How I came to believe in the goodness of God
I was raised on what my mother called "natural history". The story of creation was one of billions of years in layers of bedrock. The story of life was the struggle of genes for resources and reproduction. When I met christians, they were the unsophisticat... posted 4mo ago with 21 replies 17 17

How I came to believ 17 17

Thank you. Sounds like Lasker goes on the infinitely expanding list of books i ought to read. Any new angles on Gnon theology are highly valuable at this point in our program. 3mo ago 3 3

Thank you. Sounds li 3 3