> gnon christianity tradition theology precise christ literal metaphysical church organism leap gradient reject complexity
Life, Intelligence, and Consciousness are NP-Complete?
A know what you're thinking: anon's gone all kooky mashing together a bunch of mysterious things, wrapping it in some gold foil, and worshipping it as an idol. Maybe, maybe not. Hear me out....
posted 4d ago with
16 replies
received
gnon
computing
Life, Intelligence,
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Of Vitality
Men clamor over a place in line to proclaim and demand a thing like ‘vitality’ if it comes from their master above. But never do they offer so much as a second’s meditation on right action to attain such a thing. One wonders why—but then one sees t...
posted 2d ago with
8 replies
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gnon
Of Vitality
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What form of life does nature consider highest?
Empirically, literal yeast life wins the contest of sheer biomass. The untouchable prokaryotic bacterial masses that recycle the world's biological waste out-masses everything else. On that theme we're also soundly beaten by hive insects like ants and such...
posted 7d ago with
5 replies
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eugenics
gnon
nietzsche
What form of life do
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"Cosmic Alignment" is almost right. Life is the answer
Philosopher it-girl Ginevra Davis gave a great talk on "Cosmic Alignment" the other day. I was glad to see serious thinking against the current paradigm of "AI Alignment". Her argument is that alignment makes three big unsupported speculations:...
posted 2w ago with
11 replies
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philosophy
superintelligence
gnon
"Cosmic Alignment" i
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It is the will of Gnon that we shall fill the stars and subdue them. Jim solves the great filter, rejects copernican principle.
https://blog.reaction.la/science/it-is-the-will-of-gnon-that-we-shall-fill-the-stars-and-subdue-them/
posted 4mo ago with
2 replies
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gnon
It is the will of Gn
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The agonistic categorical imperative
The commandment of Kant is the categorical imperative, which formulated with Natural Law verbiage is to ‘act as if the maxims of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.’ To me this has always exemplified the hubristic an...
posted 2w ago with
2 replies
received
gnon
The agonistic catego
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Is Unitarianism the true religion of the coming civilization?
Jefferson didn't quite get the dates right, but I offer the provocation that he was right in spirit about Unitarianism. Unitarianism takes the best of the Christian tradition and broader European philosophical tradition, and unifies and purifies it of supe...
posted 2mo ago with
27 replies
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philosophy
gnon
Is Unitarianism the
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Alt-social failures, coolness, and Good work
The central issue with all these 'alt-social' sites is coolness. A quick binary measure of coolness for websites is the existence of an /about page. Radiopaper has one, as does Uptrust, so they go immediately in the bin....
posted 2mo ago with
9 replies
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meta
gnon
Alt-social failures,
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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 6mo ago with
23 replies
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accelerationism
gnon
Accelerationism
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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 4mo ago with
3 replies
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accelerationism
rationality
gnon
Xenohumanism Against
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Dissolving vs. Surviving
Recent xenohumanist discussion has the doomer assumption built in that we as humans will be dissolving when higher man arrives on the scene. I don't think that's set in stone and want to offer a clarification....
posted 4mo ago with
5 replies
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accelerationism
superintelligence
gnon
Dissolving vs. Survi
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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 5mo ago with
5 replies
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accelerationism
gnon
Rationalists should
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Poul Anderson's _The High Crusade_, good book for the "human conquest of the stars" theme.
In which a Medieval English Baron establishes a holy galactic empire (with themes of righteous rebellion, but it is against xenos, and so less antinomian than when human peasants pretend to self-determination).
(en.wikipedia.org)
posted 4mo ago with
1 reply
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gnon
Poul Anderson's _The
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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 6mo ago with
5 replies
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eugenics
gnon
Breeding octopuses
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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 7mo ago with
8 replies
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gnon
nietzsche
Against 'State of Na
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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 8mo ago with
21 replies
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rationality
gnon
How I came to believ
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Will to Think on Xenosystems
https://web.archive.org/web/20170720012659/http://www.xenosystems.net/will-to-think/
posted 8mo ago with
4 replies
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accelerationism
gnon
Will to Think on Xen
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