/gnon/

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, received

You're on to something, but I think B-SAT is the wrong problem to work with. If you want to apply modern deep learning to an NP-complete problem that can serve as general target for problem translations, you want a problem that has a natural metric on solu... 21m ago received

You're on to somethi received

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 received gnon

Of Vitality received

The adjective use is McCarthy-esque, but it needs more rhythm in the sentence structure and maybe a smattering of fragmentary asides to really hit.... 1h ago received

The adjective use is received

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 received eugenics gnon nietzsche

What form of life do received

More pointedly, i dont think higher man or homeric man or anything like that is about absolute competence or anything like that. Its an interesting lens to think through but the reality is more about types, and types are about niche. Homeric man is dead be... 3h ago received

More pointedly, i do received

"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 received philosophy superintelligence gnon

"Cosmic Alignment" i received

I call this "faith in being." It is the primordial form of faith. One may or may not have more particular faith in particular things (revelations, ancestors, familial relations) but one must have faith in being, or one will be lost in nihilism. 2d ago received

I call this "faith i received

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 received gnon

It is the will of Gn received

Reading Jim is like reading Aristotle. How he is able to condense this stuff so efficiently, I don't know. All I can say is God bless the 6sigma R1bers. I used to read a lot more of his stuff, but I feel like it's lately been verging a bit more into boomer... 7d ago received

Reading Jim is like received

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 received

Interesting idea RE "prima facie tautological but compressionally useful," but why would this law/heuristic have any compelling moral force? Why shouldn't one just act as one wishes from instinct in the moment, or follow a virtue ethical framework, or use ... 2w ago received

Interesting idea RE received

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 received philosophy gnon

Is Unitarianism the received

You are right about these things. I will attempt what you have specified. But i'm still lacking two things: a good hook, and "what's the point". We can be as right as we like about philosophy and so on but if there isn't some actual operational program tha... 4w ago received

You are right about received

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 received meta gnon

Alt-social failures, received

This 100%, but also I actually do not want to know what sofiechan is. Is any decent social media platform definable? Its indescribability is what lets it hold power over us. Magic is not defined; it is ingraspable.... 1mo ago received

This 100%, but also received

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 received accelerationism gnon

Accelerationism received

Tieing it back to the topic in OP, energy rate density is closely related to a lot of the thermodynamics that are used and abused by accelerationists. In many ways that Chaisson article I shared is accelerationist through and through. And on a personal lev... 3mo ago received

Tieing it back to th received

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 received accelerationism rationality gnon

Xenohumanism Against received

We need a school of true anthropology. 4mo ago received

We need a school of received

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 received accelerationism superintelligence gnon

Dissolving vs. Survi received

Some people won't believe in the inherent goodness of existence until it's been autistically proven to them with English philosophizing a hundred times over. That's fine. For the rest of us, we don't need to be persuaded of the inherent goodness of existen... 4mo ago received

Some people won't be received

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 received accelerationism gnon

Rationalists should received

am I supposed to envy this? 4mo ago received

am I supposed to env received

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 received gnon

Poul Anderson's _The received

Poul Anderson is good generally. He worked broadly across science fiction and fantasy.... 4mo ago received

Poul Anderson is goo received

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 received eugenics gnon

Breeding octopuses received

It's self-organization that's the magic of life, not reason or intelligence.... 5mo ago received

It's self-organizati received

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 received gnon nietzsche

Against 'State of Na received

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. 6mo ago received

The “savage” is not received

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 received rationality gnon

How I came to believ received

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. 7mo ago received

Thank you. Sounds li received

Will to Think on Xenosystems
https://web.archive.org/web/20170720012659/http://www.xenosystems.net/will-to-think/ posted 8mo ago with 4 replies received accelerationism gnon

Will to Think on Xen received

Who is that? Sounds like something from the Thucydides. 8mo ago received

Who is that? Sounds received