I normally stay away from posting news to lesswrong.com—although I think an Open Thread for relevant news items would be a good idea—but this one sounds especially good and might be of interest for people visiting this site...
In the year after Lorraine’s death I contemplated suicide six times. Contemplated it seriously, I mean: six times sat with the fat bottle of Clonazepam within reaching distance, six times failed to reach for it, betrayed by some instinct for life or disgusted by my own weakness.
I can’t say I wish I had succeeded, because in all likelihood I did succeed, on each and every occasion. Six deaths. No, not just six. An infinite number.
The idea reminded me of Moravec’s thoughts on death:
When we die, the rules surely change. As our brains and bodies cease to function in the normal way, it takes greater and greater contrivances and coincidences to explain continuing consciousness by their operation. We lose our ties to physical reality, but, in the space of all possible worlds, that cannot be the end. Our consciousness continues to exist in some of those, and we will always find ourselves in worlds where we exist and never in ones where we don’t. The nature of the next simplest world that can host us, after we abandon physical law, I cannot guess. Does physical reality simply loosen just enough to allow our consciousness to continue? Do we find ourselves in a new body, or no body? It probably depends more on the details of our own consciousness than did the original physical life. Perhaps we are most likely to find ourselves reconstituted in the minds of superintelligent successors, or perhaps in dreamlike worlds (or AI programs) where psychological rather than physical rules dominate. Our mind children will probably be able to navigate the alternatives with increasing facility. For us, now, barely conscious, it remains a leap in the dark.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that many people who know about you and the SIAI are oblivious of your fiction. At least I myself only found out about it some time after learning about you and SIAI.
It is generally awesome stuff and would be enough in itself to donate to SIAI. Spreading such fiction stories might actually attract more people to dig deeper and find out about SIAI than to be be thrown in at the deep end.
Edit: I myself came to know about SIAI due to SF, especially Orion’s Arm.
Interesting SF by Robert Charles Wilson!
I normally stay away from posting news to lesswrong.com—although I think an Open Thread for relevant news items would be a good idea—but this one sounds especially good and might be of interest for people visiting this site...
Many-Worlds in Fiction: “Divided by Infinity”
Thank you.
The idea reminded me of Moravec’s thoughts on death:
I already wrote this fic (“The Grand Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover”).
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that many people who know about you and the SIAI are oblivious of your fiction. At least I myself only found out about it some time after learning about you and SIAI.
It is generally awesome stuff and would be enough in itself to donate to SIAI. Spreading such fiction stories might actually attract more people to dig deeper and find out about SIAI than to be be thrown in at the deep end.
Edit: I myself came to know about SIAI due to SF, especially Orion’s Arm.