You only live once: a reframing of working towards posthumanity
Let’s say you recently purchased a new computer game. Reviewers like the game, but they say that the game itself pales in comparison to a massive, difficult-to-access secret area near the end. Bizarrely, this secret area contains over 90% of the content in the game. It’s also rumored to be a lot better designed.
If you’re like most gamers, you’ll probably play through the game normally a few times, and go for the secret area on your second or third try. But what if the game was real life, and you died as soon as your first try ended?
Edit for clarifying points:
Posthumanity is definitely an area within the game. It’s not prohibited by the laws of physics. The relevant questions are how difficult it would be to achieve and whether it would be enough fun to be worth the effort.
The reframing is meant to deal with the issue that humans tend to be bad at thinking about unprecedented events (black swans).
But the reframing is not perfect. For example, it ignores the fact that posthumanity may be achieved without your help. It also ignores the fact that by achieving posthumanity, you are helping more people than just yourself.
If no effective plan for achieving posthumanity exists, you’ll have to think of one one in order to access the proverbial secret area. This isn’t about any specific plan.
You mean, there are unsubstantiated rumors of a secret area near the end, though no one has been able to access the area yet, no matter how hard they tried? Some players have been paying a premium monthly subscription for years in a hope to get the expensive future upgrades promising priority access to the area when and if it is out of beta.
Well it is certainly a secret area present within the game. Immortality, space travel, etc. are not prohibited by the laws of physics. And saying that getting from here to there within the next 40 years is actually impossible (as opposed to very difficult) sounds pretty loony to me.
This is an argument for working towards posthumanity in general, not giving money to specific groups working towards posthumanity. The argument is supposed to work even if no such groups exist. (If you don’t know of any good groups working towards posthumanity, that’s pretty much the same scenario.)
The idea is to reframe working towards posthumanity as an expected value calculation, since it’s hard for our brains to think well about totally unprecedented outcomes (i.e. black swans).
Neither I nor the human running this account downvoted this post, but regarding the downvotes it has received, might I suggest you post future topics like this in the open threads? I think this would be quite well-received there!
Remember, open threads are our friends! We should love and respect (and use) them.
I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that there is an attitude here that something is inferior because it is short.
Personally, I like posts that are short and to the point. It tell me that the poster has respect for the readers and took time to express his or her ideas clearly and concisely. I often upvote such posts just for style.
Short is not the only issue here. The issue is that is short and appears to be potentially inchoate.
Inchoate is okay in Discussion.
(“Potentially inchoate” is also a curious formulation: as if allowing for the possibility that it might actually be a completely polished and brilliantly insightful post, but still wanting to punish the author just in case it does turn out to be inchoate.)
What questions did you want answered? Can you give an example of a concrete improvement?
Was it inchoate in a way that caused you negative utility as a result of reading it? Do you think additional words would’ve made the experience of reading positive utility?
I have an “insight density” model of writing quality. I prefer to read writing that has lots of ideas per unit verbiage. I tend to assume other readers want the same, but if adding additional verbiage will improve the way others receive my writing, I will do it!
It’s a sketch of an analogy to make transhuman/posthuman activism more appealing to a small subset of the population: gamers who don’t yet think it sounds pretty nifty. It seems more open thready than discussiony to me.
It was originally going to be longer, but I managed to pare it down...
:) Thanks!
How can a part be bigger than the whole? You probably want to say “as the rest of the game” instead. It took me a bit of effort to understand what you are trying to say.
Thanks for the feedback! I implemented your suggestion.
No idea why you were voted down.
Let’s assume it’s worth the effort, and consider how difficult it is.
The mere fact that it’s physically possible contributes negligibly little evidence towards believing it to be practically possible; strictly speaking it’s equivalent to saying the probability of success (of achieving posthuman existence) isn’t zero. That’s true but is a very weak, non-informative claim.
A lot of desirable things are physically possible but unreachable for all practical purposes. They may be inherently improbable (by relying on processes objectively improbable to succeed) or they may require knowledge we don’t have and don’t know at present how to acquire.
For instance, I believe there’s a series of simple actions I could undertake—speaking to people and so on—that would make me very rich, or powerful, or very well-connected. There is certainly nothing physically impossible about it. But I have no idea how to locate the concrete series of actions in the huge space of my physically possible actions.
So what interesting evidence do you have that :”posthuman” existence is realistically achievable, for us who are alive today? More importantly, do you have any evidence as to what actions today would help us achieve it in the future, beyond generally living as long as possible and amassing a lot of money and other resources?
Buying the right lottery ticket is would be a perfect example. Unfortunately for us, there’s no practical way to know what the right one is. ;)
Short article is short.
I know, isn’t it great?
Curious whether this is your stated reason for disliking the article, and, if so, whether it’s your true rejection.
(If it’s not your stated reason for disliking the article, I’m not sure why you made the comment.)
I did not particularly dislike the article.
I noticed that the post was especially short, for a post, and I chose to express it via a snowclone invocation of the longcat meme. For it amuses me.
“Omit needless words.”