I was born in 1962 (so I’m in my 60s). I was raised rationalist, more or less, before we had a name for it. I went to MIT, and have a bachelors degree in philosophy and linguistics, and a masters degree in electrical engineering and computer science. I got married in 1991, and have two kids. I live in the Boston area. I’ve worked as various kinds of engineer: electronics, computer architecture, optics, robotics, software.
Around 1992, I was delighted to discover the Extropians. I’ve enjoyed being in that kind of circles since then. My experience with the Less Wrong community has been “I was just standing here, and a bunch of people gathered, and now I’m in the middle of a crowd.” A very delightful and wonderful crowd, just to be clear.
I‘m signed up for cryonics. I think it has a 5% chance of working, which is either very small or very large, depending on how you think about it.
I may or may not have qualia, depending on your definition. I think that philosophical zombies are possible, and I am one. This is a very unimportant fact about me, but seems to incite a lot of conversation with people who care.
I am reflectively consistent, in the sense that I can examine my behavior and desires, and understand what gives rise to them, and there are no contradictions I‘m aware of. I’ve been that way since about 2015. It took decades of work and I’m not sure if that work was worth it.
The stuff Yudkowsky is reacting to is in ‘Nanosystems’ by Drexler. Looking in ‘Engines of Creation’ gets you the popularization, not the solid physics and chemistry. That’s all in ‘Nanosystems’, which shows how machines built out of covalently-bonded materials can be much more capable than biology. You may disagree with the arguments presented there, in which case I’d be very interested in your arguments. Unfortunately, by reacting to popularizations and tweets, you’ve inadvertently fought some straw men instead of your real opponent.
As another comment points out, when Yudkowsky says ‘proteins are held together’ he means how they are held to each other, not how they are held internally.
It’s somewhat of an exaggeration to say that proteins are held to each other by static cling. There are also hydrogen bonds. So it is more correct to say that they are held by static cling and surface tension.