Just a side note: there is growing consensus in the neuroscience community that certain activity, foremost among them self-control (rational control of emotions, inhibitive projections from the prefrontal cortex downward), are highly dependent on the blood glucose level.
In other words, you don’t eat, your blood glucose goes down, you are less able to be unbiased and detached. Also, it would seem, the short memory suffers, so you are able to keep fewer things in mind for parallel consideration. All of this adds up to an increase in irritability, more impulsive decision making, and less willingness to take complexities into account.
There are many good overviews of the data. If you wish to read more, googling “blood glucose level self control” produces several good popular takes on the first page.
Eliezer,
See poke’s comment above (which is so on the nose, it actually inspired me to register). Then consider the following.
You will never get a PhD in the manner you propose, because that would fulfill only a part of the purpose of a PhD. The number of years spent in the building can be (and in too many cases is) wasted time—but if things are done in a proper manner, this time (which can be only three or four years) is critical.
For science PhDs specifically, the idea isn’t to just come up with something novel and write it up. The idea is to go into the field with a question that you don’t have an answer for, not yet. To find ways to collect data, and then to actually collect it. To build intricate, detailed models that answer your question precisely and completely, fitting all the available data. To design experiments specifically so you can test your models. And finally, to watch these models completely and utterly fail, nine times out of ten.
They won’t fail because you missed something while building them. They will fail because you could only test them properly after making them. If you just built the model that fit everything, and then never tested it with specific experiments… you could spend a very long time convinced that you have found the truth. Several iterations of this process makes people far less willing to extrapolate beyond the available data—certainly not nearly as wildly and as far as transhumanists do.
A good philosophy PhD can do the same, but it is much more difficult to get an optimal result.
Don’t take this the wrong way. I respect and admire your achievements, and I think getting a PhD would be a waste of time for you at this point. But it is entirely true that getting one—a real one—would increase the acceptance of your thoughts and ideas. Not (just) because a PhD would grant you prestige, but because your thoughts and ideas would actually get better.
Which finally brings us to the reason for the dichotomy you noted in your post. Your rationality musings are accepted because a) they are inspiring, and b) they can be actionable and provide solid feedback. A person can read them, try the ideas out, and see if those ideas work for them. Transhumanism, alas, falls under “half-baked” category; and the willingness to follow wildly speculative tangents from poorly constrained models… well, in order to have any weight there, you better either show concrete, practical results… or have credentials that show you have experienced significant model failure in the past. Repeatedly. And painfully. With significant cost to yourself.