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His critique of Kurzweil as exceptionally afraid of dying and that distorting his scientific validity is spot on. Kurzweil is rigid in exactly the same way as

by LPTS 18y ago

His critique of Kurzweil as exceptionally afraid of dying and that distorting his scientific validity is spot on. Kurzweil is rigid in exactly the same way as a religious person who believes his body literally will live forever. He just identifies his experiential body as information processes instead of flesh, and has a mythic-technical, instead of mythic-poetic, or mythic-conventional, approach to the details of his eternal life. He's a priest, not a scientist, at least when he speaks about singularity. He needs to find a buddhist teacher and an LSD dealer to get over his fear of death. He's going to die, his body is going to rot and his greying, decayed, stinking flesh is going to be churned into worm poop, his memory and personality will dissolve, as the thing that observes all that (an is the same behind my eyes as yours, that you can see by considering your self image for a long time, and then asking "if I'm looking at me, what is doing the looking?") discards the used up vehicle and suits up for the next adventure as a different one of these trippy humans, which will have a different set of ultimately illusory relationships with this fact through waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep, all before the sun supernovas and destroys every single hint of anything he did with his life, all of which is not only going to happen, but already happening because time is an illusory construct perceived by an illusory ego. The sooner he spends 2 or 3 weeks in a psych word processing that after eating a quarter sheet of acid and screaming about it for twelve hours while burning his retinas out staring at the sun and directly perceiving it, the better off and closer to the truth his community will be. This critique of AI was a highlight for me. People who think they can mimic consciousness on computers have more in common with magical thinking then with science because they have absolutely no deep understanding of consciousness.

coffeeaddicted 18y ago
On the other hand the dead but immortal No.1 LSD Dealer and life long consciousness pioneer Timothy Leary did switch to teachings similar to those of Kurzweil for example in is book "CHAOS & Cyber Culture" written in '94. So maybe you need to get past acid to understand that Kurzweil is a lot closer to the source of consciousness than any drug will ever get you.
- mojuba 18y ago
  LSD solves everyone's individual problems but it's definitely not the carrier of some ultimate truth. LSD can bring some buddhism into someone's life and it can free from buddhism some other person.
  - LPTS 18y ago
    Yeah. I remember way back in the day being on psychedelic mushrooms once, walking through the woods, and talking to Buddha, who had appeared in a rock wall in a tunnel I walked past. Then I was like "I just saw Buddha, I should say hi and talk to him." I turned back said "hi" and he was like "Dont be a Buddhist, figure it out for yourself." So I know exactly what you mean.
- bkovitz 18y ago
  "Cryonics is the second-stupidest thing I ever heard of. Being eaten by worms is the first-stupidest." --Timothy Leary. He gave up cryonics before he died, though, and was cremated.
- LPTS 18y ago
  Leary was a clown. A holy fool (maybe). But a clown none the less. He did lasting damage to our ability to unlock the potential in psychedelics with his antics, and his more extravagant ideas cloud what we can actually learn from psychedelics. Fuck Tim Leary.
rms 18y ago
>People who think they can mimic consciousness on computers have more in common with magical thinking then with science because they have absolutely no deep understanding of consciousness. You had me until that line.
- LPTS 18y ago
  Why don't you buy that?
jackchristopher 18y ago
LPTS, do you think Kurzweil and gang are hurtful, or just wrong?
- LPTS 18y ago
  I think they are hurtful insofar as these immortality fantasies stop people from dealing with death in a less deluded way. But, on the other hand, many technology/science/Math visionaries have been driven by mythic kind of visions. Newton, Swedenberg, Cantor and Bohm come to mind. That in itself isn't hurtful. But when the nature of the belief causes them to not deal with a major facet of human existence, it starts to be bad.
Tichy 18y ago
So let us hear your deep understanding of consciousness. I hope that finally somebody can give us a definition. You sound like you know what you are talking about - or do you??? Really, I am waiting eagerly. As for Kurzweil, being afraid of death seems very rational to me. His escape plan might seem overly optimistic, but at least it is conceivable. More than you can say for your average religion.
- LPTS 18y ago
  Yes and no. I don't claim to know the answer to the hard question of consciousness. But, I think no one else does either. Even if we did have an answer I doubt its communicable. I do think my understanding of consciousness is deeper then most peoples. I've done a lot of meditation, a few peoples share of psychedelics (which do not themselves contain answers, but can open doors), and consciousness was my focus in college. I know what Im talking about well enough to know what we don't know. We don't know anything to give us a good reason to think we could put consciousness in computers. The deeper you go into your awareness the more universal the experience is. You can verify this experientially. Our bodies, thought patterns, emotions and memories all die but the awareness they all rise in (which, being aware of space, time, and identity, is outside of time, space, and identity) is immortal.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    "We don't know anything to give us a good reason to think we could put consciousness in computers." Except that it seems likely that our brains simply follow the laws of physics, like everything else. "You can verify this experientially." How? "the awareness they all rise in (which, being aware of space, time, and identity, is outside of time, space, and identity) is immortal." I didn't understand that sentence.
    - LPTS 18y ago
      1.) Except that the laws of physics do not currently explain why it is that we have any experiences at all, yet it is the continuing to having experiences that is most of interest to people wanting immortality. If that's your reason for thinking we can upload our souls, do you think we know the right physics? 2.) Here are three ways, the best first. 5 to 10 years of meditation lead by the right teacher. A near anesthetic dose of ketamine or experiences with sensory deprivation. Stuart Davis says something like "If you doubt the fact of a spiritual dimension, get a gun, shoot yourself in the head. Freed from that dingy filter you call a mind, confirm through direct experience the ontological status of subtle and causal reality. Upon rebirth, try not to forget it this time." I personally think the fastest way is to take a week camping, spend three days to read a bunch of Alan Watts, listen to "Love Has No Opposite" by Stuart Davis and everything by Bill Hicks a couple times, catch up on sleep, relax, and hike, then on day four, find a beautiful area to sit and watch water and take a medium low dose of mushrooms, and listen to some gamelan music on speakers while you let the patters of nature and the flowing water merge synaesthetically with the study and relaxation you did and the intricate gamelan music. After six hours, you will understand. Then, spend three days relaxing, reflecting, and get back to work. You can't do astronomy without a telescope. You can't do medicine without dissecting cadavers. You can't do consciousness without technology to poke at the way the brain perceives itself. The same type of power structure that wanted to keep people from looking in the sky, where they had located the God they were distorting to gain power or the body, where they located the soul, now want to keep us from looking at consciousness, where many of them now locate the soul. In these cases, letting scientists look beyond the curtain threatened the worldview they depended on to keep power. Drugs aren't the only or best tool (long term meditation is best) but for seeing a certain kind of thing in the short term, they can work. Personally, my drug days are behind me. But I learned a lot of good stuff from it. 3.) I know you don't. You have fused with your ego and are unable to take a backwards step from it. (I'm not calling you egotistical or being derogatory). Awareness and ego come apart. Spend a while with your eyes closed, considering the way your sense of space and time, and attention and memory relate to form your identity. Breathe. After 15 or 20 minutes, you might realize that you are observing your identity as a constellation of your space-time concept, attention, memory, and breath. When this happens, your concept of self switches from being the subject through which you interact with objects to being itself an object of awareness. When this happens, what is the new subject? Spend another 20 minutes considering this. The new subject becomes an object as well, and the frontal structure of your personality becomes more and more distant as you climb the subject-object ladder by observing the new subjects an objects of an increasingly broad awareness. You think you are Tichy. You are, in a way. But, also equally true, Tichy is something you are aware of. That awareness is more essential to who you are then the details of your biography. It is immortal because it is outside of time (because at a certain level of jumping the subject backwards, your time concept becomes an object of awareness). Kurzweil is concerned with preserving the ego. He should be concerned with the thing that sees the ego he is trying to preserve. Your physics doesn't touch that yet. (It might sound like I'm talking about God. I'm not. Fuck God. But, I think many people make the mistake of confusing this awareness, often discussed in mystical poetry, with a biblical God that is actually just a surface feature of the ego we are trying to put in proper perspective. It might also sound like I'm one of those hippies who's always going on about living in the now. I'm not, fuck those hippies. It's not about one level, like the level past time that you can access with meditation or some drugs used well. It's about a healthy relationship between them all.)

by LPTS 18y ago

coffeeaddicted 18y ago

On the other hand the dead but immortal No.1 LSD Dealer and life long consciousness pioneer Timothy Leary did switch to teachings similar to those of Kurzweil for example in is book "CHAOS & Cyber Culture" written in '94. So maybe you need to get past acid to understand that Kurzweil is a lot closer to the source of consciousness than any drug will ever get you.

mojuba 18y ago
LSD solves everyone's individual problems but it's definitely not the carrier of some ultimate truth. LSD can bring some buddhism into someone's life and it can free from buddhism some other person.
- LPTS 18y ago
  Yeah. I remember way back in the day being on psychedelic mushrooms once, walking through the woods, and talking to Buddha, who had appeared in a rock wall in a tunnel I walked past. Then I was like "I just saw Buddha, I should say hi and talk to him." I turned back said "hi" and he was like "Dont be a Buddhist, figure it out for yourself." So I know exactly what you mean.
bkovitz 18y ago
"Cryonics is the second-stupidest thing I ever heard of. Being eaten by worms is the first-stupidest." --Timothy Leary. He gave up cryonics before he died, though, and was cremated.
LPTS 18y ago
Leary was a clown. A holy fool (maybe). But a clown none the less. He did lasting damage to our ability to unlock the potential in psychedelics with his antics, and his more extravagant ideas cloud what we can actually learn from psychedelics. Fuck Tim Leary.

rms 18y ago

>People who think they can mimic consciousness on computers have more in common with magical thinking then with science because they have absolutely no deep understanding of consciousness. You had me until that line.

LPTS 18y ago
Why don't you buy that?

jackchristopher 18y ago

LPTS, do you think Kurzweil and gang are hurtful, or just wrong?

LPTS 18y ago
I think they are hurtful insofar as these immortality fantasies stop people from dealing with death in a less deluded way. But, on the other hand, many technology/science/Math visionaries have been driven by mythic kind of visions. Newton, Swedenberg, Cantor and Bohm come to mind. That in itself isn't hurtful. But when the nature of the belief causes them to not deal with a major facet of human existence, it starts to be bad.

Tichy 18y ago

So let us hear your deep understanding of consciousness. I hope that finally somebody can give us a definition. You sound like you know what you are talking about - or do you??? Really, I am waiting eagerly. As for Kurzweil, being afraid of death seems very rational to me. His escape plan might seem overly optimistic, but at least it is conceivable. More than you can say for your average religion.

LPTS 18y ago
Yes and no. I don't claim to know the answer to the hard question of consciousness. But, I think no one else does either. Even if we did have an answer I doubt its communicable. I do think my understanding of consciousness is deeper then most peoples. I've done a lot of meditation, a few peoples share of psychedelics (which do not themselves contain answers, but can open doors), and consciousness was my focus in college. I know what Im talking about well enough to know what we don't know. We don't know anything to give us a good reason to think we could put consciousness in computers. The deeper you go into your awareness the more universal the experience is. You can verify this experientially. Our bodies, thought patterns, emotions and memories all die but the awareness they all rise in (which, being aware of space, time, and identity, is outside of time, space, and identity) is immortal.
- Tichy 18y ago
  "We don't know anything to give us a good reason to think we could put consciousness in computers." Except that it seems likely that our brains simply follow the laws of physics, like everything else. "You can verify this experientially." How? "the awareness they all rise in (which, being aware of space, time, and identity, is outside of time, space, and identity) is immortal." I didn't understand that sentence.
  - LPTS 18y ago
    1.) Except that the laws of physics do not currently explain why it is that we have any experiences at all, yet it is the continuing to having experiences that is most of interest to people wanting immortality. If that's your reason for thinking we can upload our souls, do you think we know the right physics? 2.) Here are three ways, the best first. 5 to 10 years of meditation lead by the right teacher. A near anesthetic dose of ketamine or experiences with sensory deprivation. Stuart Davis says something like "If you doubt the fact of a spiritual dimension, get a gun, shoot yourself in the head. Freed from that dingy filter you call a mind, confirm through direct experience the ontological status of subtle and causal reality. Upon rebirth, try not to forget it this time." I personally think the fastest way is to take a week camping, spend three days to read a bunch of Alan Watts, listen to "Love Has No Opposite" by Stuart Davis and everything by Bill Hicks a couple times, catch up on sleep, relax, and hike, then on day four, find a beautiful area to sit and watch water and take a medium low dose of mushrooms, and listen to some gamelan music on speakers while you let the patters of nature and the flowing water merge synaesthetically with the study and relaxation you did and the intricate gamelan music. After six hours, you will understand. Then, spend three days relaxing, reflecting, and get back to work. You can't do astronomy without a telescope. You can't do medicine without dissecting cadavers. You can't do consciousness without technology to poke at the way the brain perceives itself. The same type of power structure that wanted to keep people from looking in the sky, where they had located the God they were distorting to gain power or the body, where they located the soul, now want to keep us from looking at consciousness, where many of them now locate the soul. In these cases, letting scientists look beyond the curtain threatened the worldview they depended on to keep power. Drugs aren't the only or best tool (long term meditation is best) but for seeing a certain kind of thing in the short term, they can work. Personally, my drug days are behind me. But I learned a lot of good stuff from it. 3.) I know you don't. You have fused with your ego and are unable to take a backwards step from it. (I'm not calling you egotistical or being derogatory). Awareness and ego come apart. Spend a while with your eyes closed, considering the way your sense of space and time, and attention and memory relate to form your identity. Breathe. After 15 or 20 minutes, you might realize that you are observing your identity as a constellation of your space-time concept, attention, memory, and breath. When this happens, your concept of self switches from being the subject through which you interact with objects to being itself an object of awareness. When this happens, what is the new subject? Spend another 20 minutes considering this. The new subject becomes an object as well, and the frontal structure of your personality becomes more and more distant as you climb the subject-object ladder by observing the new subjects an objects of an increasingly broad awareness. You think you are Tichy. You are, in a way. But, also equally true, Tichy is something you are aware of. That awareness is more essential to who you are then the details of your biography. It is immortal because it is outside of time (because at a certain level of jumping the subject backwards, your time concept becomes an object of awareness). Kurzweil is concerned with preserving the ego. He should be concerned with the thing that sees the ego he is trying to preserve. Your physics doesn't touch that yet. (It might sound like I'm talking about God. I'm not. Fuck God. But, I think many people make the mistake of confusing this awareness, often discussed in mystical poetry, with a biblical God that is actually just a surface feature of the ego we are trying to put in proper perspective. It might also sound like I'm one of those hippies who's always going on about living in the now. I'm not, fuck those hippies. It's not about one level, like the level past time that you can access with meditation or some drugs used well. It's about a healthy relationship between them all.)