Re: Rationality and altered states of consciousness

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Sep 20 2002 - 09:26:08 MDT


hook wrote:
> In many instances the only way x person might help expedite Singularity is
> by donating a part of his income to those who have the requisite skill. That is
> beyond debate; it's showing how the log will work and convincing him with, say,
> a scale model. It's convincing all of them who can contribute. Ay, there's the
> rub. The thing Ben needs to see is that the spooners could even slow the
> loggers down (they don't help matters simply by remaining spooners or neutral
> bystanders either), and that we can't let ourselves become obsessed with the bit
> of dung immediately before us and start spooning at it, but must see the whole
> problem.
> My sentiment is that all this ought to go without saying, but I felt like
> typing today.

One of the way that lists go to pot is when people stop saying the things
that ought to go without saying, leaving the lists solely to things that
ought not to be said. The year-old list subscribers may know, among
themselves, who they are; but you won't get interesting new blood anymore,
because when prospective subscribers browse the recent list archives, all
they'll see is, well, stuff.

When you see something that ought to go without saying - say it.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence


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