Re: Why I donate to the SIAI

From: Giu1i0 Pri5c0 (pgptag@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Oct 23 2004 - 09:14:10 MDT


I think Ben is making a very, very good point here.
Is there a way we could edit our message, without compromising it of
course, in such a way as to provide *also* psychological comfort?
I will risk heresy and confess that I am beginning to think current
projects to "engineer a transhumanist religion" (see e.g.
universalimmortalism.org) are actually good ideas.
G.

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 15:18:07 -0400, Ben Goertzel <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:
> Religion is the one major case of people taking things distant from their
> everyday life seriously ... but this is arguably because religion gives
> people a lot of psychological comfort, and helps build comforting social
> structures.
> There is nothing about the Singularity that's emotionally comforting enough
> to cause people to overcome their bias against paying attention to things
> outside the scope of their everyday lives.... Rather, it's more emotionally
> disturbing than comforting to most people -- so there's a bias in favor of
> ignoring it in most peoples' minds...



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