From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Thu Dec 02 2004 - 06:50:52 MST
Hmm...
Personally I don't *fear* death that much, but I generally enjoy life a lot
and would much prefer to keep living. Although my current existence is
clearly deeply flawed, I'd much rather repair these flaws and continue my
current individual-consciousness-stream, than have this
individual-consciousness-stream die off. Although I do have some important
things to contribute, I don't delude myself that I'm necessary for the
future of mind in the universe (if I get hit by a truck tomorow, or if I get
tired of dealing with funding hassles and wind up not bothering to create
the AI that launches the Singularity, some other goofball probably will
build it eventually.... Sure, it's possible the future will be massively
better if I get there first, but it's really hard to estimate the probablity
of that).
Unlike Joel, I'm not ambivalent about whether I die -- I think that if I
die, that will SUCK massively.... But in all probability (unless creating a
superhuman AI on Earth 5-10 years earlier than would otherwise occur is
going to make a cosmic difference) it won't be a tragedy, just one more
example of the suckage that pervades the universe (an example of particular
importance to me though not to the universe at large)
-- Ben
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel Pitt" <extropy@paradise.net.nz>
To: <sl4@sl4.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 6:36 AM
Subject: Acceptance of death
> Also would describe me, except throw some drugs in there for a brief
> period of time before I realised they were pre-emptively destroying
> everything worthwhile in my life.
>
> Currently, I'm don't feel afraid, scared or anything else about death.
> I am completely accepting about it. My grandmother slowly died of cancer
> over a year while living with us, by the time she passed on it was a
> blessing. I would like the singularity to allow us to fix all our human
> flaws and actually make me *want* to live. I'm ambivalent to whether
> I die, I don't delude myself into thinking I'm particularly special
> (I'm smart enough to know I'm not smart enough) so I don't feel it would
> be a loss to our species. I also think that once I'm dead, that my
> existance is over so I won't have any regrets about dieing.
>
> Perhaps if the things going on in the world didn't seem so bleak and the
> general populace so uncaring and ignorant then I'd feel more kinship for
> other people and that there was a point to everything.
>
> Anyhow, despite my blase attitude to nonexistance, I'm still doing what
> I can to forward the singularity so that maybe my attitude will change.
>
> Joel
>
> Metaqualia wrote:
>> That would also describe me before I started studying singularity and
>> transhumanist topics.
>> I wasn't terrified at all, I became a hedonist and devoted my life to
>> sex and music.
>> Horror is not what you know will happen for certain, it is what you
>> constantly fear and doubt about.
>> Overall I am more depressed now because I worry about not being
>> suspended properly...
>>
>>
>> mq
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "gabriel C" <drachyneyes@hotmail.com>
>> To: <sl4@sl4.org>
>> Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 4:50 AM
>> Subject: RE: Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004
>>
>>
>>> I wonder if there was ever an atheist who accepted the full
>>>
>>>> horror, making no excuses, offering no consolations, who did not also
>>>> hope for some future dawn. What must it be like to live in this
>>>> world, seeing it just the way it is, and think that it will never
>>>> change, never get any better?
>>>>
>>>
>>> That would describe me, before I stumbled upon this list in 1999.
>>> Facing certain extinction, I was alternately terrified and depressed.
>>> I still am, but now with a tiny thread of hope. Otherwise I think I
>>> would be insane by now.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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