From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Sat Feb 11 2006 - 15:47:51 MST
Shane,
The SL4 list tends to be full of tech nerds, but yes, there is a
Singularitarian subcommunity who believes that faith healing is
relevant to the Singularity.
To understand the connection, read "The Archaic Revival" by Terrence
McKenna (I'm sure there are numerous related websites). While taking
the psychedelic drug DMT McKenna was informed by some highly reliable
higher-dimensional machine-elves that the Singularity is due in 2012,
at the end of the Mayan Calendar.
Note that DMT is present in ayahuasca, a substance used by some
Brazilian shamen.
McKenna also postulated once that the 2012 Singularity might be
brought about by an AI programmer who was tripping on DMT or mushrooms
and therefore channeling for the plant-gods/machine-elves/whatever...
Anyway, yes, this line of thinking does exist. If you want to gain a
greater appreciation for it, I suggest you hop on a train to Amsterdam
and sample some of the low-cost tampanensis and cubensis available at
the "smart shops" there ;-)
-- Ben
> To my surprise some people turned up to defend the idea that
> faith healing is indeed relevant to the singularity. I had expected
> the complete opposite reaction.
>
> Is there really a sub-group within the singularitarians with this view?
>
> Shane Legg
>
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