From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Jan 03 2000 - 13:30:42 MST
Robert Bradbury wrote:
>
> On Sun, 2 Jan 2000, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote a nice collection of
> words to live by, including:
>
> > 3. Thou shalt convey sufficient future shock that thy audience feels
> > it, but not sufficient that thy audience runs screaming into the night.
>
> Ah, but Eliezer, that takes half the fun out of it.
If I were to write ten *commandments* for memetics, commandment one
would be:
1. Thou shalt enjoy thy work, but thou shalt not indulge thyself at the
expense of thy ultimate goals; for surely this is the mark of
foolishness and immaturity.
> Paraphrasing, "Thou shalt present the opportunity for all to
> avoid the scythe of natural selection, but never shirk from the
> duty to wield the blade."
Nonsense. Nobody *ever* "deserves" pain, not even Adolf Hitler. Now,
if *someone* has to be hurt, it might as well be Saddam Hussein; a
murderer is certainly "targetable" for life imprisonment if that makes
innocents safer. But pain itself is a moral negative, and nothing we or
anyone else can do will flip that sign to positive.
Also, my mind feels a lot cleaner now that I've given up hate.
> For as the brilliant philosopher Forrest Gump once said,
> "Stupid is as stupid does".
We're all humans in this together.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns Writing in Gender-neutral
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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