From: Osher Doctorow (osher@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Tue Jul 16 2002 - 20:05:07 MDT
From: Osher Doctorow osher@ix.netcom.com, Tues. July 16, 2002 7:11PM
I agree with Eliezer and Vanessa. So do many very religious Buddhists,
Catholics, Jews, Hindus, and a number of very knowledge-oriented scientists.
In fact, it is well known that a tendency exists for very abstract
knowledge-oriented scientists to be relatively uninterested in sex and other
materialistic things.
Osher Doctorow
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 4:44 PM
Subject: less sex, more brains!
> Vanessa Novaeris wrote:
> > spike wrote:
> >
> > <<Do you remember how you were immediately distracted from your studies,
> > agonizing over this girl or that, how you had to worry about dating,
getting
> > a car, perhaps mopping floors at the local Burger Barn to support your
car,
> > to support your social life? Do you remember that you were suddenly
very
> > distracted with all manner of pointless exercises, drawn away from your
> > studies in perhaps the middle of the most critical developmental years?
Did
> > you not waste your effort? (Hint: Yes. You did.)>>
> >
> > So sex to me, since I don't plan on procreating EVER, seems essentially
> > pointless & without any real purpose. It seems like kind of a waste when
I
> > think how that is time I could be spending productively to actually
accomplish
> > something.
>
> Hear hear. I espouse roughly this philosophy myself; I'm okay with the
> concept of romance/parenting after the Singularity, but I'm not going to
> activate that part of my life before then until I hear a rational, not
> rationalized, account of how this would advance the Singularity.
>
> Interestingly, reactions to this seem to fall into one of two
> categories; either:
>
> 1) "You poor fool, depriving yourself of one of the essential joys of
> life! You can't live without love!"
>
> 2) "Yes! Stick to that! Don't go near yon haunted planet! I wish I'd
> thought of that before I got sucked in!"
>
> --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
>
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