From: Stephen de Vries (PHEN@wwg3.uovs.ac.za)
Date: Wed Aug 28 2002 - 05:29:05 MDT
On Tue, 27 Aug Peter Voss writes:
> Stephen de Vries wrote:
>
> >I lurch into the latter categorie, my loyalty lies with neg-entropy
> >and complexity. Self sacrifice in the face of a humanity threatening
> >AI is not part of this belief system, (self-sacrifice is never an
> >option), but neither is standing in the way of developing a
> >superior intelligent technology ("Artificial" and "Sinthetic" are
> >emotively biased terms). People generally like the idea of growing
> >bigger brains, as long as these are biological based and not anything
> >as drastic as growing intelligences in a neural net (in-silico).
>
> May I point out a contradiction ? 'I lurch...' Here you use 'I' in the
> conventional sense - it cannot mean anything else.
Yes, it doesn`t.
> Then in 'self-sacrifice'
> you refer to some kind of collective consciousness or evolutionary process.
> You do indeed believe in self-sacrifice in the usual meaning of the word 'I'
> and 'self'.
Sorry for the shabby definitions, in "self-sacrifice" I intended
"self" to represent the LF.
> >"I" am not as small as my body + brain + mind, the only thing that is
> >in essence me, is the "life force" which permeates all that is alive....
> >The life force is all that I can recognize to be at the center of
> >"me", so my loyalty lies with it, not my current body, mind or thoughts.
>
> You confuse two quite separate concepts: 'I' and 'life'. You *are* alive,
> you *have* 'life-force'(LF). 'You' are not equal to LF. Other entities also
> have it. So even if you believe in some collective consciousness, nature or
> LF then 'you' is a part of that and is not identical too it.
True, if we continue with this analogy, then the life force is the
order in my particles, I am the particles + the order in them.
> If your loyalty lies with the 'life-force', then that is indeed a very
> fundamental difference to what some (most?) of us believe. I must regard
> anyone who truly believes that I am less important than the 'life-force' ie.
> that I can be sacrificed to it, as extremely dangerous.
Only a nose hair.
> We *are* back to
> altruism: sacrifice of self to a 'higher' good - God, religion, race,
> country, nature, progress, etc. - Scary.
Again we differ on the definition of self. I(Stephen de Vries, I.D.
no. 75060751810...) regard myself rather as a fanatic than an
altruist.
If there is nothing worth dying for, then there`s nothing worth living
for.
Fundamentally yours
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen de Vries
www.geocities.com/athens/7415
"Some will fall in love with life and drink it from a fountain
that is falling like an avalanche coming down a mountain"
- The Butthole Surfers
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