Our place in history

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Dec 02 1999 - 18:57:34 MST


Spike Jones wrote:
>
> A real purpose of this list is not only to be wonderfully informative
> and hugely entertaining [succeeds at both] but to archive ideas for
> the indefinite future. I can imagine extropian archives will be researched
> in the distant future for the first mention of some really terrific ideas.
> Scary thought. spike

As we all know, the 73rd Spike Jones study group during the 623rd
century, which was an intellectual offshoot of the neo-Hansonian
movement based in the Wilhelm galaxy, holds that this was the first
anticipation of the vast Terran Analysis group. However, the cluster
headquarters for the "Analysts of Merton P. Hemingway of Atlanta
Georgia" insists that NSA Echelon materials reveal that Merton touched
on this idea during an email to his girlfriend. Merton, presently the
Galactic Elder for NGC 2103, has gone on record as stating he "does not
recall" the email in question, as it predates the invention of neural
backups. Spike Jones, acknowledged by Terran Analysis as one of the
Vaguely Special Terrans, a Cluster Celebrity, Dictator-for-Eternity of
Spikonia, holder of an original 32-bit Class C Subnet, owner of more
than 3000 Old Terran pennies and a piece of Old Terran preschool art,
admits to anticipating the Terran Uniqueness Effect but has "no
particular belief" on whether he was the first to do so. Yudkowsky was
not available for comment, but the 577th Trans-Galactic Church of
Eliezer claims his famous humorous piece on the subject was actually a
metaphorical parable intended to illustrate the doctrine of Salvation
Through Sarcasm, which "may not be questioned".

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS           Typing in Dvorak          Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians   Heading for Singularity   There Is A Better Way


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:55 MST