From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Dec 12 2000 - 15:50:53 MST
Nicq MacDonald wrote:
>
> I was starting to figure that you had just looked up Quantanephilim on
> amazon.com, and read my book reviews... I went on a review-writing binge
> last summer- most of the reviews were rather poor and ill-thought out,
> however (but still better than most that are posted!). And I was sure that
> I had panned "Foundations of High Magick"... I'll have to look that one up
> again.
Amazon also lists your reviews as being "from Sioux Falls, SD", by the
way.
> Perhaps your way (write your whole life
> story, all your interests, etc.) is better than letting people pick things
> up piecemeal...
It works out the same way, in the end, doesn't it? The strength of your
net.presence doesn't determine how much people know about you; it just
determines what level of net.adept is required to know it.
> Anyway, I had pretty much figured it out by now.
Pity. I guess there's no point now in implementing the rest of my master
plan.
Your birthday is also listed in the #babygoth data, by the way, and one of
the neqroteqh email addresses was used by an "Anton MacDonald" for some
posts. (I'd actually managed to miss your earlier post in which you'd
explained that "nicq" was short for "Nicholas".)
Just making your life a little more surreal.
I have a couple of other comments on things you said or thought at some
point during your entire lifespan: There is a difference between
rationality and rationalization. There are people who can "prove anything
with logic", who use their intelligence simply for justifying what they
already want to believe, but this itself is not an intelligent act, at
least not if done deliberately. Those who fail to understand this are the
script kiddies of rationality. You have not achieved proficiency in logic
until logic can tell you something you didn't expect to hear - until logic
is dictating to you, and not the other way around. I judge moral
philosophies the same way; you have not achieved proficiency in morality
until your philosophy takes over and tells you something you don't want to
hear. Of course, that doesn't mean that just telling you *anything*
unpleasant means you're doing things right... but if all you hear is what
you want to hear, you'll never get anywhere. (Judging proficiency in
logic is rather easier; logical reasoning has to tell you something that
you didn't start out expecting, and then the logic also has to be right.)
One of the reasons I don't like magic-based philosophies, and
nihilism-based moralities, is that they appear to have no capability to be
used in a way that surprises the user. Personally, in addition to the
Nicolai Kingsley stories, I think you should also read "The Moral
Animal". (You can skip "Engines of Creation", since you've read that
already. Sorry! Just backsliding for a moment.) At least some of the
better magical philosophies prescribe mental training, awareness of
awareness and the like - and I know you believe that's what's important,
not the rituals - which tune abilities that can sometimes be turned to far
more powerful disciplines, such as evolutionary-psychology-augmented
self-awareness. But I advise you to start soon, since you're running out
of time.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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