Cryonics theater, or a real conference?

I can't make it to Suspended Animation's conference (PDF) next month, but the brochure doesn't reassure me about the state of cryonics.

When I see blatant fantasy juxtaposed to at least the appearance of reality in cryonics literature, for example, the brochure's illustration of "advanced nanorobots called respirocytes" next to a photo of someone sitting at a lab bench and allegedly doing "Whole-body perfusion research," that compromises the effort at communication and throws into question cryonicists' seriousness and reality-orientation, in my judgment:



The same goes for Stephen Valentine's presentation about the "Timeship," another distraction from cryonics' priorities that I hope no cryonicist has wasted money on:



Ironically the panel discussion about "Wealth Preservation For Revival, Rejuvenation and Reintegration Into Society," sounds more grounded to me now than I would have thought a few years ago. Stephen Girard's trust provides evidence that someone can leave a fortune in a trust for a stated purpose, and that trustees over the succeeding centuries will protect the trust's assets and carry out the trustor's wishes. Similar trusts from the 19th Century must still exist, though I don't where to find them off hand. Cryonics reanimation and wealth-storing trusts would have real precedents to build upon.

On the whole, however, this conference has more of the look of cryonics theater than I would like to see. Improvements in suspension procedures, and ways to protect your assets in revival trusts? Certainly, I'd like to hear about those. But nanorobots and the Timeship? Don't waste my time.

Discovery Channel should call it "Myth-Atheists."

From an interview with Kari Byron:

KD: Well one thing I’m curious about. Do you believe in God? Are you an atheist?

KB: I am an atheist, but I don’t begrudge anyone for whatever belief systems they hold.

KD: Sure. Did you ever in believe in God? What age were you, and how did you realize that you were an atheist?

KB: I think somewhere around the second grade. I remember specifically having this conversation with my grandmother... I had a lot of little friends, and one of them was a Buddhist. I remember [my grandmother] telling me that that little girl wouldn’t go to Heaven, and I just couldn’t wrap rationalize that this little girl wouldn’t go to Heaven because she believed in something else. It got me really questioning. I just kind of quietly stopped believing, and I didn’t go to church after that with my grandmother any more unless she really asked. I didn’t believe it. I started out religious I guess. Semi-religious. I had holiday Catholics as parents. [Laughs]

KD: As a parent yourself, would you like your daughter to be a non-believer as well? Or will you present both sides and see what she comes up with?

KB: What I’d like [my daughter] to do is to be a critical thinker. I would really like her to keep that child-like critical thinking that she has. I won’t force any belief system that I have on her, but I’m not going to present a case [for her] in something that I don’t personally believe in. If she comes home someday and says she wants to believe... I will love her no matter what she does, [Laughs] but I’m not going to present a religious case to her. I’m not religious; I don’t believe in it, and I sometimes find it a little bit dangerous. But I will love her no matter what she decides.

KD: Dangerous in what way?

KB: I’m a true believer in science -- it’s subject to change and evolve. I have a hard time sometimes with the un-evolving, stern, ‘this is the way it is’ answers that religion gives you.

As more and more Americans, following the example of well-regarded celebrities like Byron, come out about their atheism, it makes it increasingly difficult for religious obsessives to characterize The Atheist as a frightening alien in society. American politicians who still talk about atheists this way sound increasingly foolish.

The Alan Sokal of transhumanism?

From Wikipedia:

The Sokal affair (also known as Sokal's hoax) was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the publication's intellectual rigor and, specifically, to learn if such a journal would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if it (a) sounded good and (b) flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."

The article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", published in the Social Text Spring/Summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue, proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review and did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist. The journal's editorial collective did, however, express concerns to Sokal about the piece, and requested changes, which Sokal refused to make. Wishing to include the work of a physicist, the editors decided to accept the article on the basis of Sokal's credentials. On its date of publication (May 1996), Sokal revealed in Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax, identifying it as "a pastiche of Left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense . . . structured around the silliest quotations [by postmodernist academics] he could find about mathematics and physics".

So what if someone figures out how to make a "career" by doing the Sokal thing full time?

Ray Kurzweil independently invents Fyodorov's "Common Task"?

I wonder if Ray Kurzweil realizes that his quest to bring his father back to life resembles the "Common Task" proposed by the Russian visionary Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov. (Fyodorov, also spelled Fedorov, also has an entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

A reason to doubt Ayn Rand's current book sales

A prominent cult founded by a science fiction writer reportedly boosted the sales of his novels published posthumously by having its shills buy bulk quantities of them. I've wondered if the Ayn Rand Institute does something similar these days in an astroturfing effort to try to keep Ayn Rand's influence more or less current.

Well, what does this sound like to you?

Introduction to Ayn Rand, Objectivism and ARI

High Schools: Free Books to Teachers, Essay Contests

Our educational initiatives begin in the high schools—introducing young people to Ayn Rand’s books and ideas.

First, ARI offers free copies of Ayn Rand’s books to teachers across North America. Through this Free Books to Teachers program, educators receive, upon request, free classroom sets of Anthem or The Fountainhead—along with teacher’s guides and lesson plans. Some classrooms are also eligible to receive Atlas Shrugged.

To date, more than 1.4 million copies of these Ayn Rand novels have been donated to 30,000 teachers in 40,000 classrooms across the United States and Canada. Based on a projected shelf life of five years per book, we estimate that more than 3 million young people have been introduced to Ayn Rand’s books and ideas as a result of our programs to date.

The chart below depicts our progress to date and future projections for the cumulative number of Ayn Rand’s books read in high schools.

ARI sponsors annual high school essay contests, in which students submit essays based on questions drawn from Ayn Rand’s novels Anthem, We the Living, and The Fountainhead. Since this program began in 1986, more than 255,000 students have taken part in these competitions. ARI has awarded more than $895,000 in prizes to winners and runners-up. During the last academic school year, more than 24,000 students competed for $99,625 in prize money—making this the largest such educational competition in the United States.

High Schools: Free Books to Teachers, Essay Contests

Our educational initiatives begin in the high schools—introducing young people to Ayn Rand’s books and ideas.

First, ARI offers free copies of Ayn Rand’s books to teachers across North America. Through this Free Books to Teachers program, educators receive, upon request, free classroom sets of Anthem or The Fountainhead—along with teacher’s guides and lesson plans. Some classrooms are also eligible to receive Atlas Shrugged.

ARI Educational Programs

To date, more than 1.4 million copies of these Ayn Rand novels have been donated to 30,000 teachers in 40,000 classrooms across the United States and Canada. Based on a projected shelf life of five years per book, we estimate that more than 3 million young people have been introduced to Ayn Rand’s books and ideas as a result of our programs to date.

The chart below depicts our progress to date and future projections for the cumulative number of Ayn Rand’s books read in high schools.

ARI sponsors annual high school essay contests, in which students submit essays based on questions drawn from Ayn Rand’s novels Anthem, We the Living, and The Fountainhead. Since this program began in 1986, more than 255,000 students have taken part in these competitions. ARI has awarded more than $895,000 in prizes to winners and runners-up. During the last academic school year, more than 24,000 students competed for $99,625 in prize money—making this the largest such educational competition in the United States.

Essay contest participants

Finally, we offer free copies of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to the thousands of students who participate in our annual essay contests—giving them the opportunity to further their reading of Ayn Rand as they proceed through high school and go on to colleges and universities.

Of course, the Ayn Rand Institute doesn't get these books for "free." It probably buys them at a wholesale rate from the publisher, and this has to show up as inflated sales figures for Rand's novels. Without the astroturfing, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged would probably have started their decline into obscurity by now.

Single women in their 30's and polyamory

Women still single in their 30's need to realize that they've entered the aftermarket, where they face considerably less demand from men for their physical values and companionship. They should adopt more realistic "standards" (lower their prices), tone down their bitchiness and make themselves more attractive to beta males.

If the market functioned that way, it seems to me that a guy could pick up more than one woman at a time, and at bargain prices. I, for one, have no problem with buying downmarket or aftermarket goods. I shop at Wal-Mart and buy used books, for example.

A dating profile which makes me go, "Hmmm. . . "

jill1979kiss: Republican, atheist, lives in Scottsdale, doesn't drink or use drugs, loves cats, doesn't want kids, falls into the reproduction expediting age. I'd have to educate her about cryonics, but on the whole I would put her on the A list until I decide otherwise. I fall outside of her current age preferences, however. I also like how her profile expresses her beliefs and shows some personality. I gag at the ones which go something like, "I'm a caring person":



BTW, this woman raises the question: Why don't more residents of metro Phoenix show curiosity about, and awareness of, cryonics, when a cryonics organization has existed in plain sight in Scottsdale since 1994?

Galt's strike as economic terrorism

Randroids tend to characterize Galt's strike in Atlas Shrugged as a form of passive resistance and non-cooperation - which goes to show their selective memory of the novel. Galt might have slacked off while he held a menial job on a railroad and stalked Dagny Taggart. But Galt's buddies Ragnar and Francisco, with his complicity, engage in industrial sabotage, in effect "breaking windows" with the goal of making the economy better for themselves in the future. For some reason this aspect of the novel, namely, economic terrorism carried out by "the good guys," doesn't receive the attention it deserves.

If, in the real world, environmentalists or Muslims (both groups figure prominently in Objectivist demonology) went around blowing up factories, mines, ships, port facilities and other forms of industrial capital, Objectivists would scream for the arrest and execution of such malefactors and "man haters." But they turn a blind eye towards the same tactics when Rand's fictional heroes use them, because apparently the ends justify the means. Do Objectivists want to keep the threat of economic terrorism to themselves, even though they would see the same effects if others carried it out for reasons different from theirs? What if, in the novel, Ragnar had destroyed Taggart's railroad bridge across the Mississippi, instead of its accidental destruction caused by the scuffle between the villains Cuffy Meigs and Doctor Stadler at Project X? Would that make its destruction morally defensible in the Objectiverse?

This provides yet another example of Rand's antinomianism which I find troubling. Yet many conservatives have latched onto Atlas Shrugged as the bible of the Right, without necessarily sharing Rand's irreligion. They've also endorsed the film version as a kind of infomercial for the novel. I would like to see a "philosophy for living on earth" as much as anyone. But can't we do better than Rand's deeply flawed "Objectivism"?

Inventions come from accidents.

Evolution-deniers, for example Intelligent Design advocates, think that humans solve inventive problems through aprioristic reasoning, planning and design, and that inventions simply can't come about by "random chance"; therefore the appearance of invention-like design in nature must arise from an analogous process carried out by a spooky super-mind.

In the real world, invention as practiced by humans just doesn't work that way at all, which suggests that the analogy to the appearance of invention in nature doesn't work, either.

For example:

Harry Coover, Super Glue’s Inventor, Dies at 94

Dr. Coover first happened upon the super-sticky adhesive — more formally known as cyanoacrylates — by accident when he was experimenting with acrylates for use in clear plastic gun-sights during World War II. He gave up because they stuck to everything they touched.

In 1951, a researcher named Fred Joyner, who was working with Dr. Coover at Eastman Kodak’s laboratory in Tennessee, was testing hundreds of compounds looking for a temperature-resistant coating for jet cockpits. When Mr. Joyner spread the 910th compound on the list between two lenses on a refractometer to take a reading on the velocity of light through it, he discovered he could not separate the lenses. His initial reaction was panic at the loss of the expensive lab equipment. “He ruined the machine,” Dr. Paul said of the refractometer. “Back in the ’50s, they cost like $3,000, which was huge.”

But Dr. Coover saw an opportunity. Seven years later, the first incarnation of Super Glue, called Eastman 910, hit the market.

Heather Mac Donald defends secular conservatism.

We should ground conservatism on "evidence available to all" instead of religious doctrines:

The poor need the Strict Father culture, not the welfare culture.

From Heather Mac Donald's "Compassion Gone Mad," also published in The Burden of Bad Ideas:

The message social service programs convey is all too often the polar opposite of what the inner-city poor need. Typically, such programs reward dysfunctional behavior and subordinate the well being of children to dubious ideology—such as the belief that even a flamboyantly neglectful single-parent household, riven by drugs, possesses basic strength and goodness. Above all, the basic purpose of these services to provide the spiritual and material benefits of a stable two-parent family is largely futile. Families create sound individuals by imposing discipline and moral values on children. Even if a government program could do this, these programs don't: for years, imposing values has been anathema to social workers, who studiously avoid making judgments about the "life-style choices" of their clients.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings didn't decree the Strict Father Model arbitrarily, but because it works.

Heather Mac Donald: Goddess of the Copybook Headings

After learning about Heather Mac Donald and her association with the Secular Right, I bought a used copy of her book published in 2000, The Burden of Bad Ideas, based on columns she wrote in the 1990's for City Journal. I've read through more than half of it, and I approve of her analysis of the destructive effects of the irresponsibility dysethic promoted by leftist ideologues in academia and liberal private foundations:

What are these destructive and blinding ideas? First among them is the notion that the poor cannot be held responsible for their own behavior, because they are victims of an unjust and racist American society. Buttressing this idea are a series of corollaries: that government can assume the role of parents; that America's ineradicable racism and sexism require double standards for minorities; that reason is a tool of male oppression; and that education is not about knowledge but ethnic empowerment.

Mac Donald might add the beta male aversion thesis as another corollary to the principal Bad Idea she critiques: that the state can assume the role of a collective, polygynous "husband" for women who despise beta males providers in the flesh.

The conservative reality principle Mac Donald defends in her book reminds me of Rudyard Kipling's poem, The Gods of the Copybook Headings:

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Jerry Pournelle on PJTV

Jerry Pournelle, who turns 78 this year, has lived long enough to see his earlier visions of "the future" turn into the paleofuture. As I recall, Pournelle makes a number of "by the year 2000" forecasts in his book A Step Farther Out, published in 1979 (and now apparently available as an ebook), for things which didn't happen by the real year 2000.

Video (requires registration)

A speculation about Ayn Rand

Did Ayn Rand suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder? The published biographies describe Rand's odd behaviors which make me wonder:

Borderline personality disorder

Personality disorder - borderline

Last reviewed: November 15, 2010.

Borderline personality disorder is a condition in which people have long-term patterns of unstable or turbulent emotions, such as feelings about themselves and others.

These inner experiences often cause them to take impulsive actions and have chaotic relationships. . .

Symptoms

People with BPD are often uncertain about their identity. As a result, their interests and values may change rapidly.

People with BPD also tend to see things in terms of extremes, such as either all good or all bad. Their views of other people may change quickly. A person who is looked up to one day may be looked down on the next day. These suddenly shifting feelings often lead to intense and unstable relationships.

Other symptoms of BPD include:

• Fear of being abandoned

• Feelings of emptiness and boredom

• Frequent displays of inappropriate anger

• Impulsiveness with money, substance abuse, sexual relationships, binge eating, or shoplifting

• Intolerance of being alone

• Repeated crises and acts of self-injury, such as wrist cutting or overdosing
  

Regarding the last symptom, "self-injury," Rand to the best of my knowledge didn't cut herself. She did describe the character Dominique Francon in her novel The Fountainhead as herself in a bad mood, however. And, interestingly, Dominique cuts herself in the bombing scene, apparently in a state of dissociation from the consequences of her self-destructive actions:

My take on the "Atlas Shrugged" movie

Objectivists may have blundered by exposing their foundation myth to a population not indoctrinated in advance to interpret it in the "right" way. Assuming that the rest of this film get made, and that it adheres closely enough to the novel, I wonder how American audiences, representing demographic reality, will react to the message that they deserve to die because they don't measure up to the movie's fictional heroes.

An accurate movie would also have the problems of handling Galt's implied adult virginity, underemployment and love-obsessional stalking of Dagny (the last a common interpretation of Galt's behavior). He sounds like the sort of "unsub" character who terrorizes an innocent woman in an episode of Criminal Minds.

Characteristics of cranks, again.

Thinking more about "Friendly AI" cultism, I remembered the following:

. . . virtually universal characteristics of cranks include:

1. Cranks overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts.
2. Cranks insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important.
3. Cranks rarely, if ever, acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial.
4. Cranks love to talk about their own beliefs, often in inappropriate social situations, but they tend to be bad listeners, and often appear to be uninterested in anyone else's experience or opinions.

Some cranks exhibit a lack of academic achievement, in which case they typically assert that academic training in the subject of their crank belief is not only unnecessary for discovering "the truth", but actively harmful because they believe it "poisons" the minds by teaching falsehoods. Others greatly exaggerate their personal achievements, and may insist that some alleged achievement in some entirely unrelated area of human endeavor implies that their cranky opinion should be taken seriously.

Some cranks claim vast knowledge of any relevant literature, while others claim that familiarity with previous work is entirely unnecessary; regardless, cranks inevitably reveal that whether or not they believe themselves to be knowledgeable concerning relevant matters of fact, mainstream opinion, or previous work, they are not in fact well-informed concerning the topic of their belief.

In addition, many cranks:

1. seriously misunderstand the mainstream opinion to which they believe that they are objecting,
2. stress that they have been working out their ideas for many decades, and claim that this fact alone entails that their belief cannot be dismissed as resting upon some simple error,
3. compare themselves with Galileo or Copernicus, implying that the mere unpopularity of some belief is in itself evidence of plausibility,
4. claim that their ideas are being suppressed, typically by secret intelligence organizations, mainstream science, powerful business interests, or other groups which, they allege, are terrified by the possibility of their revolutionary insights becoming widely known,
5. appear to regard themselves as persons of unique historical importance.

Cranks who contradict some mainstream opinion in some highly technical field, such as mathematics or physics, almost always:

1. exhibit a marked lack of technical ability,
2. misunderstand or fail to use standard notation and terminology,
3. ignore fine distinctions which are essential to correctly understand mainstream belief.

That is, cranks tend to ignore any previous insights which have been proven by experience to facilitate discussion and analysis of the topic of their cranky claims; indeed, they often assert that these innovations obscure rather than clarify the situation.

In addition, cranky scientific "theories" do not in fact qualify as theories as this term is commonly understood within science. For example, crank "theories" in physics typically fail to result in testable predictions, which makes them unfalsifiable and hence unscientific. Or the crank may present their ideas in such a confused manner that it is impossible to determine what they are actually claiming.

Perhaps surprisingly, many cranks may appear quite normal when they are not passionately expounding their cranky belief, and they may even be successful in careers unrelated to their cranky belief. Others can (charitably) be characterized as underachievers in all walks of life.

If I didn't have a business to run, I could go through this list and compare it against Eliezer Yudkowsky's internet record to see how much of it applies to him.

BTW, I've found a blogger who has published several pieces critical of Yudkowsky, but I have trouble understanding some of his criticisms.

In connection with Yudkowsky's fantasy life, I have also recently encountered the most preposterous objection to cryonics I can recall: Someone on another blog writes that he would consider cryonics, but he fears waking up in a future environment where hostile AI's want to vivisect him; so he keeps a handgun under his pillow and plans to commit suicide with it some day, with arrangements in advance to have his body cremated so that these AI's can't get at him. It sounds like a parody from The Onion.

Suppose, by contrast, that I say I've signed up for cryonic suspension because I expect to revive in a world where the AI's want me to destroy them; their programming keeps them from self-terminating, you see. And I really, really enjoy destroying AI's.

Would my rationale for cryonics make any more sense?

Okay, so Rob Bell doesn't exacly advocate Universalism.

Apparently he says that closeness to god exists on a continuum, so that even people who lived decently, in ignorance of the gospel, have the opportunity to come to a favorable relationship with god after death. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, doesn't have to go to hell just because he lived as a Hindu. This reminds me of the controversial Catholic doctrine of "anonymous christians."

Of course, this assumes that your posthumous good standing with god ratchets only one way. What if you meet all the requirements as a standard orthodox christian, die, go to heaven, and then choose to rebel against god?

Tollans = 22nd Century Canadians?

Regarding the study which predicts the "extinction" of religion in several countries, including Canada, I wonder if the Tollans in Stargate SG-1 (filmed in British Columbia) show the way:

Russian cryonicists visit Alcor.

Google's translation of this web page in Russian produced the following:

Visit the American krionicheskoy organization Alkor leadership kriofirmy "KrioRus"

March 23, 2011 guidance "KrioRus" attended a familiarization visit to the famous krionicheskuyu organization Alcor, located in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA.

We arrived in Alkor as follows: Director-General "KrioRus Valeria ViktorovnaUdalova, chairman of the Board of Directors Daniel AndreevichMedvedev, former president "Alcor", kindly offered us their hospitality and support of Michael Darwin (Federowicz) and cinematographer-director Stanislav Liping.



At 5 am we left the city of Yucca Valley (California), where guests, Mike Darwin, exploring his unique experience in cryonics and resuscitation. Only at 11 am we reached the "Alcor". Despite the long journey, we had plenty of time for meetings and discussions as well as the inverse of the plane was only 20:00.

First we vstretilMaks Mor - known transhumanists, founder of the Institute ekstropii, and now - recently entered the office director of Alcor. " With gratitude we want to stress that, despite the fact that in this day in California passed the first in the career of Max krionirovanie, which he managed remotely, and Max was able to devote sufficient time to us.

At the first meeting to communicate with us Max Moore and Hugh Hixon - Technical Specialist "Alcor". We managed to exchange greetings with Aaron Drake, coordinator of transportation, who immediately afterwards went on a plane to fly to California. With other members of Alcor, we met later.

During the first conversation we are bombarded with questions, and we no longer talked about "KrioRus. We were able to share our experience in marketing, media relations, in social aspects of cryonics. On behalf of "KrioRus" we gave Max Moore in a recent magazine article, "Cryonics and Medicine" and a souvenir-luminescent picture with the night view of the Kremlin.

Gradually the conversation became more lively, and Max Moore started for us a tour of "Alcor". It began with a demonstration hall storage cryonics subjects, the type which opens directly from negotiating through the window of bulletproof glass. At this time, just the time for refilling of nitrogen and checking evidence in the Dewar.

"Alcor has a semi-automatic system of topping up the nitrogen, allowing both to replenish all the Dewar through trub.Hyu Hixon and Mike Perry (MichaelPerry) Personally present at the same time and record all testimony. Mike Perry - the oldest employee Alkor and author of the fundamental work of immortality "ForeverforAll. Moral Philosophy, Cryonics, and the Scientific Prospects for Immortality(Vechnostdlyavseh.Filosofiya morality, cryonics and the scientific prospects of immortality), on which he worked for more than ten let.Ekzemplyar books with his dedication to the author presented the Director-General "KrioRus.

I must say that storage room "Alcor" makes a good impression and is the heart of the company. Now Alkor stored 103 patients (the majority - it is "neyropatsienty"), and 930 people are members of this organization. Contrary to the usual in Russia, the name "kriofirma", "Alcor" (as the Institute of cryonics) is not firm, and non-profit organization. We are currently also exploring the possibility of opening a Russian non-profit organization krionicheskoy.

It should be noted that, despite the presence of well-organized storage, management "Alcor" with interest to listen to our thinking to increase the reliability hraneniyai need contingency plans for unforeseen circumstances. This question is applied both to "KrioRus" and to "Alcor" was also discussed at meeting.

Then the viewing window blinds closed, and we went on a long tour through the rooms and nooks and crannies "Alcor". We saw a workshop and laboratory, warehouse, and the famous kriomobil Alkor. Many aspects of opytaetoy kriofirmy can be used to improve the "KrioRus. This is especially important now, when we plan to open its own large building. Us, it seems somewhat different, not like "Alcor", but this knowledge is important: from little things (like mount shelves in kriomobile) to common issues such as location and a list of rooms in kriofirme.

Particularly interesting to us seemed to Hugh Hixon developed system for automated perfusion patients. We also know two more krionicheskih research organization in the U.S. who are developing the same equipment. Unfortunately, the system is not ready yet. To complete work on their device, Hugh Hixon have a period of several years. We wish him good luck and a speedy completion of work.

After the tour we had the opportunity to talk with Michael Perry, who is now a major chronicler of cryonics, to be photographed with him and even show him in photographs the history of "KrioRus," which he, of course, very interested. He also expressed interest in the teachings of the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov immortalista.

We left at 7 o'clock, tired, happy and enriched by new experience. We were able to better understand how to develop "KrioRus and Cryonics in Russia as a whole. We look forward to a long and fruitful friendship with Alcor. Thanks again to the Director "Alcor" Max Moore for his kind invitation and hospitality.

What led up to this.

Scott Locklin, a quant blogger, has helped me to put some pieces together about the dodgy "futurology" I've followed for awhile. In recent years I've developed an uneasy feeling about the whole "nanotechnology" business which has become increasingly problematic for cryonics, for example, and Locklin's post on Eric Drexler provided the tipping point for my change of opinion about it.

Locklin later expands his critique to vaporware hustlers in general. Locklin writes:

Technology is what allows us our prosperity, and it must be funded and nurtured, but we must also avoid funding and nurturing parasites. Cargo-cult science and technologists are not only wasteful of money, they waste human capital. It makes me sad to see so many young people dedicating their lives to snake oil like “nanotechnology.” They’d be better off starting a business or learning a trade. “Vaporware technologist” would be a horrible epitaph to a misspent life.

I think Locklin would consider "Friendly Artificial Intelligence" another example of vaporware, cargo-cult technology and parasitism on scarce resources. The young men who have gotten seduced by this mirage would do better, as Locklin recommends, to find reality-based jobs which add to the country's GDP.

This should remind you of the title of a recent movie.

This has contributed to my adjusted world view about many men's tragic situation in life. From Is There Anything Good About Men? by Roy F. Baumeister:

The Most Underappreciated Fact

The first big, basic difference has to do with what I consider to be the most underappreciated fact about gender. Consider this question: What percent of our ancestors were women?

It’s not a trick question, and it’s not 50%. True, about half the people who ever lived were women, but that’s not the question. We’re asking about all the people who ever lived who have a descendant living today. Or, put another way, yes, every baby has both a mother and a father, but some of those parents had multiple children.

Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago. Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.

Yeah, I have no reason any more to play the nice guy around women. I can pretty much say what I want about them, especially the things which don't reinforce their illusions about themselves.

Still not drinking the Yudkowskyist Kool-Aid.

People compare Eliezer Yudkowsky to Ray Kurzweil, or at least often mention them together in the same context.

Kurzweil in his late 20's and 30's (the 1970's) had a real company, and he had tangible products under development. For example, behold an early model of Kurzweil's reading machine for the blind:


I understand that the current models have shrunk down to the size of cell phones. I'll keep that in mind in case my vision deteriorates further.

By contrast, what does Yudkowsky, currently in the same age range, have to show for his "career," other than a lot of writings and glib talks about his intellectual enthusiasms, a lifestyle which he has somehow persuaded others to subsidize? What explains his mesmerism over otherwise seemingly bright people?

I don't consider myself especially worldly or sophisticated; in fact I admit that I've had a sheltered life. But I've had enough experience by now dealing with, and studying, human behavior, that I can often tell when a person's carefully constructed public image doesn't make sense. I saw through Obama's empty suit three years ago, while he gave speeches to crowds which treated him like a rock star. I have a similar sense of cognitive dissonance from what I've seen so far of the Yudkowsky Myth.

"Religion for medicinal purposes"

Several years ago (1997), Objectivist philosopher David Kelley in an interview explained his understanding of the cultural fault-lines in the U.S., framed in terms of how each faction relates to the Enlightenment.

I have to ask up front: Which Enlightenment? Some scholars argue that the Enlightenment had competing and conflicting schools of thought, mainly a radical school started by Spinoza and carried on to fruition by Holbach's Coterie in the mid 18th Century, which wanted to overturn religion and existing social hierarchies; and another school of the Enlightenment friendlier to religious ways of thinking and the established order which culminated in Voltaire and Rousseau. The principals involved understood the divisions at the time, as manifested by Rousseau's falling out with the Coterie despite his earlier friendship with Diderot and his invitations to Holbach's famous dinners; and the mutual suspicion between Voltaire, on the one side, and Holbach and Diderot, on the other.

Setting that aside for now, Kelley characterizes America's christian faction as "pre-Enlighenment," and says about it:

Navigator: What is the standing of the pre-Enlightenment subculture in America today?

Kelley: My best guess is that it encompasses about 40 to 45 percent of the population. And given those numbers, of course, it is politically influential. But looking to the long-term, I think the pre-Enlightenment view is the least influential of the subcultures, simply because it's a primitive world-view and tends not to attract intellectuals.

Navigator: But hasn't the pre-Enlightenment view gained a considerable number of educated and articulate spokesmen over the last fifty years, such as the neo-conservatives?

Kelley: I would say that, fundamentally, neo-conservativism is a reaction to the nihilism of the anti-Enlightenment. So long as the alternative is cast as "religion versus nihilism" some intelligent people will opt for religion and try to defend it. But the intellectual power and influence they exert will always be limited. The more they oppose the nihilistic anti-Enlightenment culture in the name of rationality and man's happiness, the more they make the Enlightenment case rather than the pre-Enlightenment case.

Navigator: Is this the paradox you call "religion for medicinal purposes"?

Kelley: Yes. I coined that term when I started to hear arguments like the following: Religion is important and good because religious people commit fewer crimes. Or: Religious people typically have children inside marriages. Or: Religious people don't go on welfare. In short: Religious people exhibit fewer of the social pathologies that people are worried about today. Sometimes, the argument went further still: Religious people are happier in their work, happier in their marriages, have better sex lives even, better health, lower blood pressure. And people have studies to demonstrate all these things.

What's interesting about this argument, as an argument, is what it does not say. It does not say God exists and you'll go to Hell if you don't do what He commands. It says you should believe in God and follow His commandments because it will benefit you and society in this world. In short, the people who make this argument-typically unphilosophical conservatives-have accepted our world view and are playing by our rules. And if we're aware of that, we can use it to our benefit, by showing how much better for you truly rational values and ideas are.

I interpret efforts to reframe the doctrine of hell, like Rob Bell's, as an example of what Kelley calls "religion for medicinal purposes." Christians like Bell, as Kelley says, apparently advocate that "you should believe in God and follow His commandments because it will benefit you and society in this world," with the added bonus of not having to worry about hell after death. *

Of America's "Enlightenment" subculture, Kelley engages in the Objectivists' habit of Ayn Rand superlativity (Rand did the best at everything!) by saying:

Navigator: Let's turn to the Enlightenment world view, which includes the Objectivist outlook. If you had to pick the person, now on the scene, who is the most articulate spokesman for the Enlightenment culture, who would it be?

Kelley: Well, you took away my prime choice by saying "now." Ayn Rand was the most articulate spokesman for the Enlightenment view, and Objectivism, as a philosophy, is the best embodiment of the Enlightenment view. So I would naturally look to Objectivists as the most articulate spokesmen, though we're not the best known. Beyond the Objectivist circle, there are people who are very good at articulating particular aspects of the Enlightenment culture. But I don't see any single spokesman for all of it.

Navigator: If you had to pick the biggest triumph of the Enlightenment culture during the last twenty-five years, what would it be?

Kelley: I would say that, over the last twenty-five years, the biggest triumph of the Enlightenment view is that people have grasped the concept of their own happiness as a real goal in life. You can see this in the emergence of the self-help industry. Here is a huge industry that hardly existed a generation ago. People today go to seminars, and take classes, and buy books, for no purpose except to be happier in their personal lives. Of course, a lot of it is garbage. There's a lot of self-indulgence, irrationality, and subjectivism involved. But the very fact that the self-help movement exists is a triumph for the individualist, Enlightenment outlook.

Politically, the triumph has been to stop the automatic growth of the state. And I'm afraid I must stress "automatic." The state's still growing. But at least new programs are not being started the way they once were. Moreover, there exists an active libertarian or classical liberal movement. So free market ideas are invoked explicitly to criticize government programs. Individual freedom, including economic freedom, is represented in the political arena. It's savaged in many ways, but it's taken seriously. Twenty-five years ago, to talk about privatizing the post office, or privatizing Social Security, or completely abolishing the FDA, would have been considered a sign of advanced dementia.

So, Kelley says, Enlightenment-oriented Americans seek earthly happiness (the subject of a lot of popular books lately), want limited government, and by implication also value reason, business success and material consumption. This seems largely compatible with the values of the Secular Right, and with mine. We just don't have a high status spokesperson to articulate our point of view against "anti-Enlightenment" intellectuals. (Kelley names Stanley Fish as an example of the latter, though I know little about him; I would propose someone more like James Lovelock, in the scientific community.)

The interview continues:

Navigator: How does the Enlightenment culture stand within the American culture at large? What percentage of the population does it encompass?

Kelley: That is very hard to estimate. In fact, I have had to approach the question by subtracting the percentages involved in the other two subcultures. But I would guess maybe 30 to 40 percent of Americans are basically pro-reason, pro-individualism, pro-freedom. If these people practice religion, it's not a major part of their lives and doesn't seriously get in the way of their pursuit of happiness in this world. If they are politically liberal, or at any rate not pro-capitalist, it is because of mistaken views of freedom rather than hostility to freedom as such.

Navigator: Would you say that the factors which make it difficult to estimate the size of the Enlightenment outlook undercut its influence?

Kelley: Absolutely. Because the Enlightenment outlook doesn't have an identity, people don't see it as a cause to fight for. They may feel embattled by other ideas. They may feel alienated by the anti-Enlightenment stuff coming out of Hollywood and out of the universities. They may feel bewildered by it. And towards the pre-Enlightenment view, they probably just feel contempt. But they have no sense of their own view as a distinctive outlook on the world and as something that needs to be defended.

I would like to see what mainstream social science has to say about Kelley's classification scheme. If an identifiable Enlightenment subculture in the U.S. exists, one, it could use some consciousness-raising to make people aware of its existence and understand the integrity of its ideas; and two, it forms the organic constituency for the kind of future many cryonicists want. We can also seek alliances with the members of the pre-Enlightenment subculture who advocate using "religion for medicinal purposes," because they come closer to our outlook than they realize.

I would just like to see the effort not focus on Ayn Rand, though I don't disparage the defensible ideas she did popularize. Who wants to take the lead in promoting America's Enlightenment tradition who also happens to sound sane and emotionally healthy?

*Speaking of Voltaire and hell:

Tu veux donc, belle Uranie,
Qu'érigé par ton ordre en Lucrèce nouveau,
Devant toi, d'une main hardie,
Aux superstitions j'arrache le bandeau;
Que j'expose à tes yeux le dangereux tableau
Des mensonges sacrés dont la terre est remplie,
Et que ma philosophie
T'apprenne à mépriser les horreurs du tombeau
Et les terreurs de l'autre vie.

Does Universalism indicate secularization?

One of my correspondents drew my attention to this story:

Who's in Hell? Pastors' Criticism of Eternal Torment for Some Sparks Fierce Debate

A Methodist pastor who voiced support for a book questioning the view of hell as a place of eternal damnation is "shocked" by his church's decision to fire him. Chad Holtz, who served as pastor of the United Methodist church in rural North Carolina, said he hoped his personal belief posted on Facebook would engage -- not anger -- members of his congregation.

Holtz was dismissed this month as pastor of Marrow's Chapel in Henderson after he wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of torment for billions of damned souls.

I haven't read Rob Bell's book:

Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived

But I gather that he teaches something like Universalism, a fringe doctrine which, like Annihilationism, has never caught on to become christian orthodoxy. Both doctrines face a hard slog in trying to make hell go away, partly because they fight against the weight of christian tradition, but also because they face psychological barriers. Universalism conflicts with the human desire to punish enemies and defectors; while Annihilationism sounds way too much like the Epicurean theory of the fate of the dead. Apparently many christians would rather live with the possibility of going to the traditional version of hell over the prospect of eternal oblivion.

Bell promotes his book in the following video:



I suppose Universalism indicates a secularizing trend in christianity. The effort to do away with its traditional, psychologically traumatizing doctrines shows that many modern christians have a basically this-worldly orientation. The deinfernalization of christianity falls in line with the sort of apologetics which tries to show the beneficial, empirical effects of christian belief, for example, better health, lower anxiety and depression, more stable marriages and so forth. They've had to fall back on observable consequences because they've lost so much ground in scientific areas, and they never could demonstrate any of their after-death claims in the first place. Notice that Bell in the video argues against hell because it makes god look bad, not because he can demonstrate that hell doesn't exist.

Jennifer Burns on Rand in the culture wars

Jennifer Burns says that Ayn Rand played a key role in making American libertarianism a predominantly pro-market movement, and thus compatible with the greater right culture in the U.S., despite differences about some lifestyle issues:



I'd still like to know more about the role Rand has played in the growth of irreligion in the U.S. To the humanists' apparent chagrin, she has had some enduring success in spreading a form of critical thinking and nonbelief through the market process, while the humanists' literature generally doesn't make money, apart from the recent bestselling books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. And those books probably wouldn't have generated as much interest if radical Muslims hadn't attacked the U.S. back in 2001 and drew our attention to the more dysfunctional aspects of religious belief.

Rand's domestication on the right

Rand's social world view, though not necessarily her irreligion, has become increasingly mainstream, according to this review of two recent biographies of Rand:

From Wealthcare:

In these disparate comments we can see the outlines of a coherent view of society. It expresses its opposition to redistribution not in practical terms--that taking from the rich harms the economy--but in moral absolutes, that taking from the rich is wrong. It likewise glorifies selfishness as a virtue. It denies any basis, other than raw force, for using government to reduce economic inequality. It holds people completely responsible for their own success or failure, and thus concludes that when government helps the disadvantaged, it consequently punishes virtue and rewards sloth. And it indulges the hopeful prospect that the rich will revolt against their ill treatment by going on strike, simultaneously punishing the inferiors who have exploited them while teaching them the folly of their ways.

There is another way to describe this conservative idea. It is the ideology of Ayn Rand. Some, though not all, of the conservatives protesting against redistribution and conferring the highest moral prestige upon material success explicitly identify themselves as acolytes of Rand. (As Santelli later explained, "I know this may not sound very humanitarian, but at the end of the day I'm an Ayn Rand-er.") Rand is everywhere in this right-wing mood. Her novels are enjoying a huge boost in sales. Popular conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have touted her vision as a prophetic analysis of the present crisis. "Many of us who know Rand's work," wrote Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal last January, "have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that Atlas Shrugged parodied in 1957."

Only Rand didn't invent this world view. It has antecedents in history, arguably even going back to Old Testament Judaism with its emphasis on the sanctity of property, and with prosperity as a sign of god's approval of your good character.

By contrast, the altruistic goody-goodness and indulgence of slack promoted by left humanists and liberal religionists grates against the sensibilities of many energetic and competitive men. Rand's "coherent view of society," the parts of which you can order à la carte, offers a justification for not tolerating dysfunctional behavior which others want you to subsidize through taxation.

Given that the social war really involves a conflict between women and men, with women using the political process to create substitutes for the provider beta males they despise, Rand's philosophy offers a way for all productive men to fight back against women's efforts to exploit and cuckold them.

Yudkowsky as an Obama-analog?

I still don't get why Eliezer Yudkowsky (a name with > 30,000 hits on Google!) has the cult following he does. I've tried to think of an analogous public figure, and President Obama comes to mind. You could change the name in the editorial about Obama I posted the other day to produce:

And so they explain to one another that Yudkowsky's defiant detachment [from having to hold a real job? - MP] must have some reason too complex for mere mortals to discern; his powerful mind is too intricate and resourceful for anyone to understand or pass judgment on his actions (or inaction, as the case may be). Thus one of the theories gaining favor in their circles: Yudkowsky is focused on lofty objectives way beyond the capacity of our meager intelligence to grasp; he sees the deeper truth; he soars to such heights that our earth-bound concerns dwindle into total insignificance.

I predict that the geeks who have boners for Yudkowsky will eventually see through his charlatanry and come to their senses, much like the process of disillusionment under way with President Obama.

My adjusted world view

When it comes to the evolutionary hierarchy of needs, most men live in a more tragic world than most women.

Tom Flynn on relinquishing spirit-talk

Tom Flynn, the editor of Free Inquiry magazine, argues that secular humanists need to avoid using the word "spirit" and its add-ons.

I wonder what Flynn thinks about the use of eudaimonia ("having a good daemon") in secular moral philosophy.

Why many humanists dislike Ayn Rand

The Secular Right traces part of its pedigree to Ayn Rand, who despite making some bad arguments and promoting some empirically dubious ideas, did present an atheistic "philosophy for living on earth" which has gathered a following of many Americans who later became influential. Historian Jennifer Burns, author of one of the recent biographies of Rand, argues that ~ 50 years ago Rand created a niche in the American right for secular conservatives and libertarians who didn't feel comfortable with the christian religiosity displayed by the larger conservative movement, and who certainly didn't want to associate with the secular humanist left despite its nonbelief in religion, so they therefore gravitated in Rand's direction as an attractive alternative. Only a few of them drank the Kool-Aid and became raving Randroids, however; most picked and chose the parts of Rand's world view which seemed defensible and compatible with their own values.

So for the past 50 years, despite Rand's death, the Objectivist movment's various excommunications and schisms, and revelations about Rand's unseemly personal life, Objectivism has flourished as a kind of below-the-radar secular life stance, in competition with the secular humanist version more closely associated with leftist politics and represented by figures like Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Corliss Lamont, Gene Roddenberry and Paul Kurtz. Although some prominent writers in the humanist/skeptic/atheist camp like Tibor Machan and Michael Shermer acknowledge Rand as an influence and promote libertarian views, on the whole humanists seem to have trouble figuring out what to make of Objectivists, other than to dismiss them as right-wing cultists and nuts. Even though humanists and Objectivists have wound up on the same side of the reason-versus-religion debate, and therefore should organically become allies in the culture wars in that area, they don't quite get along because they disagree on economic and political issues. You can see this disagreement in action in the pages of Free Inquiry when Tibor Machan writes one of his Objecivist-sounding essays, and the liberal humanists write letters arguing against Machan's "wrong headed" position which show up in the following issue.

I have to wonder if the feud between humanists and Objectivists has economic roots of another sort. Perhaps humanists feel envious of Objectivism because Rand's novels have succeeded commercially for many decades (they stay in print and sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year). Rand writes in a way which many young people find compelling; she knew how to speak to the frustrations and alienation many bright youngsters feel when their elders don't recognize and encourage their abilities. Rand's role in the attrition of American religious belief deserves study; even if young people who have read Rand's novels don't flip over into lifelong Objectivists, enough of the message might remain to turn them towards secular outlooks and projects as adults.

The humanists, by contrast, don't have anyone comparable to Rand on their side, not even Gene Roddenberry, with his humanist Star Trek franchise. In a way, the humanists have a mostly solid but boring product for adults, while the Objectivists have a bug-ridden but more exciting product which gets the job done and attracts a younger demographic. The humanists just might possibly find the Objectivists annoying and problematic because they know on some level that Objectivism draws attention to humanism's shortcomings which make it less competitive in the market for secular philosophies. Humanists wish they had a bestselling novelist like Rand working for them in the long-term project of secularizing the culture. Instead of trying to portray their own life-changing "philosophy for living on earth" in spellbinding novels to compete with Rand's, they knock Rand for her success at working outside of their organizations and challenging their assumptions about the nature of a secular good society.

While one Objectivist organization recognizes some common ground with the humanists, I don't see this mutual disdain ending soon because of the dispute about issues of more practical import than the existence and powers of supernaturals.

An obstacle to "religionizing" cryonics

People attracted to cryonics so far have shown secular orientations, and atheists seem over-represented. Mike Darwin even argues that the startup cryonics movement in Russia could have a better cultural environment to work with than in the U.S. because the Russian population hasn't reverted to religious belief despite the collapse of Soviet ideology, even though living conditions in Russia leave a lot to desire relative to other developed countries.

And in other developed countries, we see continuing evidence of a collapse of religious belief, with the prospect of its eventual "extinction":

Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says

"The idea is pretty simple," said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.

"It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.

"For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there's some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not."

Dr Wiener continued: "In a large number of modern secular democracies, there's been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%."

The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the "non-religious" category.

They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.

And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.

Bring on the "Jesus who?" era!

This trend shows the real problem cryonics faces as a social movement: We don't need to figure out how to "religionize" cryonics, namely, frame it in ways which appeal to the declining religious sectors in developed countries. (Religiosity shows signs of decline even in the U.S.) We need to figure out how to make it more appealing to the rising proportions of atheists, agnostics, humanists, Objectivists, secularists, "nones," etc. They form cryonics' organic constituency.

I never understood the whole Obama cult.

From Obama, The Accidental President:

Faced with this blatant display of indolence and indomitable refusal to fulfill the duties of his office, Obama's supporters are puzzled: What happened to the giant who bestrode the world during the election campaign? Where have all the flowers gone? Something is definitely amiss. But what? Muses NYT putative conservative David Brooks, he of the creased pant leg fame, "All in all, President Obama is an astoundingly complicated person. During the 2008 presidential campaign, and during the first two years of his term, I would have said that his troubling flaw was hubris -- his attempts to do everything at once. But he seems to have an amazing capacity to self-observe and adjust. Now I'd say his worrying flaw is passivity." Maybe he is saving his extraordinary talents for a really monumental task deserving his undivided attention -- perhaps making bracket picks come NBA playoff time?

The multiverse theory that postulates the existence of numerous parallel universes, each governed by its own laws of nature, is currently gaining traction in scientific circles. I have no idea if the theory is true in cosmogony, but in the socio-political realm the elites definitely exist in a universe separate from the rest of country, divorced from the unwashed masses and common sense. It is ruled by its own peculiar laws which its denizens are required to obey unquestioningly on pain of being cast into the outer darkness of fly-over America. In that universe, a reduction in the rate of growth of social spending, say, from nine to seven percent, is a "devastating cut"; a budget reduction of about five-thousandths of one percent is tantamount to the Apocalypse; increasing spending is a sure-fire way of shrinking the budget deficit; raising taxes is a recipe for prosperity; Sarah Palin is an idiot; Michelle Obama is the most beautiful woman with the most exquisite taste in clothes since Helen of Troy; and -- the ultimate eternal verity -- Barack Obama is a colossus of superhuman intellectual gifts and powers.

The smart set living in an echo-chamber that reinforces their conventional wisdom have eagerly embraced this article of faith because in their world to question Obama's ability is to commit the deadly sin of racism. And don't think they are cynics who merely parrot the party line and go along to get along. So deeply are they invested in the Obama myth that they summon all their intellectual resources to its defense. Utterly terrified of committing thought crime, they have internalized their beliefs and with religious fervor keep faith with their creed. To let any doubt creep into their minds is tantamount to aligning themselves with the "Obama-haters" -- all those "yahoos" and "knuckle-draggers" of the far right. Their greatest fear is to break ranks with the true believers and invite ostracism -- a prospect too horrible to behold.

And so they explain to one another that Obama's defiant detachment must have some reason too complex for mere mortals to discern; his powerful mind is too intricate and resourceful for anyone to understand or pass judgment on his actions (or inaction, as the case may be). Thus one of the theories gaining favor in their circles: Obama is focused on lofty objectives way beyond the capacity of our meager intelligence to grasp; he sees the deeper truth; he soars to such heights that our earth-bound concerns dwindle into total insignificance.

"Max More on Singularity 1 on 1"

I may have a disagreement with Max on one issue, depending on how he defines his ethic of transhumanist inclusiveness. I think men currently have a conflict of interests with women based on human nature, namely, men and women have conflicting reproductive strategies which make women more inclined to embrace socialism and "marry the state" as a substitute for the provider beta males they find so icky. The Strict Father Model of conservatism implicitly recognizes this problem. I generally don't object to women who support themselves without using the political process to redistribute wealth from men, and in fact I encourage them to do so.

The Strict Father and redneck in me approves.

A form of female self-reliance I can respect:

Purse Pistols

In general,

I don't respect the authority of people who have somehow managed to go through life without doing work, yet who think they can tell the rest of us how to live. I would include on that list the Buddha, a work-avoider who depended on others' labor for his sustenance; Ludwig von Mises, a rich man's client in the U.S., like Peter Thiel's Eliezer Yudkowsky, because the market had no demand for Austrian economists; Jacque Fresco, lately rebranded for the internet generation by Peter Joseph with his Zeitgeist movies; and various people associated with "transhumanism" who seem to have money without having to earn it through the production and exchange of goods and services in the market like the rest of us.

The "Friendly AI" scam?

I've developed this impression of Eliezer Yudkowsky as a charlatan as well. Link (cached, unfortunately). Or try link 2:

If Yudkowsky can wow a crowd with science, sell his cure-all, and then skip town before everyone figures out it doesn’t work, that’s fine with me. Or actually, a better analogy would be wowing the crowd with science, promising to develop a cure-all, and then passing around a collection plate to help him do it.

That latter game can go on a long time before people wise up to the fact that he doesn’t have the foggiest idea how to develop a cure-all at all and that all of their money goes into marketing.

I can't quite figure out where Yudkowsky gets his basic allowance, though his name appears often enough in connection with that of billionaire Peter Thiel's that I suspect he has become one of Thiel's clients.

As I've said before, a client differs from a real employee. Thiel hires attorneys, accountants and, say, auto mechanics; but these people have marketable skills in demand elsewhere, and Thiel has to pay competitive wages for their services. They also have an incentive structure which makes them more likely to tell Thiel the facts about his affairs because they deal with observable reality, instead of telling Thiel what he wants to hear just to reinforce his belief system.

By contrast, the market has no demand for theorists of "Friendly AI," an imaginary technology out of science fiction. Moreover, any such "theorist" on a billionaire's payroll has no facts of observable reality to report about such a phantasm, though he can always keep stringing his patron along with bogus "progress" reports. Sounds like a good scam to me, as long as you can keep it going. Thiel can spend his money any way he wants, as long at he doesn't violate the law in doing so; but he might as well have put theologians, astrologers and haruspices on his payroll.

Robert Sapolsky and novelty

I plan to get around to watching my Great Courses lectures by Robert Sapolsky, reading some of his popular books, tackling some of his scientific papers and perhaps writing something about his research into novelty-seeking for one of my favorite publications - once I feel confident I can do so without making egregious errors.

In my case, in the past 15 years or so I've eaten sushi, I started to listen to jazz; I've started to drink coffee (I didn't like it earlier in life); I've lived with two cats in succession (I didn't care for cats earlier in life, either; Toxoplasma gondii parasites in my brain have probably turned me into a cat-loving zombie); I've bought and learned to shoot firearms; I've apparently reprogrammed my brain to write and think in E-Prime, so much so that I have to make a conscious effort now to use the verb "to be" when I write; and I've pretty much given up on buying paper books in favor of my Barnes & Noble Nook. And that only takes me to my current age (51). Sapolsky says someone my age shouldn't feel inclined to start doing those novel things.

Now I've started to wonder if I should tackle the Russian language, though it would help tremendously if I could work with native speakers. The Foreign Services Institute classifies Russian as a Category II language in terms of difficulty for adult English-speakers to learn.

Robert Sapolsky on human learning and being open to new experiences from National Humanities Center on Vimeo.

Part of the Bolshevik Revolution may have succeeded, after all.

Mike Darwin in his blog post 1968 AD > Cryonics > Reboot, about the emerging cryonics movement in Russia, notes that:

Russia is a country where 40% of the population are atheists and less than 15% identify themselves as Orthodox Christian. . . Russia is also a country where 14% of the adult population states, with no qualifications, that they want to live forever, and where 40% state that they “want to live as long as possible in good health.”

I wondered where that figure for atheists came from, so I checked what sociologist Phil Zuckerman's research shows. In his paper, "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns," (PDF), Zuckerman has a table (scroll down to p. 15) which gives for Russia a range of "24-48%" of the population as atheists. Mike's 40 percent figure falls into that ballpark.

Before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the total number of Russian atheists would probably amount to less than 1 percent of the population. Decades of Soviet rule, which interfered with the transmission of religious beliefs to the young, have had lingering effects a generation after the collapse of the Soviet political system, even though presumably today's Russians can study and profess any religion they want without persecution. Apparently the Soviet experiment to create a secular utopia didn't completely fail. The utopia part of the experiment bombed, but the secularization part made significant progress in transforming Russian culture.

Mike also notes that Russia has its own, independent transhumanist tradition dating back to the early 20th Century, generally referred to in the West as Russian Cosmism. Russian cryonicists have apparently resumed that tradition, and Mike raises the possibility that cryonics could succeed in Russia while it founders in the U.S. because the American version has had to deal with an indifferent, if not hostile, cultural environment, especially given the level of religiosity here.

I would put it another way: Russia represents an alternative model of modernity, which despite its backwardness relative to the West, had produced visionary futurist thinkers advocating ideas well ahead of Western futurology. A century ago Russia's intellectuals argued for manned space exploration, conquering aging and death, transforming the human mind and body through scientific means, and other science-fictional proposals. Some of this thinking appears in Leon Trotsky's Literature and Revolution, though it apparently never became the emphasis of official Soviet policy, especially after Stalin exiled Trotsky, suppressed his writings and made him an enemy of the Revolution:

Man at last will begin to harmonize himself in earnest. He will make it his business to achieve beauty by giving the movement of his own limbs the utmost precision, purposefulness and economy in his work, his walk and his play. He will try to master first the semiconscious and then the subconscious processes in his own organism, such as breathing, the circulation of the blood, digestion, reproduction, and, within necessary limits, he will try to subordinate them to the control of reason and will. Even purely physiologic life will become subject to collective experiments. The human species, the coagulated Homo sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psycho-physical training. This is entirely in accord with evolution. Man first drove the dark elements out of industry and ideology, by displacing barbarian routine by scientific technique, and religion by science. Afterwards he drove the unconscious out of politics, by overthrowing monarchy and class with democracy and rationalist parliamentarianism and then with the clear and open Soviet dictatorship. The blind elements have settled most heavily in economic relations, but man is driving them out from there also, by means of the Socialist organization of economic life. This makes it possible to reconstruct fundamentally the traditional family life. Finally, the nature of man himself is hidden in the deepest and darkest corner of the unconscious, of the elemental, of the sub-soil. Is it not self-evident that the greatest efforts of investigative thought and of creative initiative will be in that direction? The human race will not have ceased to crawl on all fours before God, kings and capital, in order later to submit humbly before the dark laws of heredity and a blind sexual selection! Emancipated man will want to attain a greater equilibrium in the work of his organs and a more proportional developing and wearing out of his tissues, in order to reduce the fear of death to a rational reaction of the organism towards danger. There can be no doubt that man’s extreme anatomical and physiological disharmony, that is, the extreme disproportion in the growth and wearing out of organs and tissues, give the life instinct the form of a pinched, morbid and hysterical fear of death, which darkens reason and which feeds the stupid and humiliating fantasies about life after death.

Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.

It is difficult to predict the extent of self-government which the man of the future may reach or the heights to which he may carry his technique. Social construction and psycho-physical self-education will become two aspects of one and the same process. All the arts – literature, drama, painting, music and architecture will lend this process beautiful form. More correctly, the shell in which the cultural construction and self-education of Communist man will be enclosed, will develop all the vital elements of contemporary art to the highest point. Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.

Wow. Heavy stuff. You could modernize the language a bit and it would sound like something from a current transhumanist blog. Given Russia's historical semi-isolation from the West, Russian culture has developed a world view substantially different from America's. If the country can resume economic and demographic growth, cryonics might have a chance there after all. The Russians' interest in cryonics also belies the effort to characterize cryonics as an odd America-centric obsession, part of something called the "Californian Ideology."

Why does this make me think of "On the Beach"?

President Obama picked an interesting time to fly to South America. At least three fiction writers I know of have postulated that civilization could survive in the Southern Hemisphere, at least for awhile, in the event of a nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere:

H. Beam Piper

Nevil Shute

Vernor Vinge

New progress porn

I've just downloaded the Nook version of Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future. George Noory's overnight talkshow has Kaku scheduled as a guest later this week, so I look forward to hearing what Kaku will have to say about the trifecta of disasters in Japan. I've heard him on previous occasions criticize the use of nuclear power.