A "Transhumanist"?!

[Edwardo Piet]

Hello and thanks!

You're welcome.

Um, let's see. The meditation stuff, mostly. Frankly I kinda think meditation is little more than staring at a wall. I understand that doing this consistently will "change your brain". I understand that doing this for hours, days on end will bring you to a different state of awareness, as doing anything that repetitively would. I'm still not compelled.

I can't be bothered with it either. I've got shit to do. I do think it could be worthwhile for training conscious attention though.

Harris actually goes as far as to say he himself is enlightened, acknowledging that this is a taboo. I wasn't a fan of that.

It's cool that he acknowledges how taboo it is. He's a supremely honest human being. To be honest in the secular sense that he uses the definition of "enlightened" I believe he is to an extent, in the sense that he's intellectually and consciously much more lucid than the vast majority of people.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm discounting the effect of all the practice I did. I can hardly know. I'm certainly baffled by people who can't believe there is no free will, something that is transparently obvious. Maybe they really are in a dream of self that I have shed. I just can't say.

I agree. I think letting go of free will is enlightening.

Anti-aging research and such?

It's fascinating, although currently there are problems with it.

Interesting! I think you're the first person I've met who has also (as I have) come to the conclusion that experience doesn't just "add up" from person to person. That idea has frustrated me for a while now. There is no "supra-being" who experiences, say, 6 million people's suffering added together. There is only ever 1 person experiencing 1 person's suffering.

Recently I had an argument with some guy about this and my position made him so angry he started screaming at me. Literally. (I just laughed.) I had said, I wouldn't think existence was worth it if it required the eternal torment of a single person, even if it meant enormous wellbeing for an unlimited amount of people. In part that's because of my not believing experience adds simply. Also, how could I ask it of someone else if I wouldn't do it myself? I don't care if we are talking about trillions of people. I would never voluntarily choose eternal suffering so they could have (what amounts to) a great big fuck-fest.

Massive respect to you for also recognizing this. I also know very few people who recognize the illogicality of aggregation. You are already one of my favorite forum users intellectually speaking. You're deep. I hope you'd make an awesome friend too.

Other interesting problems abound. The "repugnant conclusion" of Parfit relies on that thinking of addition. So does a strange conclusion of the LessWrong community, that it would be worse for a large enough number of people to get a speck of dust in their eye than for a single person to be tortured for 50 years. And then there's that old chestnut, Roko's Basilisk

Agreed. I'm familiar with the Repugnant Conclusion and I have also read that very same LessWrong article that you speak of.

Yeah, I have to say I agree with it. I think retribution on humans makes about as much sense as retribution on, say, a grizzly bear. We would live in a better world without the lazy idea of free will. It seems to me little more than a convenient way to ignore the factors which make a person do what they did. It's sloppy to just say "oh, if I were him I would have done differently". As Sam says, if you were him, you would be him atom for atom, and you would make the decisions he made. Free will is a leftover idea from religion, depends on the same dualistic mysticism.

I agree 100% with all of this.

I keep on thinking I am mistaken on this because it seems so inconceivable, but isn't Dennett's position that qualia is an illusion? I only believe I am seeing colors right now.. Huh?

It's not quite that simple, because he believes that, of course, illusions are still part of conscious experience... so qualia in one sense exists and another sense it doesn't. He's all about "In one sense yes, in another sense no.".

Anyway, you're truly epic to talk to and discuss with. You're deep. I fucking love it. I'd massively love to text chat with you on Skype about these deep concepts and topics.