Apprentice comments on Alien parasite technical guy - Less Wrong

61 Post author: PhilGoetz 27 July 2010 04:51PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (54)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Apprentice 28 July 2010 06:28:48PM 13 points [-]

I think the 'alien parasite' metaphor is a very interesting and potentially productive way to think about (rationalist) human consciousness.

Some related points are made by this blog post on ethics. Peter Singer fails to live up to his ethical theories because the alien parasite that writes Singer's books doesn't have full control over Singer's actions. If it did then Singer would be inhuman to us.

The blogger makes the point that those who have managed to suppress their 'natural' moral sense in favor of the dictates of an ideological system don't have a good track record. This ties into a lot of LessWrong themes. An alien parasite that is in full control of its host is potentially a very powerful thing - and something we might reasonably be afraid of. With a human you can always count on certain things, with an alien you never can tell. Maybe it just wants to manufacture paperclips...