David_Gerard comments on Optimism versus cryonics - Less Wrong

34 Post author: lsparrish 25 October 2010 02:13AM

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

Comments (104)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: David_Gerard 27 October 2010 05:01:45PM *  1 point [-]

You can get a bad memetic cold by deliberately compromising your memetic immune system: decompartmentalising too aggressively, getting a not quite so magical click and it all becomes terribly clear: the infidel must die!

That's an extreme failure mode of decompartmentalisation, of course. (Some lesser ones are on RationalWiki: Engineers and woo.) But when you see a new idea and you feel your eyes light up with the realisation that it's compelling and brilliant, that’s precisely the time to put it in a sandbox.

Maybe. I'm not sure yet. It feels a bit like deliberate stupidity. On the other hand, we live in a world where the most virulent possible memes are used to sell toothpaste. Western civilisation has largely solved food and shelter for its residents, so using infectious waste as a token of social bonding appears to be what we do with the rest of our lives.