Who knows it may even be the best implementation for this that we can currently build on some human brains.
Though in practice the reason we have Jesus is so we can ask "What would Jesus do?", which is easier to answer than "What would the ideal rational agent with unlimited computational resources do?".
'Course, Jesus says "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."; I think we still have a moral obligation to figure out the theoretical foundations of justification for perfect agents.
Though in practice the reason we have Jesus is so we can ask "What would Jesus do?", which is easier to answer than "What would the ideal rational agent with unlimited computational resources do?".
In Stoicism, we call this type of person a sage. It is actually a very practical concept to make use of. During before-sleep meditation, I'll playback my entire day in fast-forward mentally, but alongside me I imagine a semi-transparent sage-me and I "watch" as our two paths diverge (with the sage-me living a perfectly virtuous life and me falling far short).
I recognize the title could be more informative. At the same time I believe it says what is important.
I believe in a deity, I believe in mathematical entities in the same way.
The community of LessWrong (from whenceforth: LessWrong) is deeply interesting to me, appearing as a semi-organized atheist, reductionist community.
LessWrong seems very interested in promoting rationality, which I applaud. The effort does seem scattered, though, and this is the reason I post.
One has Eliezer's website with some interesting posts. The same of this community. The community links to some posts when you are coming for the first time into it, and you also have a filter for top posts. One has the blog. And recently, the center for modern rationality (in the same page as harrypoter fanfiction about rationality).
The point being there is no defined roadmap to go from AIC (average irrational chump to make an analogy to Game - which also seems to come up around quite a bit) to RA (again, rationality artist).
I write this post as to maybe generate a discussion on how the efforts could be concentrated and a new direction taken.
Should the creation of the Center for Modern Rationality envision this same concentration, this post may and should be disregard.
If it does not, then I leave it to your consideration.
Hang.