Mitchell_Porter comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong

27 Post author: orthonormal 01 April 2013 04:19PM

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Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 29 October 2013 09:14:09AM 3 points [-]

Are there individuals here whose (main) point in life is to possess the right perspective of life?

There are individuals here whose main point in life is to ensure that the first superhuman artificial intelligence possesses the right perspective of life. Is that close enough? :-)

One thing that distinguishes LW rationalism from other historic rationalist movements is a strong interest in transhumanism and the singularity. Historically, wisdom has usually been about accepting the limited and disappointing nature of life, whether your attitude is stoic, epicurean, or bodhisattvic. But the cultural DNA of LW includes nanotechnology, space travel, physical immortality, mind uploading, and computer-brains the size of whole solar systems. There is a strong tendency to think that rationality consists of remaking nature in the image of your goals, rather than vice versa, and that the struggle is to determine which values will shape the universe. This is a level of Promethean ambition more common in apocalyptic movements than in rationalist movements.

This aspect of LW comes and goes in prominence.