A Truth-Guardian is someone who 'guards' an Idea by zapping (in its myriad forms) rather than through rational argument.
Are you willing to tell me that you've never met a Singularitarian who has attacked an opponent's authority (zap), or denigrated another's work (zap), or sought to work on their Idea's strong points to the neglect of its weak points (subtle zap), or acted in an elitist manner in order to confer perceived authority on themself (smug zap), or presented new data in such a way as to strengthen their previous predictions (super Bottom Line zap!)? Have you, Eliezer, never ever guarded your view of the future rather than argued dispassionately, even against a plainly wrong argument?
If you say no, I wholly withdraw my (well-meant) comment. Caledonian can be my second example. :p
The moment anyone makes a biased argument because of their attachment to an Idea, they become a Guardian. Singularitarians are people, and they take criticism, and defend their beliefs, requisitely passionately. Apologies if it seemed as though I was singling anybody out for specific criticism of bias - not my intention. For the record, I'm a firm believer. :)
A Truth-Guardian is someone who 'guards' an Idea by zapping (in its myriad forms) rather than through rational argument.
How does this idea relate to "Well tended gardens die by pacifism?"
Like any educated denizen of the 21st century, you may have heard of World War II. You may remember that Hitler and the Nazis planned to carry forward a romanticized process of evolution, to breed a new master race, supermen, stronger and smarter than anything that had existed before.
Actually this is a common misconception. Hitler believed that the Aryan superman had previously existed—the Nordic stereotype, the blond blue-eyed beast of prey—but had been polluted by mingling with impure races. There had been a racial Fall from Grace.
It says something about the degree to which the concept of progress permeates Western civilization, that the one is told about Nazi eugenics and hears "They tried to breed a superhuman." You, dear reader—if you failed hard enough to endorse coercive eugenics, you would try to create a superhuman. Because you locate your ideals in your future, not in your past. Because you are creative. The thought of breeding back to some Nordic archetype from a thousand years earlier would not even occur to you as a possibility—what, just the Vikings? That's all? If you failed hard enough to kill, you would damn well try to reach heights never before reached, or what a waste it would all be, eh? Well, that's one reason you're not a Nazi, dear reader.
It says something about how difficult it is for the relatively healthy to envision themselves in the shoes of the relatively sick, that we are told of the Nazis, and distort the tale to make them defective transhumanists.
It's the Communists who were the defective transhumanists. "New Soviet Man" and all that. The Nazis were quite definitely the bioconservatives of the tale.