by [anonymous]
1 min read16th Feb 201310 comments

-11

By learning to overcome the Nirvana fallacy, I have managed to find my hypothetical apostasy: I want to cure aging!

I think that awesome stuff will happen in the far future and I plan on getting there, so I'll do my best to make sure that I stay alive as long as I can. (Also, my primitive survival instincts make me want to become immortal.) Unfortunately, due to my evolutionary baggage, my own genes are going to kill me in a few decades.

What's your hypothetical apostasy and how do you plan to put it in practice?

 

Edit #1: If you're downvoting this article, I'd like to know why you're doing that. Send me a message or reply here.

Edit #2: I totally misunderstood what the hypothetical apostasy means. I was under the impression that it meant defending a view that most people deem too weird to contemplate. See Lark's explanation. I guess you should downvote this article!

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10 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 1:29 PM

I don't think you've understood what hypothetical apostasy is meant to be.

  • They're meant to be against your current views. If you currently want to cure aging, as your most cherished belief, your hypothetical apostasy should be against SENS. So you definitely wouldn't want to put it into practice! (Unless you were convinced by it and changed your mind, in which case you'd now need a new hypothetical apostasy - your old one is now no longer hypothetical.

  • They're meant to be private. If your utmost goal is to help the Greens win, writing a public, very convincing list of reasons why the Blues are right could be disasterous!

[-][anonymous]11y80

Thanks for clearing up my confusion.

Glad to help!

Actually, I think the issue is a misunderstanding of what apostasy is in the first place.

  • An apostasy is when you leave the group you were once a member of (normally a religion). Considered very sinful by some - better never to have been a believer than to have seen and turned from the light.

I totally misunderstood what the hypothetical apostasy means [...] I guess you should downvote this article!

You might consider retitling it (and adding an explanation of why all the comments are about what "apostasy" means). Something like "What views do you defend that others find too weird to contemplate?", perhaps. I'm inclined to agree that it would have been better as an Open Thread post, but now that it's here it might as well get a more informative title.

So you've found your Cause, not your hypothetical apostasy.

After correcting that error, just what are you asking for from people? Once you're clear on that, I'd recommend just starting another thread.

I myself did not downvote you, however I think I know why others did. This is the kind of thing that would have gotten better reception in the open thread. This is just to short for a discussion article, as you are not really saying anything yourself in this post.

If you post this there, you could get a whole conversation going about the topic. It's fine, all you did wrong was you didn't understand fully the community norms, so I will upvote you to slightly balance out these downvotes. And for the future, you now know our norms, so that you know where to publish.

I disagree - a post where we all post our hypothetical apostasies would be totally appropriate - if it was appropriate to post them anywhere, which it is not.