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advancedatheist comments on Open Thread, Jun. 1 - Jun. 7, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Because it is a user manual for the brain, or, the meta-level behind getting any kinds of goals accomplished. Also a meta-level manual for people to more effectively get what they want out of life.
I have a very simple definition of LW-style Rationality. People strive to improve themselves all kinds of ways, such as learning a new skill or lifting weights. LW-style Rationality is IMHO about improving the improver itself, i.e. that part of the brain that sets goals and predicts what methods will lead to reaching those goals most effectively and reviewing the goals and seeing if the methods work and all that. It is a logical and necessary extension of the general idea of self-improvement.
To see it on levels, Level 0 is whining why my life sucks. Level 1 is working on life goals directly, for example sending out a lot of job applications in order to get a good job. Level 2 is improving myself so I become a better tool for pursuing my life goals, such as getting a college degree to be eligible for the better jobs. Level 3 is improving the improver, the part of the brain that oversees both Level 1 and 2 work. That is Rationality IMHO.
I talked with transhumanists about 20 years before I discovered LW. It was not convincing, because they were the kind of transhumanists who considered it a fashionable techno-trend. Go to electronic music raves. Read Gibson type cyberpunk novels. Have a website, which was kind of a bigger deal in 1994-5. Talk about Dyson spheres and uploading. It was a bit too... stylish and posturing. It sounded too much like just a fashion, and it sounded like "Look at me, I am smart!" Back then this fashionable kind of transhumanism was often called extropianism. The community had heroes with handles like T. O. Morrow and R. U. Sirius. It was hard to take them seriously. Just look at Sirius' publication list. When serious sounding titles like "Transcendence: The Disinformation Encyclopedia of Transhumanism and the Singularity." are published by the same guy who also published "Everybody Must Get Stoned. Rock Stars On Drugs. " and "Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. " and "Cyberpunk Handbook: The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook." then yeah, it is easy to write off.
So I was surprised when I learned on LW that far more serious transhumanism than Sirius's stuff exists. And I love it that googling R. U. Sirius' name gives 0 results on LW.
I did the Extropian name change, too. ; )
I agree that the transhumanist idea needs some cognitive house cleaning. For one thing, the newcomers like Zoltan Istvan amuse me by not seeing the contradiction between the transhumanist goal of "living forever" versus Zoltan's boosterism of younger transhumanists, especially the 20-something transhumanist women who think that posting all those selfies on Facebook accomplishes something. Apparently Zoltan, a man in his early 40's, can't imagine how transhumanists in, say, the 2030's, will talk about him as one of those obsolete figures from the Dark Ages of transhumanism who needs to step aside for a younger generation.
In other words, we seem to miss the perspective of seeing transhumanism as a project of personal development where time works to your advantage. The transhumanists' life extension goal should state explicitly that the experience of living all those extra decades and centuries in good shape will turn you into a really impressive badass, at least if you do it right. Even within the limits of current life expectancies, if age and experiences add value, then the older transhumanists with good reputations should have higher status and more authority in promoting the world view than padawan transhumanists with shorter résumés who have yet to prove themselves.