In response to My Strange Beliefs
Comment author: Nathan_Myers 31 December 2007 08:21:41PM 1 point [-]

Ben Jones: Dead Christian Transhumanists' souls await the Final Day, just like all the rotting Christian corpses' souls. If you thaw out their heads and turn them back on, the souls are right where they were before, to the extent they ever were anywhere, and might as well pick up where they left off. When the head finally gets used up, the soul may be presumed to be where the other corpses' souls are.

The real question is what happens when you scan the frozen head into a non-frozen-head simulator, and start it up: can the simulation exchange packets with the waiting soul? If you start up two (or a million) simulators, can they all use it, or only the first? Or do that have to take turns, as with a time-share condo?

I think we would have to conclude that the soul (its "stamp", if you like) is encoded in details of the frozen head, and, if the non-frozen-head simulator were precise enough, you'd be running a simulation of the soul in each run, while the real soul sits twiddling its metaphorical thumbs waiting for the End Times. If the non-frozen-head simulator can simulate a non-frozen-head well enough, surely its simulation of the soul ought to be good enough too. After all, what does a soul have to do? Some people would say a cantaloupe provides a perfectly adequate simulation today, but they're probably not Christians.

In response to My Strange Beliefs
Comment author: Nathan_Myers 31 December 2007 07:54:13PM -1 points [-]

The standards of Brad DeLong, himself, would be something to aspire to. Sometimes they're exceeded here, often not. It's good to have a benchmark, but don't kid yourselves.

Comment author: Nathan_Myers 17 December 2007 06:17:10PM 0 points [-]

Wouldn't that make them "bio-reactionaries" or "bio-romantics"? Or has the equation of "conservatism" (which once denoted an inclination to preserve the status quo) with "reactionism" (desire to re-instate the status quo ante), "romanticism" (promotion of some vanished, idealized past), or raw fascism (power is its own logic) pervaded even these hallowed halls? Do we have a name for what was once called conservatism, or does the concept no longer have any meaningful referent?

In response to Misc Meta
Comment author: Nathan_Myers 12 December 2007 02:25:52AM 1 point [-]

What disappointed me about the response to that posting was how many (mostly well-spoken, articulate) people obviously learned nothing from the experience. We even have ObL's video in which he patiently explained how the overreaction was the whole point of the operation: he estimated six orders of magnitude of direct cost to the U.S. vs. his organization's own costs, neglecting all the less quantifiable damage to American society resulting from that overreaction (Patriot act, acceptance of torture, etc.). It's clear Americans haven't finished processing the experience, but it seems equally clear that the conclusion will be little better than the initial reaction.

The "Spanish Flu" epidemic early in the last century killed tens of millions of people. It was unusually deadly to young adults with strong immune systems. Most who died were killed by their own immune response.

Comment author: Nathan_Myers 05 December 2007 11:53:56PM 0 points [-]

The value of a mode of inquiry lies as much in the value of the questions it generates as in the answers. Science sets a high threshold for answers, but a good question can be worth much more than any answer.

Comment author: Nathan_Myers 05 December 2007 09:21:50AM 12 points [-]

I'm afraid Francis Bacon cribbed essentially all of his scientific method from an Iraqi usually called "Ibn al Haytham" (or "Alhacen", or "Alhazen", in different contexts).

Al Haytham invented modern science as an adjunct to studying (i.e., creating the field of) optics, about a thousand years ago. Appealingly, instead of simply advocating the method, he demonstrated using it to investigate natural phenomena, and explained, alongside his results, how the method offered the reader both confidence in his results and a means to correct his errors.

Bacon deserves some credit for bringing al Haytham's insights to the English-speaking public, centuries later. He didn't pretend to originality, but the English at the time weren't very interested in what an Iraqi had done 500 years earlier.

In response to Mere Messiahs
Comment author: Nathan_Myers 05 December 2007 09:17:06AM 2 points [-]

Sorry, that's 1000 years before science. Cf. Ibn al Haytham.

In response to The Affect Heuristic
Comment author: Nathan_Myers 28 November 2007 09:34:00PM 2 points [-]

With 7 beans in a hundred, I can just keep drawing beans until I get $14 worth, where with 1 in ten, the most I can get is $2. Not only that, I get to eat a hundred free jelly beans. This doesn't seem too mysterious to me.

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