However, my experience with SI is that when I tried to raise these concerns back in 2005/2006 I was subjected to a series of attacks that culminated in a tirade of slanderous denunciations from the founder of SI, Eliezer Yudkowsky.

I am frequently subjected to abusive personal attacks in which reference is made to Yudkowsky's earlier outburst

Link to the juicy details cough I mean evidence?

I'm definitely a "liberal" (among other things), but I'm by no means excluding group values and group interests from my ethics. I see the question of individual rights vs group-ism, cooperation, etc as a 90% false dichotomy of the worst and most damaging kind. Liberals are silly and near-sighted enough for letting this shit go on, but hard-line conservatives are arguably even worse (and more guilty) for stirring up the hostility and moving the focus from entirely solvable, compromise-accepting practical issues (e.g. abortion) to some metaphysical conflict of responsibility vs selfishness.

I do not deny the essentially adversarial nature of differing values' and attitudes' interaction in society, but it doesn't mean we should escalate the inevitable debate to an all-out war.

(Sorry for blatant meta-politics, but I'm trying to call out mind-killing here, not increase it.)

Thus, this has never been a disagreement over facts at all, but rather, a moral loathing of our very kind.

This sounds unnecessarily hyperbolic. On what grounds do you claim that this difference causes 'loathing' often enough for it to be termed generally as such?

I disagree. Techniques for spreading rationality are highly rational to learn. Considering subjects such as Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate I dare say that it's almost essential for the project of disseminating rationality that LessWrong as a group learns how group dynamics work and how successful communities are built. If we consider being rational a good thing then we ought to make it as attractive as possible to feel as part of the rationalist group.

I'm sure that major life circumstances (external events) greatly affect happiness levels - divorce, death of a loved one, major illness, losing one's job or home. People adapt but it could take years to return to previous levels of happiness, if ever (Lucas).

I got to this blog because I thought that by delving into research on happiness, I would find a way back to happiness; it's been five years since I lost it. What I've learned is that the authentic happiness I felt while married and raising a family - now replaced by singledom and an empty nest - will take great effort to achieve through activities that offer temporary relief and only a semblance of the real thing. Including exercising. While I was happy, I didn't need to question it, I simply felt it. I wonder why the loss of happiness feels like a major internal organ is gone, leaving a huge empty space inside? I suppose we need to remember that grief is also part of life, not only happiness.

Thanks for this blog, it's been helpful.

Assuming that you have programmed it to care about its own consciousness, not just to ponder it, the first boot would die, and the reboot would wake up thinking it was the first boot.

But if a consciousness can be simulated on a computer running at multiple GHz, would not a simulation on a computer running at one cycle per hour also be consciousness? And then if you removed power from the computer for the hour between each cycle, is there any reason to think that would affect the simulation?

Another aspect which I have not seen discussed so far is of a quasi-philosophical nature: What makes you "you"? Yes, it is possible that my brain could have been started up last Thursday, giving me the illusion of the memories I have. But say I made that same copy next Thursday. That being would have all of those memories that I have, and all prior associations and synapses, but if he had an accident with a nailgun the next day, I wouldn't feel any physical pain. That is because he is not me. Even if he has almost identical physical circumstances, there is no continuity between him and me. If I died before the nailgun incident, it would not be me that felt the pain.

Instead, let's say I froze my brain. My brain that makes me me, stops working. That makes the thing that is me cease to exist. The continuity stops there. The person that you revive 200 years into the future may have the same state that I left with, but it wouldn't be me in the sense that makes you want to preserve "yourself" via cryonics in the first place. It defeats its own purpose.

If it is your pattern, your personality, your way of life that you want to preserve, you win. Parents attempt this all the time, tribes, nations, and cultures do it. I have replicas of myself and relatives on The Sims 3 that I identify with. He acts the same as if I was in that situation, so he is in effect a copy of me. If you downloaded your brain and copied it, you could have copies that would do just as you would, but the one in the body reading this comment right now, that's the instantiation that you most likely care about preserving. Sure, it would be cool to have someone exactly like you living in the far future, but you'd only be the brain donor who died to create him.

The only way of preserving yourself indefinitely is to gradually transition your personality onto better hardware. Currently, it is my opinion that ethics is the only thing preventing the creation of a BCI suitable for the task.

Also note that millions more are injured rather than killed every year, making the dangers far higher than the death statistics indicate.

So, feedback requested on the Dr. Zany thing. Made an otherwise dry post more interesting to read, or pointless and distracting?