So does this mean I shouldn’t spend money on cryonics?Of course you shouldn't. It's a complete waste of money and energy. Not only is the success probability incredibly low, but even if it succeeds, there's no reason to believe the reconstructed 'you' will be enjoying life rather than hating it. You'll be giving all control over your consciousness and suffering into the hands of future entities with who knows what kinds of motivations.
As for 'workaholics do smile', so do kidnapped torture victims when their captors tell them to. They write love letters to them on command. Also see stockholm syndrome.
Will existence at least be voluntary in the future? You bet it won't be, because if they let you exist at all, that means someone has invested something in you and they're obviously going to want something in return. That's why we don't allow minors or even adults to die painlessly when they say they want to. And ems are going to be completely under control of their owners. In the best case scenario, they are manipulated by mind control and well-shaped reward functions. In the worst case, they're threatened into obedience by threats of torture, and self-termination is never an option.
I'm not going to risk existence in such a context, but I guess it depends on how optimistic or pessimistic you look at it.
'my mood is spoiled by the thought “After the em revolution I will be too busy to enjoy this, if I’m not dead.” It causes me to be depressed for days at a time. I’d like to ask people how they stop this from happening to them.'
By not believing the scenario. Look, as things stand, you are scheduled to die due to natural decrepitude, like every human being before you. And before that happens you are supposed to spend your time earning your way in life by dedicating yourself to a specialized economic function. The fact that you would be depressed, not about the present facts of life, but about Robin's futurological scenario, suggests that depression about Robin's scenario is really functioning as a proxy for depression about present-day reality. Perhaps you have been using dreams of a better future as a shield against present realities.
Robin's em posts take a few aspects of the present - division of labor, competition, decentralized economy - and use them to organize the concepts of radical cyberfuturism - mind uploading, copies of individuals, whole galaxies turned into computers - in order to produce a vivid definite image of the future. It's always an achievement when someone produces a new image of the deep future, but it has to be put back in context, as one of a number of scenarios. Back in reality, there are way too many uncertainties to regard this as a foregone conclusion. Just to mention one microscopic adjustment to the vision that's possible; see my earlier comment on how politics and culture can trump economics. You don't have to believe in a monolithic singleton to suppose that we can end up in a post-singularity attractor defined by something other than overpopulation and malthusian competition. If the image of human nature prevailing in economic thought was that we are slackaholics rather than workaholics, and if this was considered a virtue, then normative economic thought would be all about ensuring that economic agents have enough slack in their lives, and bizarro-world Robin would be writing essays about a slackonomic singularity.
But the real core issue has to be that you aren't relating to your actual existential situation as a biologically doomed wage-slave human-being. Those are the raw facts of your life, and scenarios of a singularity of slack or a singularity of desperate specialization are both futurological whimsies, with some internal logic and some empirical justification, but not enough to take either for granted. Even cryonics should not be considered a safety-net; it's more of a last resort.
On a second thought, forget the value judgment question. I wasn't proposing this as a suggestion. My original question should have been: Realistic or unrealistic scenario, given that the respective technologies will exist?
Why? Because of the surveillance? The advantages are clear: it would be sustainable, people wouldn't torture and kill each other, and there would be enough resources per capita to make life worth experiencing (remember that creating children in a state of poverty is non-consensual and causes severe suffering).
So does this mean I shouldn't spend money on cryonics? I was pretty convinced by your arguments that I should sign up, until this subsistence em stuff started to come up.
Or should I do it on the off chance that a different future will arise?
Also, I think that Nick Bostrom's arguments about the possible development of non-eudaemonic agents pose a great challenge to your idea that at least someone will be happy. Maybe no one will be happy, because in the long run, happiness isn't adaptive.
Lastly, my primary question wasn't "will I be happy in the future," it was, "how do I stop worrying about being unhappy in the future in the present?"
Ever since I've read Robin's em series I've periodically had funks where anytime I've done anything remotely fun, be it spending time with my family, reading, or sitting quietly in contemplative thought, my mood is spoiled by the thought "After the em revolution I will be to busy to enjoy this, if I'm not dead." It causes me to be depressed for days at a time. I'd like to ask people how they stop this from happening to them.
To make it clear, my problem isn't that emEvan will be poor, in the future, it's that he'll be ludicrously busy. So saying "poor folks do smile" won't work. My problem with the em scenarios isn't that people will too poor to smile, it's that they'll be too busy working to pay for subsistence to smile. As Robin himself has shown, people need free time in order to be happy. I'm worried that people will be to busy to be happy, or evolve into non-eudaemonic life-forms, a fate arguably worse than extinction.
So again, to repeat the original question, how do people avoid getting depressed for days on end by reading the em posts? I'm not writing this as some sort of sideways criticism of Robin's views, I am genuinely suffering from a bad depression and want help out of it.
Stickk makes people agree to do something like lose weight an lose money if they dont. Could something like the street performer protocol work for weightloss and such? When you lose 10 kilos ill pay you 100 dollars?
If stickk and these sort of protocols do work why dont we use them to prevent sickness rather then treat it when it occurs?
The only thing worth a damn on Exiled is the War Nerd. Don't read Zero Hedge but seems to be similarly worthless and I don't think representative of much in the broader society (political scientists will tell you that the increase in polarization occurred in Congress, not the general public). In the absence of technological change, America will keep bumbling forward.
Robert Trivers has written a book called "Deceit and Self-Deception".
For a review see here.
So does this mean I shouldn’t spend money on cryonics?Of course you shouldn't. It's a complete waste of money and energy. Not only is the success probability incredibly low, but even if it succeeds, there's no reason to believe the reconstructed 'you' will be enjoying life rather than hating it. You'll be giving all control over your consciousness and suffering into the hands of future entities with who knows what kinds of motivations.
As for 'workaholics do smile', so do kidnapped torture victims when their captors tell them to. They write love letters to them on command. Also see stockholm syndrome.
Will existence at least be voluntary in the future? You bet it won't be, because if they let you exist at all, that means someone has invested something in you and they're obviously going to want something in return. That's why we don't allow minors or even adults to die painlessly when they say they want to. And ems are going to be completely under control of their owners. In the best case scenario, they are manipulated by mind control and well-shaped reward functions. In the worst case, they're threatened into obedience by threats of torture, and self-termination is never an option.
I'm not going to risk existence in such a context, but I guess it depends on how optimistic or pessimistic you look at it.
What's the most boring explanation for existence?
'my mood is spoiled by the thought “After the em revolution I will be too busy to enjoy this, if I’m not dead.” It causes me to be depressed for days at a time. I’d like to ask people how they stop this from happening to them.'
By not believing the scenario. Look, as things stand, you are scheduled to die due to natural decrepitude, like every human being before you. And before that happens you are supposed to spend your time earning your way in life by dedicating yourself to a specialized economic function. The fact that you would be depressed, not about the present facts of life, but about Robin's futurological scenario, suggests that depression about Robin's scenario is really functioning as a proxy for depression about present-day reality. Perhaps you have been using dreams of a better future as a shield against present realities.
Robin's em posts take a few aspects of the present - division of labor, competition, decentralized economy - and use them to organize the concepts of radical cyberfuturism - mind uploading, copies of individuals, whole galaxies turned into computers - in order to produce a vivid definite image of the future. It's always an achievement when someone produces a new image of the deep future, but it has to be put back in context, as one of a number of scenarios. Back in reality, there are way too many uncertainties to regard this as a foregone conclusion. Just to mention one microscopic adjustment to the vision that's possible; see my earlier comment on how politics and culture can trump economics. You don't have to believe in a monolithic singleton to suppose that we can end up in a post-singularity attractor defined by something other than overpopulation and malthusian competition. If the image of human nature prevailing in economic thought was that we are slackaholics rather than workaholics, and if this was considered a virtue, then normative economic thought would be all about ensuring that economic agents have enough slack in their lives, and bizarro-world Robin would be writing essays about a slackonomic singularity.
But the real core issue has to be that you aren't relating to your actual existential situation as a biologically doomed wage-slave human-being. Those are the raw facts of your life, and scenarios of a singularity of slack or a singularity of desperate specialization are both futurological whimsies, with some internal logic and some empirical justification, but not enough to take either for granted. Even cryonics should not be considered a safety-net; it's more of a last resort.
On a second thought, forget the value judgment question. I wasn't proposing this as a suggestion. My original question should have been: Realistic or unrealistic scenario, given that the respective technologies will exist?
Why? Because of the surveillance? The advantages are clear: it would be sustainable, people wouldn't torture and kill each other, and there would be enough resources per capita to make life worth experiencing (remember that creating children in a state of poverty is non-consensual and causes severe suffering).
Dystopian.
So does this mean I shouldn't spend money on cryonics? I was pretty convinced by your arguments that I should sign up, until this subsistence em stuff started to come up.
Or should I do it on the off chance that a different future will arise?
Also, I think that Nick Bostrom's arguments about the possible development of non-eudaemonic agents pose a great challenge to your idea that at least someone will be happy. Maybe no one will be happy, because in the long run, happiness isn't adaptive.
Lastly, my primary question wasn't "will I be happy in the future," it was, "how do I stop worrying about being unhappy in the future in the present?"
Workaholics smile too. Perhaps you aren't well suited to being one, but many other people are. So someone will be happy.
Ever since I've read Robin's em series I've periodically had funks where anytime I've done anything remotely fun, be it spending time with my family, reading, or sitting quietly in contemplative thought, my mood is spoiled by the thought "After the em revolution I will be to busy to enjoy this, if I'm not dead." It causes me to be depressed for days at a time. I'd like to ask people how they stop this from happening to them.
To make it clear, my problem isn't that emEvan will be poor, in the future, it's that he'll be ludicrously busy. So saying "poor folks do smile" won't work. My problem with the em scenarios isn't that people will too poor to smile, it's that they'll be too busy working to pay for subsistence to smile. As Robin himself has shown, people need free time in order to be happy. I'm worried that people will be to busy to be happy, or evolve into non-eudaemonic life-forms, a fate arguably worse than extinction.
So again, to repeat the original question, how do people avoid getting depressed for days on end by reading the em posts? I'm not writing this as some sort of sideways criticism of Robin's views, I am genuinely suffering from a bad depression and want help out of it.
Stickk makes people agree to do something like lose weight an lose money if they dont. Could something like the street performer protocol work for weightloss and such? When you lose 10 kilos ill pay you 100 dollars?
If stickk and these sort of protocols do work why dont we use them to prevent sickness rather then treat it when it occurs?
Seconded.
Haven't even clicked your links yet, but I think they're conceptually awesome? What other good faith reaction could someone give you?
The only thing worth a damn on Exiled is the War Nerd. Don't read Zero Hedge but seems to be similarly worthless and I don't think representative of much in the broader society (political scientists will tell you that the increase in polarization occurred in Congress, not the general public). In the absence of technological change, America will keep bumbling forward.
You can hide your sexual orientation too.
Robin, I recall you enjoyed The Wire. Here is an interesting talk by the creator I just came across. http://vimeo.com/29805278