New Proposal for the Secret of Life

[LHX]

And we've always been aimless and self-destructive.

No evolution there.

1. as far as we can remember (which isnt very far)
2. we havent always been able to notice it
3. where did the trait of pretending to have an aim and ignoring signals of our destructive traits come into the picture?

1.  so?

2.  so?

3.  who says it wasn't always there, latent?

well - you are right on that account

obviously, since we ARE destructive, the potential had to have been there


going back to the original post (again)
i guess that if our destructive tendency is our ability to temporarily 'disrupt' the flow of nature
then what we are learning here is how to use it


when you give a person a new tool, it takes time to learn how to use it properly



so yeah - i agree with what you say about latency - it makes sense

thats the way tools work - you use it sometimes, and sometimes you let it rest

[B_M_W]

BMW--yes, it was Peter Singer on the Colbert Report.  I had heard about the speciesist thing before, and in fact I think I've seen Singer himself elsewhere, but it was good to hear his theories.

I heard that Colbert tore him apart. 

You know my position on Utilitarians, so I need not say more than that.

[B_M_W]

Wasn't built in? LHX, man, have you ever SEEN how a baby acts? ALL of its actions are out of self importance.

lol
precisely yo

there is no exaggeration there, and the baby doesnt represent it as being something other than what it is

there is no exaggerated sense of self-importance

Oh, I get you now. The babies self importance is a sincere, natural, and needed self importance, whereas exagerated self importance comes later.

Its only later in their lives that they are able to expand that sense of self to other people, and beyond. But otherwise we all start out as selfish, winey little fucks.

we still are selfish

but we also learn to be afraid of things that dont exist and desire things that cannot be obtained

thats where our selfishness gets messy
thats where we start interrupting each other

Maybe the point is to grow out of this selfishness?

[P3nT4gR4m]

Wasn't built in? LHX, man, have you ever SEEN how a baby acts? ALL of its actions are out of self importance.

lol
precisely yo

there is no exaggeration there, and the baby doesnt represent it as being something other than what it is

there is no exaggerated sense of self-importance

Oh, I get you now. The babies self importance is a sincere, natural, and needed self importance, whereas exagerated self importance comes later.

Its only later in their lives that they are able to expand that sense of self to other people, and beyond. But otherwise we all start out as selfish, winey little fucks.

we still are selfish

but we also learn to be afraid of things that dont exist and desire things that cannot be obtained

thats where our selfishness gets messy
thats where we start interrupting each other

Maybe the point is to grow out of this selfishness?

To what? Hivethink?

[LHX]

maybe

or to acknowledge that selfishness involves living in a fertile place where living things can thrive

and that aiming to be supremely selfish will have the indirect by-product of benefitting everything else that lives around you


selfish is usually seen as 'bad' - thats because the type of selfishness these days that sees people 'succeed' has the by-product of abusing and oppressing

on a long-term scale - that type of selfishness is self-destructive (and the result of a distorted understanding of the process at work)

[LHX]

Maybe the point is to grow out of this selfishness?

To what? Hivethink?

hivethink?

[Jenne]

maybe

or to acknowledge that selfishness involves living in a fertile place where living things can thrive

and that aiming to be supremely selfish will have the indirect by-product of benefitting everything else that lives around you


selfish is usually seen as 'bad' - thats because the type of selfishness these days that sees people 'succeed' has the by-product of abusing and oppressing

on a long-term scale - that type of selfishness is self-destructive (and the result of a distorted understanding of the process at work)

Ok, yeah, THAT I can get behind.

[Jenne]

BMW--yes, it was Peter Singer on the Colbert Report. I had heard about the speciesist thing before, and in fact I think I've seen Singer himself elsewhere, but it was good to hear his theories.

I heard that Colbert tore him apart.

You know my position on Utilitarians, so I need not say more than that.

Oh, he did...in his usual "killing them with bullshit" manner.  I felt sorry for the guy--in fact, I usually feel sorry for academics who go there expecting a fair trade in conversation. 

[B_M_W]

I don't feel sorry for them. They should know exactly what they are getting into when they sign up. They should know that Colbert has a character that he plays damn well, and they just have to go along with the satire.

On the other hand, the reasons I don't feel sorry for Singer are completly different. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

maybe

or to acknowledge that selfishness involves living in a fertile place where living things can thrive

and that aiming to be supremely selfish will have the indirect by-product of benefitting everything else that lives around you


selfish is usually seen as 'bad' - thats because the type of selfishness these days that sees people 'succeed' has the by-product of abusing and oppressing

on a long-term scale - that type of selfishness is self-destructive (and the result of a distorted understanding of the process at work)

Well spotted. Nothing wrong with selfishness if it's done properly.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Maybe the point is to grow out of this selfishness?

To what? Hivethink?

hivethink?

Sounded right at the time.

[B_M_W]

Just because you're not ideocentric doesn't mean you have to "hivethink".

[Starship, take me]

Then again, I do feel rather strongly that the "salvation by space colonization" arguement is bullshit.

Yes, it's bullshit, that's why no real student of the subject suggests that.  Not me, not Freeman Dyson, Bob Zubrin or anyone else.  They and I are optimists and don't piss puerile misanthropy under the banner of a goddess of chaos.  Sure, people do plenty of hideous stuff.  Einstein treated women like crap and raged against quantum theory.  But this is no reason to say humans shouldn't reproduce, but I realize you were NOT just sayin' that.

The idea behind space colonization is not to "evacuate Earth" or some tripe.  Africa wasn't evacuated when humans spread over the rest of the Earth.  However, humans and our descendant species might be living in places other than a vulnerable blue speck in the far future.

Just think about the first unicellular organisms that all life on this planet descended from moving out of primordial tidal pools, if that helps any.

[LMNO]

Doesn't Stephen Hawkins promote colonization?


I mean, yeah, it's an appeal to authority, but by all indications, that guy is smarter than all of us put together.

[Starship, take me]

Doesn't Stephen Hawkins promote colonization?

Yeah, he has been making news for his thoughts on that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O%27Neill
These guys were the pioneers.  Notice Dyson's efforts towards international peace and the environment.