[extropy-chat] SIAI: Donate Today and Tomorrow

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> Here's another thought experiment:  If I offered people, for ten
> dollars, a pill that let them instantly go to heaven when they die,
> they'd buy it, right?  They'd buy it today, and not sometime in the
> indefinite future when their student loans were paid off.
> 
> (If they were sufficiently gullible. If they were sufficiently
> desperate. If I could absolutely prove to their satisfaction the
> truth of my hard-to-credit claim.)
> 
> Now, why do so few people get around to sending even ten dollars to
> the Heaven for Everyone Institute? Do people care more about
> individual salvation than the salvation of the human species?

Literally billions of people send a lot more than ten dollars to the
Heaven for Everyone Institute, actually to several competing institutes
that all claim that their pill to heaven is the only one that works.

Pills to Heaven are like lottery tickets: even if you are skeptical,
you still scientifically must concede an extremely slight chance of
winning, however small (even Stephen Hawking concedes this possibility
given the existence of black holes), while the true believer thinks
that every lotto ticket is the big one right up until the numbered
balls roll out.

Cheated chiliasts only feel cheated for a short amount of time. They
quickly find something new to be a true believer in. It's only when
they become very highly vested beyond mere supposition that the passing
of a millenium can cause such a person to start acting rationally.

Transhumanism is a narrow subset because its adherents tend to inhabit
that no-mans-land of agnosticism WRT technological futures. A little
too much faith for hard core scientists, and a little too much
skepticism and rationality for the true believers.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
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