Risk averse imortalists? (was Re: [extropy-chat]re:embedded in open hearts (Meta/EP))

[Brett Paatsch]

Keith Henson wrote

> At 12:51 PM 15/04/05 +1000, Brett Paatsch  wrote:

>>I know from what you have written that you are interested in memes
>>and evolutionary psychology. So am I. I just re-read Dawkins
>>Chapter 12, of the Selfish Gene where he discusses Axelrod's work
>>with Prisoners Dilemma and Tit for tat etc.
>
> The mention of Chapter 12 indicates you were reading the Second
> Edition. If you pop over to the index you can find where Dr. Dawkins
> mentions me for contributing the term "memeoids," certainly an apt
> description of  scientologists.

Yes. I see it in my hardcopy.

Dawkin's writes, "Keith Henson has coined the name 'memoids' for
'victims that have been taken over by a meme to the extent that their
own survival becomes inconsequential... You see lots of these people
on the evening news from such places as Belfast or Beirut.' Faith is
powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to
forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against
fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight
to heaven. What a weapon! Religous faith deserves a chapter to itself
in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow,
the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb."

Dawkin's, Chapter 12, "Nice Guys Finish First" has also been placed
online. http://www.clayjackson.com/pages/nice_guys_finish_first.htm.
Clay Jackson says he is has put it there "in hopes that people will enjoy
it enough to purchase the book".

Those interested in Tit for Tat and when Tit for Two Tats works and
doesn't work may find this chapter worth reading. Essentially Tit for
Two Tats was a strategy that was not entered in Axelrod's original
experiment but it was found afterwards that had it been entered it
would have won against the field of entrants in that first experiment.

How well strategies do depends on the other strategies that they are
up against.

>>Why pick a fight with scientology Keith?
>
> They picked the fight.  Look up what Helena Kobrin did in early
> 1995.  I have sometimes likened this provocation to a gang of thugs
> riding into a small US town and burning down the newspaper.

I did look it up. And I see that you use the 'gang of thugs' phrase in your
paper on cults at the bottom.  But the fight they picked wasn't with you
personally. You personally didn't have to respond to the gang of thugs,
you personally could have kept your head down.

>>Were you not using *rational* self-interest at the time?
>
> Over the course of the last 20 years I have come to the conclusion
> that people are not rational.  Of course they do rationalize.

The way you answer this suggests that you are including yourself in the
set of people that are not rational but that do rationalize.

I can respect the honesty and humility in that, but how can you know
whether you are rationalising at too low a level? After all memeoids
rationalise too. You don't seem to want to be a memeoid. Do you
think that it is ever *rational* to totally self-sacrifice or does such a
thing necessarily make one a memeoid to the value they think they are
serving?

I think that quite a lot of 'immortalists' would hold, but for political and
social reasons few would be willing to say that, yes, ultimately, a total
self-sacrifice is an irrational act because the basis for valuing anything
else goes when the self goes.

>>Did you bite off more than you knew?
>
> Yes.
>
>>Was it a stand on principle?
>
> Yes.
>
>>If so what principle?
>
> Freedom of speech.

Thank you for defending that principle.

> There were other factors involved, several of them, and they all
> step from  roots in the deep tribal past.

I'm not so sure about the deep tribal past stuff though. Obviously a
common deep tribal past is shared by everyone here now or we
wouldn't be here. But why would natural selection have stopped
selecting way back in the deep tribal past rather than when our
parents were exercising their judgement about with whom they
would mate?  Ever generation has spinsters and bachelors and
people that do not live long enough to have children. Isn't that still
natural selection?

Dawkins talks of the extended phenotype. Do you think that
rationality itself is an extended phenotype?

>>It has occurred to me, as it appears to have occurred to Samantha
>>that perhaps those that know they are going to die sooner or later,
>>are more willing to fight, and even to die sooner in defence of
>>something, some other value than themselves.
>
> An equally valid rationalization would be that people who think they are
> going to be around an extremely long time are concerned with nipping
> nasty social organizations early before they haunt you for eternity.  A
> world run like scientology would be a very nasty place to try to live a
> long time.  They do what LRH told them, and one of the things he told
> them would result in an extremely large number of deaths.

There are plenty of examples of memeoids that are willing to totally
self sacrifice though. Christianity and other religions have been around
for 2000 years.

In comparison are there any 'immortalists' who have ever willingly and
knowingly totally self-sacrificed for a principle like freedom of speech?
I don't know the Bruno story well enough, perhaps he was a sort of
secularist martyr for science.

I think there have been humanists that have spoken out in defence of
principles because they wanted their lives to count and perhaps because
they wanted their names remembered fondly or their kin to benefit.

> This might help you understand the issues.
>
> http://www.operatingthetan.com/nots56.htm
>
> The experience did provide the impetus to understand matters about
> EP that  eventually led to this article:
>
> http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/cults.html

Thanks for the links. I did read them.

> Which the editor tells me has been downloaded something like 250,000
> times and is still popular.  That has led to another article where I 
> account
> for wars and explain why we are in a period that is likely to get a lot
> worse.
>
> It is still in draft though after being rejected by a science fiction
> magazine as too speculative.  :-)

If you want to provide a link to it I'd be interested. Can't guarantee that
I'll get to it quickly though.

Regards,
Brett Paatsch