[ExI] Memes and ghods

[Stuart LaForge]

Keith Henson wrote:

> I originated a few memes.

More than just a few. You should post more often.

Incidentally, I met some guys out here in Nevada when I first moved here
about 10 years ago who said they knew of you by your battles with Co$. I
can't remember their names but they were a father and son squatting at an
empty gold mine that the federal government had shut down.

> There are a few ideas I had that I didn't spread out as memes because
> I thought they were not good.  Won't mention them here.

I agree. Let the bad guys do their own homework.

> The "world as a simulation" meme I didn't originate, but I was a link
> (as was Hans Moravec) in it becoming a cottage industry in philosophy
> departments. The story was discussed on this list in the early 2000s.

I didn't take it very seriously back then. It wasn't until I derived the
causal closure of the Hubble volume a few months back that I started to
take it more seriously. Our causal cell is finite and that suggests either
a multiverse or a simulation.

> Oh, how the character of this list has changed.  In the early days, it
> was more about us becoming gods or at least entities with what was
> considered godlike powers through nanotech.  I think it could be summed up
> as "There are no gods--yet."

Well you know what they say about the future not being what it used to be.
Setbacks like 9/11 and the Great Recession happen and the ship of history
gets blown off course from time to time. But take heart for so long as the
ship is afloat, we still have a chance to reach port.

Besides godhood is relative, not absolute. Relative to 90% of the species
on this planet we effectively are gods. Just rather careless ones.

Stuart LaForge