[ExI] Enlightenment at Last, was "are we publishing?"

[Jeff Davis]

Dear John,

I'm somewhat puzzled as to what it is about our president that's caused you
to go all loopy loopy.  Perhaps it's envy, perhaps it's that he's all the
things you are not: tall, handsome, charming, brash, confident, supremely
successful, filthy rich of course, and has access to the best pussy the
world has to offer, which is to say, all the pussy he deems worthy to
grab.  I can't know exactly what it is, but you're sensitive about
something.

However, here's hoping that I can ease your troubled mind.

Lately there's been a bit of hysteria over the possibility -- a low
probability in my view -- that notwithstanding the 22nd amendment, the
Trumpinator might want to stick around as the White House resident after
January 2025.

First, let me say I don't really personally see how that would be a
problem. Many people consider Franklin Roosevelt to have been a great
president, so I don't really understand why, except  perhaps out of
political jealousy, one would want to prematurely terminate a good thing.
But that's just me.

Tat said, here's my main point. We Extropians -- I've always considered
myself an Extropian Without Portfolio --have been monitoring the progress
of technology for some quarter of a century now, and have pondered
endlessly notions of Life Extension, artificial intelligence, cybernetics,
the uploading/downloading/joining/merging of human intelligence with the
larger exponentially transcendent synthetic machine intelligence, ie, AI.
Yippee!

But if it should turn out that we are lucky enough to be on the cusp of
these events, which we have so long dreamed of, and our current president,
the greatest president ever, should hang in there beyond what the actuarial
tables of the pre-singularity era suggest, then it's entirely possible that
Trump himself may be the first human to upload and transcend.

Imagine if you will, if you can, that we humans are the first and only
intelligence to have emerged in the universe, and that Donald J Trump
having privileged access to the most Advanced Darpaian Technologies
available, becomes ***THE ONE*** , the first to merge with transcendent
machine intelligence and becomes ...  wait for it ...  God Himself.

Sleep well my friend, sweet dreams.

Oh, and, one final note. About eight or so years ago you fiercely declared
the impossibility of free will.  My reaction: I instinctively recoiled at
the notion, since every spiritual being instinctively recognizes that life
itself, subjective experience itself, clearly, self-evidently, proves the
existence of free will. But your argument was logically robust, nay, more
than that, logically seemingly unassailable. And yet, I simply, and humbly,
in light of the great respect I hold for your uncompromising rigor, had to
object.

So now, lo these many years hence, I must thank you for setting me on my
quest of these last 8, 10, 12, years. A quest to uncover the defect in your
reasoning, and prove that your logic, for all its powers, is in the matter
of free will, feeble and inadequate. The universe has features that
transcend mere logic, enabling the fundamental truth of spiritual
existence, the freedom of consciousness, of spiritual beings, to be the
masters of their own fate.

So celebrate with me this great liberating truth: each and every one of us
is indeed free to choose his own path.

And thank you once again for choosing me to bring you to enlightenment.

Ever your grateful student and devoted friend, Jeff Davis

-- 
          "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                                                Ray Charles
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