[ExI] Pascals wager

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Tue May 4 22:13:27 UTC 2021


I am a materialist, but believe the mind will never be uploaded because it
is too complex.  Every day it seems that new studies find new kinds of
neurons or some such.  The deeper we go the more complex it gets.  I
believe that eventually they will be able to copy something resulting in
the copy's acknowledgement that it is a person.  And you have to factor in
the brain's interactions with the rest of the body, such as the heart and
gut.  And of course I could be very, very wrong.  I'll never know.  What if
each copy has the worst possible phantom limb/phantom body syndrome ever?
Will they be able to duplicate the actions of antipsychotic medicines on a
digital person?

For many people atheism is a loss of security in what humans are and
what we are doing here and how we should act.  You are now alone in the
universe.  People love to be part of something:  a club or clan, a family,
a team.  Atheists do feel a camaraderie with other atheists, just as I as a
psychologist feel a closeness with other psychologists, but that seems to
pale next to being a member of a religion who will meet one another in
Heaven.

Atheists clearly feel superior to others.  We are the smart ones, the
rational ones, the ones who have dumped religious myths.  This to me is not
much reward compared to what religions promise.  But I am not an atheist
for the rewards.   And I have to tolerate the punishments and write them
off as misguided.  bill w

On Tue, May 4, 2021 at 3:26 PM Ben via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 04/05/2021 18:00, bill w wrote:
> > atheism has no goals to offer people
>
> Not so sure about that, either.
>
> I'd call achieving an unblinkered, rational view of the world a goal. A
> very worthy one, too.
> I'd call combating the evils of religion in a non-violent way a worthy
> goal as well.
>
> Many atheists still have what I call a 'crypto-dualist' worldview, which
> is betrayed in their language. They may say they have no beliefs in the
> supernatural, but then say things which reveal some kind of conviction
> that there is something non-natural about the mind, for instance. Look a
> the number of atheists who can't take the final step to fully embrace
> materialism, and as a consequence deny that uploading can work, for
> instance ("it would 'only' be a copy!!").
>
> I'd say that an important goal of atheism is to divest oneself of any
> trace of non-materialism, to fully accept that the mind is a result of
> physical processes, and all the consequences of that view. And yes, I
> know how difficult that can be. For many people, atheism is just as much
> a challenge as any religious path. But far more rewarding, in my view.
>
> --
> Ben Zaiboc
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210504/a00322ce/attachment.htm>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list