[ExI] Early Archives... Re: Yudkowsky ‘Humanity’s remaining timeline? It looks more like five years than 50’

Fri Feb 23 07:30:55 UTC 2024

On Thu, Feb 22, 2024 at 7:05 PM Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com> wrote:

> These files are already online.
>

Where? The GitHub repo has files from 1996, but we are talking of 1993-96
files.

>
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2024, 12:02 PM Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 22 Feb 2024 at 18:52, Max More via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I could upload the files but I don't know the format. The files have
>>> names like "DIG30269". The files open just fine using MS Notepad. The one I
>>> opened as a test had a message from Reilly Jones – another old name to
>>> remember. Here it is, from.... wow, almost 30 years ago.
>>>
>>
>> Send them to me!
>>
>>
>>> From: Reilly Jones <70544.1227 at compuserve.com>
>>> Date: 31 Oct 94 17:35:54 EST
>>> Subject: [#94-10-621] Zen Physics Enlightenment
>>>
>>> Marvin Minsky wrote 10/30/94: <I don't know why you're so sanguine about
>>> Zen
>>> enlightenment.  I know of no one who has experienced much of it who has
>>> also
>>> been able to continue to make significant mathematical or physical
>>> discoveries.
>>> In particular, the dozen or so people formerly known for substantial
>>> accomplishments in modern physics seem to have totally lost those
>>> capacities...
>>> I attribute this to serious mental damage from "Zen  enlightenment".
>>> The best
>>> evidence is seen in their strident claims of now being able to
>>> understand even
>>> more about mind and nature.>
>>>
>>> The mystic state is low-focus conscious attention.  It is
>>> content-transcending,
>>> meaning that the connections to external reality are implicit and bypass
>>> the
>>> semantic bootstrapping cognitive mechanism in our brains.  All mystics,
>>> everywhere and forever, can describe in great semantic detail, the trip
>>> to
>>> enlightenment, as they gradually shut off the external world of desires,
>>> and get
>>> their focus of attention lower and lower (or broader).  At some point,
>>> the
>>> attentive state goes below semantic content and opens up to implicit
>>> knowledge,
>>> the open-ended connections between non-self and the self.  Nothing from
>>> this
>>> mental state can be brought back into consensual reality to share with
>>> others
>>> because it is literally wordless.
>>>
>>> The philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset agrees with Marvin's assessment as
>>> to
>>> mysticism's practical value:
>>>
>>>   "My objection to mysticism is that out of the mystic vision no
>>> intellectual
>>>   benefit redounds to mankind.  Fortunately some mystics were thinkers of
>>>   genius before they were mystics-men like Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, and
>>>   Bergson.  In these men the fertility of thought, logical or expressed,
>>>   contrasts curiously with the poverty of what they discovered when in a
>>>   state of ecstasy."
>>>
>>> I think that when people who have contributed in the intellectual field
>>> go off
>>> on a mystical journey, that they have somehow sensed the sterility of
>>> the field
>>> they are working in.  They have sensed that their field is approaching a
>>> complexity catastrophe that is due to the exceedingly rugged fitness
>>> landscape,
>>> the steepness of the scientific peak of knowledge they and others are
>>> clinging
>>> to.  They know that unless they descend the peak, and search in the
>>> basins
>>> between clusters of peaks of potential knowledge, that they have ended
>>> up in an
>>> epistemic evolutionary dead-end.
>>>
>>> The state of advanced physics, cosmology and mathematics for the bulk of
>>> this
>>> century has been sterile and dead-ended (relative to other, more
>>> productive
>>> epochs or other current scientific fields), assumptions at the very core
>>> of
>>> these fields must need to be re-examined.  This felt need for
>>> re-examination is
>>> what launches specialists off into the basins for a long-jump search.
>>> It is an
>>> exceedingly low-probability tactic of discovering where the assumptions
>>> went
>>> wrong or discovering better assumptions, but the people making the
>>> search have
>>> decided that local hill-climbing, or tweaking the existing scientific
>>> framework,
>>> is not going to be fruitful.  So, although most people going this route
>>> waste a
>>> lot of time in fruitless search, it is unpredictable when and if someone
>>> will
>>> come up with something highly fruitful.  Sometimes a trip to the
>>> wilderness
>>> makes you see things differently, usually you just get bug-infested and
>>> dirty.
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Reilly Jones               |        Philosophy of Technology:
>>> 70544.1227 at compuserve.com  |  The rational, moral and political
>>> relations
>>>                            |  between 'How we create' and 'Why we create'
>>> ------------------------------
>>> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> on behalf
>>> of Giulio Prisco via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>>> *Sent:* Thursday, February 22, 2024 10:10 AM
>>> *To:* ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>>> *Cc:* Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com>
>>>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Early Archives... Re: Yudkowsky ‘Humanity’s
>>> remaining timeline? It looks more like five years than 50’
>>>
>>> This GitHub repo has archives from 1996, upload new archives here, or
>>> send them to me and I will upload them.
>>> https://github.com/Extropians/extropians
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 21 Feb 2024 at 16:25, MB via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Keith,
>>>
>>> It would be a plus to share those archives with someone on the list
>>> (*not*
>>> me!) - like John Klos, or spike or ExIMod, someone who will preserve them
>>> besides you.  Just something to consider.  :)
>>>
>>> Be Well!
>>> Regards,
>>> MB
>>>
>>> On Tue, February 20, 2024 20:50, Keith Henson via extropy-chat wrote:
>>>
>>> > PS.  I have the early archives of Extropy Chat, but they are had to
>>> > access.
>>> >
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