29-30 Aug 2010
I woke up around 6:00 PM and took 1 piracetam and choline, and again at 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM. Sleeping went alright, although I did have a dream about an escaped mental patient slicing me in the arm with a scalpel. That wasn't fun. It hurt.
Would you believe that Youtubers found yet another innovative way to bug me? Today, someone decided this would be an excellent response to my mosque video:
"no good reason"
From a GAY person you are incredibly ignorant. You realise muslims have killed gays because they were gay right?
Have fun being stoned once muslims take your right to be gay.
Yes, they actually said that. (And got upvoted for it!) The argument itself is bad enough, but what really annoyed me was that they would attempt to bring my sexuality into this. I know, that's not something you'll hear from me very often, but in this case, the assumption that it has any relevance is not being made in good faith. What's really insulting is how it seems to imply that because I'm gay, that means I'm obligated to abandon reason itself on this particular topic and jump on this dipshit's bandwagon of "all Muslims everywhere would kill you if they could!" Sorry, but having some potential personal stake in this does not warrant shutting my brain off. It's not going to make me suddenly think "oh, okay, I guess because some Muslims have killed gay people, that must mean American Muslims now share this exact same view." The atrocities of middle-eastern Islamic theocracies aren't going to coerce me into holding knowingly false beliefs about the general disposition of most Muslims in this country.
Rationality always comes first: reality takes precedence over what we want to believe or what feels good for us to believe. Portraying a certain group as uniformly, infinitely evil, by inaccurately claiming that they possess beliefs which they actually don't, is a disservice to our own position. If you expect me to take part in this, then you must not know me very well. There are more than enough excellent reasons to oppose religions, especially Islam, without having to rely on the flawed and illogical reasons of morons.
I plan to record a video tomorrow, and while I was going to work on writing the next one tonight, I felt like reading some short stories instead (they were very good). I already have the basic structure of it in place, though. It's going to be about morality, again, principally focusing on the standards by which differing moral systems are ranked. Much like morality itself, I don't consider these standards to be something objective - we have to develop them and decide which ones should apply. When watching the original video that inspired this, it seemed like many of the answers were immediately apparent to me, as if the main thrust of them was obvious and further exploration was only necessary to flesh out some of the details. I hope I'll be able to articulate this as well as I can.
Overall, after a week of piracetam, I can't say I've noticed any especially significant difference. I wouldn't say I've been particularly productive, but it does seem like thinking comes easier, and I've mostly been in a better mood than usual. This could all be attributed to just having a good week, though.
Do you like sci-fi? Here's a pretty great story about nootropics.
i loved the sci fi story link you put up. btw, do you get pains from where injuries occur while your sleeping? i noticed that when i actualy would sleep without inducing it that places on my body would hurt and somtimes ive woke up with bruises and mysteriously one time i had a 4 and a half inch gash in my arm that didnt bleed....odd isn't it? but anyway, this is my first comment to you and i love all the things you do for people that dont stand up to all the religious bullshit and haters alike. im bi-sexual and even though i havnt found a guy that fits the bill, i still wont let people try to walk allover my gay friends and a couple times it ended up in fights, but at least i have a clear mind for not letting it continue. anyway, im gonna wrap this up and hopefuly i hear if you had any wierd incidents in your sleep too.
Daniel :3
I do sometimes have some residual sensation where dream injuries have occurred, but no actual marks. One time I had a dream about chopping off my own hand with a meat cleaver - but it turns out I was just laying on top of it.
I also read the story and although it was an interesting perspective, quite a bit of it didn´t make sense. Especially the last part, I mean none of the ones superhuman´s planes interfered with the other ones(because of their different spheres of interest-->no conflict(that the different moral goals would drive a conflict was completely arbitrary)). Both could just as well pursue theirs individually even possibly with a little help on each other due to different insights.
Also that, on many occasions, the protagonist could derive at so specialized conclusions with so little information just due to his superior intellect doesn´t ad up to reality in the slightest.
But otherwise a nice story to fantasize further about.
I think the issue is that a superintelligence is both very powerful and unpredictable, and thus could potentially pose a threat that could not be foreseen, even when left to operate on their own. And yes, there is still the information-theoretical limit of how much can be conveyed in only so much space. I'll chalk all this up to the inability of non-superintelligent humans to write stories about real superintelligences, due to not being smart enough to know how they would behave.
"I think the issue is that a superintelligence is both very powerful and unpredictable, and thus could potentially pose a threat that could not be foreseen, even when left to operate on their own"
But in this story both superhumans where able to predict (and adapt their prediction to changes with almost no additional information) the psyche of the other one to the most minute level (which was necessary for their subliminal attacks to work). Both even knew that the author would make them attack each other, for no reason, beforehand, so the element of unpredictability of each other wasn´t there to drive a conflict.
"I'll chalk all this up to the inability of non-superintelligent humans to write stories about real superintelligences, due to not being smart enough to know how they would behave." but we (in this story) know what their goals where(because they where explicitly laid out for us) and that they wheren´t in conflict
(the author could have easily saved that conflict by pretending that the buildup of those upload industries would have used up earth´s resources and/or manpower to much or would have cause much trouble and pain within mankind, so that the other one had to interfere(a very inelegant solution but still better than the original one))