Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ted Chu
Read between
March 9 - December 20, 2016
The purpose of a firm is to do something remarkable,53 not merely to survive.
Success is grand, but failure can be more insightful.
If we are able to recognize the inevitable wastefulness of any evolutionary process in a world dominated by free will and randomness, then we will be better able to adopt a higher perspective on socially sensitive issues such as the human misery that may chance to accompany unexpected or passing events.
what is often missing in studies of the future is the basic understanding that evolution almost necessarily creates crises and reversals.
As Wendell Berry rightly suggested, to naively trust “progress” or our putative “genius” to solve all the problems that we cause is worse than bad science; it is bad religion.
Any major evolutionary change can be viewed as a failure and setback from some local perspective or smaller time frame.
In summary, natural evolution is eventful, chaotic, rough, unclean, unbalanced—it is a storm of “creative destruction,” not a walk in the park. Conscious evolution will be full of unintended, unpredictable consequences as well, including calamities as well as magnificent, seemingly “miraculous” advances. Conscious evolution must follow the same strategy as natural evolution, only with more intensity and with the aid of Cosmic Vision. Going slow may be tactically correct at times but not strategically sound. To take new initiatives is to risk disaster, but to stand still is to render disaster
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To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell. —Overheard by Richard Feynman
The majority of species have degenerated and become extinct, or, what is perhaps worse, gradually lost many of their functions. For example, the ancestors of oysters and barnacles had heads, snakes have lost their limbs, and ostriches and penguins have lost their power of flight.
As we discussed in chapter 8, happiness is not our end but a great motivator for achieving our goals. But fear is also a great motivator, maybe even greater than the attraction of happiness. The great pressure brought on by existential fear produced a disproportionately large number of outstanding individuals. Likewise, fear of the posthuman future will create many of the geniuses of the future.
One can find evidence of fear lurking in the background of many kinds of emotions that on the surface might seem to be the antithesis of fear. Courage is the ability to overcome fear. In the posthuman world of advanced artificial life forms, we certainly will need more courage when existential fear inevitably increases in the face of uncertainties and perceived threats.
But because of its survival value, fear remains the most electric emotion: it concentrates our attention, sharpens our perceptions, and quickens our reactions as no other emotion can.
Nociception—the sense of pain—is the first function of the nervous system;
Fear of change. In particular, fear triggered by change, or by the threat of change, is one of our deep-seated instincts because changing the self is experienced internally as the equivalent to self-destruction, and changing of the environment always brings uncertainty and risk. We may even fear any change in our understanding of the world, for it may cause psychological damage, such as denting our self-esteem.
In the book of Genesis, the first emotion experienced by humanity is not desire, not shame, but fear.
As Livy (59 BCE–17 CE) claimed, “We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.”
Second, we should highlight the risks of the status quo. One of the best approaches to fighting the conservative forces in democratic policy debates is to emphasize the risk of refusing change. We need to ask those who are resistant to change, “Where does the status quo come from?” Everything we know was utterly new at some point in history. The new always appeared to be odd and crazy as measured by the prevailing conventional wisdom. Once committed to and tested, however, the impossible or the extreme can become reasonable, normal, or even inevitable in retrospect.31
What are the characteristics of a super-being that are likely to succeed in the long run? To use the analytical framework developed by New York University’s historian James Carse, we can conclude that beings of the future who gain immortality would play an open and infinite game with dramatic strength, which is the courage and resilience to prevail against all odds, rather than theatrical power, which is the force to bend or defeat others in a closed and finite game. Strength must be applied in an unselfish fashion because any “self” has a finite and closed existence. True power is not the
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technological advancement has continued to expand the quantity of available resources, rendering Malthus’s laws no longer operable.
The human species is extremely precious at present, but it may not be so after it spawns countless new beings that are far more “human” than us. They will not be masters of us humans, but they will be masters of the universe in ways we can never be. Our spiritual (if not fleshly) offspring will first be our servants, then our partners, and finally gods.
This is a really simple and, it seems, accurate prediction of where things are heading. The only thing I'd alter is that I think the "we" vs "them" will likely be less divided...perhaps it'll be more contiguous.
“The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind.”46
Exercising God-given capabilities is a way to honor God; to refuse to exercise them is a form of dishonor. Even if we wanted to, we could not play God, and the act of advancing our technology does not mean we are usurping divine prerogatives, even if we are creating posthuman beings. In earlier times, the scope of what “only God can do” was vast; now it is shrinking rapidly, and it will continue to shrink. Therefore, the notion that we can “play God” is based on a false assumption of what our natural, or God-given, capabilities are. We should also consider the possibility that we truly are
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In the end, I believe that the best mind-set is the Proactionary Principle,69 which follows Mao Zedong’s principle of being “strategically fearless, tactically paying full attention”
We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of our actions—if they are to be moral—is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. —Václav Havel,
Might it be possible that, in that broader context, there is actually some harm in “doing no harm to our fellow humans”? Again the question comes down to whether our ultimate aim is human happiness and well-being or fulfilling our ultimate potential and our responsibilities toward cosmic evolution.
Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative; there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realized that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made
Wow
rejuvenated
in the process we have been building up the capacity for the ultimate creation, which is creating something better than the creator (humanity) itself.
“Modern physicists reject the notion of an action-at-a-distance and recognize only local events. . . . Present events result from present conditions, that is, conditions that are contiguous in space and time. The past has dropped out of existence . . . [but] the human mind is the joiner, fitting together the disparate elements of the world . . . I remember or reconstruct what no longer exists and call it the past. I project or guess at what has not yet happened and call it the future. I connect the past with the present and invent purpose, a kind of nonlocal causality. I do the same with
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Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Every revolutionary idea evokes three stages of reactions: At first people say, ‘It’s completely impossible.’ Then they say, ‘Maybe it’s possible to do it, but it would cost too much.’ Finally they say, ‘I always thought it was a good idea.’” Arthur Schopenhauer’s original version is: “New truths go through three stages. First they are ridiculed, second they are violently opposed, and then, finally, they are accepted as self-evident.”
