Comments on: What I Did On My Holidays, Part One

By: Nashorn

Nashorn — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:25:45 +0000

So you guys are all for Thought Control, provided that it is done for the good of the people

Anyway, I think that “kinda like a religion but without any of the bad parts” is just what most of the good people who actually have created religions had in mind. Somehow the complications just seem to creep in anyway. Creationists seem to be already in on the meme-schooling thing though, one has only to think of the ferociousness that they exhibit pushing their propaganda drivel on to elementary school biology classes.

And I’m certain that I have read all this in a SF short story already… somewhere.

By: Kaksoisagentti

Kaksoisagentti — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:11:02 +0000

I think Sandberg, Hughes (both talks), Bostrom (both talks) and Van Nedervelde were the highlights for me.

"So we get exposed to a mild version of religious ideas for a brief period, but then grow to maturity in an environment where there’s not much to enforce them. That was pretty much my personal experience, anyway."

Yeah, that was my experience too. Sadly, many people still take some other irrational beliefs, like astrology, so maybe the vaccination works against big religions, but the little infections can still get in, like a common cold.

By: Michael Grant

Michael Grant — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:39:32 +0000

Very interesting. I suspect a one-thousand year lifespan is way too high to be achievable, both for reasons of the complexity of biology, and also for reasons we simply aren't aware of yet. For example, if an average of ten people a year currently die worldwide of the disease that turns out to be the main cause of death at the 200-year mark, we probably haven't even got a name for it yet. Cf. on the fiction front Kim Stanley Robinson's Icehenge, where we do indeed see a thousand-year lifespan trumpeted only for people to reach old age and die after only half that; and on the non-fiction front the early overhyping of the promise of nanotechnology by Eric Drexler in Engines of Creation.

By: hannu

hannu — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:51:21 +0000

Kaksoisagentti, I’m not saying that I won’t become a full-blown convert one day. But yeah, some sort of artificial meme that would provide one with the sense of comfort and community and moral values that religion does would be a great, uh, idea. (Have we discovered a meta-meme here?)

I’m still catching up on the talks online, so any pointers to the highlights would be appreciated, by the way.

It occurred to me that Finland is a pretty good place to get a memetic vaccination like you describe. We get taught some Protestant values and Christian lore at school, but as a society we are quite secular. So we get exposed to a mild version of religious ideas for a brief period, but then grow to maturity in an environment where there’s not much to enforce them. That was pretty much my personal experience, anyway.

Hmm… I’m sure there’s a story or two there…

And David, that’s amazing news! Wow.

By: David Chambers

David Chambers — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:18:23 +0000

Have a look at:

http://www.mprize.com/index.php?pagename=newsdetaildisplay&ID=0107

By: Kaksoisagentti

Kaksoisagentti — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:04:06 +0000

(Damn, something strange happened and I lost what I was writing.)

Maybe you are not comfortable taking the positive aspect of religiousness (community, motivation, clear goals, or whatever) and linking them to hard science and tech? Or, like Bainbridge said in the conference, religions are harmful diseases, so we might have to replace them with something that is like a religion, but leaving out all the bad parts. Like a memevaccine: but some inactivated religion in, and you’re immune for all harmful religious infections for life.