Prologue

Prologue With this book I hope to elaborate, using various essays and logs, on Cryptosociology and general social and human problems, with the proposed solution of blending Transhumanism and Singularitarianism. Far too often ideas are shouted down or derided by “experts” in positions of authority and no real challenge to them is offered. The search for that challenge is the purpose of this publishing. This also book contains my creed, a counter-faith for lack of a better term, based upon my personal ethics given the logical consequences of the views portrayed here. I don’t want to be convinced that I’m wrong, I want to be proven wrong if possible. I personally am not important, but these ideas are. I didn’t invent them; I’ve merely collected and restated them, because they need to be discussed accessibly so that civilization can decide which among them can lead to better quality of life, and which must be ignored. The interplay alone is mine. Society is leaning towards ultra specialization, and while this has many advantages a problem arises, I find that I’m not the best, or worst, at anything I’ve ever done - that I'm currently aware of - and odds are neither are you. I’m a generalist or a holist, and while in the eyes of some there is nothing worthwhile about that, it also means that I’m detached to a degree and can see the picture as a whole a bit better than anyone who has ultra specialized, and probably so can you. One of our main problems as a society is that we only consult specialists with our questions. Such is our respect for and faith in specialists we assign political specialists to lead us. Nowhere in our social nervous system is the holistic, context rich, generalist perspective given true voice despite the fact that many people have exactly that. This book is in part an effort to change that and intends to convey the conceptual meat of two decades spent reading and debating. It is my attempt to accomplish what I consider to be the purpose of all intelligent life; to examine the world and do what can be done to ease suffering, and perpetuate life. This quest is hardly mine alone, and takes many forms across many scales. For example some people seek to help themselves exclusively, others seek to help their nation or their family, some do this by curing the sick, or developing ways to kill the enemy in an effort to protect those they love. I do it by writing, and debate. I consider my whole species my family and the only thing I have to offer them is my mind. My only enemy is misunderstanding and deception. So until I can upload my mind, edit it, and enhance it, and share it, here it is in text. It will be constantly revised so long as I exist.

One can also see this as a universal position paper, on everything I could think of in general. While I have rosy fantasies about how this work will be received, as all authors do, I suspect that at most it will vanish into the sea of information already available. At the very least seal my fate politically should I decide to run for something. This book is my attempt to do something about the horrors of the world around me despite it feeling very much like I can’t do anything. Also, to contribute and encourage an era of modern “amateur” philosophy, to remind people that no matter what tradition or social order says philosophy is a day job, in point of fact perhaps the most important one. No one is born an expert and everyone has to be a beginner at some point (until memory augmentation, anyway). Further, expertise is not merely mastery of names, dates or arcane terminology, but mastery of concepts which in my view are far more important. Just because you don’t know who invented determinism doesn't mean you can’t put knowledge of it to fruitful and credible use. Or draw logical consequences from it should you believe it to be the case. Beyond that, the basic purpose of all these essays is to expound my view of life. Some of them are old, some of them are new, some of them are cold and logical, some are rather emotional or even whiny, some are finished others aren’t, some aren’t even essays, but conversations, or direct copies of blog posts. I'm also doing my best to contribute to the well being and advancement of my species by opening that view up to criticism and scrutiny for the purpose of perfecting it, and getting debate started even if only in small circles. Debate while being holy in my opinion, is also natural selection for memes, and as humanity is the dominant form of life on earth, then the meme is the dominant form of life on the mind of man. In that way this book is the memetic child that stands equal to any genetic one, perhaps more so as they are immortal, and evolve directly. Of course, accomplishing all these goals to any special degree, with the sheer volume of humanity on the planet, becomes more and more difficult, such that it may even be impossible. Perhaps the damage is done or perhaps it’s not damage at all. Time will tell. And I have no choice but to try, if I wish to sleep peacefully. The bulk of this work may be seen as complaint and pointing out what is wrong with the world, and while in a way it is, I also wish to convey my view of life, which I believe, is very positive. I love life to an extreme degree, So much so that I’m going to have my corpse frozen on the off chance I can squeeze a few more

years of it in, and I have a great deal of confidence in humanity and its ability to be a benevolent and adaptive force, not only for itself, but for everything else, as we are the only known intelligent representatives of life itself. A responsibility I might add that we cannot long ignore. Evolution is ours to control, and we should attempt to do so with our eyes on the goal of making life an enjoyable long-lasting experience for as many organisms as possible. There is certainly room for everything in the universe. However, in the end I will still be a rotting clump of water, toxins, and meat (hopefully frozen)… or radioactive ash, depending on the political situation directly prior to my death. These words are my way of begging existence for confirmation or denial, a voice, security, survival, and most importantly, contentment. The body of this book is semi-scholarly social and psychological commentary. I mean semi-scholarly in that while I am not a member of the neo-cult known as “The Scientific Community”, I have made a very sincere effort to keep myself open, and keep my facts straight. I consider myself a philosophical scientist -I call myself a cryptosociologist to be specific- despite my lack of letters and formal education -in this area-. As a result of this attitude, when I'm proven wrong I'm not upset about it, in fact I like it as my views move ever closer to parity with external reality. Ironically this pervasive feeling that I don’t know, may be what contributes to my proximity ideologically to a true scientist. Far too often the ‘educated’ among us feel that because they graduated they know all there is to know and therefore stop learning. Submitting this book, which is the heart and soul of my belief system, for public scrutiny, could be seen as a request for wholesale slaughter on my values deep within, I grin expecting them to stand the test of reality, and the snares of human indignation - but if not we’ll all be better informed in the end, and at least two people were made to think, you and me. Again, I've spent years debating the concepts contained in this book, with a large number of people. I was told at an early age that I like to argue, and my response, to the great amusement of my wonderful family was an instant and emphatic, “I DO NOT!” Because of this love for verbal conflict, time and again my earlier ideas were shown to be false. I hope that after those years of revising my viewpoint and honing it against many others, – which amounts to a sort of philosophical and intellectual boot camp – that I've come to a fairly accurate holistic picture of human society and the reality in which it sits. That being said, if you find a factual error and can readily

demonstrate this without the ‘Appeal to Authority’, please contact and correct me, I will respond personally, so long as I am able and am granted the right to publish the exchange. Contact information can be found in the back. This book was not submitted for large scale publishing because publishing on demand allows for just that sort of correction to be made. Odds are by the time you read this, The Book, will already be the product of thousands of tiny and not so tiny revisions. Given the raw number of people that have written on the subjects tackled here I doubt any of my ideas will be defined by consensus as ‘original’. But as someone once said, the secret to creativity is concealing your sources. I can say this work is at least independent invention. Its purpose is more of an overview and introduction. If any of the statements made here strike you, I’d suggest digging a little. More detailed discussion can be found elsewhere. However I’d caution you. As the major tells us, over specialization leads to weakness, and dependence. A kind of cultish mystical mentality develops as people stop caring about why a problem is solved in a certain way. Also, the specialists themselves, being specialists, get a restricted picture by definition of their work and as such it evolves slower. Don’t lose sight of the forest because you love the Douglas fir. Many times innovation in a given field has come from concepts or persons totally outside the field. Over specialization makes this extremely difficult. And the sheer amount of data makes it very difficult for the kind of Renaissance man thinking that was possible when whole branches of science were contained in their entirety in just a few volumes. Further, competition develops, and ideas stop being shared, like how math people feel about biology people. Details are good, but don’t get lost in them. Unlike the traditional scientific community, my language evolves and its purpose is not to obfuscate the truth but to clarify it. This is written for people, and unlike scientists, I trust the translators of the future, so there is no need to write this in Latin. The argument often made is that science uses Latin and Greek to foster international communication and to be as specific as possible. But with examples such as artery which means ‘wind pipe’ and the scientific name for chimpanzees ‘pan troglodytes’ meaning ‘cave dwelling satyr’, I find this hard to believe. I think a more realistic answer is tradition and a fundamental inflexibility which will be covered in a later chapter. This inflexibility has been shown by nature to be lethal time and again. Adaptation is nature’s most prized skill; somewhat paradoxically it may be referred to truthfully as the only skill which lasts. I also ask that you consider this book as it is presented, as a whole. You are almost certain to find something in here that you find abhorrent, such as my hatred of religion and monogamy, or my moral relativism, but no one view typifies me, and to judge me solely on it, reduces you more than me. Please try to remember that even if you totally disagree with me on a single issue, in the majority we by definition agree as humans. My purpose is partly to aid in uniting humanity with the following general and pervasive idea in mind, we have more in common than not.

This is true of all humans, maybe even all sentients, because perhaps the essence of what it is to be human is the essence of all sentience. But for humans especially this is true, because we share the same genetics, the same evolutionary history, the same biosphere, the same capacity for love and hate and intelligence and reason. If you must hate me, please hate me for most of me, and not one small part. I ask the following of you on behalf of, and for, all humanity. Don’t hate over one thing, because in every meaningful way, we are all one thing. How I defend these ideas may come under attack do to my lack of ‘citation’. To those who take this position please realize that I defend my positions conceptually, as defending the specific points with evidence is too small scale, would hopelessly confuse the point of the work, would negatively impact its persuasive ability, and can be better accomplished by others with more patience and a better memory for names and dates. Beyond that, while you may claim that I’m lazy for failing to cite my work, I claim you’re lazy for demanding that I do. Typically the people that beg citation are also the type to support math instruction, which in my view became a pointless specialty field with the birth of the pocket calculator. Logic would be a far better class to give 1st graders. "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing it’s opponents and making them see the light, but rather because it’s opponents die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - Max Planck "If we confuse dissent with disloyalty — if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox — if we deny the essence of racial equality, then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the. . . confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought." –Edward R. Murrow June 1953