The twosiderism of transhumanism vs Dark Mountain

 Via Massimo Pigliucci, Paul Fidalgo offers a critique of sorts of both transhumanism (not limited to Ray Kurzweil's Singularity) and the "collapsitarian" movement, led by a group called Dark Mountain.

Many people who read here probably know what transhumanism is.  For those who may not guess on collapsitarianism, it's a name given to an idea that has also been around for some time, with an additional dollop. The old idea is that civilization was a mistake. The new idea is that climate change and related issues will lead to its fracturing, that we can't fix that, and that we might as well accept it.

Here's my take on Fidalgo's take.

Transhumanism, IMO, like much of such futurism, has strong libertarian roots. Like colonizing Mars and other such nutteries, first, it doesn't address who would be able to afford this at start (nor, in the case of colonizing Mars, who would agree to be the soma-fueled worker bees). Fidalgo partially addresses this, late in the long piece, with a "don't leave people behind," but doesn't get straight into the largely libertarian politics behind that, even though he does focus later in the piece on Zoltan Istvan.

I agree in large part on the collapse-predictors. Like author Fidalgo, I reject the seeming Roussellian attitude that a pre-industrial style of life was "intended," is noble or whatever.

Beyond that, re the "civilization as a mistake" angle, even though the Dark Mountain people don't expressly mention overpopulation, if you're turning your back on civilization, you can't ignore it. And, that's my ultimate rhetorical question: Are you volunteering to be part of the 90 percent, or whatever, "cut"? I've never seen any such group be honest about this. 

That said, back to the transhumanist side and civilization to this point. Per a commenter on Massimo's Facebook group, the bottleneck of energy production and consumption includes the destructiveness associated with such production and consumption.

The Istvan part is interesting. Didn't know his past as a Natl Geo reporter. Sounds like there's probably some psychology behind all of this. He of course ignores the energy issues for transhumanism, as well as the libertarianism it's based on.

And, per Fidalgo, I am reminded, with this, of the "Sargon" episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. Finally, and I think Massimo would agree, that re theories of consciousness as being embodied, a mind "stored on a machine" (if even possible, and almost certainly not) would no longer be a mind.

Fidalgo's piece, especially the riffs on Shakespeare in the last one-third, isn't bad overall, but I think could have been sharpened even more.

More thoughts on Tacitus, the Great Fire of Rome and modern historians

I remain convinced that Christians did not start the Great Fire of Rome, and had that stance well before reading Candida Moss.

More importantly, I remain convinced that Nero did not scapegoat Christians as arsonists, mainly because there weren't enough Christians in Rome to be on his radar screen circa 64 CE to be fingered. Rather, while agreeing with Nero revisionist historian John Drinkwater that the fire was an accident, as I excoriated him in an extended review of his book, I reject that there was any scapegoating followed by persecutory death.

Rather, this appears to have been Tacitus trying to bank-shot two smears for the price of one. Taking what he claimed to know about Christians 50 years later, which of course was itself scurrilous, he retrojected that 50 years. Since, in reality, Christians not only weren't scurrilous, but as I also say at that link, were too small a percentage of Rome's population, at probably no more than 1/10th of 1 percent, and ALSO, circa 64 CE, were not self-identified separately from Jews, they simply would not have been on Nero's radar screen to persecute. Tacitus, rather, is grasping a chance to show his Roman readership that Nero was so odious to the odious Christians for them to evince sympathy from Romans. Why Drinkwater can't see this bank shot as it is, or seems to be to me, I don't know. In any case, he's flat wrong on the number, and group identity, of Christians in Nero's Rome.

He's not alone. Tom Holland, in his book "Dynasty," with even less analysis, repeats the way-too-precise claim by Jerome that exactly 979 Christians were killed by Nero.

That said, there remains the issue of Tacitus' story perhaps being an interpolation. Drinkwater rejects that; Holland doesn't discuss it, if he's even aware of it. Per that link, Christians appear not to have discussed the Great Fire and alleged Christian martyrdom before circa 400 CE, that is, before Jerome and his suspiciously precise claim.

Furthering my idea that this was, if anything, a general messianic Jewish disturbance either mislabled by Suetonius and/or Tacitus, or Tacitus doing a bank shot? (Suetonius, in the expulsion at the time of Claudius, is almost certainly a mislabeling, not a bank shot. BUT? Drinkwater seems to believe there were Christians even back then.) Holland notes that, according to Valerius Maximus, the first Roman expulsion of Jews happened way back in 139 BCE.

Maybe we're pushing the whole idea of "qualia" too hard

 From a 3 Quarks Daily piece linked by Massimo Pigliucci, my thoughts:

Per your previous posting from Mr. Elgat on qualia, I noted that originally, I heard of qualia in the sense of color, as in Dennett's "redness." 

Well, now we're going to go into evolutionary biology, and touch at the edges of Goodman, the new problem of induction ... and that famous word of his. 

As you know, our primate ancestors long ago evolved a third cone cell and trichromatic vision. So, let's talk about the qualia of "greenness." (Actually, given its peak frequency, it should more be yellow-greenness, and Photoshop will also tell you how much yellow many "greens" have.)

So, in that sense, contra Dennett, we have evolved for a certain type of qualia, it would seem. (Ditto for bees in the ultraviolet, had they the brains to think of such things?) But, at the same time, per Goodman, maybe we should talk of "yellreen"?)

More seriously, you've also probably read studies of anthropologists that show that in "primitive" societies, the first word they have for a color beyond black and white is "red." I think "blue" is second, then either "yellow" or "green" about equal.

So, we have a biologically driven concept of color, but degrees of how color is differentiated are driven by cultural evolution as well. 

But that's not all. 

I said "words." "Language." 

Now, we're also in linguistic philosophy. Insert women joking about how men can't tell mauve from periwinkle. But, that ties back to cultural evolution, or sub-cultural evolution, and a perceived need to be that precise on distinguishing tints, like classical Greek putting five adverbial particles at the start of a word. 

But, perception is not adverbial nuance. Per the evolution of that third cone ... men, of course, often suffer from red-green colorblindness. What I am getting at is that maybe the whole idea of qualia is framed too simply in general. It may not quite be p-zombies, but maybe its usefulness is less than some claim? 

To be more precise, I think we're pushing too hard the idea of qualia as a denoter of consciousness. That said, discussion of what qualia are? Where in the brain they might be located? THAT is indeed a good marker.

Top blogging of 2021

 Not all posts are from the past year, but these were the most popular by readership in the past year.

No. 1? Remains my calling out of Anthony Fauci for telling Platonic noble lies about mask-wearing or not, back in 2020. (He'd later tell other lies, first semi-noble, then totally mundane ones.

No. 2? My decade-ago calling out of the likes of Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer for engaging in libertarian pseudoscience pseudoskepticism.

No. 3? It's interesting it's trended this high, but it's a blog post of mine from last year about an Atlantic Monthly contributor, and (former?) regular Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter, for the weirdness, if you will, of his story about when he stopped (for a while) being an "ambulance chaser" because his own wreck made him an ambulance needer. My piece covered "PTSD, journalism, accidents, existentialism." The first three were involved; the fourth was my angle of entry.

No. 4? Veering to critical religion — not critical exegesis of texts, but criticism of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and all the hypocritical dirtiness in its closure of Concordia University-Portland (with the denouement still ahead in the snarls of multiple lawsuits).

No. 5? My untangling of the "Young Hume" vs "Old Hume" on Pyrrhonism and more. Part of a serious of extended posts inspired by David Harris' critically acclaimed, yet actually somewhat spotty, recent biography.

No. 6? In which I told Jesus mythicists that Nazareth is real, and more to the point, was real 1st Century CE.

No. 7? The later semi-noble lies of Fauci got examined, in a psychological take on him and a sociological one on tribalist Democrats.

No. 8? A relatively recent one, showing how Harvey Whitehouse's ideas on the evolution of religion, by not being grounded in good philosophy of religion, jumped the shark. Sadly, it appears that the likes of a Scott Atran, by heading down a similar ev psych-based road, may also be "jumping."

No. 9? I pretty thoroughly deconstructed David Graeber's posthumously coauthored new book. (I even more thoroughly deconstructed its political angles at my main blog.)

No. 10? A philosophy and philosophy of science question is wrestled with: How do we define "life"?

"Namaste" — worse than "harijan"? Both bad, but both Christian

 "Harijan" was Gandhi's popularization and reinvention with a twist of a term for the Outcasts or Untouchables. It means, "the lord's person(s)." The first half is cognate, I believe, with German "Herr" and English "sir." Some encyclopedias define it as "Vishnu's person," but I think that is not fully right.

And, it is offensive, not just because the Supreme Court of India said so. Calling the Dalit's the 'lord's children" while ignoring the Hindu caste structure that puts them there? Offensive.

I say the same for "namaste." Claiming to recognize the divine in someone else when said in a pitying way? Offensive.

Both words in some way, to me, seem to say that "god considers you a child of his, and your disability shows god at work and challenges us."

But, it's not Hinduism alone, or eastern religions alone, that hold this.

Jeebus himself, in John 9:2-3:

2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

There you go.

Top blogging of October-December

Blogging no more than twice a week, I don't do enough here, versus my main blog, to do a monthly top 10 recap.

But quarterly? Earlier this year, I said yes.

So, here we go.

No. 1? My decade-ago calling out of the likes of Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer for engaging in libertarian pseudoscience pseudoskepticism.

No. 2? I pretty thoroughly deconstructed David Graeber's posthumously coauthored new book. (I even more thoroughly deconstructed its political angles at my main blog.)

No. 3? An oldie but a goodie — when I told Tim O'Neill of "History for Atheists" to go fuck off. Many Gnu Atheists have felt that, but from what I've seen, so have a number of other non-Gnus. He's an atheist who strikes me as a Samual Huntington "cultural Christianist," specifically, Catholic division. 

No. 4? What happens when biblical archaeology meets Zionism? Overblown claims that Edom existed, accompanied by hypocritical lies about the chief archaeologists alleged neutrality on historicity of biblical narratives.

No. 5? Something interesting to see trending from more than a decade ago. Is the question of whether or not we have free will (and calling determinism the only alternative is a false dilemma and a poor one to boot) even discussible?

No. 6? John Drinkwater's recent bio of Nero was highly touted for his revisionistic take. My take on Drinkwater is that his take is right ... up to the Great Fire, where he gets Tacitus, Nero vs. Christians, the presence or not of Christians in numbers in early Rome, and related issues massively wrong.

No. 7? This one started trending more after I posted it as a response to a Medium post, and then to Massimo Pigliucci. From 2019, I wondered if the seeming rise of the Nones (though, now, seemingly, that rise has been put on hold by COVID, and other factors show that Pew's religious demographics research seems to have some accuracy issues) said that America would take a path like that of post-WWII Europe.

No. 8? Speaking of? The Nones have slipped, too! My thoughts.

No. 9? A counter to "Tippling Philosopher" Jonathan M.S. Pearce, who seems to, more than once, extend himself too far on critical exegesis, enough to exhibit moderate, though not (yet?) huge, Dunning-Krueger tendencies. This was to counter his claims about Paul's 1 Corinthians resurrection body implying that Paul believed a physical body of Jesus was still in the ground, and related nonsensicalities. 

No. 10? My blunt destruction of the bullshit surrounding the so-called "Beethoven 10th."

Is "just asking questions" a religion?

Vox claims that the rise of the Net, specifically social media, and most specifically, newer social media like TikTok, when mixed with the rise of the "Nones," is creating a new religion of "just asking questions."

First? The "rise of the Nones" is on pause right now, possibly in part COVID related, though the crest hit before then.

Second, by my version of defining religion, which relies on sociology of religion and philosophy of religion, it is not a region.

My definition, which I think I've uttered here before, is something like this.

Religion is about:

Metaphysical matters of ultimate concern, within a social group setting; and 

How one orients oneself within that group to a better relationship to these metaphysical matters of ultimate concern.

One, note that "metaphysical" shows we're clearly into philosophy. It means something that "transcendence" does not.

Two, note that "of ultimate concern" shows we're not talking about footy fandom. UK fans who would believe that they can conduct magic rituals to revive the career of a current player, let alone actually revive a dead star of the past, would be considered mentally ill by psychologists, and ministers, and presumably by Whitehouse.

Three, note that I did NOT say "god," or "deity/-ies" or "divinity/-ies." 

This means that Theravada Buddhists who do not believe in a personal deity are still part of a religion. They ARE, Stephen Batchelor, Robert Wright, and Buddhism flirter John Horgan. I also did NOT say "soul." Western monotheisms, and generally Hinduism, believe in some sort of personal soul, as in "your immortal soul," in the Western tradition, but Theravada claims to believe only in a "life force."

And, "karma."

And, that leads us to point the second, of the two main parts of my definition.

Karma is itself a metaphysical entity throughout Hindu and Buddhist belief, and basically similar among Jains, from what I know. Given that these religions claim one can be reincarnated as a piece of shit, or more literally, a dung beetle eating that shit, without knowing what one did wrong in a past life, or, per Theravada, even having a personal soul from a past life that COULD remember, is why I've said that karma is more offensive than original sin, following on an earlier post. But I digress.

The "just asking questions" may be a form of spirituality. Subsets of "just asking questions" may be part of religions, if their "just asking questions" is religiously based, but not be a religion itself.

And, if things like this:

(T)he renewed interest in holistic medicine, or the girlboss optimism of multilevel marketing companies

Are part of the basis of the piece, Rebecca Jennings needs to toss that Word doc in the trash. Those flunk my test easily. Not all holistic medicine is metaphysical, and ditto on the specific example of new MLM companies. 

Of course, with a Twitter bio like this:

senior correspondent at Vox covering internet culture with a minor in tiktok and feelings

None of the above is surprising.

And, with that, the story flunks my test, too.

History of religion has shown that new religions are organized and developed. Maybe Jesus wasn't starting a new religion, but Paul was. Maybe Muhammad didn't actually start a new religion, but the Umayyads did. Ditto for the Buddha vs followers of him.

I have said before that conspiracy theories are a new form of Gnosticism. Here, I caveat that parallel to note that while conspiracy theories offer claims to esoteric knowledge, AND, are "organized," as in an elite vs initiates, they're NOT focused on metaphysical issues or how to get oneself rightly oriented to them.