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Sunday, April 12, 2009

Giulio Prisco May Be One of the Most Idiotic People Alive


Reading my critiques of superlative futurology he admonishes me to: Go study some biology

Because then, no doubt, like everybody else who studies biology I'll become a Robot Cultist like Giulio Prisco, who expects a post-biological superintelligent Robot God to arrive any time now -- and if "Friendly" solve all our problems for us, or if not so "Friendly" might just End Everything who knows how horrifically; and who pines for personal techno-immortalization via either the superlongevity medicine presently aborning in the super-secret Robot Cult labs in the asteroid belt or through an "uploading" process whereby one's squishy en-brained mind manages to "migrate" without loss into that ethereal eternality that is cyberspace; and who expects swarms of self-replicating programmable multipurpose room-temperature nanobot slaves to make him rich and powerful beyond the dreams of avarice.

Everybody knows that people who actually study biology believe all that stuff like the Robot Cultists do. It's only muzzy-brained pseudo-poetic humanities types who aren't smart and knowledgeable and go-gettery enough to get with the sooper-sciency Robot Cult program, after all.

11 comments:

Giulio Prisco said...

Now, now... _You_ sound like you're looking for a date...

Dale Carrico said...

ew

jimf said...

> Giulio Prisco May Be One of the Most Idiotic People Alive

Hm. Well, as you quoted later,

> Krugman on the Krazy
> [via NYT]
>
> [Just as the r]epublicans have become embarrassing to watch.
> And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people….

Roko said...

What's that scientist holding? Is it the Elan Vital?

Roko said...

... because if it is, the caption ought to read "Dale, I've found something you were looking for!"

Dale Carrico said...

You better hope he's not left holding the bag. And he's not a "scientist," he's a mad scientist. I wonder why you Robot Cultists have such trouble distinguishing the two.

Dale Carrico said...

By the way, why are you still repeating the claim that I am advocating a quasi-mystical vitalism in respect to consciousness just because I argue that the fact that consciousness is indeed material suggests that its actual materialization is therefore non-negligible?

Your attribution simply doesn't follow. Is it that you don't understand my point? Is it that you don't care and just want to repeat a dumb slogan and pretend it constitutes a response?

I'll be more generous than you deserve me to be, and pretend it will interest you for me to note that while I have never been moved by Bergson, particularly, I have found Prigogine inspiring here and there.

jimf said...

> What's that scientist holding? Is it the Elan Vital?

No, it's obviously a Green Kryptonite clothespin. The
guy with the glasses works for LuthorCorp.

If you hang up your underpants with those kryptonite
clothespins, you'll get super-sperm and give birth to
superbabies.

Or something like that.

Don't you watch _Smallville_?

Robin said...

This whole "vitalism" business that you're suddenly being accused of is bizarre and fascinating.

I spend a lot of time among evolutionists, so the analogy to the evolution/creationism debate just screams right out at me. The creationists are forever screaming about how evolution is a faith-based theory and hence, no good. (Any functional neurons will show the irony of this, but it seems to escape those blinded by faith entirely.) It just seems to me that the folks who are advocating for a non-existent "intelligence" and getting called out on it are trying to deflect with their own accusations of magic. And it's just as transparent and absurd as the creationist claims.

Sometimes I just want to smack sense into people.

Ok, a lot of times.

Anonymous said...

LOL. You should have a weekly Silliest Robot Cultist post like Countdown with Keith Olbermann's 'Worst Person in the World' segment. :)

Dale Carrico said...

The robocultic idiocy is accelerating, in fact the acceleration of robocultic idiocy is accelerating, demanding the weekly Silliest Robot Cultist become daily, hourly, minute-by-minute, second-by-second and so on until we arrive at a robocultic silliness singularity of sooperimbecillence followed, no doubt, by whining.