1.1 --- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
     1.2 +++ b/org/fear.org	Mon Mar 14 07:21:07 2016 -0700
     1.3 @@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
     1.4 +#+title: Self Deception
     1.5 +#+author: Robert McIntyre
     1.6 +#+email: rlm@mit.edu
     1.7 +#+setupfile: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
     1.8 +#+include: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
     1.9 +#+html_head_extra: <link rel="stylesheet" 
    1.10 +#+html_head_extra:  type="text/css" href="../css/ideas.css" />
    1.11 +#+options: num:nil toc:t
    1.12 +
    1.13 +
    1.14 +I used to be a fundamentalist Christian. I truly believed that God was
    1.15 +real, that Jesus died on the cross to save humanity from their sins,
    1.16 +that the world was only 6,000 years old, the whole shebang. There was
    1.17 +a point in my life when I would have died for Christianity. Back then,
    1.18 +one of the things that really bugged me was how my fellow Christians
    1.19 +didn't seem to /care/ about serving the Lord and trying to become more
    1.20 +Christ-like. They believed that they had the answers to how the world
    1.21 +was created, what happens when you die, how to ensure that they went
    1.22 +to Heaven, and the consequences for being judged without Jesus'
    1.23 +attoning blood! Knowing all this, how could they dare to live "normal"
    1.24 +lives that and not honor Jesus by their every action?  It seemed like
    1.25 +people lived in a haze, without meaning or purpose to their lives. 
    1.26 +
    1.27 +#+BEGIN_QUOTE
    1.28 +The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the
    1.29 +easiest person to fool.  So you have to be very careful about that.
    1.30 +After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other
    1.31 +scientists.  You just have to be honest in a conventional way after
    1.32 +that. --[[http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm][Richard Feynman]]
    1.33 +#+END_QUOTE
    1.34 +
    1.35 +
    1.36 +Xanadu (Ted Nelson)
    1.37 +
    1.38 +M22, Cryonics (Dr. Greg Fahy, Robert Ettinger)
    1.39 +
    1.40 +AI Risk (Eleizer Yudkowsky)
    1.41 +
    1.42 +Creation Science (Dr. Nathaniel T. Jeanson)
    1.43 +
    1.44 +
    1.45 +
    1.46 +
    1.47 +
    1.48 +What if all the work that I've done for brain preservation research is
    1.49 +just an excercise in self deception? 
    1.50 +
    1.51 +I resolved not to be like the "casual christians" and devoted myself
    1.52 +to living a godly life. Lives were on the line! If someone died
    1.53 +without being saved, they would suffer in hell forever! How could I
    1.54 +not work to save as many people as possible, especially when Jesus
    1.55 +himself had assigned Christians their first and most important duty to
    1.56 +go into the world and spread the good news?
    1.57 +
    1.58 +I wanted to become a great Christian apologist and win souls for
    1.59 +Heaven. Every day of inaction meant more people who would be lost
    1.60 +forever in hell, and only the body of Christ could help lead lost
    1.61 +people to a better eternity.
    1.62 +
    1.63 +So I poured myself into studying the Bible and learning the rules of
    1.64 +my religion. I made a special focus on learning how to explain
    1.65 +Christianity to people who didn't believe. I took these things very
    1.66 +seriously and by the time I was 12 I had already read the New
    1.67 +Testament twice and spent a lot of my time on
    1.68 +http://www.answersingenesis.com/, learning how the natural world
    1.69 +confirmed the truth of the bible with overwhelming evidence. I prayed
    1.70 +every night to become a better Christian so that I could help
    1.71 +people be saved.
    1.72 +
    1.73 +I wanted with my whole heart to not be "casual", to be a good
    1.74 +Christian, to help people... But it was this very desire that led me
    1.75 +to lose my faith.
    1.76 +
    1.77 +
    1.78 +
    1.79 +I'm just a zealot, and all I've done is trade christian salvation for
    1.80 +technological salvation. 
    1.81 +
    1.82 +And even worse, I'm a heretic. I'm just going to get disillusioned
    1.83 +with mind uploading the same way I did with christianity.
    1.84 +
    1.85 +

     2.1 --- a/org/ideas.org	Mon Feb 22 17:00:02 2016 -0800
     2.2 +++ b/org/ideas.org	Mon Mar 14 07:21:07 2016 -0700
     2.3 @@ -19,6 +19,57 @@
     2.4  getting credit.
     2.5  #+end_quote
     2.6  
     2.7 + - spinal cord made of light; moon :: transit time of light from moon to
     2.8 +      earth is same as transit time of signals through spinal cord. So
     2.9 +      you could have your mind on the moon and your body on earth and
    2.10 +      it would feel the same!
    2.11 +
    2.12 + - semantic darkmode browser extension :: some websites are naturally
    2.13 +      dark themed (like aurellem.org) while others are light themed
    2.14 +      (like google). At night I like dark themes and during daylight I
    2.15 +      like light themes. You can just invert your screen to convert
    2.16 +      light to dark, but when tabbing through multiple browser tabs
    2.17 +      you end up occasionally spraying your screen with bright
    2.18 +      colors. So, have a little button that inverts a single web page
    2.19 +      for firefox! Or, you can have a tiny bit of preprocessing (you
    2.20 +      just measure the overall white vs dark pixels) and then invert
    2.21 +      the page depending on that.
    2.22 +
    2.23 + - optogenetic readout during cruoprotection :: basically a "lightbulb
    2.24 +      above the head" to measure activity of selected neurons.
    2.25 +
    2.26 + - carbon dating and immortality :: if you've been /alive/ for a
    2.27 +      million years, you'll carbon-dat as being as old as yesterday. 
    2.28 +
    2.29 + - gas tenderization :: use high pressure and gas diffusion to both
    2.30 +      denature proteins and infiltrate lots of gas into a piece of
    2.31 +      meat. Then rapidly decrease the pressure, and the meat will
    2.32 +      experience air bubbles similarly to bread rising, and might
    2.33 +      become tender and tasty!
    2.34 +
    2.35 + - learning damage from mind uploading :: a person might be uploaded
    2.36 +      so that they can answer every question about their life and be
    2.37 +      able to perform actions they had previously learned, but due to
    2.38 +      incomplete simulation of long term chemical and structural
    2.39 +      dynamics, they might have a severe learning disability!
    2.40 +
    2.41 + - holy "spirit" :: most blasphemous liquor
    2.42 +
    2.43 + - truck blindspot lights :: lights that shine on the road and show
    2.44 +      where your vehicle's blind spots are.
    2.45 +
    2.46 + - eyelid screen :: you can just close you eyes, but you're reading a
    2.47 +      book. it would be really cool and look like rapid eye
    2.48 +      movement. In this tech, the screen would replace your eyelid
    2.49 +      entirely. The other really neat thing about this concept is that
    2.50 +      your eyelid screen is a part of you. You might have some
    2.51 +      smooth muscles in it that works like a selection or cursor, and
    2.52 +      the scren can feel your eye rolling underneath and tell where
    2.53 +      you're looking, allowing for a very immersive experience. It's
    2.54 +      like an "all-in" virtual mode, still cleanly separating the real
    2.55 +      from the digital, telling others you're in your "virtual space",
    2.56 +      and still looking entirely human. 
    2.57 +
    2.58   - blockchain based experential memory ::
    2.59  
    2.60   - a hidden world of early life :: I imagine that the bridge form the

     3.1 --- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
     3.2 +++ b/org/tidbits.org	Mon Mar 14 07:21:07 2016 -0700
     3.3 @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
     3.4 +** Google Calendar URL API options
     3.5 +   
     3.6 +   Make your google calendar public (detailed [[https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37082?hl=en][here]]), then get the
     3.7 +   puclic calendar URL, which will look like this:
     3.8 +   
     3.9 +   #+BEGIN_VERSE
    3.10 +   https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=<YOUR-ID>&ctz=<TIMEZONE>
    3.11 +   #+END_VERSE
    3.12 +
    3.13 +   Some useful options include:
    3.14 +
    3.15 +   - mode :: options are AGANDA, WEEK, MONTH 
    3.16 +	For scheduling, I find wither WEEK or AGENDA to be best.
    3.17 +	
    3.18 +   - dates :: You can specify the dates to display using
    3.19 +        yyyymmdd%2Fyyyymmdd, example: 20160313%2F20160320. 
    3.20 +
    3.21 +	
    3.22 +   
    3.23 \ No newline at end of file