Roko's Basilisk

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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Postby dada » Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:15 am

You know chuang tzu's butterfly routine, he dreams he's a butterfly, and when he wakes up he can't be sure he isn't the butterfly dreaming he's chuang tzu.

We say, that's cute, but let's be reasonable, obviously he's the man and not the butterfly. Maybe we're agnostic, say we can't know one way or the other. What I'm personally saying that is he's talking about something entirely different, dreams and butterflies and chuang tzu are some symbols he's using to say it. Am I in a world of suffering, dreaming of a world without suffering, or do I come from a world without?

So I come from that world without suffering, into this nightmare world of suffering. Or I come from the nightmare world, and the world without suffering is just a dream. I can obviously see from the second perspective, it has been fed to me since before I could write. I just don't see where it gets us in terms of getting to the dreamworld where there is no suffering. So I choose to explore the second perspective, as a way to end suffering here in nightmare world. I think there is practical potential in it, besides it being something I feel intuitively.

So I say the world without suffering is here, now, inside, and everyone would laugh. I'm just too stupid to realize that the world without suffering is only a dream now, or in a future measured in kalpas, eons. Any sooner manifestation of the world without suffering would take a miracle, a rewrite, a move to the best timeline, somehow. An infinity gauntlet.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:19 am

dada » Thu Mar 04, 2021 9:01 am wrote:I'm not disagreeing with all that. What do we do about it, though. Should we declare jihad against machine-intelligence. Or is it already too late for that.


Probably, yes. I'm guessing some number of those in the tech sector would agree.

Anyway I think my point on this thread is that if some comic book and sci-fi fantasy ideas make for good thought experiments or entertainment, others may be better. Is there any value in better thought experiments, or are they all equal, and all pointless and ineffective? Better entertainment, or is it all escapism, spectacle?


All equal, pointless, ineffective? No. All escapism? No. Worth doing? Yes. I view it as analogous to pure scientific research without obvious applicability. Or as poetry. Useful is not the standard, but it is useful to the mind thinking it.

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We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Postby dada » Thu Mar 04, 2021 1:23 pm

"Useful is not the standard, but it is useful to the mind thinking it."

To what end? We demand a world without suffering, how does it get us there? Otherwise what is the standard, then. And if the standards do turn out to be different, maybe we could say it has a different sort of value, but the desired results are the same.

You know, people hear buddha say suffering is desire, and imagine a free world as one without desire. But desire is always separation from what you desire. Suffering is desire, and a world without suffering is desired. So we wouldn't want to eliminate desire, but heighten it. Now we're moving into Jalaluddin territory. Peotically we say even the angels are seperate, each one desiring the next, all the way back, the name of allah, himself is a sigh of longing. Goddess sighs with pleasure. Psyduck says "psy."
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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Postby dada » Sat Mar 06, 2021 3:24 am

"So I come from that world without suffering, into this nightmare world of suffering. Or I come from the nightmare world, and the world without suffering is just a dream.

I can obviously see from the second perspective, it has been fed to me since before I could write. I just don't see where it gets us in terms of getting to the dreamworld where there is no suffering.

So I choose to explore the first perspective, as a way to end suffering here in nightmare world. I think there is practical potential in it, besides it being something I feel intuitively."

Needed to fix that. Couldn't edit the post it came from. So I'm exploring the first perspective, I come from the best of all possible worlds, into the stuff of waking nightmares.

Changes the whole meaning of every jouney to the underworld myth. We might see them as journeys into the subconscious, or the visionary world. Now the underworld is the mundane world, profane, everyday.

So gilgamesh dives to the bottom of the ocean to find the herb of immortality, he's diving from the visionary world into the world we know. The world is at the bottom of the sea.

On the way back, a snake eats the herb. Is it the evil, time travelling basilisk? No, just a snake. Gilgamesh didn't wrestle with it, he put the herb down while resting by a spring. The snake was just passing by, it was his lucky day. Glgamesh's hesitation is what caused the loss of the herb of immortality.

In the image of the archangel and the serpent, we might see the holy, rational mind subduing the dark, irrational emotions. But we might consider that the serpent was created by the angel in a moment of hesitation, born of an angel's over-rationalization.

Now the serpent to be subdued isn't the dark emotions, but over thinking things. When the angel casts its over-rationalizing shadow from itself, that is what becomes the serpent. So by subsuquently destroying it, chaining it, casting it out of the universe, the archangel is correcting its own mistake without a doubt.
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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Postby dada » Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:47 pm

Gil is two parts angel, one part human, a rare combination. In his search for immortality he's looking for a way to keep the third that is human from dying. To turn his human part into something angelic, become one hundred percent angel. But when he fails in his quest, and the human part dies, he is now one hundred percent angel. His failures lead him to his wish, it just didn't happen how he thought it would.

So he comes to terms with mortality. Easier for him, being two parts angel, than it would be for someone who is two parts human, one part angel. Or a balance of human and angel in equal measure. For someone who is no parts angel, death would be very dufficult to come to terms with, I imagine.

Before diving for the herb, Gilgamesh climbs the seven mystical mountains to where the old master lives. This is clearly the climb to the visionary world. Historical arguments over where they are located geographically have probably been going on for as long as the symbolic journey has been a thing. Some recitals add an eighth mountain, or the ascent from mountain to mountain resolves into the final, gigantic mountain, touching the world of light at the very top, beginning 'on the convex surface of the ninth sphere.'

The old master is the sole survivor from the time before the great flood. He can't grant immortality, his own immortality was given to him. Special dispensation. He's the one who suggests finding the herb of immortality in the everyday world at the bottom of the sea. The great flood presupposes a framework of alternating periods, ones where the truth, meaning, is hidden in symbols, and ones where everyone can see it as plain as the nose on their face.

At the start of a period when truth is hidden, the world is flooded in symbols. The old master rides out the storm in the ark, floating on top of the symbolic floodyness. Speculation as to how long the periods last has probably been going on for as long as meaning has been hidden in symbols.
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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Postby dada » Sat Mar 06, 2021 3:35 pm

One more riff with gilgamesh. The goddess rescues a tree that has fallen in a river, plants it in her garden. The plan is to let it grow big and strong, then make 'a chair and a couch' from the wood. Maybe a chariot and a comfy spot for our world-weary guests to sit. But the tree becomes too big for its lederhausen, and gets all polluted with demons.

The demons are all symbols of divinity, mistaken for the divinity they symbolify. The serpent, symbol of the divinization of rationality. Also the shape-shifting bird. And lillith, representing the image of the transcendent ineffable itself, mistaken for the divinity which presents it, the divinity which it is a presentation of.

Gil gets the serpent out, the bird flies off to the mountain, lillith moves to the desert, and the tree can be cut down. For all of his effort the goddess gives him a gift, a pikku and miku made from the tree. Translators seem to favor drum and drumsticks for pikku and miku, but I think it is open to interpretation as tablet and qalam, or stylus. She gives him writing materials.

He loses them in the underworld, or the world, in other words, and sends his faithful friend to find them. However, his faithful friend doesn't follow the instructions he was given before leaving, fights with the shades down there, and becomes a permanent resident.

Sad to lose a faithful friend. But the tablet and stylus didn't make it back, they stayed down there. So we have a 'gift from the gods,' like fire. The divine blank page and divine something to write with, lost in the world. In some myths fire is stolen from the gods, in others it is given. Here we have a myth of a divine gift, here in the world by accident.
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Postby dada » Mon Mar 08, 2021 10:36 am

""Useful is not the standard, but it is useful to the mind thinking it."

To what end? We demand a world without suffering, how does it get us there?"

Could we say that comedy and tragedy are thought experiments that can contain healing properties. Tragedy is cathartic, and we say laughter is the best medicine. Better thought experiments, story-idea complexes would be stronger medicine. Others would be watered-down, or not make any difference, or may even be harmful. Blame for a society's ills should fall at the feet of its poets and storytellers.
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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Postby Iamwhomiam » Tue Mar 09, 2021 6:10 pm

It seems the suffering in the world will always be. The promise is the escape from the suffering while remaining fully aware of it.

Perhaps, as you say, someday we'll all be elevated to become pure in spirit and purely spiritual beings, balls of pure energy.
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Re: Roko's Basilisk

Postby thrulookingglass » Thu Mar 11, 2021 7:41 am

That sounds defeatist (suffering in the world will always be). We owe it to all civilization to diminish its effects, not remove all suffering entirely.

care: responsibility for or attention to health, well-being, and safety

And man spent it days pursuing war...and not much more. Devastating that war. Not a noble pursuit. "Spirit" is what you foment in the world/creation. What does your spirit/consciousness serve? Money.

Wars that cannot be won with rifles are fought by confounding the mind.
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