Comments on: Douglas Hofstadter on Singularity http://www.haibane.info/2008/06/16/douglas-hofstadter-on-singularity/ a celebration of science fiction, anime, and geek culture Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:58:20 +0000 hourly 1 By: Mitch H. http://www.haibane.info/2008/06/16/douglas-hofstadter-on-singularity/comment-page-1/#comment-1695 Mitch H. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:59:20 +0000 http://www.haibane.info/?p=1076#comment-1695 I find that soul-shard thing to be honestly repugnant. A horrible, intrusive conception of consciousness, which would grant tyrants and personality-cult-figures true immortality. It suggests that coercive ideology is a spiritually valid gambit. Furthermore, it seems to make the "brain in a box" Kurzweil singularity hypothesis unnecessary - why worry about the soul in direct contact in some sort of world-mainframe, if you honestly believe that conceptual communication is inherently spiritual, that communicating an idea is a form of psychic reproduction. The more I think about it, the more upset I get. It clothes communication in the metaphor of infestation. I find that soul-shard thing to be honestly repugnant. A horrible, intrusive conception of consciousness, which would grant tyrants and personality-cult-figures true immortality. It suggests that coercive ideology is a spiritually valid gambit. Furthermore, it seems to make the “brain in a box” Kurzweil singularity hypothesis unnecessary – why worry about the soul in direct contact in some sort of world-mainframe, if you honestly believe that conceptual communication is inherently spiritual, that communicating an idea is a form of psychic reproduction.

The more I think about it, the more upset I get. It clothes communication in the metaphor of infestation.

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