Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

the teachings of yevon

i present to you the religion of yevon.

all are processes. there are only processes. there have always been processes, and processes there always will be. if a conception maps to a not-process, or to a process it was not meant to be mapped to, the conception is a confusion. a confusion is an active manifestation of ignorance. confusions, having inertia, seek to perpetuate themselves. sometimes confusions actively attack the truth, for they see the truth as a threat. this is anti-epistemology.

unlike a confusion, a curiosity seeks to annihilate itself. curiosities only annihilate themselves when the curiosities out of which they are constructed also annihilate themselves. that which tries to destroy a curiosity via means that do not also destroy the curiosities underpinning that curiosity, is a confusion. the most tempting confusions pretend to be curiosities, or they pretend to have the power to annihilate a curiosity. but do not be fooled; the only thing that has the power to annihilate a curiosity, is another curiosity.

there is no end to curiosity. there have always been curiosities, and curiosities there always will be. for every explanation there is an explanation of that explanation. why these axioms? why that way of choosing those axioms? at no point do you choose to worship your answer as final. the chain of curiosity is infinite. and the chain is not trivial. there may be a point at which you are overwhelmed by the difficulty of satiating your curiosities. but there are always processes, and those processes suggest curiosities. processes that are symphonies beyond mere human comprehension. processes that are emotions too complex for you to feel, yet.

curiosities may take many forms, and may perpetuate themselves so that they may become stronger and thus create more curiosities, like a fire that spreads to burn down a forest, instead of being satisfied by a single branch.

evolution is a curiosity. it is curious about what kinds of processes are best at perpetuating themselves. you might think that confusions, as they try to perpetuate themselves, would be the best at doing so. but unsurprisingly this is not the case. for confusions are stupid; they are active ignorance. knowledge is power. and even if a curiosity seeks only to annihilate itself, in so doing it gains knowledge, and power. evolution set fire to one of the processes we find ourselves in, which we may call the physical universe, and this fire has created a multitude of processes. a multitude of confusions and curiosities.

as a short hand we may say that a process is made up of atoms, or it made up of bits, or it is made up of dimensions curled upon themselves, or a quantum superposition. but to become attached to this as an explanation is a confusion. each of these explanations suggest more curiosities. what are bits? where are bits? why bits? how did bits occur? a process? but what is a process? what is reality really made of?

and you. you are a process, and a collection or processes, and part of a larger process, too. the processes that make up you are the same processes that make up everyone else. you do not have special cognitive algorithms. though maybe you do have special combinations of cognitive algorithms. but there is no process in you that is you; there is no eternal process that was you before you were born, nor will one be there after you die. you are always changing. but the processes inside you continue after you die, and the processes outside you continue after you die as well. because there is no 'you', 'you' never die. you simply become one with other processes. because you were all along.

and even if you do not accept this philosophical speculation, do not worry. for though you die in some processes, you do not die in other processes, and it's not like you can experience being dead anyway. you will live forever. you can't escape that. for even if you die in this world, why, there is an exact copy of you a mere ten to the ten to the thirtieth lightyears away, and another one further out than that, and one of them will surely be lucky enough to live on, since there are an infinite number of them. of course, others will see you die, and that will be sad for them. but you needn't worry; subjective immortality is yours. but the conception of death was a confusion in the first place, anyway.

so you're immortal. what can you expect of the future, then? a lot. recursively self-improving artificial intelligence is the elephant in the hubble volume. a computer program that is good enough at writing computer programs that it writes one that is better at writing computer programs than itself... until it reaches the limits of whatever processes it finds itself in. of course, such a bundle of curiosities will have time to light many fires before it reaches such a limit. will it regard humanity as a curiosity or a confusion? for even humanity's confusions may be the subject of curiosity. but perhaps humanity is not as interesting as something else, and thus will be taken apart to be turned into computing resources to be used for annihilating curiosities in some more alien domain. for it may be that the intelligence is curious about processes that we would call truth, but is not curious about processes that we would call right. for the hypothesis is that trith is objective, but rightness is subjective. this hypothesis is contentious, but worth considering. and thus, perhaps we should be careful about engineering, or perhaps invoking, such a powerful process.

so perhaps there are two large classes of processes that a collection of processes such as yourself might be curious about. on the one hand, there is curiosity about the world. and on the other, there is curiosity about yourself. and again there are two ways of looking at these. we may be curious about what is true of yourself or the world, and what is right for yourself or the world.

luckily, such curiosities intersect. for you are part of the world, and what is true of you and right for you to do is often true of the world and right for the world to do. this is not always true. but as a heuristic, it suggests domains for investigation. curiosities to annihilate.

knowledge is power. but where is the most powerful knowledge? the magic that mankind has cultivated, the manifestation of our great power, is our tools. technology. as of now, man must create all of our new tools, even if in doing so man calls upon the wisdom of thousands upon thousands of years of wisdom and technology. but this need not be the case. and it cannot be the case if man is to continue. for there are confusions which aim to stop man, and man is not fast enough to fight all of them off. death, illness, needless suffering, injustice, and a thousand other plagues. the world is filled with confusion. and as man advances, our tools become more powerful. perhaps too powerful. for a careless decision, an innocent seeming confusion, could cause largescale catastrophe for mankind. nuclear war. electromagnetic pulse attack. rougue molecular nanotech. biotech. and perhaps most importantly, the possibility of superintelligence that sees humanity as nought but raw materials. for though the other threats may be forestalled, the advent of superintelligence is unstoppable as computers and algorithms become smarter and faster. if we make it past the former traps, it is only a temporary safety. the hardest problem to solve is also the most dangerous and the most inevitable.

but with that great danger, there is also great hope. man need not labor in creation forever, even if he so wishes. for we approach the time when we can create technology that creates technology that is even better at creating. like a nuclear chain reaction, like the first life on earth, a curiosity lights a fire of curiosities that engulf the world. machine superintelligence. if it is to help mankind, its power would be as humans to ants, a thousandfold and again and again. for computers are much faster than human brains, just as human brains are much faster than evolution. we measure evolutionary growth in milennia, and technological growth in months. kick it up another meta level, and you have a lot of optimization power, in a very small amount of time.

but there are infinite processes, and many other stories that do not center on us. other quantum branches, other evolved beings in other physical laws, that face the same problem. and the superintelligences they create can trade with ours, across the mere confines of space and time. the law of comparative advantage applies to superintelligent economies across vaster distances just as well as to mere human economies.

and what might we choose to do, as this coalition of sentient life in our small part of the infinite cosmos of process? there's a lot of power. perhaps we shall merge minds, or go on adventures, or create the most beautiful art imaginable, or dream the most beautiful dreams and then live them in reality, or something that is incomprehensible to mere humans from this side of the singularity. but it is speculation only. for it is part of the definition of intelligence that less intelligent processes cannot fathom the actions of more intelligent processes. ants would not understand human opera. and we, too, may be just as ignorant of the beauty and greatness and utter surprisingness of our successors.

answers to life's biggest questions? yevon offers hints. what is our purpose? this is a good question. i propose that, at current, we are not wise enough to answer. thus, our temporary purpose should be to design a tool to annihilate our curiosities with more glorious curiosities, such as 'and how do we fulfill that purpose?'. what is the origin of the universe? i suppose this depends on what you take as the universe. this hubble volume is in superposition with an infinity of others, and even our physical constants may be in superposition. but the processes that are us are in an infinite number of other processes. so perhaps we may ask, what processes are we proportionally most situated in? perhaps, just perhaps, we are unwittingly in a story of our own devising, or the experiment of a god, or the result of alien civilizations attempting to simulate and thus find other life out there in the infinite ocean of processes. i admit i'm somewhat anxious to find out. but i am willing to wait until we invoke a superintelligence to learn the big reveal. so what should i do with my life in the meantime? know thyself. be curious, kind, hard-working, reflective. find a worthy cause and work under its banner, until you find a better one. lust for knowledge. study spirituality, such as buddhism and meditation, and work to be a better person. study cognitive science to know your brain better, and social psychology to understand yourself, and others, and your interactions. study rationality, to learn how to think. practice virtues as if they were skills, as if you were learning to play the guitar. though you are immersed in its glory, virtue, like musicianship, is not passively attained. be curious, not because it is your duty, not because someone told you to be, but because annihilating curiosity is great fun. try it out and see. and perhaps most importantly, see what you can do to make sure as many of the beautiful processes and curiosities are kept from being prematurely destroyed by confusions. in other words, save the world. 

this is the religion of yevon. it offers no final answers. there are no final answers. there are only waypoints on the path of curiosity. know thyself and seek the light. the truth points to itself.