My comment was in reply to Sapphire's, not your post Matt :)
I wonder what you mean by the second paragraph.
How does this not lead to reinforcing the resigned attitude towards death? Why would someone do their best to take care of their life, if they truly fully embrace death as a normal part of said life?
While sharing your belief that we should reduce suffering however we can, with the caveat that it doesn't hamper maximizing our other values, still I sense that it is wrong somehow.
The idea of a person ending, when considering all that has happened, the gratitude that arises for them having lived their lives at all... well it makes me feel as if it's enough. As if they've exhausted some fundamental reserve of goodness, and so it's fine to let them go.
I think we should appreciate the good in the lives of those lost, but never sever the old tie, to accept it as the natural order. It should motivate us to improve this world for all.
In hindsight, LW is all about the 0th step.
Thank you for the response.
you mean augmenting adults using computer software.
Any physical or mental system meant to improve thinking and cognition for anyone right now. One obvious example is writing, which extends our capacity to think and remember. Another would be SRS, which helps solidify our memory.
But your reply points at the more important inner mental systems. Sadly, I don't know any simple, obvious way to do the 0th step.
I am interested in all the ways we could improve our thinking. It was my initial impression that Andy Matuschak's Tools for Thought seem to aim at this, and I was convinced by his Evergreen Notes thesis. You're probably already familiar with his work.
Can I get your input on why current note-taking systems fail at supporting at thinking and some alternatives? Or if note-taking itself is missing the point, how can we augment good thinking?
It strikes me as false to equate low likelihood of factual validity, and any information in the scriptures is warped to the point of being false. Is this fallacious reasoning?
I think the arguments of the dissidents and contemporary critics would be warped by necessity, but their central arguments would still be expressed. A refutation cannot satisfy majority of the targeted audience if it doesn't contain enough of the proposition's truth.
You were correct. Buddha didn't just believe in the supernatural, he argued for it against the skeptics and atheists, some of whom were early materialists and moral nihilists (Ajita Kesakambali completely rejected the notion of afterlife). It seems extremely unlikely that he wasn't believing in the supernatural.
I was interested in what LWers have to say about Buddhism. Recently, I've fallen into a rabbit hole of what seems the perfect religion with minimal negative parts. After reading this post, and reading your response I discovered that I deluded myself, I have started adopting a metaphorical understanding, not very dissimilar to Christians interpreting their holy texts in insane ways.
The labyrinths of complex texts with easily extractable and molded meaning, is a big challenge.
(I am new to LW, if this comment seems low quality enough that it shouldn't exist, please let me know)
I strongly agree with you, conditional on AI alignment with humanity's growth.
If you believe that AGI is possible, would be radically transformative, why cap things? We can have happy immortal minds whether an AI or human (transhumans, really).
Perhaps you're concerned with the way current AIs (LLMs like ChatGPT & Claude) are thought of as tools. This worries me as well, when I am not worrying over the possibility of an apocalypse.