Then maybe, instead of just downvoting, these persons should have asked him to clarify and repharse his post. This would have actually led to an interesting dicussion, while downvoting gave nobody nothing. Maybe it should be possible to downvote a post only if you also reply to that post.
Personally I think that this call voting is indeed useless and belongs to places such as Youtube or other such sites where you can't expect a meaningful discussion in the first place. Here, if a person disagrees with you, I believe she or he should post a counter argument instead of yelling "your are wrong!", that is, giving a negative vote.
The first picture is a dark image of a planet with a sligthly threatening atmosphere. It looks like the upper half of a mushroom cloud, but it could be also seen as the earth violently torn apart. This is why I think , given the context, that it symbolises the threat of a nuclear war, and more universally, the threat of a dystopia.
The last picture shows a beatiful utopia. I thought it's there to give a message of the type: "If everything goes well, we can still achieve a very good future." That is, while the first picture symbolises the threat of a dystopia, the last one symbolises the hope and possibility of an utopia.
Of course, this is merely my interpretation. There are very many ways one can inerprent these pictures.
I'm afraid you are making a very strong statement with hardly any evidence to support it. You merely claim that people who pursue gratitude-free goals are often religious people (source?) and that such goals are a myth and absurd. (Why?) I for one, don't understand why such a goal would be necessarily absurd..
Also, I can imagine that even if I was the only person in the world, I would still pursue some goals.
Strange enough. After all, while I am a transhumanist to some degree and also enjoy scifi, I am far from being a genious. Still the message of the pictures were immeditately obvious.This would suggest towards what you said: they maybe appealing to general people, while not necessarily as appealing to those already very familiar with scifi and transhumanism.
I could indeed simply lie and play the role of an obeying soldier to get the position I were looking for. However, it is of course true that if I had born and lived in a country where people are continiously fed with nationalist propaganda, I would be less likely to disobey the rules or to think it's wrong to retalite.
If I had been one of those persons with the missile warning and red button, I wouldn't have pressed it even if I knew the warning was real. What use would it be to launch a barrage of nuclear weapons against normal citizens simply because their foolish leaders did so to you? It would only make things worse, and certainly wouldn't save anyone. Primitive needs to revenge can be extremely dangerous with todays technology.
as interesting as picking up rocks and observing insects crawling under them, IMHO
What, insects are fascinating!
Rationality can be useful when drawing. It allows you to avoid simple mistakes which you could otherwise make. I think this is especially true when you are for example inking your work, or doing some other other task which is mostly mechanical. However, sometimes following mere feelings can provide very interesting results. I am not a good drawer, nor do I actually know anything about drawing, but I draw a little bit every now and then. I find drawing most enjoyable when I draw quided by intuition, just letting the pen draw curve after curve the way it feels. I have found that when I do this, I achieve results more to my liking than when I actually think about what to draw and how. Maybe this is simply because I don't have much actual knowledge about drawing, I don't know.
Anyway, interesting post, thanks.
I think the main reason for this is that these persons have simply spent more time thinking about cyronics compared to other people. By spending time on this forum they have had a good chance of running into a discussion which has inspired them to read about it and sign up. Or perhaps people who are interested in cyronics are also interested in other topics LW has to offer, and hence stay in this place. In either case, it follows that they are probably also more knowledgeable about cyronics and hence understand what cyrotechnology can realistically offer currently or in the near future. In addition, these long-time guys might be more open to things such as cyronics in the ethical way.