71–80 of 176 posts
A gut punch for me. He was influential in many ways, as multiple comments here have already attested-- in particular the 'Manna' story that has been mentioned several times, which definitely knocked my socks off. Since no one else has brought it up yet, I want to say that one of his websites, "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" ( https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ ) was very important in my world. It may not exactly be th…
A gut punch for me. He was influential in many ways, as multiple comments here have already attested-- in particular the 'Manna' story that has been mentioned several times, which definitely knocked my socks off. Since no one else has brought it up yet, I want to say that one of his websites, "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" ( https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ ) was very important in my world. It may not exactly be th…
No higher power ever wrote anything though. That's all human writing, human promises, human propaganda.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only clear distinction between the utopia and the dystopia is on wealth distribution. All the rest of it is a narrative about consequences. Anyway, the AI there isn't like our LLMs either. It's an AGI capable of long term societal prediction.
> The only clear distinction between the utopia and the dystopia is on wealth distribution. A utopia where everyone is starving vs a dystopia where some people are fabulously wealthy but almost everyone has basic healthcare and education and opportunity to succeed? Inequality isn't anywhere near as important as the baseline of what most people have available to them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the idea of sharing society’s abundance with everyone is clearly possible It is possible. If we stopped at the invention of fire we'd all have equality by now. The problem is that people keep inventing new stuff.
Why is innovation and sharing mutually exclusive?
Sad to hear a brilliant man decided to take his own life. He seemed increasingly dark on his later takes, and it's a testament to the evils of unrestrained high-IQ and no guard rails.
And all of us, even the von Neumanns and the Ramanujans, have restraints and guard rails.
A gut punch for me. He was influential in many ways, as multiple comments here have already attested-- in particular the 'Manna' story that has been mentioned several times, which definitely knocked my socks off. Since no one else has brought it up yet, I want to say that one of his websites, "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" ( https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ ) was very important in my world. It may not exactly be th…
Obviously someone who has come to atheism is not going to speak well of prayer. The guy ends each section with more questions than answers. And each of those questions comes from a highly confused state about what religion is, about what prayer is, about what God is. And maybe even what your purpose is. In the words of the Bible, “ the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light…
No need for goalpost moving. The holy book claims that God answers prayers. This is, in fact, a lie. Some people aren't yet fully convinced of this, and reading the website helps them along. (see uncle comments)
A gut punch for me. He was influential in many ways, as multiple comments here have already attested-- in particular the 'Manna' story that has been mentioned several times, which definitely knocked my socks off. Since no one else has brought it up yet, I want to say that one of his websites, "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" ( https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ ) was very important in my world. It may not exactly be th…
It's worse than that, it's bad theology on a topic that has been discussed for millennia.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only clear distinction between the utopia and the dystopia is on wealth distribution. All the rest of it is a narrative about consequences. Anyway, the AI there isn't like our LLMs either. It's an AGI capable of long term societal prediction.
> The only clear distinction between the utopia and the dystopia is on wealth distribution. A utopia where everyone is starving vs a dystopia where some people are fabulously wealthy but almost everyone has basic healthcare and education and opportunity to succeed? Inequality isn't anywhere near as important as the baseline of what most people have available to them.
Most of the developed world is going through one version or another of this right now. Housing cost crises everywhere from Vancouver to NYC to Tampa to London are far too sharp, far too recent, and far to correlated with the concentration of assets at the top of the wealth distribution to be “because we need to build more housing”. By all means build more housing, but if we keep redistributing all wealth upwards constantly that new housing will become expensive AirBnBs and shit, not homes owned by people at the median.
The idea that the person at the median is doing as well as they were ten years ago is a weird religion, the idea that they’re doing as well as their parents is a cult.
Inequality is bad because the basic essentials for the person at the median are some of the best investments for the people at the top.