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when you strip away the scifi accoutrements of popular depictions of transhumanism, you're left with an ideological core many would feel much more at home with; ultimately, the resistance tends to be one of aesthetics. this is understandable, but sad; should that really stop us?

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many people already hold some milder form of these beliefs; most would agree that glasses, hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, pacemakers etc, are all net positive; the rest is but a matter of degree! what real difference is there btwn those, and Neuralink?

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RT @pee_zombie
this often escapes notice, that glasses are a cyborg enhancement of the body; using technology to transcend the limitations of our genetic heritage, to become more t…
twitter.com/pee_zombie/status/

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transhumanism is, to me, a belief system organized around the principle that we can become much more than what we are, that we shouldn't have to be limited by the accidents of our biology; quite similar to progressivism, no!

it's the idea that humans can, & should, transcend.

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more people than would admit it to themselves are, in fact, bioessentialist luddites; it's not necessarily wrong to think this way, either. I can totally understand the impulse! but it ignores the realities of life for those whose mortal form is... flawed

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RT @pee_zombie
there is a type of bioessentialist luddite which resists any sort of cyborgization, ie integration of tools into the extended self; they push for a sort of RETVRN o…
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these people often claim that it's wrong to mess with God's creations, that much of the changes brought about by technological civilization are satanic and soulless; even those more measured conservatives who don't use biblical language tend react with disgust at the very idea

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I often wonder if those of a more bioessentialist bent think about people like me; I'm not particularly unfortunate compared to those more seriously disabled, but, for many people, their bodies feel more like a burden, a curse, than a joyous divine gift, or anything do that sort.

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therein lies the rub; not for my whole life, but only until I manage to jailbreak my corporeal confinement, to rehome into the digital realm, perhaps download into a new synthetic body one day. but this one won't allow me to live the way I wish I could.

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RT @pee_zombie
at the peaks of my frustration I seem to vibrate within my skin, my spirit yearning to break free and transcend the mortal coil, to rehome into a digital body like a …
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I've had pretty bad chronic back pain for most of my life; I'm basically never not in some amount of pain, and during flare-ups I can barely walk, at times. won't get into the reasons, but trust me, I've tried mostly everything & it's not going away so long as I'm in this body.

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I often get asked why I'm so autistic about transhumanism, why I care so much about this dorky meme ideology; it's a joke, right? pls say yes

it's bc of the massive frustration I feel constantly as someone w/ serious chronic pain. I don't talk about it much, but my back is shit.

kiki is yang and bouba is yin and they form the basis of existence
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RT @egregirls
beep is kiki and boop is bouba and they form the basis of drone communication
twitter.com/egregirls/status/1

while one's culinary paradigm has much lower stakes than certain other domains, its still important to remain flexible; how you do anything is how you do everything, and omnivore is but a particular cognitive metaframe.

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the problem with cognitive calcification is that its generally a one-way state transition; dead players do not often become live once more. while there are exceptional cases, optionality of frame tends to be ergodic in nature, possessing terminal states.

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RT @pee_zombie
the function of your primary ideological frame should be to ensure psychic ergodicity, avoiding memetic calcification and maintaining metacognitive optionality; this…
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cognitive calcification is a natural part of the lifecycle; once you've figured out a general algo & have settled into a comfortable routine, there's seldom a need for maintaining this sort of mental flexibility, and so, many stiffen up; it's just easier.

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RT @pee_zombie
thinking about future shock today, and more generally, calcification and stagnation of self

why it happens, who it happens to, whether its inevitable

collecting s…
twitter.com/pee_zombie/status/

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often, we may be unwilling, or even unable to, let go of a frame which has served us particularly well, if we are either unaware of its existence, or if it has become load-bearing and calcified into an inextricable part of our cognitive architecture. this is a degenerative state.

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cognitive frames are optimizations, simplifications our minds make of our sensory inputs in order to do more sense-making w/ less energy; they are tools, force multipliers. as w/ any tool, it is critical to know their limits, to know when to put them down

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RT @pee_zombie
similar to how your vision is filtered & shaped by your perceptive apparatus, your beliefs and observations are interpreted through your epistemic exoskeleton, ie y…
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in the real world, however, there are no true closed systems; every abstraction leaks eventually, and if your frame cannot handle exceptions, it fails to be useful at these edge cases. this failure manifests in a variety of ways, but it's always stressful

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RT @pee_zombie
the notion of an abstraction being "leaky" means that it does not perfectly conceal the idiosyncrasies of the underlying layer from the one above, without which it …
twitter.com/pee_zombie/status/

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when in an environment created by those inhabiting a certain frame, every design decision is made w/ the same optimization criteria; the paradigm, the way of thinking, is fractal, showing up at different levels in the same ways. so long as the system is closed, this suffices.

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this has long been a pet peeve of mine, and interestingly enough, is a great example of sticky frames & unknown unknowns. the chefs are unaware of the existence of the frame they're in, not realizing there's even a question to be asked. good veg cuisine requires a paradigm shift.
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RT @vgr
When high-end restaurants sometimes charge the same for comparable meat and vegetarian items, where the meat is clearly a more expensive ingredient… are t…
twitter.com/vgr/status/1432390

honey, I'm not mad that you pulled out of Afghanistan, I'm just disappointed at how you did it

I've placed an invite link in my bio, feel free to drop in and say hello! chances are you'll get a response, either from one of us or the seemingly-benign AI which seems to have taken up residence. no one knows how it got there nor how to make it leave. its probably fine.
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RT @pee_zombie
bumping this again as I've been looking to move some of the discussions on here off the TL; mostly just been dropping links to interesting things in…
twitter.com/pee_zombie/status/

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