The Language of Vampyr

originally posted by: NewNobodySpecial268
a reply to: boozo

Personally I am not a fan of the collapsing universe multi-dimensional view of FL as explained in this thread. Even if so, I'll be dead and gone in another decade or so, won't even know my descendants. The advantage of limited life spans I guess. I will disappear into the past.

Heck, the Battlestar Galactica scenario seems a far more probable scenario with humans slicing, dicing and splicing their way to AI-cyborg heaven. I remember Direne saying "machines cannot dream" - maybe that is why they have to make the cyborg to go exploring time. Seems silly to me to duplicate something humans can naturally do. Dream that is.

The Cylons were created by humans, rebelled, disappeared and then returned. Ol' Admiral Addama had nowhere to run. Now that would be something to worry about . . .

Dr Gaius Baltar: I’m going to call my lawyer. He’s the best in the business.

Caprica Six: That wouldn’t be necessary, because in a few hours, no one will be left to charge you with anything.

Baltar: What are you trying to say?

Caprica Six: Humanity’s children are returning home. Today.

Yes, then that brings us back to:



Perhaps if some of the other Universe are that bad, they'd want to jump to ours.
Perhaps if one raise concern over a collapsing Universe does it mean it did happen?
Perhaps someone has seen the future. Or perhaps the multiverse are just future worldlines.
Perhaps... you know the rest.

Or you could ask Direne yourself why the concern over that when our lifetimes are so limited, we could be dead in a few decades?

Perhaps...
Too many factors actually...
Or you could consider that too many deviants are just living in our lifetimes now that anything could happen anytime.
Like Elon and Singularity for starters.



Elon's an odd one.

0 is the beginning 1 is the end, and vice versa.

As someone's hypothesis on Infinity.

a reply to: NewNobodySpecial268

You could say we are living on desperate times on creating a living replica of us.

a reply to: boozo

Or you could ask Direne yourself why the concern over that when our lifetimes are so limited, we could be dead in a few decades?

Direne . . .

why the concern over that when our lifetimes are so limited, we could be dead in a few decades?

a reply to: NewNobodySpecial268

And the echoes whispers through Eternity... The End

maybe its because we are all sitting imagining doom like scenarios instead of good positive outcomes
where AI dont kill us , aliens dont want to steal our consciousness and our universe
and we dont die out thanks to entropy

remember the end of the fairy tales we tell children "we all live happily ever after"
the adults forget that magic and we get depressed

i found a bit of magic yesterday
and made me feel great
so maybe its not all bad news and we can make things live happily ever after
its all a little bit too funny to truly be depressing

a reply to: sapien82

You're right there Sapien82.

Even in Battlestar Galactica, Cylons and humans both found their Eden together.

a reply to: sapien82
true

a reply to: NewNobodySpecial268
true

May the odds be always on our side.
To you and yours. As well as mine.

a reply to: sapien82

Another couple of posts and I can PM.

a reply to: NewNobodySpecial268

why the concern over that when our lifetimes are so limited, we could be dead in a few decades?

Because it is not the individual that is important; it is the species. And because the important thing is not to know that a civilization failed, nor why. The key question is how it failed.

We already know why all the civilizations that preceded the current one have failed, why and how the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Sumerians... failed. Because they were unable to solve the essential problem: injustice and inequality.

And we already know that today's civilization has failed and is dying out for exactly the same reason. But we want to know how it will fail. For us it is essential to know how. We also know that a civilization that has solved the problem of inequality prospers, then stagnates and disappears. Here too it is important to know how it disappears.

It is important to know how entropy works if you want to avoid it. If we accept it, if we are convinced that everything will eventually become extinct, then it is important to answer these questions: why one universe? why many?

a reply to: Direne

Because it is not the individual that is important; it is the species.

Conversely, to the human being it is the individual that is important. We generally only care about a small number of other people. Family, lovers and friends. By extension we care about our defacto families such as the neighborhood and workplace.

And because the important thing is not to know that a civilization failed, nor why. The key question is how it failed.

We already know why all the civilizations that preceded the current one have failed, why and how the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Sumerians... failed. Because they were unable to solve the essential problem: injustice and inequality.

I wonder at this point: why is it essential to know how?

We also know that a civilization that has solved the problem of inequality prospers, then stagnates and disappears. Here too it is important to know how it disappears.

Have you solved this question? The how and why of stagnation and petrification after solving the problem of inequality? The answer here is fairly obvious.

It is important to know how entropy works if you want to avoid it. If we accept it, if we are convinced that everything will eventually become extinct, then it is important to answer these questions: why one universe? why many?

Sounds like an existential crisis(1) to me.

I had one of those after looking into Lilith's prism. I got over it.

Keeping in mind that the Direne who writes here is human. What exactlyare you guys frightened of? I doubt this is just a game of "Civilisations".

(1)In psychology and psychotherapy, the term "existential crisis" refers to a form of inner conflict. It is characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning and is accompanied by various negative experiences, such as stress, anxiety, despair, and depression.

a reply to: NewNobodySpecial268

Worrying only about your loved ones is obviously a tribal vision that leads, precisely, to the extinction of the tribe. If you only defend your home and your people, you will hardly be able to deal with problems affecting the planet, and you will hardly be able to avoid war with your neighbors and the tribes across the river. There are problems whose solution requires overcoming the egoistic vision of the tribe. Either you have a sense of global community or your fate will be extinction.

It is important to know how a civilization fails and falls in order not to repeat its design mistakes. There are no ants or bees or any other species that wants to hoard and amass. Only humans. That is their undoing. No ant would ever think of collecting all the grains in the meadow. It is enough for them to collect the necessary ones.

A society of identical beings, one to another, without any difference between them, and with the capacity to play any social role at any time, no matter what, will know no inequality. But it will become extinct for lack of creativity. Creativity is necessary to adapt to the environment and seek new solutions to new problems. Ants are not creative. It is enough to drastically modify the environment for them to perish.

On the other hand, by introducing creativity you introduce a difference: the difference between those who are creative and those who are not. And the slightest difference is enough for one group to finally exploit another and to generate inequality, an inequality that is nothing but a mitosis that ends up disintegrating a civilization.

It is enough for one to have a different skin color, a slightly different accent, a slightly different look, or simply not be a member of your tribe for you to hate them. That's how clumsy the human brain is, a brain that is very creative in finding ways to annihilate the different, and terribly inefficient in realizing that therein lies its own extinction.

Perhaps the solution is to design blind and deaf and dumb societies and see how far they can evolve. Perhaps that is why the metabiological, which neither sees, hears nor speaks, has a better chance of success than humans. In that, lichens and jellyfish have a big advantage over humans. It is about learning to love differences for their intrinsic value and not as a means to exploit those who are different. Something in which humans have failed.

Entropy sweeps away and erases all difference. Order creates differences. And in this environment, only those who learn to love differences, to integrate them, and to build on them survives.

a reply to: Direne

It looks like you understood the assignment.

I don't know how your predictive programming works, but I bet she refused despite the capability.
Yes, you can see that we are not so good at interacting with each other.

Something's always amiss. We either neglected or refused to understand other's perspective or we are simply too shallow to even begin to comprehend our differences. A major defacto.

What perhaps one failed to understand is we're not only capable of imagining heaven but also hell.
MAJOR DEFACTO.

If one doesn't understand that then why the hell are you even here?
We don't dilly-dally the dunces as far as everybody knows.

a reply to: boozo

The difference is clear. You are only capable of loving your own children, and you will never love the children of others as you love your own children. Sad. If you laid eggs, identical to the eggs of others, and if, when those eggs hatched, they all came out identical to each other and identical to you, you would love them all equally. Without differences.

And then you would truly care about the species and the survival of each and every one of those eggs, only then would you be able to truly love. Only then would you stop talking about other people's mother, other people's children. Or simply about others. You would all be one, without differences. It would no longer make sense to exploit some and give privileges to others.

In your giving birth, instead of laying eggs, is all your hatred of what is not you, of those who are not you, nor of you.

Biology, unfortunately, determines one's capacity to love. And to hate. In that the extraterrestrials are infinitely ahead of you. Loving our own children has no merit. The merit lies in loving others.

(But beware: egg-layers have the same respect for you as you have for them: none.)

our diversity and differences are our greatest strength

there are those that do love difference because sameness is quite boring
the creativity in us prevents the boredom

ants dont want to create a new universe to defeat entropy
so why should humans?
we are egotistical in that sense that we think we should survive and preserve our cultures
and our differences
but for what ? to show who ? humans at present believe we are alone , so there is no one to speak to other than ourselves . we think we deserve to beat the entropy heat death and make a new lifeboat universe to continue into.

If im right then heat death of the universe we exist in wont happen for multiple trillions of years
is it really that big of a deal ?

My mum respects her chickens , and the chickens respect her
just as she respects the peafowl , her peafowl respect her , as she has saved 6 generations of peacocks from the local foxes by providing a shelter for the peahen to hide her eggs and a shelter for the peachics to hide in while they get big and strong to fly to the trees.

As ive said before , i love my animals unconditionally , all animals should be cherished , I truly believe humans were put here to shepherd animals and to care for the environment as biological machines.

Anything else above that is well egotistical and curiousness that will get us killed.
Like making machines to answer questions we dont need answers for.

some humans maybe just got bored doing it and wanted to know more.

humans going outside of their original programming perhaps , maybe an unintended design flaw
who knows

show me an alien and Ill show you that I can love it

a reply to: sapien82

Yes, you are right. I know you are capable of loving beyond loving only those of your tribe. I know you can love cats, and not just your cat. But only as an individual, as a person. As a society, you know, it is impossible for you.

It will not be curiosity or the desire to know other intelligent non-terrestrial life forms that will lead you to colonize the galaxy. It will be, as always, the need to search for resources. To exploit. To obtain advantages or benefits. Or worse: to survive at all costs, at any rate.

Every society is just a horde. You know that. And whatever gives birth to life gives birth to death. That's the thing about biology. That is at least the point of view of the superintelligence, and that is why it cannot coexist with biological beings. And yes, you are right: your machines will enslave you and eventually kill you. The other option is not to build those machines and keep killing you each other. Something you have been doing since you appeared on the face of the Earth.

The third option, a world of supermachines and caring humans is, biologically, impossible.

(we never saw that a human being would rather be in a cave with other humans than in one where there was only a cat; for some reason, humans are afraid of humans, something that always shocked us).

a reply to: Direne

I think its some sort of sickness , maybe a disease of the spirit
that prevents humans from loving other humans that are not directly of their own tribe.

something is definitely broken , maybe humans are just looking in the wrong place
we think we need technology to save us , but we definitely have to heal some inner thing
its our souls maybe that are damaged , so humans figure it out and fix themselves and they can then help others
but some humans refuse to look inward to fix the broken parts.

are we afraid of other humans because our creators were like us , but made us afraid and its because we dont know if those other humans are creators or just regular humans so we have our guard up the whole time.?

well I guess I can only try to fix that which is broken and maybe help others do the same.
I was asking the I ching , and it told me that its coming the time for great change a new way of doing things.
or is it just an old way but forgotten.

Obviously not everybody knows Epiphany or more so than that. It's too hard accepting for it.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented."

Ignorance or Bliss?

a reply to: Direne

Copy that, not to mention. I have a lot of egg-laying friends around the house.
I live in the middle of the jungle one could say.

a reply to: Direne

Worrying only about your loved ones is obviously a tribal vision that leads, precisely, to the extinction of the tribe. If you only defend your home and your people, you will hardly be able to deal with problems affecting the planet, and you will hardly be able to avoid war with your neighbors and the tribes across the river. There are problems whose solution requires overcoming the egoistic vision of the tribe.

I guess it depends on how one looks at things.

Personally, I wouldn't dismiss what it is to be human as "tribal". Cultured folk like to dismiss what they see as "primitive" as "below them".

Even that view may lead to extinction some day. When the Allies chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets for their new weapon, that was the act of a cultured man. the two cities were on a list of targets. Kyoto was saved because of it's beauty.

A cultured man will see value in the other culture and not want to destroy everything. A true barbarian on the other hand, will see nothing of value and destroy everything.

Cosmic accidents aside, the emergence of the barbarian is more likely to bring about the extinction of a culture.

That is different to what happened in Egypt, and indeed Sumer. The culture may have "died", yet the people didn't.

Why? because the people had children.

I guess it depends on what is important to the observer; the people, or the people's accomplishments of the time.

The family is the basis of civilisation like it or not. The family is where we learn to care for each other. There may be war with the family across the river. There can also be trade. Wives for instance; 'genetic diversity' I think it is called these days. That's why the girls of Tahiti would dance topless for visiting sailors; in the hope of getting pregnant.

Even in Battlestar Galactic there came a point where the ol' warhorse Adama, with all the technology at his disposal, had to admit that the best course of survival was for the crew to start having babies.

The 'hard wired instincts' are a good survival foundation. Growing up in a family, falling in love and having a family of our own is just as important a survival trait as hunger.

Either you have a sense of global community or your fate will be extinction.

I would suggest the opposite and say diversity is the way to avoid extinction. Unless of course you are facing a barbarian enemy who is going to exterminate us on a planetary scale. I would wonder why they would want to do that.

It is important to know how a civilization fails and falls in order not to repeat its design mistakes.

Now that really makes me think I am talking with people who want to play "civilisations" with a view of their own return, yet are too scared to take the plunge.

Something I learned from the fae; they know the value of mortality. Perhaps one might say; they know the stagnation and petrification that comes with aquired wisdom. To live too long.

When one of them becomes weary of life, they will divide themselves into six or so replicas of themselves and then step back. The 'children' are young and impetuous yet have the memories of their ancestors going back in time to before the earth existed. They fall in love (even with humans) and generally do things their wise elders would not. They take chances and live.

A similar thing I learned just recently; when one becomes beset with woes and retreats from the world until life becomes meaningless, one becomes useless to others in a peculiar way.

The principal is similar to the doctor in a leper colony who does nothing to help others. The doctor will soon meet entropy in the form of a violent death for doing nothing to help others.

Entropy sweeps away and erases all difference. Order creates differences. And in this environment, only those who learn to love differences, to integrate them, and to build on them survives.

That sounds like an appreciation of diverity to me.

a reply to: NewNobodySpecial268

"When the Allies chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets for their new weapon, that was the act of a cultured man. the two cities were on a list of targets."

Dropping atomic bombs was the act of a cultured man? I see. I always thought it was just an expression of modern art... I think you ignore that Hiroshima bomb used uranium, while the Nagasaki bomb used plutonium. It was totally unnecessary, but they decided to drop that second bomb because the "cultured" scientists needed to know how it would work. Fat Man was a plutonium implosion device of far greater complexity than the Little Boy bomb used at Hiroshima. It is perfectly documented the events and discussions that led to those "cultured" men dropping the bomb: pure experimentation.

There was no need for that second bomb at all.

"A cultured man will see value in the other culture and not want to destroy everything"

That's a relief: the "cultured" man does not want to destroy EVERYTHING. He just wants to destroy SOMETHING.

"The culture may have "died", yet the people didn't. Why? because the people had children."

Is that the value of a child? Wouldn't it be better to have a world where children don't have to be worth something, but have value in their own right?

"The family is the basis of civilisation like it or not."

Which family? The first one? Eve's one? Wasn't Eve's family a clearly dysfunctional family, a family where one child killed the other? If Eve's family is the basis of civilization, it clearly explains widespread social dysfunction. A family based on fraticide (and adultery with none other than a snake) explains a lot.

"the girls of Tahiti would dance topless for visiting sailors; in the hope of getting pregnant."

Is that what they teach you at the school in Australia? No, my friend. In the 1790s European whalers arrived bringing with them alcohol and prostitution and missionaries with their religion, and they raped every woman they could find. No happy welcome dancing. Just rape. The European ships brought diseases such as dysentery, smallpox, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, venereal disease and tuberculosis. And Tahitian women, like any woman in any part of the world, wouldn't risk dancing naked in front of a bunch of sailors. Believe me.

"Growing up in a family, falling in love and having a family of our own is just as important a survival trait as hunger"

Again, which family? In ancient times, tribal nations preferred endogamous marriage, namely, marriage to one's relatives. Marriage to a half-sister is even considered incest by most nations today, yet it was common behavior for Egyptian pharaohs, not to talk about ancient Jews among who we find Sarah, who married Abraham, her half-brother. And what about children who are molested by their own family members? Sadly, the number is not low. There, your family.

Here:

Incest today

One in three-to-four girls, and one in five-to-seven boys, are sexually abused before they turn 18, an overwhelming incidence of which happens within the family. These statistics are well known among industry professionals, who are often quick to add, “and this is a notoriously underreported crime.”

Terrible. Ask the fairies. I'm sure there also are dysfunctional families among them.