Bret WeinsteinVerified account

This is the double-edged nature of language.Through language we can create paradoxical universes that extend far beyond the rules of reality, but it’s this same feature that allows us to imagine a better configuration of reality and work to make it so and thereby improve lives.

You are exactly right. This is an adaptive trait, run amok in a novel landscape. We must stop it.

A virtual world will always require bootloading from physical reality. Those who don’t maintain a strong connection to physical reality will risk destruction through ignorance of real events that pose risks to the physical framework that maintains the virtual reality.

They are going to get us killed. The virtual is downstream of the physical, and they failed to install a firewall, one way valve or failsafe.

While I agree- Most of human history features mankind being wrong about almost everything, and still somehow engineering machines that make it to the moon. It’s as though we made progress in spite of ourselves.

Love this point. I think progress is the process of testing a lot of bad ideas, like sifting for gold. Progress is made despite moving mountains of failure. But progress is also made through moving mountains of failure.

The point is great, but the future is different by virtue of the power of the tools in question.

Please please expand on that.

This is the concept of virtual villages. The internet offers communities of people who will support, encourage and validate positions and inclinations not many in the real world would patiently entertain or tolerate. It’s the true safe space.

That would be different. And entirely acceptable. Here we have Twitter, FB, Patreon and Google playing along, making the rules for all of us. Rules that dictate if we can eat *in the real world*.

It’s not sustainable. It’s maladaptive & misaligned with actual human experience & function. It’s imbalanced and will tip too far until retaliation, demand, exposure, and abandonment rein them in. Feels unpredictable, but I’m hopeful the system will be regulated by alienated ppl

It’s the world where two 60yr old men are online flirting with each other posing as bi-curious girls in their twenties. TOTALLY maladaptive. It’s exactly what an AI would want prior to skynet becoming self aware.

In other words, the simulacrum will supplant what it simulates; unreality will become reality. Very Orwellian.

It won't work, but it seems to be what is being attempted.

I don't think it's so different. They'll still be interacting with real people (otherwise it's just a video game). It won't be much different that social media. They'll just be replacing written word, images and video with spoken word and 3d.

You're missing it. If a man decides to transition, he will only partly make the jump in the land of physics and anatomy. But online, he can become whatever he wants. It is only the physical world that forces a paradox. My claim is, the nonsense battles we face are that paradox.

Quiet! They'll hear us! One mustn't disrupt the flow.