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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      The cosmos is something like a figurative mirror in a cosmic mirror test. You pass the regular mirror test if you can recognize yourself in a mirror (as other apes, and even crows do). You pass the cosmic mirror test if you feel lonely/yearning when you look up at the sky.

      1 reply 6 retweets 27 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      Not all humans pass the cosmic mirror test or possess the Gaia instinct. Hardcore libertarians certainly don’t. Many traditionally religious types don’t. I suspect many “rationalists” who fetishize “optimization” don’t. That’s okay. You’re all just a bit less evolved than me 😇

      3 replies 1 retweet 21 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      I think the common factor there is that because they believe in some non-corporeal god (efficient markets, traditional gods, post-singularity-AI and/or simulators) the spiritual valence of the material cosmos is... attenuated shall we say? Head-in-some-noosphere syndrome.

      1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      Passing the cosmic mirror test means at some level, you’re a sort of hyper-atheist. What we see is all there is. Everything else is comforting fiction. You must find both material sustenance and spiritual succor in these living/non-living atoms around us. There’s nothing else.

      1 reply 2 retweets 16 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      Ironically, we hyper-atheists are most vulnerable to soul death because we keep our souls in atoms around us. Those who believe in any religion keep souls in eternalist, aionic, safe spaces. There’s a nice Dr. House rant about why atheism makes you value life more, not less.

      4 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      The universe is not exactly a mirror-of-living-earth, and potential alien life wouldn’t be a “reflection” but there would be sense of mutual recognition if we did find *any* life. Even if it was alien/predator/andromeda-strain style life that “recognizes” us by trying to kill us.

      1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      Back on earth, we’re not the only creatures with a sense of outer space (turtles and spiders orient towards the moon/stars for example) but we’re the only ones who experience the Gaia instinct and pass the cosmic mirror test. It’s not just a firmament with twinkling lights to us.

      1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      The earthbound side of the Gaia instinct is caring about an idea like “90% species extinction”. No other species is capable of caring about anything more than its immediate kin, predators, and prey. Local eco-web consciousness only. The Gaia instinct is for tech-modern humans.

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      As individuals we can feel an individual version of mutual recognition with almost any creature that we can respond to and that responds to us. Cats and dogs of course, but even trees and slugs. Even if that sense of mutuality is an “eww” or pang at cutting down an ancient tree.

      1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      THIS is what at risk. Life may go on even in the worse 50% of climate change outcomes, but the Gaia instinct might die. The world will end in the sense of an idea of ourselves reflected back when we look up. Even if we retain a gritty, anthropcene kind of cyber-paleo modernity.

      1 reply 1 retweet 15 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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      What might end is the capacity to feel the kind of incredibly poignant loneliness that took Hubble, Pioneer 11, shipping containers, and a double helix to deliver to us. It might be the most precious emotion we’ve constructed for our minds to experience. Better than religion.

      9:14 PM - 6 Mar 2019
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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          Our ability to feel this feeling might be perhaps the peak experience of being human if the worse climate futures play out. We might live on, but on a dispiriting subhuman journey. Or we beat the crisis and go on to experience way more on our many frontiers of the spirit.

          2 replies 0 retweets 11 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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          You may not share this sensibility. But ask yourself: do you possibly not feel this because you’ve short-circuited your capacity to feel it by putting your “soul”, for lack of a better word, in an illusory place where it cannot die, but doesn’t truly live either?

          2 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 6 Mar 2019
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          This is ultimately what many of us are thinking/feeling when we talk about climate. We’re not secretly trying to shove Big Government down the world’s throat. We’re trying to prevent the soul-death of the world as we know it. Harsh as 90% collapse might be, soul death is worse.

          4 replies 0 retweets 26 likes
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        5. End of conversation

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