Chuck has all the answers but he won't tell us Re: Money, happiness, and the halting problem Re: I can finallyanswerone point-blank

[Brian Atkins]

Chuck Murcko wrote:
> 
> On Thursday, July 26, 2001, at 09:12 PM, Brian Atkins wrote:
> 
> > Chuck Murcko wrote:
> >>
> >> Mmmm. Riddle me this:
> >>
> >> What drug cocktail should I try to get the experience I had when I was
> >> 17, crewing on a 22' sailboat in open ocean during a North Atlantic
> >> gale?
> >>
> >> What drug cocktail should I try to get the experience I had when I was
> >> 27, buddy breathing my (badly panicking) heavy rescue training partner
> >> out of a smoke-filled tunnel because his Scott Pack failed?
> >>
> >> What drug cocktail should I try to get the experience I had when I was
> >> 37 and I watched my son born?
> >>
> >> You *don't* get it so completely you flubbed the subject.
> >
> > Actually, you don't seem to be getting it. Your words do not seem to be
> > in any way related to what I originally said regarding happiness being
> > nearly equivalent to the meaningless state of getting high. I was not
> > attempting to say that in a literal way (taking certain drug = exact
> > feeling of happiness); rather it was a comparison meant to show the
> > transient unimportance of all of our experiences UNLESS we find some
> > way to continue living. The whole point being that if you kick the
> > bucket
> > then so do your hard won and cherished experiences, thereby making it
> > all pointless. Lasting achievement must stay tied to the physical world.
> >
> 
> How does the "meaningless experience of getting high" nearly describe
> the happiness in any of these three experiences? It doesn't. That's how
> my words relate to yours.

You're still confusing the issue- see below.

> 
> The physical/(rest of the) world doesn't much care whether I become
> happy. Neither recognition nor propagation of my happiness are
> requirements for me to become or remain happy. That's about fame,
> something entirely different. My happiness is not required to be a
> lasting achievement, for it need not affect anyone other than me. So
> what if I'm happy, and that dies with me. Does that make it any less

Then it's gone along with the rest of you, and you might have well
never lived or gone to the trouble to experience anything. Just like
the feeling of a high fades after the drugs are gone, your feelings
and memories fade to nonexistence after your mind is gone. Both just
blips of information that popped in and out of being.

So no your happiness is not required to be lasting. No one's forcing
you to stay alive. Just wanted you to realize the meaninglessness of it
all if you end up kicking the bucket.

This all relates to the happiness thread because I was trying to get
across the idea that simply seeking happiness is not enough. You have
to make your life last if you want it all to continue to be worth
anything.

> important or real than the type of happiness a messiah feels? Happiness
> spreads from a happy person just the same whether they shine shoes or
> invent cheap fusion power for their day job.
> 
> I believe you don't recognize that the happiness in each of the above
> experiences is completely different from the tripe of chemical
> experience. You haven't recognized the events you yourself have
> experienced that show this, regardless of your chronological age. Is
> there then anything more to say? I think not.

Still missing the point...

> 
> I believe what you're talking about (your abc list) cannot yield by
> itself any insight about or aid to gaining happiness. Jack is not
> related to happiness. All IMHO, as I said at the beginning.

Fine Chuck, enjoy your nonexistence OR call yourself very lucky if
the future created by others with jack allows you and your memories
to survive.

> 
> >>
> >> You would have shown a whiff of a hint of a clue if you had tried
> >> "Chuck
> >> has a whiff of a hint of one clue, but I don't even get that".
> >>
> >> As before, best of luck. You'll need it.
> >
> > You keep saying that, but I'm the one trying to do something to keep
> > us all alive. If you ride my coattails, consider yourself to be the
> > lucky one.
> >
> 
> Check.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> Chuck Murcko
> Topsail Group
> http://www.topsail.org/
> 
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

-- 
Brian Atkins
Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/