My existence on the internet might be with my real name, but my suspicion is that the vast majority of people are creating Avatars of themselves on the internet, untagging Facebook photos and writing blog posts to fit the image they wish to project. Weigel is jobless because he chose not to maintain the avatar.

There is probably quite a bit of truth to this. I have chosen not to use names other than my own and not to have any avatars of myself on the web. If you find “khuxtable”, “kahuxtable”, “Kathryn Huxtable”, etc., it’s either me, or someone else with my name or initials. (There are several Kathryn Huxtables online. I was the first, since I was working at a university when the internet expanded.) If you find a different sort of name, it is not me.

I’m unlikely to pay for this in any real way unless we turn into the Republic of Gilead, in which case I’m heading for Canada.

I’ve chosen not to tag photos or to join lots of groups online, but that’s more because I find the associations resulting from them to be annoying.

His original Ignite presentation is “The Psychology of Incompetence”. It’s quite funny and everyone should watch it, especially programmers because it pokes fun at our industry.

If anyone here truly feels fiat currency is worthless then feel free to give me all your money.

I’m fine with that. If anyone here truly feels that fiat currency is worthless, then feel free to give me all your money.

Denise thinks that maybe “Escape” (the Piña Colada Song) is the worst song ever.

I think maybe it’s “Having My Baby”.

Ideas? Suggestions? Criticism?

Greg Bear also said at a Science Fiction convention in the late 1980s that people who think humanity will look the same in a generation are all wrong. I met him at NolaCon II in 1988 and argued with him about this. We did not change each others’ minds. He thought that advances in genetic engineering would lead to people altering either themselves or their children to be different in whatever arbitrary way made a good story. ;-)

Many times, these speculations are combined.

Although these speculations can make good stories about the Human Condition, my argument against all this is:

• Machine intelligence is proving to be a lot harder than people thought back in the day. Computers are better than we are at certain things, like doing numerical calculations accurately, and they can do many things faster than we can, like scanning star patterns for comets and such, but they don’t do the latter better than we do, and we are far better than they are at many other things. I don’t believe that in principle a computer can’t mimic a human mind, or something like one, but that point is a lot farther off than the AI folks like to admit.
• I think Vinge, Kurzweil, and others are confusing the rate of technological change in certain fields in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries with a natural law. There is no real reason to assume that the development curve isn’t some sort of sigmoid curve and that we will soon approach the leveling off point.

  As for Greg Bear, the Human Genome Project has rendered some of his more fanciful speculations problematic, in that we appear to have a lot fewer genes than earlier geneticists thought. Actually constructing a gene to make, say, a second thumb on a hand, will likely prove a lot more difficult than he thought it would in New Orleans in 1988.

• My final point concerns attitudes towards the human form.

  I think that humans in general are more reluctant to fiddle around with their general appearance and faculties than a few body modification people would tend to suggest. People who do change their bodies are looked on as freaks by a large majority of the world, if not Americans. And even in North America and Europe, this is not common behavior.

  I don’t think we’ll see people making large changes in large numbers to their forms anytime soon, if ever.

I have been active in my local UU congregation, Shawnee Mission Unitarian
Universalist Church.

Unitarian Universalism is more a religious outlook than
a set of beliefs. There’s lots of history about the
formation of the UUA on the UUA home page (see above). I
won’t recapitulate it here. After long discussions about
what we believe, the UUA agreed to adopt the following
principles and purposes, along with several sources we draw
from. The sixth source listed was adopted in 1995 in
recognition that many UU congregations were, in fact,
drawing from that source.

Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association

• We, the member congregations of the Unitarian
  Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote
  • The inherent dignity and worth of every person;
  • Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
  • Acceptance of one another and encouragement to
    spiritual growth in our congregations;
  • A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
  • The right of conscience and the use of the
    democratic process within our congregations
    and in society at large;
  • The goal of world community with peace,
    liberty, and justice for all;
  • Respect for the interdependent web of all
    existence of which we are a part;
• The living tradition which we share draws from many sources:
  • Direct experience of that transcending mystery
    and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which
    moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an
    openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
  • Words and deeds of prophetic women and men
    which challenge us to confront powers and
    structures of evil with justice, compassion,
    and the transforming power of love;
  • Wisdom from the world’s religions which call
    us to respond to God’s love by loving our
    neighbors as ourselves;
  • Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed
    the guidance of reason and the results of
    science, and warn us against idolatries of the
    mind and spirit;
  • Spiritual teachings of earth-centered
    traditions which celebrate the sacred circle
    of life and instruct us to live in harmony
    with the rhythms of nature.

Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and
ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our
understanding and expand our vision. As free congregations
we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our
mutual trust and support.

(This is reposted from my static website and backdated.)