David Lucifer
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Enlighten me.
  
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interview for US News
« on: 2003-07-31 23:02:15 » |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "James Pethokoukis" <jpeth@mindspring.com>
To: "David McFadzean" <david@lucifer.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 3:43 PM
Subject: Questions from US News reporter
> Here are a few questions. Free free to ramble and stray off topic.
>
> 1) Could you give me some background on yourself? Age, Location, what you do
> for a living, that sort of thing.
b. 1966 in Edmonton, AB, Canada
I have been working as a professional software engineer since graduating with
an electrical engineering B.Sc. from the University of Calgary in 1987.
After working for Hewlett-Packard for 3 years, I went back to grad studies
to get a masters in artificial intelligence.
While doing the masters degree (1993) I was first introduced to transhumanism
when a fellow grad student loaned me his copies of Extropy magazine. I read
them all and was impressed enough to attend the first Extro conference in 1994.
I've been to every one since.
While in grad school I started a weekly discussion group called the bs group
(for biological simulation or whatever). This evolved into the Daemon Maxwell
Group which met every week to talk about new technology and transhumanist
topics. At one of the meetings I introduced an article written by Robin
Hanson on idea futures. We were enthralled with the concept and worked in
our spare time to build the first prediction market on the web. We were
honoured with the 1995 Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for world's
best web site. We presented our experience at Extro 2.
You probably heard a lot about Hanson and idea futures with the recent
debacle over the terrorism prediction market.
more info here>> http://hanson.gmu.edu/ideafutures.html
In 1996 I took over administration and hosting of the Extropians mailing list
and website and I have been the ExI's electronic communication officer ever since.
In 2000 I quite my day job to form a .com based on the ideas of Extropian
Sasha Chislenko. The Javien vision was to build a new superstructure on the
web to merge commerce (with micropayments), identity systems, collaborative
filtering, and the semantic web. Like most .coms we ran out of money and had
to cease operations, but unlike most the company survives in a new form
now focussing exclusively on micropayments.
Sasha committed suicide the same year Javien started. I keep his memory and
ideas alive on this tribute site>> http://www.ethologic.com/sasha/
For the last 2 years I have been working on the seed AI project started by
Peter Voss at Adaptive AI (http://www.adaptiveai.com). The goal of the project
is to create an AI that can bootstrap itself to superintelligence and
presumably bring about the singularity. It doesn't get much more transhuman
that that :-)
I am now based in Montreal and helping to start up a local chapter of the WTA.
> 2) Do you consider yourself either a transhumanist or Transhumanist, if you
> get my drift?
I certainly subscribe to the ideas outlined in the Transhumanist Declaration
and the ideals in the Extropian Principles. I honestly don't know whether that
makes me a transhumanist with a capital T or not.
http://www.transhumanism.org/declaration.htm
http://www.extropy.org/ideas/principles.html
> 3) The transhumanists I have spoken with seem reluctant to confront
> traditional religion. They talk a lot about coexistence. Your Church of the
> Virus seems to go out of its way to take it on. Why?
Because the traditional religions are predicated on false assumptions and that
leads to poor models of reality, confused communication and bad decisions.
We don't claim to have The Truth(tm), we believe all knowledge is provisional.
We do claim that a belief in the supernatural is unnecessary for a good
(meaningful, ethical) life. Believing in the supernatural is not only
unnecessary, but detrimental to pursuing the good life.
Despite the handwaving of a number of commentators, science is fundamentally
at odds with the traditional religions. They all make empirical claims which
are inconsistent with current best knowledge. They do not have any special
domain over matters of morality.
> 4) What do you see "religion" looking like 50 or a 100 years from now?
Assuming that there are any biological humans in existence 50 or 100 years
from now religion will be a superset of what you see today. There will still
be Christians and Muslims and Jews and Sikhs and Hindus, and followers of
Vodun and Asatru and Confucius, but there will additionally be a myriad of
new denomiations, variations, and syncretic almagams. Some popular religions
today will disappear altogether (I don't give Scientology a good prognosis).
If I have anything to do with it, the followers of Virus and the religions
it inspires will grow from hundreds of followers to a significant movement.
> 5) What led you to start the COTV and what do you ultimately hope to
> accomplish with it? Are there members beyond just yourself?
The Church of Virus was started with the revelation that religions, all of
them, are mind viruses. They are mutually supporting memes, competing
for the same niche in the ideosphere like species competing in the biosphere.
Science as a memeplex, and its relative secular humanism, can't compete
with the world religions because they aren't in the same niche. In order
to win that game you have to play that game. I decided to form a new religion,
one that was entirely consistent with science, one that espoused rationality
and empathy as virtues, one that rejects dogmatism and hypocrisy as sins.
I named it Virus to be deliberately provocative, to put people in a wary
position by telling them the raw truth, that this religion is designed to
infect them.
I didn't invent Virus to be destructive. It is meant to be a viable
alternative to the traditional religions. I don't think anyone should
have to check their rationality and common sense at the church door.
Since Virus first made its appearance on the net in 1995 it has attracted
over 1500 people that have contributed to the project.
Thanks for this opportunity, James, and please let me know if I can answer
any further questions.
David
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