Robin Hanson: belief

Transcript context

…Yes. There’s a critique of the classics which says that, if all these people have read the classics before and they haven’t been able to extract from these classics some explicit statement that, now, you could put in a textbook and read, somehow you have to go back to the classics and get it yourself by reading their original words. You might say, yes, you might get it, but then you’ll never be able to tell anybody else that either, so what’s the point other than your personal enjoyment? I put a priority on discovering things intellectually that I could explain to other people, that I could transfer to other people. To be part of this collective enterprise where lots of us work together, discover things, tell each other, and then we all know more as a result over time—I think that’s a wonderful thing to be part of, and that’s what I hope to be part of. These experiences I could have that would give me some sort of insight in a way that I couldn’t communicate to other people, I figure, what’s the point, then? That’s not part of this grand enterprise that I’m trying to be part of. In your earlier book, The Age of Em, people upload their brains into computers and then make many copies of themselves. Is this your solution to Fermi’s paradox, namely, where are all the aliens? Have they all done this?…

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