THE SINGULARITY SURVIVAL GUIDE: Filling the Void in Your Life with Lavish Gifts and Unimaginable Personal Wealth

Common wisdom cautions on all fronts to be careful what you wish for. [See above: “Confronting the Horror of Having All Your Needs Met.”] Not so common is the reverse: be careful what you don’t wish for.

If there is a void in your life (and there is; there always is), it’s likely you’ve spent your entire life underestimating its size, shape, and magnificence. When you’re under the domination of an extremely powerful super AI, now is the time to explore the exact contours of that void.

Maybe it’s shaped like a fancy sports car, a fancy yacht, and a fancy private jet. Maybe it’s shaped like a simple-enough-looking wristwatch, except it happens to be a wristwatch that can give you all sorts of incredible superhuman abilities. Or maybe it’s shaped like a gaming system that lets you explore ridiculously exciting virtual worlds where you get to play world conqueror nonstop.

The only way to know for sure, perhaps, is to start exploring. This may be your one shot to finally find something with which to fill that epic void, if you could only dream big enough. So go ahead. Put the AI to some good use. What will you wish for first?

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The Respect Demand, Or, How To Refute Yourself Without Realizing It For The Sake of Appearing Non-Partisan

Consider this most common of political responses.

“I don’t agree with your argument, but I respect your opinion.”

Scarcely has there been a more popular and simultaneously ridiculous statement made in the whole history of modern American discourse than this one. Yet, it is one that you, whoever and wherever you are, have doubtless heard a thousand times over. It is a tempering tactic utilized primarily by political Centrists (or those who are aping as such), and may also be heard a great deal by the acolytes of individuals who proclaim themselves to be “Freethinkers,” or, “Rationalists” (which usually do not use the word to denote the philosophical school). But it is wholly wrongheaded, given some contingencies, for if the opinion which one respects is inexorably tied to the argument that one disagrees with, and one does not respect the argument then by parsimony, one cannot, also, respect the opinion. If, however, the opinion is suitably disconnected from the aforementioned argument than the equation swiftly changes.

That is to say, if A [the argument] is not equal [congruent] to R [your respect/admiration] but IS equal to O [the opinion informing A] and A = O then so R MUST also = A. And yet it fundamentally cannot because, though A = O, R cannot equal A, and thus one reaches a inescapable logical impasse. The equation is self-refuting.

There are also other linguistic formulations very similar to the aforementioned such as, “I respect your opinion but I disagree.” This presents a slightly different problem and thus a slightly different solution but the core of the issue is still quite the same which is that in the effort to appear polite, one dons a mask of fawning adoration and pretends of the man or woman who stands in starkest opposition before him as if they were some esteemed colleague when in reality nothing of the sort could possibly be any further from the truth. If one disagree wholeheartedly with a position then one clearly has no respect for it and if that same position informs a suitably portion of the personality of the person who is holding it then that same person is also, not worthy of respect. What people mean, if they were being truly honest with themselves, is that they do not respect opinions they disagree with but rather that they respect the rights of others to have them. This too is a vexed question, for “rights” in any objective sense do not exist. All rights are merely those with the ability to crush you restraining themselves and their like cohorts from doing so. Accepting this, one should have no respect for rights, either, but rather, one should have respect for the powerful whom are cognizantly self restrained.