Yehuda Spacified
Some things take time to sink in, time for time (and memory) to do its culling and for us to look at them with fresh eyes. Eliezer Yudkowsky’s email to his deceased brother was one of those things. I’ve been rereading it about once every week, for one reason or another, since I discovered it 52 days ago, and each time it has resonated ever more deeply inside me. Its call to action is ever more urgent. Its wisdom ever more piercing. Its optimism ever more evident — there’s some brutally naive optimism in this letter, one that stares at us in the face, but one that we refuse to see… because it’s so damn hard to simply entertain the thought, because the moment we accept we might be able to do something about death itself, the 150,000 human deaths every day become 150,000 murders that could be prevented.
I don’t want to forget it. I’ll paste it in my wall and create new remixes of the content, and in this spirit I spacified the whole thing into a 30k PDF. Opinions on both the text itself and the utility (or lack thereof) of the spacifying will be most appreciated.
2 Comments
That is a very powerful article. I read it when you initially posted it and read it again just now. The spacifying is good – it really forced me to pay attention in some places where I skimmed over before.
I had a similar experience to Eliezer’s just a couple of months ago. I went to watch a Pink Floyd cover band play. I had a great time. Then, two days later, I found out that a close childhood friend of mine died the night of the concert. The cause was alcohol.I felt extremely guilty about being at a concert celebrating immediately after losing a good friend. But I had no way of knowing he died until later.
While I am not sure he fits Eliezer’s definition of a loved one, he was a dear friend. If there is a spiritual connection between us, shouldn’t my spirit have been diminished instantly by his loss?Or could all of my spiritual experiences in the past have happened inside my brain?
It is not a sensible world to me. Not at all.The world is a meaningless place. It is our duty to give it meaning and cherish and protect what little we’ve been able to create. No one else will.
I’m sorry to hear about your friend Ben. We shall have to work smarter.And I’m glad the spacifying helped. Thanks for sharing.