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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2846 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I can't tell if you're calling George's words or Tolkien's "cope", but if it's the latter then I think you're mistaken. Tolkien was Catholic, and his setting reflected his beliefs. Death is absolutely a good thing in that framework, because you get to be with God, and that is such a profound joy that all else pales in comparison (even being in an 18-year-old body until the heat death of the universe).

Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means. When they do, it ranges from the boring (eternal rest and praising God) to the pedestrian ("Heaven is a city 15,000 miles square...") to the horrifying (profound joy at being in the glorious presence of God is just religiously flavored wireheading).

Transhumanists sometimes write about what heaven on Earth might look like (Star Trek, The Culture, Friendship is Optimal, etc.) and if we fall short, I don't see the Christians doing any better.

One thing I've noticed in spending time with old people (proper old, not @George_E_Hale lol) is that they are often quite ready to lay down their cares and rest. And the young never quite understand it because they just haven't been through enough of life to get to the point where death seems like a welcome end to things (with some exceptions, like very depressed people). But it's a very real thing, and to be honest I can understand it a lot more now at (almost) 40 than I could at 25.

Well, I'm 35, and I still don't see it; my reasons for being weary of life are all fixable. I'm tired of getting old, but that can be fixed by being eternally 18. I'm tired of watching my friends and family die, but that can be fixed by making them all eternally 18. I'm tired working a job I hate, but that can be fixed by making AIs do all the jobs. I'm tired of having lost the love of my life, but that can be fixed by forking her and modifying the copy just enough that she will want to be with me until the last star grows cold and the universe comes to an end.

You know, simple solutions to simple problems.

I don't think anyone particularly describes the metaphysical well, at least as regards the concept of "eternal life." I also would suggest that there would be no "day-to-day," as you put it, no longer a time at all in the sense that we comprehend; thus to wonder what someone might be eating for breakfast in heaven, or whether there will be Playstation, etc. is a misapprehension of the concepts. This may ultimately cover all of your earlier listed adjectives (boring, pedestrian, and horrifying), I don't know.

I appreciate the humor in your last sentence, though its preceding paragraph lists several woes for which I have sympathy. I have also added the word "forking" to my vocabulary.

and if we fall short, I don't see the Christians doing any better

you can think of it as being a permanent version of basically the hottest boy-anxiously-but-purely-asks, woman-gives-freely-and-usually-a-bit-more-than-he-can-handle-type /ss/ doujin you've ever seen, except instead of just sex the exploration space is infinite

[reference pictures #7 and #8 here, SFW...ish]

that is how the relationship God [the woman] wants to have with you [the shota] is supposed to work; infinite desirability and infinite depth in infinite ways comes to you, for free, in the same ways

sex might not be the best way to illustrate it because of the implications (and Christians have a rather famously bad relationship with it) but Song of Songs does it anyway so IDK lol; it's supposed to feel like losing every single virginity at once to a beautiful woman who takes you to bed simply because you asked her to

Can anyone explain the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid reference? I just don't get it even though I've seen S1.

Shotacon's a porn genre; that's why he's called that in the show (the 'u' in his name is silent in both sub and dub). The author of this work has others that play this a bit straighter but it's worth noting the relationships his characters have are generally constructive, not destructive.

The interesting part of it is that the most difficult parts/negotiations of the typical male and female relationship dynamic are standing on their head or taken for granted. The thing about the casual awkward sex-type button-pushing is that normally the man is supposed to offer something to the woman and in return she'll show him her tits, but in this case, the man can't offer anything except best effort and the woman is trying to stuff her tits in his face before he's proven himself; the inverse of how a typical relationship is supposed to function.

The other thing about Shouta is that he's, well, innocent. He approaches [what is basically God] like a child would (Kobayashi does this too, but in a slightly different way)- hence the nervousness to accept the gifts offered him (and the apprehension about accepting them publicly; he does share a bed with her, after all, and they do have a kid in the spinoff), but it's worth noting he does accept them (considering that he does care for Lucoa and doesn't want her to go away, and is worried about doing that by accident).

It is noteworthy that in Christianity, this is repeatedly stated to be the way God works; so just extend that principle out to everything rather than just the sexual angle and... there you have it.

It's just the guy's name being shouta is a reference to the porn genre. That's the meta-joke behind all the gags with his big-titty dragon familiar, whatshername.
Used to be a pretty common name, possibly less so now. Like calling your daughter Dolores.

Like calling your daughter Dolores.

That only applies if your family name is 'Haze'; 'Lolita' actually used to be a common-ish name back in the 1930s, like 'Adolf' was.

at last i truly see

i am sorry i am not good with computer

though in all honestly Pixiv is really annoying when you want to link single image, like every site was 20 years ago which I guess is appropriate for Japan but still

not that Reddit is any better since it replaces all your image links with the hat thing

I was more generally expressing the minor revelation (unironically, thanks for inspiration), not specifically addressing examples, I'm ahem familiar with those. Truly a thinking man's fetish.

As for images, I usually just reupload to catbox for simplicity.

Truly a thinking man's fetish.

I thought that was NTR?

Why did the Christians ever bother with the obviously-pederastic-implications "Father" image when this gem existed in information-space?

Of all the metaphors I ever expected to see used to describe the transcendental nature of heaven, doujin wasn't anywhere near that list. But man, I'm here for it.

Obligatory: fucking weeb. ;)

I didn't know those books were about free hats. Normally they tempt him with a gpu

oh right, I forgot about that stupid broken interaction with Reddit image links

This is what that image is supposed to be- specifically, #8 on that page (#7 works as well).

normally they tempt him with a GPU

Apparently they've been stepping up their game.

I'm more of an _p2 guy, so there's no need to worry about getting into heaven in the first place.

the big titty goth GF is just the more socially-acceptable/PG version of this tendency
she needs to be ugly and hostile-looking because men who want this get really self-conscious the prettier she is

https://i.redd.it/40qhbp5fzpv61.png

Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means.

I don't think it's fair to say "don't bother", because the situation is more "can't". You're asking finite beings to describe something which is not just infinite, but completely alien to our experience. Of course people can't adequately describe that.

But that also doesn't detract from my original point: it isn't "cope" to say that death is a good thing if your framework of existence says "after we die we get something even better than the best things here". That's just straightforwardly true in that case! Note that I'm not trying to convince you the framework is true, just pointing out that if you accept that framework for the sake of argument then death is obviously a good thing.

Well, I'm 35, and I still don't see it; my reasons for being weary of life are all fixable. I'm tired of getting old, but that can be fixed by being eternally 18. I'm tired of watching my friends and family die, but that can be fixed by making them all eternally 18. I'm tired working a job I hate, but that can be fixed by making AIs do all the jobs. I'm tired of having lost the love of my life, but that can be fixed by forking her and modifying the copy just enough that she will still want to be with me until the last star grows cold and the universe comes to an end.

You're cheating here by including things that are not really related to your original scenario of "living in an 18-year-old body until the heat death of the universe". Yes, your body breaking down over time would be fixed. If we assume that you're also preventing any form of death, then losing your loved ones would be mostly fixed. But that doesn't bring back the loved ones you have already lost, it doesn't prevent your loved ones from deciding they want to gracefully exit life (at which point you lose them), it doesn't magic AI into existence to do your crappy job, it doesn't change human nature such that people will actually be nice to each other for the first time in recorded history.

Like yeah, if you wave a magic wand that says "every bad thing about life is gone now" then living forever is great. But that isn't what you said, you simply talked about living forever by itself being good enough. But it isn't, you would need to fix all the other problems too.

It gets even worse for your case when you think through what fixing all the problems in the world actually would require. Not just tech, though the tech barrier is so high that it should give us pause as to whether it can ever happen. The sheer fact of individuality means that sooner or later, two people are going to have desires which conflict with each other. Now what? Unless you mind control one or both of them, at least one of those people is going to be unhappy with the outcome. Even with a magic wand, this is unfixable. I guess you could use mind control, but that seems like the utopia now has a dark dystopian underbelly that is needed to make it work (yes Persona 5 Royal, we see you over there). Not a very satisfying utopia any more. Perhaps the sort of thing one might write a short story about walking away from. ;)

Only because Christians rarely bother to spell out what day-to-day existence in heaven actually means. When they do, it ranges from the boring (eternal rest and praising God) to the pedestrian ("Heaven is a city 15,000 miles square...") to the horrifying (profound joy at being in the glorious presence of God is just religiously flavored wireheading). Transhumanists sometimes write about what heaven on Earth might look like (Star Trek, The Culture, Friendship is Optimal, etc.) and if we fall short, I don't see the Christians doing any better.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

I would say that the more thoughtful transhumanists either converge quite closely to the above, or else diverge in ways that seem to me strictly inferior (The Good Place, Lena). This is because the above, as your own comments indicate, is the best we can concretely imagine; as you say, "simple solutions to simple problems".

Those Christian writers both capable and willing to engage in speculation are forced to appeal to abstractions (The Great Divorce being my favorite), but I for one find those abstractions intriguing, and clearly preferable to the Transhumanist offers; if I accept the most plausible of the Transhumanist assumptions, they indicate to me that Transhumanism's capacity for creating Hell vastly exceeds their capacity for creating Heaven, much less God.

Were you under the impression that Lena was envisioned as a transhumanist example of Heaven???

No, but it seems to me that most descriptions of Transhumanist Heaven suffer from suicidally-naïve faith in progress, and Lena demonstrates succinctly why it is suicidal. It seems to me that a lot of Transhumanists have been dreaming of and actively working toward Lena without comprehending the reality of the scenario, and that this constitutes a disqualifying failure of imagination and reasoning. I readily slot myself into this category; I used to be a transhumanist, and I did not write Lena, for reasons that I have spent some time contemplating. Uploading your mind means boxing yourself. It is not immortality or transcendence, it is a level of imprisonment and vulnerability so utterly profound that no human has ever experienced the like.

Those that dodge this pitfall usually do so by appealing to a God analogue; CelestAI or Coherent Extrapolated Volition-aligned superintelligence, and thus converge on the Christian model.

The Good Place tries to thread the needle, and collapses into number-go-up banality.

Friendship is Optimal is just as much a warning as Lena is: the message is that in Heaven, you will be subjected to the unyielding alien whims of a being who will mindrape you into accepting it. If it is a convergence to the Christian model then it shows me how naive the Christian faith is, and it only dodges being suicidal by introducing layers upon layers of mental gymnastics of why it's wrong to murder babies before they sin. What is "a disqualifying failure of both imagination and reasoning" if not to utter "Heaven is beyond imagination" and "Heaven will undoubtedly be good" from the same mouth?

I would say that the concept of uploading is vulnerable to the "man-made horrors" scenario in ways that are obvious to us, but it is not doomed to it, and the very fact that Lena exists as a caution tale instead of blindsiding us in reality is proof of that. In fact, the ability of transhumanists to notice skulls seems to rapidly outpace the ability to create skull-producing nanofactories. How many Christians ponder on whether Heaven might actually be horrible (and remain Christians) as much as Transhumanists ponder on all the ways the man-made Heaven might be horrible?

(In my own chronicle of noticing skulls, I have concluded that a) non-destructive uploading is a way of procreation and I shouldn't subject my upload to anything I wouldn't do to my child; b) destructive uploading without an ego bridge is a way of suicidal procreation and I shouldn't do it unless I'm about to die anyway; c) don't upload myself, with continuity or without, to a system that is trivially root-accessed from the outside.)

The Christian looks at the myth of Icarus and Daedalus and concludes: "man was not meant to fly". The Transhumanist looks at it and concludes: "do not operate experimental technology outside constraints that have been proven to be within the safe margin".

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