Beliefs

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:19:39 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

The Inquisitive Neurologist posts a "non-exhaustive list of my beliefs and opinions, both conventional and unusual (or worse)." [faré]

- IQ is the best known measure of cognitive ability, predicts lifetime success in many domains, is predominantly genetically determined in modern populations, and systematically differs between various ethnic groups

- evolution is a fact, not a theory

- there is no god around these parts, and even if there was, he/she/it would not be somebody worthy of invitation for dinner, much less worship

- espousing the three opinions above is enough to make you a pariah almost everywhere

...

- it bears repeating that non-initiation of violence is the only criterion for differentiating between good and evil

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Comments (1):

Interesting, but..

Submitted by heuristic on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:23:13 GMT

I've no problem with most of the statements in his list but this gives me pause:

"if I ever get root access to my mind, about 70% of it will be
removed in the first round of modding"

The question naturally arises: who is doing the removing?

As the saying goes, the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces.

So my first round of self-mind-hacking would be ultra-conservative, with fail-safe rollback to frequently-taken backups, and consist entirely of strengthening obvious weak spots - better memory, laser-like sustained concentration on demand, etc. The quirky tendencies that seem to have no useful role would be treated with wary caution, like a strange insect that probably has some ecological role in my neurolical garden but I'm not sure exactly where.

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