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Micah Redding 🚀🤖❤️ Profile picture
Micah Redding 🚀🤖❤️
@micahtredding
Expanding, lasting life. Religion and scientific progress. christian/transhumanist (@xianityplus)
Aug 27, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“Should we really be spending money on X when Y is going on?”

This is a common argument against art, science, technology, infrastructure, exploration, charity, compassion, change, reform, and progress of all kinds. This assumes that humanity is operating on a fixed budget, and that the obstacle to doing something good or desirable is every other good thing we might do.
Aug 15, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I have a lot of respect for anti-natalists. They are willing to say explicitly what many people implicitly believe.
medium.com/s/futurehuman/… I think they are completely wrong.

But I don’t think they are *obviously* wrong. I think humanity is far too much of a mixed bag for that.
Aug 12, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Everything that stands the test of time was at one time disruptive. Every oldies station was built on young people’s music.
Aug 4, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
We summited Mount Rainier! Did you know that 40% of people who climb above 10,000 feet experience Acute Mountain Sickness?
Jul 21, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
People sometimes discount one-on-one “coffee” meetings. But I don’t know anything else that is as good at quickly determining personal alignment—and the particular *dimensions* of that alignment. The more “goal-directed” the meeting is, the less this is true.

The whole value proposition is in discovering unknown connections and resonances between you.
Jul 18, 2018 • 8 tweets • 1 min read
The New Testament sees Jesus as the answer to an ultimate question:

How do we unlock humanity’s future? Will it be through violence?
Religious observance?
Ethnic separation?
Fanaticism?
Jul 16, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I do not like using Google Docs.

Mostly because I do not like using Microsoft Office. Alternatives to Google Docs?

Is there a good Medium-like collaborative editor?
Jul 12, 2018 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
This is the time travel version of the Simulation Argument. The difference here is that @davidmanheim assumes time travel doesn’t happen, but asks whether it is possible—while Nick Bostrom assumes simulation is possible, but asks whether it happens.
Jul 9, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
People who've left fundamentalism have often traveled a long way to realize that every reading is an act of interpretation.

So they often provide a disclaimer before offering their own interpretation. I think this can be good. But if we’re not careful, it can also prevent us from engaging deeply.
Jul 7, 2018 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
The future of text is #markdown, but the future of #markdown isn’t standardization. Markdown is great because it is built for graceful degradation, with the ultimate fallback system.

This makes it portable, resilient, and robust.
Jul 7, 2018 • 8 tweets • 1 min read
I’ve tried to push myself to take more and more of these leaps. To get increasingly comfortable with having to apologize. Actually, I’m not worried about apologizing. Almost everything I do is a mistake!

I’m more bothered by the knowledge that some people will never say anything, never giving me the chance to fix things.
Jul 6, 2018 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I tend to think of values (and visions of the future) like Vanishing Points—ideals to which things converge. That doesn't mean the possibilities keep getting smaller. The whole (ahem) “point” of a Vanishing Point—is that it contains an infinity within it.

If it's well-chosen, it should lead you into larger spaces, the further you go.
Jul 6, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Did religion delay scientific progress for millennia?

(If people had given up religion 2000 years ago, would we be 2000 years more scientifically advanced?) Somebody said this, and it made me realize this is one of those areas where we all carry around radically different models of the world.

I suspect the difference here goes not just to what we think of religion & history, but to what we understand science to be.
Jul 5, 2018 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
This is a fascinating idea.

You create text, and then that text gets turned into a URL.

And the trick is that all of the text is stored directly in the URL—Nowhere else.

ht @LinusEdwards
itty.bitty.site Why would this be useful?

The main reasons I can think of are:
1. Styling & formatting (you can use full HTML)
2. Taking advantage of Twitter's built-in link-shortening

That is, you can include a full page of styled content in a URL, which then can be included in a Tweet.
Jul 4, 2018 • 9 tweets • 1 min read
My ethical philosophy is premised on taking responsibility for the flourishing of all humans, all life, all matter.

This is somewhat ambitious. Paradoxically, I believe this is the only way to become an individual.

To the extent we take responsibility only for our own well-being, we become mindless clones of everyone else.
Jul 3, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
There seem to be at least 2 distinct kinds of gods:

1. Motive centers, that work in and through all humans (ie, Mars, Eros, Mammon).

2. Perfected individuals (ie, humans envisioned in their ultimate form). At a rough glance, Greek and Roman mythology considers the gods of motive centers to be pre-existent, while individuals are only deified through unique accomplishments.
Jul 3, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
There are two kinds of Artificial Intelligence:

1. Basic #AI, pursuing the goals of some other agent
2. General AI (#AGI), formulating its own goals From an ethical perspective, these are two very different things.

Basic #AI always pursues the goals of some other agent. The question is which agent that is, and whether those goals are examined or (perhaps more often) unexamined.
Jul 2, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In a world of endless possibilities, you have to make choices about what will come to be.

Making choices about what will come to be—is expressing and developing values.

When values are reconciled, refined, and integrated—you have a religious vision. When a religious vision becomes tangible, you have an engineering project.

An engineering project invites the most basic question of all—is this possible?

When you ask whether something is possible, it means your religious vision is making testable claims on reality.
Jul 1, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
To be alive is to be open and receptive to change. Actually, that’s probably not strong enough.

To be alive is to seek to be changed.
Jun 28, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Most of the church’s traditional rituals are very hard for modern people to find meaningful.

Music is a stunning, powerful exception. Despite all the attention paid to music in modern churches, I think it is under-appreciated and under-utilized.
Jun 28, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If God hadn’t intended for us to have bionic arms, God wouldn’t have given us the ability to build them. Is God’s will revealed by the way things are?

Well then, the way things are includes our ability to change the way things are.