Elizabeth Childs wrote:
>
> Interesting. I am always aware of the permanence of my remarks, and have
> often killed a post because I didn't want it coming back to haunt me.
>
> I try never to say anything that Jesse Ventura wouldn't say. :)
I've often wondered whether, in a few decades CRNS, it will become the custom to undergo a permanent change of name at age twenty, or some other significant milestone of maturity - perhaps married couples will both adopt a new last name instead of hyphenating, in a triumph for sexual equality. The driving factor in this cultural revival of an old custom won't be a mark of maturity or a religious ritual, but the need to outrun all the posts you made to the Internet when you were fourteen years old. Lord knows, I've considered doing so often enough. In fact, I'm considering it now, since my twentieth birthday is essentially my last chance to decide.
Or perhaps it will simply be wiser to give ourselves version numbers, providing an intriguing way of tracking internal changes, providing some mental distance between ourselves and our past opinions, and allowing an increment of the major version whenever we need to make a clean break.
Eliezer Yudkowsky v3.3, signing off.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way