True, there are important differences. However my first impression was
from the page entitled "The Big Questions and the Short Answers" at
http://www.the-truth.com/QnA.html. The "big questions" listed are:
What is going on?
Why am I the way I am?
Who am I?
What is my purpose?
What is the future?
How should I live?
What should I keep in mind?
I couldn't help but notice the similarity to the Virus introduction
where I have a section introduced with:
"For a quick overview, here are some brief answers to big questions:"
Followed by these "big questions":
What is out there?
What is going on?
What does it all mean?
Why am I here?
What should I do?
Given that I had never seen The Truth page before last week, and assuming
he didn't copy Virus, you have to admit the resemblance is at least
superficially remarkable.
On Anders Sandberg's "Further Transhumanistic Links" page at
http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/Trans/other_page.html, he has a link to
The Truth with this commentary:
The Truth: The Universe Is A Growing God. This seems to be the first
transhumanist religion I have encountered. Vaguely related to the
Omega Point theory or the evolutionary scheme in David Zindell's books.
Knowing that he has already encountered Virus, I fired off a question this
morning asking if he didn't consider Virus to be a transhumanist religion.
His (almost immediate) reply:
No, I consider Virus to be the first tranhumanist *meta-religion*. The
reason I do not yet consider it a religion is that it is clearly far from
optimized for release and right now seems to be mostly under
construction. The Truth is obviously meant to be believed in (although it
is a bit weak as a religion). I think Virus should disect it throughly
and use the best pieces, there are some good ideas.
I think Anders speaks The Truth (c) :-)
I recently finished "5000 B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies" by
Raymond Smullyan (a highly readable and entertaining collection of
essays and fictional dialogues about truth, epistemology, zen, mysticism,
solipsism and ontology). In the afterword he discusses what he sees to be
the point of philosophy. He claims that even very few professional
philosophers seem to realize that for any given statement, there exists
some interpretation that would make that statement true. Therefore, instead
of trying to prove your opponent wrong, try to find out in what sense she
may be right. I think this ties in nicely to the concept of Empathy I
proposed in my Sins and Virtues message (now on the web at
http://www.lucifer.com/virus/ethics.html). I believe Smullyan is right,
"much can be gained from constructing possible models of other world views
within one's own".
Let us give The Truth a charitable reading. In what sense can it be
self-referential?
-- David McFadzean dbm@merak.com Memetic Engineer http://www.merak.com/~dbm/ Merak Projects Ltd.