A Case for Religion?

by phil on Tuesday Jun 10, 2003 3:48 PM
religion_old

Japan’s chilling Internet suicide pacts

The discovery Sunday of the bodies of four young Japanese men in a car at a vista point near Mount Fuji appears to be more evidence of a grim new trend in the prosperous country — group suicides of strangers who meet over the Internet. The suicide pacts, which have resulted in at least 18 deaths since February, are shocking to experts, even in a nation plagued by an astronomical suicide rate.

I always found this interesting. As we get smarter and move toward the singularity, are we going to reach an upper-bound on the amount of intelligence in single nodes? I think there are definitely some parts of the intelligence map of nodes approaching Singularity that have to be blocked off or barred. Some of these areas have to be a limitation on the ability of someone to change his/her motivations. For example, increasing order will come with those with a penchant for knowledge and artistic explosion and with no ability to tame or turn it off. However, keeping such areas cordoned off becomes increasingly difficult as intelligence expansion moves at a brisk, thrashing pace. Hence, I think suicide will become an ever increasing trend, especially since natural selection through DNA has been extremely slow.

UPDATE: Yikes, I didn't explain some of my premises. But basically, what I'm saying is that if someone had unfettered access to intelligence, they'd eventually reach those zones that explain to them that the world is just an illusion, nothing happens after you die, even if you did die you wouldn't be there to care about the effects, and that their existence depends on the suffering and enslavement of many people, animals, and earth. i.e: Nothing matters and everything is far from ideal anyways, so adios.