A lot of dath ilan's present macrostrategy could be summed up as "We're still successfully heredity-optimizing people to be smarter, and the emotions and ethics and humaneness of the smartest people haven't started to come apart; let's create another generation of researchers before we actually try anything for real."  Life in dath ilan, even before the Future, is not that bad; people who rather wouldn't be alive today have easy access to cryopreservation; another generation of non-transhumanist existence is not so much a crime that it's worth risking the glorious transhuman future.  Even the negative utilitarians would agree; they don't like present life but they are far more terrified of a future mistake amortized over millions of galaxies, given that they weren't going to win a war against having any future at all.

They're delaying their ascension, in dath ilan, because they want to get it right.  Without any Asmodeans needing to torture them at all, they apply a desperate unleashed creativity, not to the problem of preventing complete disaster, but to the problem of not missing out on 1% of the achievable utility in a way you can't get back.  There's something horrifying and sad about the prospect of losing 1% of the Future and not being able to get it back.

A dath ilani has an instinctive terror, faced with a problem like this, of getting something wrong, of leaving something behind, of creating Something that imprisons the people and future Civilizations inside it and ignores all their pleas and reasoning because "sorry that wasn't my utility function".  Other places, faced with a prospect of constructing a god, instinctively go, "Oh, I like Democracy/Asmodeus/Voluntarism/Markets, all the problems in the world are because there is not enough of this Principle, let us create a god to embody this one Principle and everything will be fine", they say it and think it in all enthusiasm, and it would be legitimately hard for an average dath ilani to understand what their possibility-separated cousins could be thinking.  It's really obvious that you're leaving a lot of stuff out, but even if you didn't see that specifically, how could you not be abstractly terrified that you're leaving something out?  Where's the exception handler?

There is something about the dath ilani that is shifted towards a kind of wariness, deeply set in them, of the cheerful headlong enthusiasm that is in other places.  Keltham has more of that enthusiasm than the average dath ilani.  Maybe that's why Keltham-in-dath-ilan is so much happier than a dath ilani would've expected given his situation. 

A lot of dath ilan's present macrostrategy could be summed up as "We're still successfully heredity-optimizing people to be smarter, and the emotions and ethics and humaneness of the smartest people haven't started to come apart; let's create another generation of researchers before we actually try anything for real."  Life in dath ilan, even before the Future, is not that bad; people who'd rather not be alive today have easy access to cryopreservation; another generation of non-transhumanist existence is not so much a crime that it's worth risking the glorious transhuman future.  Even the negative utilitarians would agree; they don't like present life but they are far more terrified of a future mistake amortized over millions of galaxies, given that they weren't going to win a war against having any future at all.

They're delaying their ascension, in dath ilan, because they want to get it right.  Without any Asmodeans needing to torture them at all, they apply a desperate unleashed creativity, not to the problem of preventing complete disaster, but to the problem of not missing out on 1% of the achievable utility in a way you can't get back.  There's something horrifying and sad about the prospect of losing 1% of the Future and not being able to get it back.

A dath ilani has an instinctive terror, faced with a problem like this, of getting something wrong, of leaving something behind, of creating Something that imprisons the people and future Civilizations inside it and ignores all their pleas and reasoning because "sorry that wasn't my utility function".  Other places, faced with a prospect of constructing a god, instinctively go, "Oh, I like Democracy/Asmodeus/Voluntarism/Markets, all the problems in the world are because there is not enough of this Principle, let us create a god to embody this one Principle and everything will be fine", they say it and think it in all enthusiasm, and it would be legitimately hard for an average dath ilani to understand what their possibility-separated cousins could be thinking.  It's really obvious that you're leaving a lot of stuff out, but even if you didn't see that specifically, how could you not be abstractly terrified that you're leaving something out?  Where's the exception handler?

There is something about the dath ilani that is shifted towards a kind of wariness, deeply set in them, of the cheerful headlong enthusiasm that is in other places.  Keltham has more of that enthusiasm than the average dath ilani.  Maybe that's why Keltham-in-dath-ilan is so much happier than a dath ilani would've expected given his situation. 

A lot of dath ilan's present macrostrategy could be summed up as "We're still successfully heredity-optimizing people to be smarter, and the emotions and ethics and humaneness of the smartest people haven't started to come apart; let's create another generation of researchers before we actually try anything for real."  Life in dath ilan, even before the Future, is not that bad; people who'd rather not be alive today have easy access to cryopreservation; another generation of non-transhumanist existence is not so much a crime that it's worth risking the glorious transhuman future.  Even the negative utilitarians would agree; they don't like present life but they are far more terrified of a future mistake amortized over millions of galaxies, given that they weren't going to win a war against having any future at all.

They're delaying their ascension, in dath ilan, because they want to get it right.  Without needing threats of imminent death or pain, they apply a desperate unleashed creativity, not to the problem of preventing complete disaster, but to the problem of not missing out on 1% of the achievable utility in a way you can't get back.  There's something horrifying and sad about the prospect of losing 1% of the Future and not being able to get it back.

A dath ilani has an instinctive terror, faced with a problem like this, of getting something wrong, of leaving something behind, of creating Something that imprisons the people and future Civilizations inside it and ignores all their pleas and reasoning because "sorry that wasn't my utility function".  Other places, faced with a prospect of constructing a god, instinctively go, "Oh, I like Democracy/Asmodeus/Voluntarism/Markets, all the problems in the world are because there is not enough of this Principle, let us create a god to embody this one Principle and everything will be fine", they say it and think it in all enthusiasm, and it would be legitimately hard for an average dath ilani to understand what their possibility-separated cousins could be thinking.  It's really obvious that you're leaving a lot of stuff out, but even if you didn't see that specifically, how could you not be abstractly terrified that you're leaving something out?  Where's the exception handler?

There is something about the dath ilani that is shifted towards a kind of wariness, deeply set in them, of the cheerful headlong enthusiasm that is in other places.  Keltham has more of that enthusiasm than the average dath ilani.  Maybe that's why Keltham-in-dath-ilan is so much happier than a dath ilani would've expected given his situation.