I’ve been musing about a Suspension for Historically Significant Minds movement. I don’t particularly care whether I personally get suspended, I don’t think I’m important, we can only save so many of these living biographies, others are more important, I think it’s a tragedy that the most interesting biographies are currently being burned.
I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect a fund like this to be able to act very often, though! The figures who wont pay for their own suspension usually aren’t going to be willing to accept suspension.
The people I’d want to nominate would tend to have a deep attachment to some community of the present, they would rarely think of the far future. Most of them, on receiving their invitation would think about it for 20 minutes and then trash it, out of a sense of humility, and out of a sense that accepting such a thing would look from the outside like an abandonment of their community. I would want to say to them, “No, you were selected because you are the largest portion of that community that we’re able to save.” I’m not sure whether they’d hear it.
Maybe it would help to give them additional nominations to allocate to others, so it wouldn’t just be them. A lot of them wouldn’t want to deal with the political consequences of having to make a decision like that. It would just make things messier. The dirty work of triage.
I’ve been musing about a Suspension for Historically Significant Minds movement. I don’t particularly care whether I personally get suspended, I don’t think I’m important, we can only save so many of these living biographies, others are more important, I think it’s a tragedy that the most interesting biographies are currently being burned.
I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect a fund like this to be able to act very often, though! The figures who wont pay for their own suspension usually aren’t going to be willing to accept suspension.
The people I’d want to nominate would tend to have a deep attachment to some community of the present, they would rarely think of the far future. Most of them, on receiving their invitation would think about it for 20 minutes and then trash it, out of a sense of humility, and out of a sense that accepting such a thing would look from the outside like an abandonment of their community. I would want to say to them, “No, you were selected because you are the largest portion of that community that we’re able to save.” I’m not sure whether they’d hear it.
Maybe it would help to give them additional nominations to allocate to others, so it wouldn’t just be them. A lot of them wouldn’t want to deal with the political consequences of having to make a decision like that. It would just make things messier. The dirty work of triage.