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relevantfiction

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I've read a lot of science fiction. As an experiment, I'm recommending books that I think are relevant to the ideas that people discuss on this forum. Let me know if you think what I'm doing is useful or not.

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I would advise that you judge them by what they actually do,  not what they say they will do.

It doesn't. I don't think he's honest about his intentions for his money.

The money was distributed to everyone who owned Twitter stock, not burned.

I'm not quite sure how it would relate to Exhalation the story itself but I do think it is sort of related to "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" in that same collection. I have not read The Gentle Seduction but it looks intriguing!

I can't find the article but I read something (an economics paper) suggesting that charitable trusts should invest in the companies most opposed to their mission (e.g. oil and gas for a climate change charity) to:

a) try to sabotage the companies via voting

b) hedge against the success of the companies (e.g. if oil and gas is still making a ton of money in 10 years, the climate change charity would than have likely outperformed the market and would have more money to fight back - and if the oil and gas companies go out of business, the climate change charity would not need the money because they would have already won the fight).

You should look into that. 

Specifically, it seems like any time a charity would prefer this approach, they would already be investing their own donations (and many organizations, like Wikipedia and universities, do).

The only thing I can think of is that maybe there are charities who would do this but don't want to because they think it will make them look bad on Charity Navigator.

The book series "Hyperion Cantos" by Dan Simmons explores what this might be like for the digital people being recreated. 

**Spoilers Ahead**

Some of  the interesting ideas that the series explores around this topic:

  • The digital people often go insane when they find out that they have been recreated and that their memories "aren't theirs."
  • The distinction between the digital people and the historical people they were based on is difficult for people to process. People often falsely assume that that the digital people have perfect certainty in the accuracy of their memories, when in fact they are unsure of what is and is not accurate.
  • The digital people are defined just as much by being digital as they are by being copies of past people (e.g. They are speed superintelligences) - this makes their selves very different from the people they were based on.