Plus, you and I *are* machines, it’s just human tendency to ignore the machinery. Admitting to it stirs up a lotta existential fear. :)

You speak of Singularity. I’ve written before why I don’t find it scary. And I’m going to be writing much more on it in the future. Wonderful cross-pollination for the topics here.

Mad props to you for coming full circle in your self-help journey, remembering that you are the best expert on *you* that you will find!

There’s tons of dysfunctional stuff out there, and not just in self-help, in science and from “respectable” authorities too. The only thing you can really do is keep educating yourself, on what’s out there, and what’s going on inside. :)

Besides, a wiki wouldn’t work, because there is just too much dysfunctional advice-giving out there. Wiki can’t even get concrete facts right, how could there be a– let’s call it what it is– a “self-help” wiki, chock-full of a diaspora of opinions.

I love what you said above about how we don’t need more data-crunching (ie, more self-help, more gurus, more how-to’s, etc). We need more action.

I’ve plowed through my fair share of self-help and most of it was dysfunctional. I realize this only now after imbedding other people’s beliefs into my head and trying to live MY LIFE. See how that will, like, never work? That’s like corrupted third-party software I was downloading.

Now– I know that my experience, my emotions, my beliefs, my boundaries are what I need to respond to, tend to, work on, and let flourish.

Hopefully I’m not alive when The Singularity happens. I don’t trust no damn, dirty robots! }:I

You bring up a good point about it actually calling for abstract thinking, or thinking itself…

The quote reminded me of the well-known revolutions in science, where one thinker challenged several authorities, much in the way I think self-aware enough robots will be able to with ease. :)

If you are a cyborg from the future – welcome! I appreciate your contribution to our primitive society. Same goes if you’re not ;-)

I came across this quote today:

“Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.” ~Thomas H. Huxley

I would also like to see society change such that #9 could be revised or even removed. Abstract language gets us into lots of trouble. I think that with enough research into the history of religion, we’d find that scenario you mention has happened before.

Btw, have you considered… I might be a cyborg from the future? :P

There is so much information out there about how to make sense of life as we learn more and more about ourselves, and society gets more complex. It might be cool to have a great big life guidance wiki that brings it all together. Some people may go through their whole lives without thinking about their emotions constructively, and the rest of us could stand to understand ourselves more than we do. I think if any of us look back far enough (which may not be that far at all), we’d see ourselves at a point where we need almost as much guidance as the newly conscious robots targeted by this guide.

I really like the idea of the footer too, saying that the guide should be revised. Too bad more religious scriptures didn’t have that kind of insight, if the robots were to go back in time and help with that, it might result in a need for revision of number 9. That is of course unless at some point someone saw fit to use that footer to make a revision that removes the footer itself! Maybe that has happened before, hmmmm.