Re: Steering the Extropian Ship [was ... Where do cool people go?]

From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Tue Apr 18 2000 - 23:14:20 MDT


What I am primarily interested in, Anders, is not merely, the general the
expansion and acceptance of TransHumanist and Extropian views, however
enjoyable that is! What I m the focusing on the obscure and strange notion of
'resurrection' that can be outlined in a pure, materialist, physicalist,
objectivist, hypothesis. Now basically, Moravec, Tipler, and Tegmark have
done some essays on this; and have published; hence the attention that they
have received.

I am concerned with that amongst our August group (or anywhere else) there
appears to be a dearth of such intellectual creativity on this admittedly,
unusual, topic. Moreover, I believe that this line of study would make
in-roads with the general public. I mean, if you have at least pointed the
way out of permanent death, then nonotech and macro-engineering would be much
easier to gather support for.

Sincerely, Mitch

In a message dated 4/18/00 2:53:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time, asa@nada.kth.se
writes:

<< Do you want papers loudly proclaiming transhumanism or *doing*
 transhumanism? Over the last years a lot of the science journals have
 becuome much more transhumanism-friendly, Nature runs a series of
 science fiction "essays" of which many are transhumanist or deal with
 transhumanist issues, there was a debate essay in Science about the
 effects of radical life extension - and of course reading Nature,
 Science or PNAS these days almost feels like a Greg Egan story.
 
 The important things are done by the creeping acceptance of
 transhumanist visions and memes in the mainstream. The loud Moravecs,
 Tiplers and Kurtzweils are good for attracting attention to themselves
 and bring the questions into the open, but unless there is a good base
 of transhumanesque ideas widely spread nothing will come of it.
 
 As for myself, my research is moving in the direction of modelling
 cognitive enhancements. >>



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