PR disasters

From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sat Jun 24 2000 - 00:34:47 MDT


Anders Sandberg wrote:

> Sure, but you shouldn't hand them their weapons, should you? It is one
> thing if they have to deliberately misrepresent us (and that can be
> exposed, scoring debate points), another to have to face some idiocy
> some transhumanist said on a public list...

Anders, I dont see this as an issue, since any person could have
figured out a way to insert material in the archives with any name
on it, and placed a false early date on it. For this reason, no one should
ever need to answer for anything they allegedly posted to the list.

If in some future debate, someone calls you on something you posted,
why not point out that you may or may not have posted that particular
item? Unless you put a digital signature on it, everything from Eliezer's
anti-purple-dinosaur posts to my originally-incorrect calculation of
Jeff Davis' planet cooling orbit analysis has total plausible deniability.
Furthermore, I have intentionally had extropians who were guests in
my home post stuff under my name. Everyone who ever posted
anything that now embarrasses you: it never happened.

That being said, imagine the greens attitude towards Mars colonization.
It will be a loooong time before that place is filled with humans. In the
mean time, during the terraforming process, it would make a truly
wonderful unspoiled and unraped wildlife refuge, would it not? spike



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