From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Jun 25 2000 - 06:16:05 MDT
I hope transhumanists are judged more on what they do than what they
merely claim to be.
We all encounter people who make us think "What an idiot!" or similar
uncharitable things, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not. But
thinking that somebody is a fool or unethical does not mean one should
immediately blurt it out. There is both a chance of being mistaken and
of simply having a highly subjective opinion about some emotionally
charged issue. It is much better to focus on the issues rather than
the people, because they can be clarified, argued and maybe understood
to a much greater extent.
Are we not striving to become more rational, more transhuman?
That doesn't mean it is easy to stay detached after somebody called
you a dendrophagous hynerian or whatever, and occasional emotional
outbursts definitely should be forgiven. It is the consistent personal
attacks, bad debate tactics, spurious claims and claiming to be great
but not providing a shred of evidence of actually being able to do or
be something great and respectable that really make the credibility of
the people doing it suffer. Of course, given the nature of
incompetence most of the people who do this does not realise what they
are doing but think they are enlightened and rational and their
detractors merely acting out scripts of cultism or whatever.
All this is obvious, has said before and is not really
interesting. But as I pointed out in the PR thread, we better get very
good at it. Idiotic posts/posters should be responded to where
appropriate - in an approproate manner.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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