Re: >H Re: How do we make transhumanism practical?

From: Alex Future Bokov (alexboko@umich.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 07 2000 - 20:46:52 MDT


Transhuman Mailing List

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

...and I'm still not done...

In my town, there is an annual event called the Naked Mile. You might
have heard about it. It's when the entire police force, and every
University of Michigan bureaucrat stand by, powerless to stop a torrent
of screaming college kids from running naked through the streets on the
last night of the school year. I have my own tradition for Naked Mile
(besides running, which I of course also do).

I buy all the water pistols I can afford at the local supermarket.
We're talking about obscene amounts of firepower here, people.
Carfulls. I then give these water pistols to fellow runners as
self-defense against perverts with cameras and perverts who try to
grope them.

Now imagine the amount of persuading it would take to get a complete
stranger on the street merely to accept a free water pistol from you.
They'd look at you like you're insane and move on. Forget about
convincing them to run naked while brandishing the water pistol. Let
alone hundreds of them doing this at the same time. Yet here we were,
running, dousing expensive video equipment, with the crowd cheering
them on. Beautiful women who wouldn't give me the time of day
normally, gratefully accepting my water pistols. They even intuitively
understood what they were for, I didn't have to explain.

In short, I picked favorable initial conditions, tweaked them just a
little, and breathtaking results ensued. The tweaking part is important,
because all the dynamic optimism in the world wouldn't cause water-pistols
to appear in naked people's hands while I sat at home doing nothing.

If only I was always so good at spotting favourable conditions and coming
up with just the right tweak. Give me a sufficiently long lever....

- --

Ruby Ridge Hillary Hillary
Why are the above words in my signature? Check out:
http://www.echelon.wiretapped.net

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 6.5.1

iQBpAwUBOWaWHpvUJaRNHMexAQGYSwKaAuALwhr/reZKP+fzd1Qc6n1pQKmw63Mx
6FtdfofAJaX/pKzQ+TOmIMkTh9qk5+a5mIRFIRCPfZT7qw2Ln/bAgeKtgugE9AOv
EPNnnhgjSxgUDVIb
=BqSA
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

***************************************************************************
* Please visit our official site-- http://www.transhuman.memetree.com/ *
* *
* If you need to unsubscribe, send email saying "unsubscribe transhuman" *
* (or "unsubscribe transhuman-digest" as the case may be) to *
* majordomo@logrus.org, without the quotes, from the SAME email address *
* as the one you subscribed under! Yes, it is case-sensitive. Don't blame *
* the admin for your spelling errors. *
* Please email all technical problems to *
* owner-transhuman@logrus.org, NOT to the list. *
***************************************************************************



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:29:46 MST