From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Tue Jan 16 2001 - 08:17:36 MST
From: Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org>
>>Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de wrote:
>>> Let me add to this: the unbounded techno-optimism is out of
>>>step with
>
>> Unbounded? Where?
>In the extropian principles.
Odd, I just did a text search of the principals and "unbounded" was
not found.
>Count me out, too.
>I'm not advocating going back to the stone age. I'm not even
>advocating a slow-down in research, or trying to prevent people
>inventing and selling whizzy applications of new technologies.
>I'm just saying that new technologies have side-effects, sometimes
>disastrous ones, and insisting that their deployment is *always*
>beneficial isn't going to fool anyone (and is going to make us
>look like idiots).
I was unaware anyone was advocating this.
>> You will notice that there is no consensus on the issue.
>On the contrary -- there is a consensus that we oughtn't to wipe
>ourselves out. (I think you'd find very few people seriously
>disagree with that statement, and most of them aren't in a
>position to act on their ideas. Luckily :)
There is a consensus amongst the general public that astrology is
a pretty neat idea.
>So, your question for $64K: why is Extropianism so overtly
>associated with unmitigated optimism that it's seen as a joke in
>some circles?
Because people in general are not optimistic? Because we are
continually being misquoted/misunderstood?
We advocate a rationaly based technological advancement of the
species. If we had waited till everyone was satisfied with every
possible contingency, we would still be swinging from the trees.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
Adler Planetarium www.adlerplanetarium.org
Life Extension Foundation, www.lef.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:04:56 MST