From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Sat Mar 17 2001 - 14:03:26 MST
From: "Anders Sandberg" <asa@nada.kth.se>
> ("If it would make most people happy, then I see nothing wrong with
> turning all professional philosophers into sausages", as the Swedish
> utilitarian Torbjorn Tannsjo said).
Have Swedes honored Torbjorn with the national holiday that he deserves
for saying this? (Of course sausage is bad for our health, but not nearly
as pathogenic as in its former state, in this case.)
> Maximising extropy cannot be done globally, it is up to
> each being (and group of beings) to try to maximise it. When two
> beings come into conflict over this (say, Robert and I both want
> Jupiter for our respective M-brains) they could of course use force to
> settle it, but if I did this it would lead to the decrease of extropy
> for Robert (however odd I might find his version of extropy) and also
> a significant risk of having the conflict spread (for example by
> involving our friends, allies and PPLs) that would lead to a high
> likeliehood of less extropy even for me (and others).
Right. War is not healthy for extropians and other living things, to
paraphrase a second millenium poster.
> One can develop the above argument into a more watertight ethical
> system, but it seems to point at a situation where extropianism would
> not lead to everybody against everybody trying to get the last scrap
> of computronium, but rather everybody trying to work together to find
> a way out of the box or at least trade the limited resources.
Borg hive wins again. Pogo has seen the assimilator, and it is us.
τΏτ
Stay hungry,
--J. R.
Useless hypotheses: consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind,
free will
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