From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Jun 05 2001 - 00:02:39 MDT
Ben Goertzel wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Strange. I found his criticisms spot on. People are in denial here if
> > they don't see that Extropian looks rather odd, cult like and even new
> > agey to outsiders. There's a lot of groupthink that goes on here.
>
> Indeed. I've made this point many times on this list, finding each time a
> rather mixed reception
Hm, I think you don't "get it". You must not be "in" yet.
Seriously, every time you move closer to the frontier of technology,
people get even MORE iconoclastic. If hackerdom is a cult, it's a cult
that probably has more diversity inside than the rest of the world
outside. You could say the same thing about science-fiction fandom. The
Extropians don't have the population to match the diversity of fandom, and
the Singularityfolk are fewer still, but the basic point still holds. It
would be easier to get the entire population of Japan to wear matching
outfits than to get three randomly selected Extropians to agree on a
definition of uploading.
As for "groupthink", this usually translates to "Extropians believe in
[something correct] and are not sufficiently 'open' to [really stupid
idea]." You often hear astrologers accusing scientists of the same thing,
and I am inclined to cluster astrologers with the trolls who make such
accusations.
> I started a thread about 2 months ago on the topic of what Extropians could
> do to make the mainstream of culture respect them and listen to them more.
> Some OK ideas were generated. But it turns out that most of us are more
> interesting in thinking and doing interesting stuff than in being respected
> by the mainstream ;>
Being respected by the mainstream would be a useful child goal of the
continuing effort to mess with things that humanity was not meant to know,
but it shouldn't be allowed to distract us from the main issue. I can't
really speak for Extropians, but Singularityfolk are not, generally
speaking, a cult or even a society. We are out to do certain things that,
if accomplished, will erase the "mainstream" as we know it, so what would
be the point?
The instincts for promoting your own political viewpoint within a society,
so that you can rise in status - they are distractions from the
appropriate distribution of effort. My quest is technological, not
ideological, and if evolution doesn't recognize that because there were no
reproductive benefits to technological quests fifty thousand years ago,
then be damned to evolution.
> One frustrating thing for those of us with human egos is that when extropian
> ideas do become mainstream, it will likely be new people outside the
> extropian community who are given credit for them in the popular eyes.
"There is no limit to what you can accomplish if you do not demand credit
for it."
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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