From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Tue Jun 05 2001 - 08:15:45 MDT
While I'm not as offended as Max by this thread, I can certainly understand
his offense.
Extropy is just plain NOT a cult. It's silly to say so.
Is it a fringe organization, in some sense? To be sure.
Is it bad to be a fringe organization, concerned with things that the
mainstream of society thinks are weird, wrong, or even dangerous? Well, by
the standards of anyone except the most rigid conformist, some fringe
organizations are good, some are bad, and some are just peculiar....
Any group of relatively like-minded people quickly becomes somewhat insular
and forgets sometimes how the rest of the world thinks.
Webmind Inc. was its own little world, where everyone took for granted
certain ideas about AI, and we tended to forget that there was a whole AI
mainstream out there with rather different (and to us, often ridiculous)
ideas about thinking machines.... Even though we disagreed within Webmind
Inc., compared to most of the Ai world, we all agreed pretty closely.
I see Extropy as being a bit like Webmind Inc. in this way, though broader
in its focus.
Some detractors called the Webmind AI Development group a "cult" with me as
the demagogic leader.
So, it seems to be like this:
1) if you don't gather a group of people with similar orientations together,
you can't achieve much of anything
2) if you do, you're accused of forming a cult and being a cult leader ;)
> > Max More and his Extropian Principles. All bow before Max's wisdom...
Hmm. Maybe you should keep your kinky fantasies to yourself... ;p
> Oh, right. I'm constantly being bowed to. Always having to tell
> my acolytes
> to straighten up in my presence. Yes, sure, not only do many
> people find my
> writings illuminating and useful, they also slavishly and uncritically
> absorb them undigested. Really. That must also explain the vast flow of
> income into Extropy Institute. (Enough to employ one person part-time.)
The lack of income for the Extropy Institute is something that would be
solved along with the problem of spreading extropian ideas to the masses, I
suppose.
ben
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