From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Tue Mar 12 2002 - 20:30:15 MST
Anders Sandberg wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 08:02:44PM -0800, Adrian Tymes wrote:
>>This may be another angle of why transhumanism is seen as detached from
>>humanism and similar values held by much of humanity: because the latter
>>are pure thought, pure debate, pure compassion and emotions and hopes
>>and dreams...but transhumanism has an aspect, however small, that
>>actually shapes how the common man really lives (at least, to such a
>>radically large degree as to make mere humanism seem to have zero
>>effect). To think that a force other than your own has that much real
>>power scares people.
>
> Hmm, have you ever participated in a discussion of politicial
> ideology with real politicians? Then you will see that in many cases
> political ideologies have a very real component of practical attepts
> to shape the lives of common people (when politicians become cynical
> pragmatists they drop the ideology and just shape society anyway). In
> fact, I would say that compared to socialism, environmentalism or
> conservatism, transhumanism appears so far to be an enormously more
> "pure words" ideology than any of them.
Ok, then, perhaps a rephrase: transhumanism includes an element where
people other than those who control vast amounts of power anyway
(high-level politicians and corporate executives) stand a good chance of
significantly impacting society.
Alternately, consider: "how the common man really lives" - society
shaping is well and good at the grand level, but how are you and I
directly impacted by the decision of, say, whether or not to drill in
Alaska? ("Price at the gas pump" - maybe, but the real, short-term
effect there is minimal at best. "Reduced war" - not a direct effect,
unless you're in the US military or a contractor for them, and even then
not much when you average the few who participate in, say, Afghanistan
over the rest of the armed forces personnel.) Now compare this to, say,
the impact of a simple, open-source AI that could get rid of most of the
spam in your inbox, or of a company with actual (flying) spacecraft that
offered any-major-airport-to-any-major-airport in one hour service (or
just a trip 'round the Earth in one and a half hours) for $20K or so a
pop, or of an uploading service to transfer consciousnesses from failing
old bodies into androids, or...
We don't have to go through governments, or similar large bearaucracies,
to implement our changes. Or maybe we will go through them - like a
knife through hot butter. And this is not the least bit scary to those
used to How It Was?
>>And, yes, I use the present tense deliberately. From this perspective,
>>the Internet is but an inkling of things to come. That came fast, on
>>the scale of human history, and we predict (with some evidence) the rest
>>to come even faster. Witness the entire concept of the Singularity, for
>>instance...and efforts to make the public more familiar with, and thus
>>less scared of, it.
>>
>>Sorry. I like making threads come full circle like that. ^_^;
>
> Gives a nice sense of closure. I reall think that card game can
> become quite good.
Here's hoping it does.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:12:57 MST