From: Dave Sill (extropians@dave.sill.org)
Date: Thu Apr 04 2002 - 16:53:07 MST
"Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, Dave Sill wrote:
>
> > I think personal liberty is fundamental to extropy, and I don't think
> > it can be achieved by suspending liberties "temporarily".
>
> But extropianism is also about being "rational" (see principle 7).
Are you willing to ignore some Principles (5 and 6) in the pursuit of
others?
> If I rationally think that one of the greatest goods is saving the
> greatest number of human lives and that accelerating our perpetual
> progress (principle 1) will be the best way to get the intelligent
> technology (principle 4) necessary to do that then it rationally
> makes sense for me to choose to live in the country that taxes my
> income and uses that money most effectively to protect me while
> encouraging the research necessary to accomplish this.
This implies that there's a smorgasbord of countries to choose from,
and that people can simply choose the one that best meets their
needs. In reality, many people are stuck with the country they're born
in--and the alternatives aren't very attractive.
> I would claim anyone choosing not to do this would be behaving
> irrationally unless they cite the principle of self-direction (#6)
> as trumping the above cited principles.
How about the Open Society (#5)? "Preferring...exchange over
compulsion". If citizens are compelled to support the Master Plan run
by the wise and rational Benevolent Dictator, who, after all, just
wants to make things better for everyone, I don't think that's
consistent with Open Society.
> And even then I'd likely consider them to be irrational -- they
> would be playing russian roulette with their life because their
> hazard function is significantly increased by choosing to live
> outside the society I've just described.
Because your plan is obviously best. Uh huh. And since you deem them
irrational, it'd probably be OK to expel them or round them up and,
er, recycle their components, maybe? To tolerate irrationals would be
downright irrational.
> So I think extreme libertarian positions are not extropic. You need
> to come up with a way to convince me that libertarian societies
> would be safer and better at accelerating the progress than the
> current system we now have.
I don't think the goal is race toward Extropia as fast as possible,
damn the consequences, ignore the collateral damage, etc. I think we
should proceed deliberately and gradually, following the Principles as
much as possible along the way. Forcing people to fund your agenda
because you think it's obviously the most rational way to proceed is
not extropic, it's evil.
> Want to play rock, paper, scissors? :-)
No, thanks.
-Dave
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:15 MST