From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Thu May 23 2002 - 11:36:17 MDT
Wei Dai writes:
> Consider a situation where you absolutely don't have time to judge someone
> on his own merits before having to make some decision. The only
> information you have is that he belongs to a certain group. Should you
> ignore that information and just treat him as a random human being? Or
> should you even ignore the fact that he is human and just treat him as a
> random sentient being? What is sentient? And what does "random" mean?
> (I.e., is he a random selection from all existing sentient beings, or from
> all sentient beings that ever existed, or from all sentient beings that
> ever existed and ever will exist, or from all sentient beings that can
> possibly exist?)
I think if you look at Extropian principles of self-transformation,
intelligent technology, self-direction and others, we can hope to move
towards a situation where group membership will be voluntary. Ideally,
what you see is what he wants you to see. A person will be able to
present himself in any fashion he desires.
In that situation, it makes sense to use whatever information the person
is presenting in order to judge how you will respond to him.
However this is different from group membership today, which is often
involuntary and unchosen. Rather than responding to a person as a
member of a given race or sex, it is more like responding to his fashion
choices or what he says on his T-shirt. These are voluntary statements
and people choose to present themselves in that way, and I think it is
in accord with the Extropian principles to respond to them in terms of
what they are voluntarily saying.
Given that we do not yet have such complete control over our appearance,
perhaps a reasonable approach today is to aim to approximate the ideal
situation which we hope to move towards. Try to respond to people on
the basis of those aspects of their appearance which they have adopted
voluntarily, and less on those aspects which they have no control over.
This is a middle ground between strict neutrality, which would have us
ignore tattoos, piercings and hair length in favor of absolute equality,
and old-fashioned prejudice, where we respond to women and men, blacks
and whites, based on those racial and sexual groupings. It seems to
me that this is an example of how the Extropian principles can offer
guidance which differs from the extremes of the left or the right today.
Hal
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