From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Thu May 23 2002 - 12:13:13 MDT
On Thursday, May 23, 2002, at 05:16 am, Wei Dai wrote:
> 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?
I hate contrived arguments. They usually cannot really exist in the
real world. They serve only to lock an opponent into an imaginary
alternate universe where only your opinions make sense and their own
opinions are invalid by definition. I don't see how this helps the
discussion any Such contrived examples do not translate their
conclusions back into our real world. Even if you get an opponent to
agree to your terms in that specific unrealistic situation, so what?
Does this give you more ammunition to apply an unlikely solution more
broadly?
Why is it so important to invent a scenario where racial prejudice,
pre-emptive attack, or undesired coercion is OK? Where is this
leading? Why are we trying to justify things through convoluted logic
that we reject on the face of them? If you don't have time to make an
informed opinion or gather sufficient evidence for your claims, why not
admit that you have an unsubstantiated view? Why try to prove some sort
of moral authority for making hasty or unsupported decisions when
necessary?
> I would welcome any suggestions on how to derive the answers to these
> questions from Extropian principles.
Plain logic and math work in these situations. Statistics dictates that
group measurements cannot be assumed to apply to any individual within
the group. Anybody making such assumptions is just plain wrong. This
is simply a more complicated math error, but the answers are just plain
wrong.
To derive these from the Extropian Principles and related discussions,
look for the following concepts:
- freedom, self determination, self-governance, self-direction, removal
of limits, etc.
- non-initiation of force
- force only as self-defense
- logic, pan-critical rationalism, scientific method, rational thinking
- skepticism, evidence, extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary
proof
- dynamic optimism, open society,
If you really can't see the foundations for such social interactions in
the Principles, we definitely need to make them clearer! I thought
these were well known Extropian ideals.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:18 MST