From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat May 25 2002 - 09:23:48 MDT
Max writes
> Lee seems to see the Principles as a summary of -- or abstraction from --
> what Extropians think. (Who are these people? All or some self-described
> Extropians? Anyone who would largely agree if they came across them? (A
> delightfully common event, I'm happy to say.)
Historically, those Principles arose from the thoughts of
certain specific people, almost entirely, I believe, from
you. They gain their popularity only because they chimed
with the thinking of a lot of people. They encapsulate in
words a lot of unarticulated thought in many people. They
also can, we hope, turn out to be extremely influential.
You deserve much credit for being at the forefront of a
worldview. Many libertarians and others will read the
principles and say, "yes, yes, yes, oh! yes, that too!,
yes, hmm, indeed, yes".
Were Goethe or Hume great philosophers because they articulated
and were slightly in advance of the great mass of thinking that
was going on in many intelligent people at the time, or were
they true leaders who showed everyone else the way? When one
uses a Popperian principle, or a Darwinian principle, is one
necessarily or by definition conscious of what it was they
actually wrote?
> I would not find this interpretation of the Principles to
> be accurate as a historical statement
why not, exactly?
> nor as a useful stipulative definition.
Yes, I felt very uncomfortable about having implied that. What
someone was asking me for was indeed a definition, and I didn't
and don't have one.
> The Principles do state that they are a "codification" but now this
> discussion indicates that I need to clarify that. Certainly I never
> intended this to be understood as a summary, nor as an average of
> the views of any group.
Yes, quite so. That would leave them at the mercy of changing
statistical demographics, group membership, and what not.
> What looks like a strong disagreement between Harvey and Lee may be much
> less than it appears. By digging into this question more (over the
> weekend), we can benefit from the exercise of surfacing our cognitive
> contexts for the differing statements.
Harvey's and my differences are perhaps incidental. I've been on either
side of many divides before---political, religious, philosophical, and
psychological, but I sense that this is something quite new, and very
interesting. We seem to actually think differently.
> "Tools of thinking" seems a reasonable description of the Principles,
> though it's in obvious need of explanation and qualification.
A tool is something that one can use without thinking about
how it works. It would be quite frightful to even contemplate
that. Maybe, just maybe, it would be all right to characterize
Occam's Razor as a tool; but it would be perverse to use any
human being's writings as tools. The Ten Commandments can be
*applied*, but not the writings of Daniel Dennett or Max More.
> When, Harvey, you compare using the Principles in a way
> comparable to scientific methodology, rules of logic, and
> so on, I get very uneasy. Perhaps it's just your analogy.
> Yes, the Principles can act a *little* bit like the rules
> of logic, but the analogy is dangerous.
Just why the analogy is dangerous, you don't say.
Lee
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