From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon May 27 2002 - 15:28:29 MDT
Rafal writes
### Reason wrote:
> The route I suggested was a Turing Test for evaluating what is human vs.
> potential human/non-human. I'm arguing that by that definition, infants are
> not human. (Members of species homo sapiens, sure, will be human eventually
> if given support, sure, but I can't interact with them in the way I can with
> a real human).
### Let me first say that I agree with the rest of your
### post, about the ultimate lack of a compelling ethics,
### a set of rules that would impose itself on all minds
### like the rules of mathematics, by virtue of being
### undeniably true and unavoidable.
Yes, I concur. Fundamentally, it's a question of respect.
Just how do you regard people who reject the Extropian
Principles?
(a) they are as wrong as if they were to claim 2 + 2 = 5,
or to claim that the Earth is hollow, or to claim that
telepathy has been shown to work.
(b) they are *unreasonable*, in the sense that they
have failed to reason correctly. They should be
regarded as wayward students, who may one day
surmount the various logical and scientific errors
that plague them.
(c) they have differing values from us, but values that
can be objectively shown to resemble the values of
backward-looking, religious, atavistic, authoritarian,
nihilistic, or harmful systems of the past.
(d) they have differing values with which we strongly
disagree and which many of us properly and often
harshly condemn.
(e) they have differing values from us, to which they
are just as entitled as we are to ours, and there
are no objective criteria against which their values
and ours can be compared.
So what choice most closely fits your take? Thanks to
everyone who answers, not just Dr. Smigrodzki.
Lee
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