From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Tue May 28 2002 - 17:40:22 MDT
On Monday, May 27, 2002, at 05:28 pm, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Just how do you regard people who reject the Extropian
> Principles?
Differently depending on how and why they reject the principles. All of
your possibilities can and do occur in different situations. I'm not
sure how anyone can choose a course of action without knowing the
specific case. Different challenges to the principles need to be
handled in different ways according to the complaints.
All of your choices are good for different situations:
> (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.
Yes for those who claim logic is a politically correct tool to suppress
uncomfortable rudeness, or who claim science is just another religion,
or those who claim there is no objective consensual reality, or those
who claim that 2+2 can't be proven to equal 4, or that the Earth hasn't
been proven to not be hollow, etc.
> (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.
Yes for those who make a classical logical flaw but can't see it, or
those who misinterpret reference documents because they don't understand
them, or those who have an inaccurate view of the state of the art
because they listen to advertising hype but haven't researched what is
really going on, etc.
> (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.
Yes for those who do not desire longer life, staying alive, better
health, or better technology. If they have fundamentally different
goals, then they would not consider our principles good or work toward
the same results we desire.
> (d) they have differing values with which we strongly
> disagree and which many of us properly and often
> harshly condemn.
Yes for those who not only seek their own differing goals, but also seek
to limit our goals. if such people are actually mounting an attack on
our principles seeking to destroy them, then we need to disagree with
them. If such people deliberately misquote postings, quote out of
context, and misrepresent other people opinions to gain undeserved
support for their own, then they should be harshly condemned.
> (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.
Yes for those who have differing values from us as long as they allow us
to continue with our values. This only applies if there are no
objective criteria against which their values and our can be compared.
However, since all our principles are developed using the best objective
means we know so far, I doubt that the situation would arise where our
objectivity suddenly ceases to exist or that objective tools suddenly
cease to function. Only non-falsifiable ideas could not be objectively
compared against objective criteria. Falsifiable ideas can be
scientifically tested, logically considered, and rationally thought
about.
> So what choice most closely fits your take?
I vote NONE OF THE ABOVE! Your options only include ways to reject new
ideas and other people. This runs counter to the Extropian Principles
which recommends that we remain open minded and consider new ideas. In
fact, you left out the only Extropian possibility that is supported
extensively by the Extropian Principles themselves! I propose:
(f) they present scientific evidence of a better process by which to
proceed, or they provide logical proof that there is an improvement that
can be implemented in the principles, or they present a rational thought
process that explains why further revisions to the principles would be
in order. They present evidence of their position to other extropians
who are open minded and consider their new ideas. If the ideas are
falsifiable, repeatable, objective, logically derived, consistently
explained, and promote extropy rather than entropy, then these ideas
become perfect candidates for integration into the next version of the
Extropian Principles document written by Max More.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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