From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Sep 06 2002 - 10:00:44 MDT
On Fri, Sep 06, 2002 at 10:11:55AM -0400, Simon Smith wrote:
> It quickly becomes apparent, however, and you should point this
> out to your friend, that politics (albeit not only American, but
> that's okay because I'm Canadian) is extremely important. If
> governments ban cryonics (the way British Columbia has) or mind
> uploading, for example, discussing the technology of cryonics or
> mind uploading will become intellectual masturbation. For
> Transhumanism to make any *real* progress in the *real* world I
> think we have to address the political as well as the
> technological.
Exactly. You might not care about politics, but politics affects
you.
The important difference is between transhumanistically relevant
and irrelevant politics. For the most part the debate about how the
war on terrorism is waged or the relative evils of different taxation
systems are totally irrelevant. On a higher level the problem of
terrorism and other irrational use of dangerous technology, as well
as better socioeconomical systems, are far more relevant - so let's
debate on that level instead of getting too bogged down the kind of
politics found everywhere else.
We need to think both ideologically and politically, but on our own
terms rather than the terms set by other traditional (and
nontraditional) political groupings.
For example, we need to make more good replies to Fukuyama's
criticisms of transhumanism and posthumanity - a few good books or
papers could do a lot of good both culturally and politically. It
might also be a good idea to try to figure out possible medical
systems in an era of augmentative medicine and then try to sell them
to the politicians.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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