From: John Grigg (starman2050@lycos.com)
Date: Sun Sep 08 2002 - 00:53:36 MDT
Greg Burch wrote:
I have agreed all along that Extropy Institute needs to be very clear
that we have no association with this kind of thing and that it is
utterly inconsistent with the Extropian Principles. There is some small
risk that some few people might somehow come to believe that
transhumanism in general and extropianism in particular somehow have a
connection to the kind of terrible nonsense one finds in places like
"stormfront.org",
(end)
The current thread reminds me of the time when I came upon a group on Yahoo
which called itself "Ad Astra." This online organization was not to be
confused with the National Space Society by any means!
This Ad Astra was a quasi-"transhumanistic" group which appeared to be put
together by a molecular biology graduate student and a woman who worked in
journalism. There were maybe a dozen other occasional posters. They did
not want to be racists, but instead "racialists." lol
I got into a heated discussion with the grad student, and with help from
Anders Sandberg and Robert Bradbury, I gained their grudging respect for
extropian views.
A letter I passed on from Anders explaining how ultimately race among humans
would just not matter due to transgenic engineering, was a memetic nightmare
for the grad student. He was utterly horrified at the concept! I guess
they were not so transhumanistic after all. lol
In the end they felt they were compromised by me, and so they abandoned the
Yahoo site entirely. I was even accused at one time of being a possible
agent for The Southern Poverty Law Center! lol
Greg, it may make you feel good to write off all these people as being
simply ineffectual losers, but there are at least a few of them out there
who are pretty bright(in a very myopic way), and they could in time build a
real following with a certain amount of worldly power.
I hope the young grad student finds his way before he does some real harm.
Where possible, we need to reach out to people like him, and see if they can
be enlightened.
best wishes,
John
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