From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Sep 17 2002 - 17:24:07 MDT
On Tue, 17 Sep 2002, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> > Harvey Newstrom wrote::
> > But on this list, we should be discussing transhumanism.
> >
>
> ### I second the motion.
Cough. I believe if we go back through the archives we will find
one or more very large debates on the meaning of "transhumanism",
"posthumanism", "extropianism", etc. Generally speaking I think
I support the extropic vector more than the transhumanist vector.
(I generally believe the creation of greater information content
is a good thing while the creation of hyper-vectors of some
existing human traits (e.g. people on steroids prone to violence)
is a bad thing.) This is just my opinion.
So I don't think we can easily define what we should and should
not be discussing. Politics is a very sticky issue because it
is the one of the more common means that human communities use
to drive ourselves in specific directions.
There is no definition for "transhumanism" in the Merriam-Webster
online dictionary I commonly use. So I don't think we can confine
discussions to something most people have a hard time defining.
However it might be useful to discourage "idealogues", in the sense
of "an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular
ideology" (M-W) since by definition they cannot engage in the
rational discussion aspects of the Extropian Principles.
I think perhaps one way to discover "idealogues" lurking amongst
us is to require that they answer questions regarding what would
need to be demonstrated to get them to change their opinions on
a topic. The more unreasonable the responses the more guilty
they probably are of ideology. A rational person would cease to
engage in idealogical discussions because it is a pointless exercise.
My 1 cent.
Robert
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