From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Dec 13 2002 - 17:51:46 MST
On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Jef Allbright wrote:
> Anava 000 quoth:
>
> Dear fellow Extropians,
>
> What is the point of extending life or even eradicating death, if all you
> going to do with these opportunies is bring along the same old negative
> baggage that you had before.
>
> By this I mean, rudeness, intolerance, censorship, bickering, violence and
> exclusivity?
A very very good question Anava. One we should discuss more often.
This is sent to the response Jef sent to Anava's question but is
sent to the points that both made.
I was commenting offlist to Spike yesterday about how bad things
could get (his onlist posts gave some view of that). As most of
the people on the list are in the U.S., E.U. or other "first world"
countries. There is a very general lack of awareness of how bad
things can be (for most list members). So I wish to take issue
with some of Anava's points (which are quite valid for people
who may be new to the list.)
Rudeness -- yep, we get short with each other. We should try to fix that.
Diplomacy is a learned art.
Intolerance -- not so much, there may be opinions that are out-of-favor
but most of the people on the list would agree that they should have
their hearing.
Censorship -- no, except under very limited situations where the list volume
has become too high and volatile there is no censorship.
Bickering -- yep, there is a fair amount of that. It is due to different
philosophies and perspectives -- but that may be part of the extropic
process. How does one get to the "truth" if one doesn't debate it?
What all list members may need to do is examine whether or not they
are debating it in a "professional" fashion.
Violence -- not that I'm aware of (unless you are speaking of verbal
"rudeness" -- and that runs into some very sticky freedom of speech issues.)
Exclusivity -- perhaps -- to participate effectively in the Extropian list
there is a "body-of-knowledge" that one may require. We try to point out
the books one may need to have read (the Extropian reading list, my list
of books I've read, Anders extensive web site, Greg's web site, etc.)
We can't make the barriers much lower without having the ability to
transfer knowledge directly into your mind -- and that might be fairly
unextropic.
I hope that deals with these points. People who have been on the list
for a while are well aware of these potential problems. They have learned
to deal with them while hoping that we might evolve better solutions for
them. The canvas isn't completely painted yet -- we still have much work
to do.
> ### This is a profound and subtle point. Unfortunately, the persons who
> don't get it are generally very confident in their ignorance while exulting
> in the illusion of their "freedom and individuality".
This may not be a comment by either Jef or Anava. But let us not confuse
"freedom and individuality" with "personal experience". One person's
"ignorance" is another person's "experience". You can *never* invalidate
another person's experience -- the best you can do is to argue that it
may not be relevant in specific situations. I cannot stress this
enough. There is no "ignorance" -- there is only an expression of
what "works" based on their knowledge base. Knowledge bases are not
universal (though we might like them to be).
So much of what may show up on the extropian list as rudeness, bickering, etc.
is really a conflict in knowledge bases. I'm moderately certain if the
knowledge bases could be exchanged "instantaniously" that much of this
would go away. Unfortunately we cannot easily do this using current technology.
> I wish I had time to do a write-up on the related concept of "victimless
> crime".
It would be interesting to see this -- I have many thoughts related to
this area and it would be interesting to see an extropic paper related
to this concept. I'm fairly certain the Journal of Evolution and Technology
would be interested in publishing papers on this topic.
Regards,
Robert
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