From: Steve Witham (sw@tiac.net)
Date: Thu Dec 05 1996 - 21:51:48 MST
>On Wed, 4 Dec 1996, Steve Witham wrote:
>>
>> This is the main reason I'm an extropian: because the point is not just
>> to celebrate change, any old change, but to try to make change for the
>> better rather than the worse. Extropy rather than entropy.
and Eugene Leitl <Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de> replied:
>"Better" is an observer-dependent metric.
As is entropy, by the way. But mainly: of course it's observer-dependent.
The point is not to default to being a non-observer, a non-valuer.
> Being human encompasses a lot
>of traits, not all of them positive. You should list some of them up,
>then checking whether all extropians would agree.
It isn't really necessary to what I was saying, which was a point about
the term "non-human." Most people, non-extropians included, would agree
that a person could lose a lot of things and still be human. But if
someone uses the term "non-human," it means missing something essential--
to the speaker at least. I think the opinion poll could be reduced to
two questions:
1) Do you think there's a core or essence to "humanity?"
2) Is it a bad thing for someone to lose their "humanity?"
>There is a danger in trying to press a heterogenous (an understatement)
>bunch of people under the outward spiraling banner of Extropy.
And I wouldn't want to. What I meant was, if "extropy" means anything to
me at all, it's the idea of actively pushing for a better future--which
requires getting over apologizing for one's particular values--rather than
passively accepting whatever happens, or trying to join the winning team
by philosophizing in its favor. People actually slip into a little
gung-ho fatalism on this list sometimes: if the XX are coming and we can't
beat 'em, then join em. Well, not so fast, boys.
>[...]There is a tendency here to use labeling as threat
>of exclusion: "You are not Extropian. You do not belong to us. You have to
>think thus & thus to call yourself Extropian".
No, my kind of exclusion is this: if I personally don't like the way
someone thinks, if their idea of progress runs too much counter to what
I consider progress, then I don't like their way of thinking. It's
"entropic" by my lights, whether other "extropians" agree or not.
>(Don't get me wrong [...] I just
> say be wary of your argumentation stratagems.)
Thanks for the tip but maybe you can help me figure out how I expressed
myself so poorly the previous try.
(Also, thanks for Cc-ing to me--it'll be a week before I'm that caught up
reading the list!)
--Steve
-- sw@tiac.net http://www.tiac.net/users/sw "It just keeps going and going and therefore you yourself have to keep going and going." --Energizer Bunny researcher
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