Re: Plea (was ExI: Cognitive Extropians)

From: Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Jan 21 1997 - 16:58:05 MST


Lee Daniel Crocker writes:
>The process of natural evolution is simply a mathematical consequence
>of duplication, mutation, and competition. It is inevitable, and will
>continue. What changes, though, are the entities upon which it works.
>For this period of Earth's history, it has been little chunks of DNA.
>From now on, since we have free will, it will be little chunks of
>motivation. Of course, DNA will continue in other non-free species,
>and other replicators may be discovered as well. But for /us/, we
>no longer slavishly serve DNA.

Yes. Now you slavishly serve your memes, such as your superstitious
rigid belief in a clearcut and well-understood distinction between
"reason" and "emotion". You haven't got the foggiest idea what the
referents of those words are: no one does, as of yet. You could
just as easily be dogmatically ranting about phlogiston or the
luminiferous ether.

The funniest thing is that in your foolish ranting against the
passions, you don't even notice that you are entirely caught up in
your emotional passion for rationality. You just blindly whirl
about in your libertarian macho-flash routine, giving the beliefs
that you happen to share with me a bad name in your community (which
pisses me off, incidentally), prating about "free will" while
functioning as a marionette for Ayn Rand's mind.

Oh, I'm sorry. Was I rude? I'm just calling it like I see it here.
I certainly hope you won't be so irrational as to allow any of your
buttons to be pushed by this post. Perhaps when you respond, you'll
show some evidence of actually having read it, rather than simply
seizing another opportunity to grind your ax at us.

--
Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/ 


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