From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jul 04 1998 - 17:35:34 MDT
Let's face it: we have an image problem. No matter how reasonable our
views appear to us, no matter how correct they actually are, most
people do not consider transhumanism or its subset extropianism
seriously.
I recently wrote that many people actually think extropians are
gun-toting survivalists believing in a technocalypse; the current
debate about heavily fortified island nations, surviving the Y2K
problem and escaping into space wasn't helping the image. Den Otter
promptly replied that we are survivalists (in the sense of not wanting
to die prematurely and doing something about it), often believe in a
singularity and would have great use for an island nation with
transhumanism-friendly laws. This is of course true, but misses the
point in a rather revealing way.
When most people use the word survivalist they refer to the image of a
weapon-fanatic loner on the extreme right who plans to survive and
prosper when everybody else gets their well-deserved disaster. When
people overhear you talking about the Singularity, you could just as
well speak about the Rapture or New Age Prophecied By The
Mahatmas. And proposing a libertarian island kingdom suggests images
of piracy, drug trafficing, child porn and money laundering.
It doesn't matter if these views are right or wrong as long as people
hold them: they make us look like a cult.
If people think you are some kind of extreme cult they will treat you
like a cultist - with all that that entails.
Among the common behaviors used by all humans when faced with a
ranting cultist is to stop listening to the ranting as soon as you are
certain enough that you are dealing with a crazie; the more radical
and upsetting the ideas, the faster you want to stop listening and the
easier it is to decide it is just cultishness.
First impressions last. If people come upon transhumanism as some kind
of new age cult, right-wing extremism or fascism they will treat it
like that, and not investigate further. They will even spread the
word, and we all end up shunned by decent company. But I want my
membership in Aleph and Extropy Institute to be something to be proud
of, something that looks good on my CV!
This is why we better do something about our image. I believe we have
great ideas with practical content. But we better present them well,
in a form that people can understand and accept rather than
immediately reject. It would be obvious to anybody planning to live a
transhuman life that being good at communicating with other people is
a high priority if you want to live in a society with them and get
them to help you.
Many transhumanists make the mistake of becoming so used to all our
fantastic ideas (after all, most are rather down-to-earth when you
think of them carefully ;-) that they assume everybody else also will
understand how reasonable nanotechnology, cryonics and singularities
are. The listeners, who doesn't regard them as reasonable or obvious
since they have not heard very much convincing evidence or have no
collaborating experience, simply concludes that the transhumanist has
read too much science fiction. And in the absence of facts they are
making the simplest choice, applying Occam's razor correctly: the
theory that the transhumanist is right is much more complex than the
theory that he is just an overenthusiastic weirdo, so it should be
rejected until further evidence shows him to be right or at least
somewhat connected to reality.
This is why we better learn to present our ideas calmly, gradually and
with as much supporting facts as possible. Don't rush it, don't try to
make people swallow the entire bizarre package of ideas at
once. Instead give them one interesting idea to chew on first, like
dynamic optimism or wearable computers. They will come up with new
ideas and questions on their own (which they tend to accept much more
readily than other's), which can be discussed further. Even better,
let them discover for themselves how the various fairly interesting
but relatively uncontroversial ideas link together into a whole, with
implications they certainly wouldn't have believed if they hadn't
thought of them themselves...
Another problem we have is that we use a lot of weird terminology and
even worse, hot button words that cause learned emotional reactions
('immortality'. 'genetic engineering'. 'freedom'. 'market'). Sometimes
it is useful to get an emotional reaction, but quite often it limits
the possible repertoire of thinking. When you are aroused, you tend to
select cognitive patterns that are fast and well-learned and use them
with a minimum of thinking - the famous 'knee jerk reaction', although
it can be more subtle and flexible than that. If we are not careful,
we will close off the possibility of communication just by the way we
discuss.
This doesn't mean we will give in to the misinformed views of people
around us, quite the opposite! It is better to act by spreading
information and ideas, gradually and friendly instead of trying to
browbeat them to see something they don't believe in. By communicating
well with other people you can spread your ideas efficiently; that way
the facts and good ideas will be spread, and you might even learn
useful things from others (including the occasional realization that
their misinformed view actually was valid). Sometimes you might have
to take a verbal fight or make a stand against pure stupidity, and
then you better employ your passion, rationality and verbal skills to
maximal effect without fear or hesitation, but it is inefficient to
waste them on "winning" small arguments.
I don't want us to become politically correct. I don't want
self-censorship. But I want the ability to explain clearly and
rationally, and the ability to swallow the worst blunders before you
say them. Think of what you are saying and how people will react to
it!
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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