From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Nov 16 1998 - 17:44:22 MST
Phil Goetz wrote:
>
> At 11:58 AM 11/5/98 -0500, Doug Bailey wrote:
> >However, I'm not so certain that racism, sexism and transhumanism are
> >mutually exclusive. Please understand that I deplore racism and sexism and
> >all other forms of bigotry. However, I do not see any intrinsic aspect of
> >transhumanism that would manifest in such a fashion that no transhumanists
> >are bigots.
>
> I think that anyone who regarded themselves as a transhuman would
> necessarily be a bigot, since they would regard themselves as greater than
> human. So they would be racially bigoted against humans.
There's a lot of neural hardware supporting things like bigotry, which a smart
transhuman would disable if at all possible. Saying that a transhuman is a
bigot "by definition" implies a lot of connotations which may be absent -
hatred, smugness, prejudices. Are you a bigot because you consider yourself
"superior" to chimpanzees? No - you don't fear or hate them, and you don't
exult in your superiority. If you did, you'd be a bigot, with all the correct
negative connotations of implied, and it doesn't matter that the assertions
generating your emotions would be correct.
I would define bigotry as a condition testing for a certain set of evolved
human emotions, and not as a condition testing relational assertions of ability.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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