From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Nov 18 1998 - 21:50:27 MST
Dick.Gray@bull.com wrote:
>
> On Tue, 17 Nov 1998 jag36@cornell.edu wrote:
>
> > i don't understand why we're talking about humanism, morality, and
> > compassion on a listserv dominated by libertarians and objectivists.
>
> _I_ don't understand what you're doing on this list. Extropians are _by
> definition_ libertarians. What did you expect?
I do not consider myself a libertarian.
I used to regard CSICOP as having definitively disproved all claims of psychic
powers. "Nobody has claimed the $10K" was good enough for me. Then Dennis
Rawlins, a founding member of CSICOP, accused CSICOP of distorting and
withholding experimental results in "sTARBABY". I have read Klass's response,
which failed to deny this accusation and focused on ad-hominem attacks.
CSICOP has lost their objectivity and become an advocacy group. They are not
searching for the truth; they are promoting a particular set of beliefs, even
in defiance of the facts. They have become the Committee for Skeptical
Investigation, not the Committee for Scientific Investigation. One cannot
have both.
This doesn't mean that I believe in psychic powers. But I no longer believe
in CSICOP.
What's my point? In my opinion, the majority of libertarians whose writing on
the subject I have read have also lost their objectivity, to the point of
being unable to perceive that libertarianism has flaws. It's not good enough
to be the best system; they insist the system is perfect. They have become a
political cause, rather than a rational choice. One cannot have both.
I still think much less government would produce better results by almost any
moral standard. But I no longer believe in libertarianism.
--
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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