From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Fri Mar 05 1999 - 11:31:18 MST
> Thanks for your thoughts, Eliezer. As someone with a strong
> predilection for organizing ideas, it's tempting to try to derive
> everything that falls under "extropy" from a smaller number of
> "first principles". Overall, though, I share your misgivings and
> I'm glad to hear some reinforcement of these misgivings to
> counterbalance those who want to make extropianism more exclusionary.
Don't confuse a desire to exclude bad ideas from the Extropian
label with a desire to exclude people. We all want more people
to call themselves extropians, but there are two competing ways
of achieving that: reduce the criteria for inclusion to the point
where people find themselves included with no work, or work to
change the minds of people to adopt extropian ideals defined
more precisely and meaningfully.
The "big tent" inclusiveness of the Republican party may be good
for getting yourself elected, but if you're trying to spread ideas,
you have to have ideas that actually mean something or else you
just get a mass of people as philosophically irrelevant as, well,
the Republican party.
> *Let* the ideologues and dogmatists rail against this looseness.
> I think it's clear which approach is the more extropian, both in
> principle and in result.
A dogmatist is one who holds some idea beyond criticism, and we
have not hesitated to reject that, just as we have not hesitated
to reject deathism. Critical rationalism does not exclude the
possibility of rejecting ideas--indeed, that is precisely its
purpose. It only insists that every idea be honestly evaluated,
and that none be immune from examination. Ideas can still be
evaluated, the bad ones rejected, and the good ones held as
ideals. Idealism and rationalism are entirely compatible.
Our failure to explicitly reject statism just as we explicitly
reject deathism and luddism is not justified by a desire to remain
non-dogmatic. If it is due to genuine philosphical doubt about
what the ideal should be, then say so. That's a valid reason to
remain open on the issue, but it should encourage us to evaluate
the differing ideas more vigorously so that we can reject some
and move forward. What we idealogues fear is that some may value
the lack of principle itself for political reasons rather than
honest philosophical ones, and may actively work against finding a
resolution in the matter.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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