From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri May 28 1999 - 07:12:54 MDT
Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net> writes:
> Has anyone here thought out this meme: perhaps the *most* important
> influences in our lives are not family and friends, but the books we
> read as children? These plant memes early, when they have the
> most impact on our developing synaptic interconnections.
I'm not sure they are the most important influence in most children,
but they can be. Many factors add together in creating a person, and
often they affect different aspects.
I read a lot of popular science books when I was a kid, and then moved
on the science fiction. It was at least a partial cause for me
becoming a transhumanist, but the reason I started with science is at
present unclear to me. But once I was immersed in the world of
science/science fiction, transhumanism slowly emerged as a logical
conclusion to me.
> The question was "If one book, which and why?"
> Someone argued that if the question is interpreted as which
> book had the most *impact*, it might well be a Dr. Seuss
> work, or equivalent. This notion might explain a few things at least
> in my case. {8^D spike
I wonder if children shouldn't be introduced to Stanislaw Lem's _The
Cyberiad_ at an early age. Many of the stories can likely be
translated into a simpler language (even if they often are readable as
they are in the translations I read), and put transhumanistish ideas
into the heads of children. Beside the humor and nonsense, he deals
with how to solve problems with intelligence (such as the hillarious
story about making the perfect monster), the philosophical
consequences of robots, uploading, copying and a lot of other stuff,
trains recursive thinking and overall plays with your mind.
Of course, in my case the main influence on early scientific thinking
may have been the character Skalman in the swedish cartoon Bamse. He
was an eccentric turtle who built strange inventions, read books,
slept (he had a clock which told him when it was time to sleep, eat
and read - usually at the most inconvenient time) and generally helped
the main character Bamse (a bear who became super-strong by eating a
certain kind of honey) by intelligent advice (often 100% correct
popular science). Unfortunately the Skalman character remained rather
peripheral, and the rest of the cartoon developed in a rather naive
leftist/PC direction.
We need more transhumanists to write childrens books! And cartoons!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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