From extropians-request@extropy.org Thu Aug 4 15:02:32 1994 Return-Path: extropians-request@extropy.org Received: from usc.edu (usc.edu [128.125.253.136]) by chaph.usc.edu (8.6.8.1/8.6.4) with SMTP id PAA10826 for ; Thu, 4 Aug 1994 15:02:25 -0700 Received: from news.panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA19163; Thu, 4 Aug 94 15:02:13 PDT Received: by news.panix.com id AA14301 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Thu, 4 Aug 1994 18:01:52 -0400 Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 18:01:52 -0400 Message-Id: <199408042201.AA14301@news.panix.com> To: Extropians@extropy.org From: Extropians@extropy.org Subject: Extropians Digest #94-8-43 - #94-8-52 X-Extropian-Date: August 4, 374 P.N.O. [18:01:30 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org X-Mailer: MailWeir 1.0 Status: RO Extropians Digest Thu, 4 Aug 94 Volume 94 : Issue 215 Today's Topics: arkuat's Extropian FAQ [1 msgs] Extropians Digest #94-8-24 - #94-8-32 [2 msgs] FWD: Hawking foresees superhuman future [2 msgs] Houston's economy Was [RE: Venezuela & Socialism] [2 msgs] Information-theoretic death [1 msgs] mourning, ritual, and functionality [1 msgs] Your Extropian FAQ [1 msgs] Administrivia: Note: I have increased the frequency of the digests to four times a day. The digests used to be processed at 5am and 5pm, but this was too infrequent for the current bandwidth. Now digests are sent every six hours: Midnight, 6am, 12pm, and 6pm. If you experience delays in getting digests, try setting your digest size smaller such as 20k. You can do this by addressing a message to extropians@extropy.org with the body of the message as ::digest size 20 -Ray Approximate Size: 25930 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 94 23:54:28 EDT Subject: [#94-8-43] Your Extropian FAQ Nick Szabo says- > Extropianism is the work of several people, and evolving, so > I'm not sure we can define any single person as "the" Extropian. True. But Max was the instigator and--or am I wrong?--is the one who sort of crystalizes things and puts them down in The Principles once in a while...? Anyway, capital E Extrop is the philosophy rather than the circle of people. I guess I'm making a two-sided criticism here: I think people shouldn't identify with Extropianism, and I think Max should have responsibility for it and control over its canonical expression. Because neither the people nor the philosophy should get mushed. -fnerd quote me - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - nutritional information per serving: less than one (1) bit -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ From: fnerd@smds.com (FutureNerd Steve Witham) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 94 00:37:29 EDT Subject: [#94-8-44] arkuat's Extropian FAQ dV/dt suggests some epriming of Erik Forste's Extropian FAQ, along the lines of... > ..."Max More, President of > Extropy Institute, has written...", followed by, "Many people who consider > themselves Extropians believe...", and "There is a larger extropian > community of those who share some Extropian views but..." (Note conscious > use of big and small E's.) There's certainly some salutory effect there. I'm not an Eprime expert, but I remember someone saying that there's a shadow area where you talk about "isish" concepts without actually using forms of "to be." I think the phrase "people who consider themselves Extropians" is like that. Here you're talking about people who think they "are" Extropians, without saying "are"! And it's true, people seem to think that they "are" Extropians, but I wonder if it's slipping into bad form and fuzzy thinking to just rephrase it in Eprime and leave it at that. My point was actually to emphasize that people identify with this philosophy, in order to warn newcomers of the potential for confusion there. But then to leave it at that since it's a familiar phenomenon and no tragedy. Especially with that line in there about how Extropians are never, never, never allowed to be dogmatic! (Maybe a variation on Eprime would allow forms of "to be" in reports of other people's ideas, but only in scare quotes. Millitant Eprime!) Btw, Erik/arkuat seems to have incorporated my suggestions in a graceful (IMHO!-) and gracious way. -fnerd quote me - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - nutritional information per serving: less than one (1) bit -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------ From: "John M. Bozeman" Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 02:24:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [#94-8-45] mourning, ritual, and functionality >> >> So in a sexual assault or just sexually icky situation, the sexuality circuits >> decide this is the kind of situation where you should allow yourself to be >> rewired, but then the actual events rewire you in a way that disturbs your >> smooth functioning. And the intimacy/openness circuit shuts down so >> the wiring gets fixed in the new bad arrangement. >> >> or pushy, or fatalistic, whatever, statement. Then you come up with a >> counter-statement that you either address to the imagined speaker, or to >> yourself (as if you were a parent talking to a child). Then you practice >> recognizing the bad statement, dubugging, and substituting the counter- >> statement in closer and closer to real time. >> I find this direction of thought interesting, but problematic. Namely, how do we tell "good" sexuality from "bad"? It is easy to say "personal preference," but sexual codes vary tremendously from culture to culture... biological arguments also founder pretty quickly, too. "Societal dictates" seem pretty arbitrary... Are we doomed to total relativism? Or is there a transpersonal sexuality? John Bozeman ------------------------------ From: Alexander Chislenko Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 09:00:52 -0400 Subject: [#94-8-46] FWD: Hawking foresees superhuman future HAWKING FORESEES GENETICALLY EDITED SUPERHUMANS | Reproduced from the August 3 edition | | of the Boston Globe without permission | It's a vision worthy of a sci-fi novel. A handful of humans defy laws that forbid tampering with their own genes and resculpt themselves into brilliant, age-defying "superhumans" who take over Earth -- then move on to colonize other planets. That's the prediction of one of the most prominent theoretical physicists of our time -- Stephen Hawking, whose best-selling book, "A Brief History of Time," brought the complexities of black holes and the beginning of the universe into living rooms around the world. Yesterday, he offered his view of life on Earth -- for the next few centuries -- to several hundred computer aficionados in town for the Macworld Expo. Hawking, who has Lou Gehrig's disease and can move only a few muscles, communicates through his computer. Yesterday, he wheeled onto a darkened stage at the Park Plaza Hotel, his face illuminated only by the glow of the computer screen attached to his wheelchair, and gave a speech prerecorded in the computer-generated voice that has become his trademark. Much of his speech focused not on his usual scientific topics -- the beginning of the universe, the nature of black holes -- but on a relatively puny subject: the human species and its history on Earth. "We are entering a new phase: self designed evolution," Hawking said. "The ability to redesign ourselves genetically, he predicted, will be irresistible. Scientists are working on the human genome project to point out genes contributing to certain diseases or traits lie. "Once we have read the book of life," Hawking predicted,"We will start writing the corrections." The beginning of such a change will start with genetic therapies for defects linked to single genes like cystic fibrosis and muscular distrophy. But eventually, humans will devise ways to modify complex human traits like intelligence and agression. In Hawking's scenario, weary governments trying to rein in the technology will pass laws banning genetic engineering. "Once such superhumans appear, there are going to be political problems with the humans who won't be able to compete. They will die out or become unimportant." Hawking, backed by his equations, called many other sci-fi themes -- such as time travel, or using time warps to beat the speed of light -- plain hogwash. After all, he said, as he displayed a drawing of large- brained humans toting cameras, we havent seen any tourists traveling backward from the future. Hawking sees us colonizing space through machines that can land on distant planets planets and mine resources to reproduce themselves, then traveling to nearby stars within the next two centuries. But this future is endangered, he said, by an agressive human race whose behavior "has been pretty stupid, and not calculated to aid the survival of the species." posted by Eugene Chislenko ------------------------------ From: "Brady, Mark" Date: Thu, 04 Aug 94 09:20:00 PDT Subject: [#94-8-47] Houston's economy Was [RE: Venezuela & Socialism] James Daugherty wrote: >Why don't you buy the citizens right to bear arms? The clear intent of the Second Amendment wording >is for the "armed citizenry" to ensure the "well regulated militia". Sounds like spontaneous, extropian >order to me! I don't buy it because the intent of the Amendment was to provide armed State militias to oppose the Federal government. The amendment was to avoid a repeat of Concord and Lexington where British troops were attempting to disarm local established militias (not spontaneous groupings). The Second Amendment seems to be designed to play/balance one political group off against another. >The fact that the FEDS have discontinued the militia concept and substituted a National Guard system >integrated into Federal Tyranny doesn't repeal the Constitution. Yes, the Southern cause in the Civil War to some extent was aided by the fact that the succeeding states had militias in place. During the Civil Rights era, all the Feds had to do threated to nationalize the Guard to get State governments to back down. >And even if that isn't what the Constitution's framers meant, they should have. But really, there are plenty >of quotes that the major Founders took an armed citizenry as a given. Unfortunately, because of Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is. I would argue that most of the Founders took an armed State-run militia as granted. I referred to the debates on August 23, 1787. We can continue this discussion off list if you want the exact quotes and you can see if you agree with my interpretation. However, this discussion leads me back to how to obtain personal freedom. It seems as if there are many paths to get from here to a freer society. It is my opinion there seem to be several ways. 1) Like the NRA, EFF and the ACLU, fight the government within its own system to increase personal rights. 2) The second is to move to conceptual areas where there is no government regulation (PGP, smart drugs). This areas are free because the government doesn't know enough to even begin to regulate them (unless they make the entire area illegal). This follows Robert Anton Wilson's statement "Stupidity breeds intelligence." 3) Move to physical areas where there are no governments (L-5, tropical islands). Are there any I am overlooking? Mark Brady MBRADY@MSMAIL.HIS.TCH.TMC.EDU Disclaimer: The opinions in this message are strictly those of the author and do not belong to Texas Children's Hospital, St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, the Texas Heart Institute or any other sane entity. ------------------------------ From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu Date: Thu, 4 Aug 94 14:49:09 GMT Subject: [#94-8-48] FWD: Hawking foresees superhuman future In re whether "mere humans" will die out as a result of inability to compete with superhumans: Maybe, and maybe not....Have amoebas died out because they can't compete with us? How about e. coli? Whether "mere humans" can coexist with superhumans depends on what niches remain, what new niches open up, and whether the superhumans want and are able to pay the (probably non-trivial) cost of extermination. Yours for a more interesting future, Nancy Lebovitz ------------------------------ From: pavel@PARK.BU.EDU (Paul Cisek) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 11:46:44 -0400 Subject: [#94-8-49] Information-theoretic death >From: dkrieger@netcom.com (Dave Krieger) >Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 10:14:50 -0800 >Subject: [#94-8-30] Information-theoretic death > >>From: pavel@PARK.BU.EDU (Paul Cisek) >>Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 11:11:39 -0400 >>Subject: [#94-8-25] Information-theoretic death >> >>Fortunately, the very same mechanisms of self-calibration that occur >>during childhood may be used after revival to retune the system to the >>new body. > >This sounds as if Paul expects "off-the-shelf" bodies that the new owners >(brains) will need to adapt to. (This may be due to a mental image on >Paul's part of a purely biological body rather than a cyborg.) > Actually, I made no such assumption. Recalibration will be necessary whether the new body is biological or mechanical or virtual. The brain essentially has to learn how the commands it sends down to effectors (including muscles, glands...) affect the incoming perception - this is called a circular reaction. If the effectors and receptors are virtual there still presumably exists a consistency in the environment-mediated transformation from action to perception. It is this transformation that the nervous system needs to learn in order to anticipate the consequences of its actions and to use its effectors. >The skills embodied by our biohardware today must logically fit into three >categories: (1) those skills that are stored 100% in the brain; (2) those >skills that are 100% somatic (in the spinal cord and other parts of the >nervous system); and (3) those that are shared between the brain and >peripherals. This latter case would seem to involve complementary >components in the two (arbitrary) divisions of the nervous system that have >co-evolved or co-adapted to mesh well with each other. > Just about everything would fall into category (3), with the exception of things that are purely mental (I'd rather not further any theories on just what may be "purely mental"). And though we cherish all those mental things so much we would be quite at a loss if our physical properties were radically changed. And as to motor skills it's meaningless to say that a new host body (biological/mechanical/virtual) will come "preloaded" with certain skills. Try to avoid analogies with computers. The nervous system works as a unified system and it _assumes_ such unification. Fortunately in the case of replanting brains, the same mechanisms that unify the system may be used to adapt to a new body. >From: Safier >Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 13:53:42 -0600 (MDT) >Subject: [#94-8-36] Information-theoretic death >XRef: Response to Message #94-8-25 (Paul Cisek) > >Actually, The body would already be producing surge levels of >acetylcholine. What would be needed would be injections of cholinesterase >to facilitate the breakdown of Adenosine Triphosphate in the microspindles >of the muscles. Theoretically, a "new body" would already be maintaining >the cholesterol -to-steroid process which would generate, among other >things, choline and acetylcholine, but the lack of well-tuned >cerebro-spinal familiarity(proposed by above) would mainfest in a lack of >cholinesterase, the enzyme that catalyzes the on-que muscle contracting >energy. > I didn't realize that cholinesterase was involved in ATP breakdown in spindles. Since cholinesterase is also used in the breakdown of acetylcholine (ACh) then a lack of cholinesterase in an un-tuned cerebro-spinal system would presumably also mean an overabundance of ACh and thus too much neuromuscular transmission - right? So does tuning of the cerebro-spinal system involve reductions in synaptic efficacy? That would be consistent with themes of plasticity elsewhere in the nervous system. But actually, when I mentioned acetylcholine I was not referring to its action as a primary transmitter in the neuromuscular junction. What I meant to mention was its action as a secondary neuromodulator in the cerebral cortex. There's evidence that acetylcholine increases plasticity in large regions of the cortex, allowing extensive reorganization and calibration, even the formation of memory. Paul Cisek pavel@cns.bu.edu ------------------------------ From: Bo Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 10:16:16 -0600 (MDT) Subject: [#94-8-50] Extropians Digest #94-8-24 - #94-8-32 In regards to all this discussion about Re-animation/DeAnimation and cryogenic preservation.... Has anyone ever considered the fact that there are some who believe that this is all un-necessary, due to the fact that there is already a process in place that accomplishes it? Some call it Re-incarnation.... Some just believe that there is really no "end" to self....we're just here for a few rounds of reality at Life University until we learn what we came here to learn... Some find it amusing that sophomores and juniors want to "stay back"...and not ever "graduate"....;-) I'm not saying that I "believe" this......but the point of view makes all this talk of preserving the "current" version of self somewhat amusing...if a little backward. ;-) Bo the Bohemian..... *****************************[ ****************%%%%Bo@bohemia.metronet.org%%%%********************** ------------------------------ From: "Phil G. Fraering" Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 12:47:21 -0500 Subject: [#94-8-51] Houston's economy Was [RE: Venezuela & Socialism] >3) Move to physical areas where there are no governments (L-5, tropical >islands). Uh, how about aall the tropical islands have governments, and there's nothing at L1-L5? Phil ------------------------------ From: "Phil G. Fraering" Date: Thu, 4 Aug 1994 12:58:57 -0500 Subject: [#94-8-52] Extropians Digest #94-8-24 - #94-8-32 Not really, Bo... you know the Catholic Church teaches that suicide is bad, and there is the possiblility that refusing a viable treatment for a disease that is killing you is suicide... and that cryonics may be a viable treatment, for old age... Just some friendly thoughts about how you may be committing mortal sin by not signing up with Alcor... Hanno Reincarnationist ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V94 #215 *********************************