From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Wed Jun 02 2004 - 13:06:55 MDT
> It may
> even be that I'm not very nice. Altruistic towards humans in
> general, yes,
> but with a strong tendency to think that any given human would be of
> greater worth to the human species if they were hung off a balloon as
> ballast. So frickin' what?
So ... this tendency of yours makes me feel like it would be a fairly
bad idea to trust you with my own future, or the future of the human
race in general.
I do not trust this sort of altruism, which is coupled with so much
unpleasantness toward individual humans.
I would place more trust in someone who acted more compassionately and
reasonably to other humans, even if they made fewer (or no) cosmic
proclamations regarding their beautiful altruism.
Being an arrogant jerk and a excellent scientist or philosopher is not
contradictory. Being an arrogant jerk when you're trying to raise funds
to help you save the world, is not intelligent, because you're asking
people to trust you for more than just science and philosophy, you're
asking them to trust you with their lives.
-- Ben G
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:47 MDT