From: "Charlie Stross" <charlie@antipope.org>
> Now, given that a lot of the political conflicts, famines, and other
> unpleasantnesses we live with today are scarcity-related, doesn't it
> make sense to try to understand how two thirds of the human species
> will respond to technologies that promise to make most of the roots of
> conflict magically go away?
First, I think people immature enough to truly believe in "technologies
that promise to make most of the roots of conflict magically go away"
don't belong in science or technology, because this is a dangerously
irresponsible attitude. Scarcity has never been the problem. Just the
opposite; overpopulation creates social problems. Politics and
distribution failures produce scarcity, but that has to do with misuse of
technology rather than any lack of technology itself.
> Just because you don't approve of somebody's beliefs, it does not follow
> that you can safely ignore them.
As I understand it, extropy has nothing to do with "approving" beliefs. It
has to do with science and technology... which needs to ignore belief
systems in order to remain objective. The danger lies not in ignoring
belief systems, but rather in taking them seriously. As long as we can
still laugh at the absurdities of religion, there is still hope that
humans will survive the accelerating evolutionary phase transition.
We won't move into a better future until we defeat religiosity, which is
the most regressive force now operating in society.
τΏτ
Stay hungry,
--J. R.
Useless hypotheses: consciousness, phlogiston, philosophy, vitalism, mind,
free will
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