Date sent: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 05:41:41 -0700 (PDT) From: mark@unicorn.com To: extropians@extropy.com Subject: Re: Cryonics propaganda... Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> dwayne [dwayne@pobox.com] wrote:
> >We as a species spend FAR too much time and effort trying to work out
> >how to reduce ourselves back to beasts, and not enough time trying to
> >improve ourselves. Which is, I feel, the main problem with the gun
> >thread, I'd rather the effort went into making people better than
> >working out how to keep bad people away.
>
> Only a few big problems with that one:
>
> 1. Who decides what's 'better'?
>
The courts and psychiatric boards can decide who are well enough
to keep and bear (those who are never convicted of violent crimes
or judged mentally incompetent), and who we are better off kepping
guns from (those who are).
>
> 2. What do you do with people who refuse to become 'better'?
>
Don't let 'em get their hands on the means to commit quick and
efficient long-range mass murder
>
> 3. What if those 'bestial' aspects of human personality are actually vital
> to its future development? I'm not terribly surprised that most transhuman
> developments come out of a country which supports 'bestial' ideas like
> competition and self-reliance, for example.
>
That's what football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, soccer,
boxing, tennis, golf, chess, political campaigns, military service,
religious proselytization, the stock market, summa cum laude,
laboratories and corporations are for.
>
> 4. If people become 'better' then why shouldn't they own and carry guns?
>
> Mark
>
If they became better, why would they need them, and if they
remain vulnerable to the plagues of vilent aggressiveness and
insanity, how can we trust those who have been documented as
succumbing to same?