Nicq MacDonald wrote:
>
> > The future of science and technology are not mystical, not magick, not
> > mysterious.
>
> Arthur C. Clarke would disagree with that statement...
No, he said 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic." He did NOT say that it WAS magic. THINK.
>
> Anyway, since when is our destiny of a mundane nature? This notion has only
> been commonly believed for a very short duration of humanity's existence-
> I'd also argue that this notion is purely transitionary, a kind of
> collective "dark night of the soul" (as a mystic would put it) before ourinitiation into the Transhuman existence...
Nobody is going to give us a leg up, there is no Galactic Confederation, Von
Daniken was a moron, and Childhood's End was FICTION. Get over it.
>
> > A transhuman is not supernatural.
>
> We don't know this. I, for one, think that it must be... if this wasn't the
> case, we would certainly be awash in signals from alien civilizations and
> others that still live tied to their mundane existence, eternally expanding,
> conquering, warring... remember, there were numerous second-generation stars
> that matured billions of years before our own Sun, and odds are that in a
> self-organizing universe many intelligent races could have developed and
> eventually reached their own singularity, in which, through technological
> means, they advanced to a state that is beyond our comprehension, and could
> only be seen as divine. The only way we could even hope to perceive a
> slight bit of the nature of such beings is through mystical means. Even the
> ever hard-nosed Carl Sagan proposed something to this effect in "Contact",
> when he mentioned the idea of a species that had reached a state beyond our
> imagination designing patterns in the physical universe that could only be
> read through mathematical codes... maybe the Kabbalists are on to
> something...
Sagan was showboating buffoon who was doing memetic programming.
Supernatural, adj. 1. Existing outside of, or exhibiting properties
contradictory to the laws of, the natural universe.
No, transhumans are NOT supernatural. Inhabitants of a Universe Prime, running
our universe as a quantum simulation, would be supernatural deities, but they
cannot interfere with the simulation.
>
> > Capital 'P' Powers are not amazing or incredible, they are merely
> currently
> > inscrutable.
>
> If they're inscrutable, they very well could be amazing and incredible. You
> don't know this- nor do I.
incredible: lacking credibility. Sorry, any Power I ever meet would likely be
very credible in its existence. Overwhelmingly so. It might be amazing, but it
would not be mystical or supernatural.
>
> > Mystics read fantasy, extropians read science fiction.
> > Get it?
>
> I read both. My favorite genera, in fact, is Science Fantasy- Star Wars,
> Shadowrun, the more recent Final Fantasy games, and several of my own
> strange concoctions.
>
> I'm one of those strange people who sees no contradiction between being
> mystical and being scientific (and I don't even need some arcane
> interpretation of quantum physics or feel the need to bend the rules of
> probability to back me up).
Then you need to drop the SF and start reading real science books.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:21 MDT