On Sun, Dec 23, 2001 at 03:18:05PM -0500, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> There are no "Indians". There are no "Afghani". There are only humans.
> Transhumanism, and Singularitarianism, are basically egalitarian
> philosophies, because they permit the analysis of cosmic perspectives, and
> when you look through a cosmic perspective the modern-day divisions
> between humans become absurd. There is no reason why the happiness of an
> American computer programmer should weigh more in my calculations than the
> happiness of an Indian computer programmer. They are both the same kind
> of entity. They are both evolved biological organisms. There is no
> reason why one would have any greater intrinsic worth than the other.
Amen to the above paragraph.
I find identification with states and races utterly boring and
retrograde. I cringe whenever I see the pronoun "us" used to refer
to the US government, the West, white males or the like. In the
early years of this list (a decade ago!?) the state was something
to be smashed, or at least completely avoided, and race, sex, and
sexual orientation were annoying baggage that could and should be
thrown off ASAP. We were racial/ethnic mongrels already, and sex
would be infinitely mutable with transhuman technology, so what of
it?
Now I see attempts to think outside millenia-old collectivist
debates scoffed at as unrealistic. Depends upon one's perspective.
Eliezer's right, from another perspective these debates seem absurd.
Next time you're worked up about supposed threats to the homeland,
"western" values, or competition between your very distant relative
and your slightly more very distant relative, do one of the following
or invent your own:
* Go outside, look at the stars
* Look at something under a microscope
* Create and/or learn something new
-- Mike Linksvayer http://gondwanaland.com/ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:30 MDT