From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Wed Sep 06 2000 - 05:48:38 MDT
Waldemar Ingdahl writes:
> We are still a movement that hides in the basement, we' re not getting out
> in the public forums, after so much time. Actually the trend does seem to me
> to go backwards. Rereading old issues of Extropy magazine was interesting,
> but frightening, the discourse was on a higher, more informed, level.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems a few years ago the list discussion
*was* at a higher level.
> In my last days in the Swedish Transhumanist Association I often found
> myself writing e-mail about 30 or 40K long explaining basically "Economics
> 101" to others, constantly trying to re- invent the wheel to keep the
My hunch is that economics will be eventually reinvented, becoming
essentially a formal physical/information theory. There's nothing
basic about the economy. Everyone who thinks the field is mature is
imho totally mistaken. Of course, we're not exactly throwing around
equations and results from numerical models, when discussion markets &
Co. I frankly admit to not knowing what the best system is, hence I
usually keep my trap shut when such high-falutin' stuff is being
discussed.
> My experience says that one of the problems are that the transhumanist
> movement established itself, from the beginning, as an activist movement.
> Activism is important, but it is a later stage in the development of a
> political movement. Looking on how other movements established themselves
Transhumanism is based on science and technology, right?. This is the
true cutting edge, and there all the work is being done. Everything
else is, well, words and memes. See nuthin' wrong with that
either. However, I'm getting a bit tired of this activism thing, at
least in science goals are clearer, and there is a clear metric of
progress. Otherwise one might wind up looking a bit like these
stick-dry Objectivist Institute dudes, or the Sceptics Society. You
know. They're there, but they're not quite there.
> [mucho interesting ruminations snipped]
> A change of strategy is at hand, I think.
> Like our opponents say, this is World War IV. And if we don't understand
> this and form ourselves into a better fighting force they will win,
> unopposed.
I don't see the instrumentality of the continued us-them
polarization. First of all, this could really eventually lead to
radicalization, including violence on either or both sides, which
would seem monumentally dumb. Even our opponents can't help
contributing to the cosa nostra by not dropping out of the
economics/rat race. Why don't you give them a break? No equivalent of
neoludd PETA is going to pump you full of lead in the parking lot in
front of your house yet, and I see no diabolical mad scientist world
domination plans to be conducted in remote mountaintop castle
laboratories being hatched here, so why can't we all get along. Some
folks are concerned about electrosmog, or genetically engineered food,
so what. They might not be scientifically schooled, and thus their
opposition lacking rigeur, but their concerns are valid. Instead of
"you ludd, no good", how about some gentle education? For instance, we
do know about the rodent long-term mememory problems when irradiated
with cell-phone-type EM, and we do know that humankind tends to
generate pests, by introducing organisms from remote areas of the
globe with slightly differing fitness from those occupying a given
niche, so that blanket assertions that release of genetically modified
organisms into the environment could not lead to a yet another
irritating man-made pest could be a bit premature? Not to speak about
seed-total herbicide packages, leading to monopolization of markets,
reducing ecological and economical diversity.
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