From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Mon Nov 13 2000 - 15:41:15 MST
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
> "Michael S. Lorrey" wrote:
> >
> > Marriage laws in most states
> > are essentially permitting two illiterates to incorporate as a partnership
> > without any business experience or training, no assets, and allows them to
> > assume major 18 year debts (children) every nine months with no credit record or
> > proof of ability to pay, and the ability to declare bankruptcy on those debts
> > while retaining ownership of the assets. If that's not a recipe for disaster, I
> > don't know what is.
>
> Excuse me, but the en*tire* human race was illiterate for, what, 40,000,90,000 years? Marriage existed long before written language... perhaps before
> spoken language. Who are you to decide what standards people should be held
> to before being allowed to marry? Maybe it's the people who are least
> fortunate who most need to find someone, so that they can be less fortunate
> together.
Eli, zero plus zero still equals zero, and adding a negative to that (a
dependent) equals a negative. Extropy is about promoting positive sum games, not
perpetrating zero or negative sum games. Extropy demands personal responsibility
and individual enhancement. Getting a big L tatooed on your forehead isn't an
extropic body modification, and forcing one on someone else prior to birth is
worse. I never said that I should decide other people's standards, I was merely
pointing out the idiocy of those pre-existing standards. Changing those
standards is, in fact, a goal IMHO extropians should strive for convincing the
rest of humanity to support.
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