From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jan 06 2002 - 16:41:10 MST
"J. Hughes" wrote:
>
> http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/TranshumPolitics.htm
>
> Abstract:
>
> Contemporary transhumanism has grown out of white, male, affluent, American
> Internet culture, and its political perspective has generally been a
> militant version of the libertarianism typical of that culture. Nonetheless
> transhumanists are becoming more diverse, with some building a broad liberal
> democratic philosophic foundation in the World Transhumanist Association.
> The essay also discusses the emergence of neo-Nazi and radical democratic
> transhumanism. For transhumanism to achieve its goals it needs to distance
> itself from its anarcho-capitalist roots and its authoritarian mutations by
> clarifying its commitments to liberal democratic institutions, values and
> public policies. By embracing political engagement and the use of government
> to address equity, safety and efficacy concerns about transhuman
> technologies, transhumanists are in a better position to attract a larger,
> broader audience.
I suggest in the strongest possible terms that the phrase "neo-Nazi" be
removed from the *abstract* of this paper. As presented in the abstract,
it sounds as if there's a large organized movement somewhere that is an
accepted part of contemporary transhumanism, as opposed to a lone idiot
who tried to join a webring that shut down and reincorporated with a new
charter rather than accept him as a member. Please remember that any
intimation of a possible link with Nazism is a horrendous accusation, and
anyone who just reads the abstract of your paper is likely to come away
remembering only that transhumanism has something to do with Nazism.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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