From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Wed Jan 09 2002 - 12:07:15 MST
>From: hal@finney.org
>For Mike and his fellow conservative ideologues, consider an
>intelligence enhancement for your children which has an observed
>side effect: almost all of them become Socialists. Quel horreur!
Then clearly the intelligence enhancement was a failure, give Greg
Burch or one of his associates a call.
>It's not implausible: in fact in many of the most difficult and
>esoteric branches of science and mathematics, branches which
>require the highest levels of sheer abstract intelligence to
>thrive, Socialism and allied political philosophies are
>widespread. I remember reading an obituary in The Mathematical
>Intelligencer which went to some length to apologize for the fact
>that the deceased was not a Socialist. He was still a decent guy,
>the obit hastened to explain, he just had this one little
>political blind spot.
There are a great many things that sound great in theory and fall
flat on their faces in the real world. Socialism being one of my
favorite examples.
By failing to take into account human nature Socialism proves it is
too abstract. Failing to realize this proves your mathematician
friends need to spend more time in the real world.
>So you can make your kid a genius, but it will take him from the
>political philosophy you have embraced all your life. He will
>have nothing but contempt for your political views. He will be
>lost to your political culture. Yet you will be giving him great
>powers for advancement and achievement in life.
If he wants to be a socialist fine, just tell him to go to his
socialist friends for money....
Like I said if he goes in for intelligence enhancement and comes
out socialist, sue the doctor.
>In this situation, is it so easy to see that enhancing your child
>is automatically the right thing to do? How do you like MIKE'S
>PROPOSAL that society FORCE you to enhance the child?
I don't agree with forcing anyone to do anything except not harm
others, or themselves if they are unstable.
If people chose to remain handicapped when other options are
available, more power to them.
>Hopefully as Extropians we have the courage and the faith to give
>our children these advantages even at cost to ourselves and our
>link to them. But clearly for most people this will be an even
>more difficult decision. If transhuman technologies are most
>easily applied to children, which is plausible due to their
>greater neural plasticity (which is why the cochlear implants only
>work on them), then we may all find ourselves in the position of
>the deaf for whom Mike shows such scorn.
I don't see what faith has to do with it, but I think Kahlil Gibran
put children into perspective long ago:
"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and
daughters of life's longing for itself."
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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