From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Mar 11 2002 - 03:18:50 MST
On Mon, Mar 11, 2002 at 09:36:38AM +0000, Alex Ramonsky wrote:
>
> Six billion brains think
> >more than one (not necessarily in my direction, but at least a lot of
> >thinking gets done).
>
> ...yeh, but if five and a half million of those are thinking your views are
> dangerous and must be suppressed, that's not necessarily beneficial to your
> survival.
> [snip] My aesthetic is more along the line of "how can I get out of here?"
You can't. You can imagine yourself escaping to space, a secret base in
Antarctica or artificial island in the Pacific, but these options are
not particularly realistic (see my previous criticisms on this list on
the "exit strategy"). Instead you have to live and work in a world where
many people disagree with you. The way to survive those five and half
million people is to convince the remaining five *billion* people that
your views, if not theirs, at least require tolerance and protection
(because if they do not give that, then what is there to protect their
own not universally accepted views from everybody else?). If five
billion people think you are wrong and awful, then you better find ways
of convincing them otherwise. Hoping to escape them is a daydream.
> [snip] assuming that "we" are somehow fundamentally different from "them"
> sets
> >up an insurmountable barrier for communication. We might be feeling the
> >transhuman man's burden when we try to bring the poor benighted luddites to
> >truth and progress, but the inherent smugness of that view will leak
> through
> >and cause resentment and eventual backlash.
> > It is better to realize that we
> >transhumanists aren't that different from anybody else, we just happen to
> >have a few uncommon views and somewhat larger ambitions.
>
> ...We are different in the same way that a group with a vaccination against
> a deadly disease is different from a group affected by the disease and
> without a vaccination...we can share it with them or we can let them die.
> And the problem we face is...they're terrified of needles...
> ...so how do invent the hypospray?
It is called communication. It is called understanding culture. It is
called public relations. The hypospray you seek has been here all along,
but far too many transhumanists prefer to dream about a less messy
solution where they do not have to do so much themselves. After all,
sitting around hoping to find some super argument that will convince
everybody requires nearly no effort, but convincing the mainstream is
going to be hard work (although it can be very fun and rewarding work
too).
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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