From: Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Oct 29 1996 - 06:41:44 MST
On Mon, 28 Oct 1996, David Musick wrote:
> Rich Artym said "transhumanists and Extropians have a few sacred cows of their
> own, and questioning these areas of dogma gets short shrift. We all know what
> they are."
>
> I DON'T know what they are. I have no "sacred cows"; nothing in my mind is
> off limits to questioning. I have no dogma, that I'm aware of. Please tell
> us what these "sacred cows" are that Extropians have.
Beware of that kind of invitation - now you might get a lot of people
hunting your sacred cows.
One obvious sacred cow you have seems to be that you don't have any; try
imagining that you have views that you cannot question.
As for extropian/transhuman sacred cows, there are of course the idea that
things will get better in some sense in our future, and some see the
Singularity or the utility of nanotech, uploading or AI as fundamental and
unassailably true. Another dangerous sacred cow is the belief that we know
what we are doing and are not a group of technophiles playing world
saviours in our spare time.
Sacred cows make the best hamburgers!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
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