Re: Excedo: What's in a name?

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Nov 20 1997 - 15:33:54 MST


OK, now the neutral Swede is in this debate too. I have great
sympathy with all sides. :-)

I think Excedo is a good name, no doubt about it. The initial Ex- fits
in well with the transhuman memes, and the ending do at least gives me
associations to action.

Is it too close to Extropy? That is very subjective. I think the core
morphem of extropianism is of course extro-; not just the outwards
'ex', but the movement of 'tro'. Extropy without the trope is
something very different.

I think Shaun is too worried about the similarity, but in principle he
is correct: the name suggests a similarity (but that might be
*positive*, since both groups are on the same side and share many
ideas, it would be silly for humanists to avoid having "humanist" in
their organisational names), and there is a real risk/chance of being
linked with ExI (in Europe this can have tricky political connotations;
here in Sweden being a classic *liberal* is considered extreme,
libertarianism is beyond the pale).

This is not likely to be a large or permanent problem, so I think we
should not invest too much emotional capital in this. The main problem
right now seems to be that a lot of us onlookers are cheering on the
two sides, almost forcing them into a silly confrontation. I'm not
sure I have any good solution, other than hope Max and Arjen can
discuss this and come up with a good solution. As transhumanists, we
all realize that names are merely (useful) labels, what really counts
is the contents.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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