From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 29 1998 - 10:07:05 MDT
Mike Lorrey writes:
>> Yeah, but most "kooks" really are, ... and most of
>> them are not fondly remembered by history.
>
>I would amend that to say that most proponents of progress are not fondly
>revised by present day historians. Since most present day historians are of
>the luddite/crunchy/left persuasion, ...
I'd bet that if a widely respected Extropian like Hal Finney or Carl Feynman
were to look at a random sampling of people labeled "kooks" by their
contemporaries in the last 500 years, they'd conclude most of these "kooks"
really were, in Hal's or Carl's favored sense of the word. Sure among those
millions were people advocating stuff we like, but what fraction of "kooks"
was that? And how many of the "kooks" advocating stuff we like had good
arguments for their positions?
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
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