From: Michael S. Lorrey (mike@lorrey.com)
Date: Sun May 23 1999 - 23:38:26 MDT
"O'Regan, Emlyn" wrote:
>
> I'm finding the ongoing discussion of Natural Law on this list
> facinating - not really for the content, but for the location. It seems
> that Natural Law has become (to some) a justification of private
> property rights because it is "Natural", it pertains in some way to
> "evolution", and it is simply the best system that we can come up with,
> tried and true, etc...
>
> Humanity has naturally evolved into its present form over billions of
> years, but none of us are particularly happy with the current form (a
> fair job, good ideas, seems to die rather to frequently, please pay more
> attention to neatness, final mark 6/10). Evolution is the antithesis of
> the transhuman, one would think. The whole idea of transhumanism seems
> to me to be about breaking the evolutionary shackles and reinventing our
> universe as we see fit.
>
> Why not break another shackle?
>
Any good engineer knows that it is far easier to work with the forces
involved rather than try to combat them. Opposing natural forces is a
stressful, unstable, temporary thing. This is why free market capitalism
works best, it doesn't try to fight human nature, but it tries to take
advantage of it to fullfill all needs (including altruistic ones).
We are learning with computing that evolved systems are capable of
becoming the most powerful systems ever, far beyond the capabilities of
targeted purposeful design.
Extropy is not anti-evolution, but for enhanced evolution.
Mike Lorrey
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