From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Jun 02 1999 - 18:27:39 MDT
Al Villalobos wrote:
>
> Question: As us Extropians accelerate faster and faster away from
> "mainstream" society ( or even more extreme, the great teeming unwashed
> masses), how do you see society as a whole reacting to us?
Huh? Society is catching up to the Extropians, while the Extropian
ideology per se is basically standing still. Look at _The Matrix_!
The Singularitarians are as extreme as transhumanism gets - does anyone
dispute that? - and I'm as extreme as Singularitarians get, and I, at
least, don't think your average guy is going to notice much difference
between me and Robin Hanson. The Singularitarian philosophy continues
to move substantially ahead of the "mainstream transhumanism" of
Extropy, but it isn't moving faster than the general population. Even
my own personal philosophy is moving slower than the ability of the
fairly large "technophile" segment of the population to deal with
concepts like, well, _The Matrix_. The general population, in turn, is
catching up to the technophiles faster than the most extreme
ultratechnologists are diverging from anyone.
I expect this trend to continue; there's an S-curve involved which is
constant for any given level of smartness, and even the geniuses are
starting to slow down compared to the general population.
So I really don't see any problem, unless you're talking about the
increasing technophobe sector of the population, which will also
continue to grow larger and more extreme.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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