From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Sun Sep 05 1999 - 14:43:14 MDT
In a message dated 99-09-01 11:23:17 EDT, sentience@pobox.com (Eliezer S.
Yudkowsky) wrote:
> I hate to ask a question that sounds this newbieish, having been around
> the list for three years, but what exactly *is* the difference between
> Extropians and transhumans? Stating that a "DC transhumanist group" is
> "70% Extropian" implies a much more noticeable distinction than I've
> been modeling - but then, having not gotten around to any conventions
> yet, I wouldn't have any way to notice a division into groups.
Being engaged in a dialogue in another forum that has included this question,
I have some thoughts ready to hand on the subject. Taking into account that
the following is part of a larger context, I pass along some of my current
thinking on the question you pose:
. . . "[T]he distinction between transhumanism and extropianism" is a subject
that sparks quite a bit of discussion - so much so that I've given up trying
to be involved in every such discussion I'm aware of. Many people say that
extropianism is somehow a subset of transhumanism. I prefer to say that
extropian values are transhumanist and that extropianism is a transhumanist
philosophy. My personal, perhaps quite idiosyncratic take on the question is
that extropianism is a world-view that derives from valuing what happens in
nature when complexity spontaneously creates information processing systems
(thus my ethical system of "mind morality"). We are most uniquely such
systems and thus valuing this is simply a function of self-actualization and
self-valuation. From a simple application of the Golden Rule (which is
really just an extension of the "cosmological principle" of "no privileged
observers" to the realm of values), other extropian values of tolerance and
non-initiation of force or coercion are derived. . . .
. . . But "transhumanism" as a cultural movement does not, I believe, purport
to be an all-encompassing world view in the same way that most religions
purport to be, for instance. It is compatible with a wide (but not
indefinite) range of basic world-views. Thus there could be socialist
transhumanists and even, I suppose, nihilist transhumanists, just as there
are socialist and nihilist humanists. (I believe one could not be an
"extropian nihilist" and it would be difficult, I imagine, to try to craft an
"extropian socialism".) . . .
. . . "Transhumanism" is as broad a term as "humanism"; the "transhumanist
dialogue" has just begun, in many ways (although I'm often amazed at the few
prescient pathfinders we can look to as intellectual forebearers - like
Butler's Erewhon and Shelley's Frankenstein). Consider "transhumanism" to be
a defined arena in which discussion should take place - some of the few
"constraints" on that dialogue being a value system that encourages
individual autonomy and a continuation of the process of increasing human
potential. Within that arena, extropians have a more clearly defined set of
values - essentially those of the Enlightenment; if Thomas Jefferson had
lived today I feel absolutely sure he would have been an extropian. . . .
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"Civilization is protest against nature;
progress requires us to take control of evolution."
-- Thomas Huxley
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