On Sun, 2 Jan 2000, Robert Owen wrote:
>
> I have archived all the correspondence from the previous threads; it was
> precisely my experience with them that motivated the current post. It is
> my personal opinion that discussions of, e.g. Libertarianism, Gun Control
> Legislation and an Extropian Political Platforms have nothing whatever to
> do with either Transhumanism or Extropianism.
Strictly speaking, Robert, you are correct. TH/Exisms are about the
philosophy of evolution and perhaps ways for evaluating and judging
different moral values, advantages and disadvantages of courses of action,
etc.
The "politics" and "economics" creep in when you actually get into the
details of how to implement these moral values and courses of action.
In particular, the more extreme discussions of such things as Libertarianism,
Gun Control, escape to other planets, enclaves, etc. are a form of "worst
case" analysis. What do we do if our "best efforts" at convincing people
that taking self-control of our evoulution fail? What happens if we misjudge
things, go to fast, and slip and fall? How do we balance, even among
ourselves the differences between the go-fasters and the go-slowers?
I would hate to see us move from organizations involved in rational
educational discussions to organizations with "platforms". But
platforms do serve a purpose of condensing a lot of in the trenches
discussion into a form that can be easily communicated. But we
should perhaps keep in mind a separation between E-THist philosophies
and Futurist/Protechnology "parties" even though I would expect there
will be a lot of overlap between these.
Robert
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