RE: The Politics of Transhumanism

From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sat Jan 19 2002 - 19:18:58 MST


estropico wrote,
> >Harvey Newstrom [mailto:mail@HarveyNewstrom.com] wrote:
> >extropian philosophy = extropy + transhumanism
>
> what's the difference? If you break the above down to its components,
> you get:
> extropian philosophy = CMT + libertarianism + humanism

No you don't. Why do you keep adding libertarianism? The early Extropy
Institute and Extropian List contained liberals, conservatives, socialists,
anarchists and other political bents besides libertarianism. It is
inaccurate to say that it was only libertarian or that its purpose was more
libertarian than transhumanistic.

Why do you keep excluding transhumanism? Extropy Institute was established
to be a transhumanist organization. This very list was founded as the first
transhumanist list. The Extropian Principles were written to establish a
specific definition of transhumanism. You can't pretend that extropy has no
connection to transhumanism.

> Anyway, what I mean with my little formulas is that when humanists
> considered how to deal with the coming technological advances and their
> impact on the human condition, the result was transhumanism. When
> libertarians did the same, the result was extropy.

This is not an accurate history. Humanists did indeed create transhumanism.
However those same transhumanists went on to define extropian philosophy. I
don't see how you can separate their history or try to claim they evolved
independently of each other.

Where are you getting these ideas? They don't seem to match history or make
sense. You seem to be trying to split the global transhumanist community
into separate unrelated sectors. This won't work. There is too much
interaction among the transhumanists. It's a small world, and the group of
transhumanists are even smaller. We have worked together, shared ideas,
critiqued each other's ideas for so long that it is impossible to totally
separate any of us as being totally isolated from the others.

--
Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
Principal Security Consultant, Newstaff Inc. <www.Newstaff.com>
Board of Directors, Extropy Institute <www.Extropy.org>
Cofounder, Pro-Act <www.ProgressAction.org>


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 13:37:35 MST