I've just completed reading "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson -
and I am *very* impressed and inspired by that book. I'd really
appreciate some opinions from other people on this list about that
particular book, since it's one of the "top-ten" books in the Extropian
Principles Reading List, and it basically says what you say. Of course,
it says nothing about Extropians or anybody on this list... well, at
least it says that extropy/negentropy is "good" - AND it says a lot
more... maybe I should put it the other way round: what you say reminds
me of some things I read in that book ;-)
I wonder how many people have experienced, or at least are interested in
- for example - the neurosomatic circuit mentioned in Prometheus Rising,
which might be a more reliable means of life-extension than having to
wait for better technology (I don't see it as an "alternative", though -
becoming immortal is a matter of technology because mortality is a fatal
hardware-bug that you can't overrun with even the best software). Or
simply checking out different reality-tunnels (which looks very much
like an important part of self-transformation to me, and it is fun).
On the critical side, I can think of no way of "falsifying" most of the
ideas in Prometheus Rising (except for Wilson's too optimistic view of
the future which was falsified by time). I'm afraid any attempt of
falsifying could be simply overcome by saying "this is dogmatic circuit
3 (dogmatic rationalist) argueing". That puts up the question: how
useful are the models explained, to people who use them?
later,
Holger
-- o---------------------------------------------------------------o | "That's the funny thing about memories, isn't it? We are not | | what we remember of ourselves, we are what people say we are. | | They project upon us their convictions - we are nothing but | | blank screens." +$+ Trevor Goodchild in "Aeon Flux" | \_______________________o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| "Best do it so" -?- \ mailto:Holger.Wagner@lrz-muenchen.de | ! http://www.extropy.org ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^% PGP-Fingerprint: BD 78 AE 5A AD 20 91 AC E6 77 A8 B4 12 D1 9C 39