The "Extropians" have formed a distinct culture containing its own rules,
standards, art, terminology, and mailing list. To the extent that this
culture professes idealistic and technophilic goals, promotes the public image
of AI, cryonics, and other frequently targeted technologies, provides
psychological support for those researchers who happen to be Extropians, and
encourages fresh blood to join the cause, Extropy can be viewed as a positive
affector to the Singularity and its subgoals. Extropian art, Extropian
terminology, and discussions about such utterly useless subjects as sex and
fashion should be viewed as supporting Extropy itself, rather than Extropy's goals.
In other words, the causal structure is as follows:
{ culture } [ P.R. ] { uploading }
{ terminology } TO "Extropy" TO [ recruiting ] TO { Singularity }
[ mailing list ] {culture} { psy. support } { nanotech }
{ art } [ forethought ] [ survival ]
There are more efficient paths, especially if you're willing to dedicate your
entire life - which is why I am no longer subscribed to the mailing list.
Have a nice day. By the way, I now own a "Singularity 2005" T-Shirt
[ T-Shirt ] TO [ conversations at cons ] TO [ psy. support ]
which, to the best of my knowledge, is the first of its kind. Do I own a
priceless collector's item or an unoriginal followup? Anybody know?
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.