Re: Extropian public image

YakWax@aol.com
Sat, 21 Jun 1997 09:11:42 -0400 (EDT)


On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Max More wrote:

> How will you implement this policy? You can present the milder aspects of
> these ideas to non-transhumanists but then, when they look at your web
> sites or literature, they will see all those wild ideas. How do you plan to
> segment the market? Will you set up different web sites and print different
> literature for the different audiences? If so, how do you prevent
> crossover? (A quick web search and the non-transhumanists will find the
> explicitly transhumanist sites.)

First you teach them how to think like a transhumanist. Discussion of more
radical ideas should be just that, discussion of ideas. Don't say "this is
how it's going to be" but "it's going to be how you want it to be", then put
them all in a discussion forum and let them decide how they want it to be.

> I'm facing this issue very clearly now as I write my book The Augmented
> Animal. I don't want to tone it down yet I'm trying to make the ideas
> appealing and reasonable to the average reasonably intelligent reader who
> hasn't heard of many of these ideas before. (A tough and smart editor helps
> with this!)

When I read Engines of Creation the first time the thing that had the
greatest effect on me was not the possibilities of nano-technology, but how
it is already used within us. Making people take a look around them to see
how amazing the world is already will often soften the blow of radical
concepts.

~Wax