Re: Of Baboons, Weasels and Sneeches (Was: Re: STORY: The Transhumanist Racist)

den Otter (neosapient@geocities.com)
Wed, 9 Jun 1999 12:42:09 +0200


> From: Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se>
> "den Otter" <neosapient@geocities.com> writes:
>
> > > From: Michael S. Lorrey <mike@lorrey.com>
> > > QueeneMUSE@aol.com wrote:
> > >
> > > > It's the Star Belly Sneech story.
> > >
> > > One of my favorites. To me it illustrated how stupid the whole race/difference
> > > thing is...
> >
> > Actually, it's stories like this that are stupid; they support the myth that
> > the whole "race/difference thing" is just a matter of some irrelevant
> > exterior features
>
> I don't know about Dr Seuss (BTW, thanks everybody for explaining the
> reference to me), but in my story (if Dr Zuckermann was right) there
> were real differences. But technology can make these differences
> irrelevant or even useful.

True. The question is: will that technology ever become evenly destributed? Note that while giving everyone an equal opportunity is fine, it would of course be *very* stupid to intentionally make some other race "superior". The same goes for artificial "races", (i.e. AIs) of course.

> Then of course we can start arguing about
> how large the differences are in real life and if they are truly
> relevant compared to other factors;

Well, IMO it's all a matter of percentages; only a relatively small portion of a race/group is responsible for its success/progress etc, and for some reason this group has been marginalized in places like Africa, while in Europe they managed to create a positive feedback loop which allowed more and more people to realize their "full" potential, thus fuelling further progress. So what is the key ingredient here?