Randy Smith wrote:
>
> >From: Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>
> >Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
> >To: extropians@extropy.org
> >Subject: Re: Fear of Letting People Get Things They Want
> >Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 03:17:36 -0700
> >
> >Randy Smith wrote:
> > >
> > > >"A random person in the world will be chosen, and you get this choice:
> > > >a) Let them have $X more worth of real resources (such as by telling
> >them
> > > >where
> > > >to find an oil reserve that would otherwise remain unfound.)
> > > >b) Nothing happens.
> > > >Which do you choose?
> > > >
> > > I would choose not to give it to him. I do so because I know that if
> >this
> > > person (person Y) is wealthier, then that means that whatever wealth I
> >have,
> > > is lessened. If Joe X wants to sell some property and I want to buy it,
> >then
> > > have if I let this person Y have the oil wealth which would otherwise
> >remain
> > > unfound, then there is more competition for the property I bidding for,
> >and
> > > the price goes up.
> > >
> >
> >That does not follow unless you believe wealth is static.
>
> Hmm. Jargon? Dogma?
Hmm. Knee-jerk? Confusion?
>
> >There is more
> >competition if the person wants the same limited resource as you.
>
> Yes?
>
> >There
> >is also one more person with more resources, which, if used wisely will
> >produce more wealth for you and everyone else.
>
> There was a tribe of protohumans in the valley. Protohuman Mac finds a nice
> chunk of chert (flint), hard to find in the valley. Previously, protohuman
> Joe had the only chunk of chert in the valley and he was going to trade it
> for the semi-rancid gazelle carcass that some other protohuman had found,
> and with that, he was going to lure that comely female protohuman Velma into
> the bushes, and thereby pass on his genes. But now, with his bigger chunk of
> chert, Mac gets to pass on his genes.
> Do you think Joe, if he were not able to get the chert himself, would have
> told Mac where it was? Velma womb is the limited resources here, ultimately.
>
We are not protohumans and the situation is largely different. I don't
find the analogy terribly useful. We are coming into times where we can
tell the local matter assembler to build whatever physical object we
might want/or need and where wombs are not necessarily only available in
warm mammalian bodies of the appropriate gender. My point is why drag
values that work in a much more limited environment into what is
increasingly a much less limited or extremely differently limited one?
Values that are not appropriate to now and to what is coming will get us
killed or at least seriously limit our options.
>
> Bid adieu to the gene pool, then.
>
Uh, increasingly the gene pool is under our own control. Evolutionary
reasoning of this limited scope is irrelevant.
> >There is a survival advantage only in a world of scarcity where even
> >mere surival actually is pretty problematic.
>
> THat's how it was and is. Even now, we often enforce artificial scarcity for
> the most valuable resources in our society (medical care, real estate, etc).
> Even now, wealth is relative.
>
And a lot of that artificial scarcity is created and maintained and is
"artificial" precisely because we haven't figured out how to rethink and
rework our value systems and institutions yet.
> >The trouble is we haven't
> >thought past genetic conditioning that is largely outmoded.
>
> Can you support that statement with examples?
>
It is obvious from the above.
- samantha
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