On Mon, Aug 06, 2001 at 07:18:30AM -0700, Technotranscendence wrote:
> On Monday, August 06, 2001 1:32 AM Anders Sandberg asa@nada.kth.se wrote:
> > I'm one of those crazy 100% libertarians.
>
> I suspected as much. Welcome aboard!:)
Thanks! I came out of the closet on this relatively recently.
> > I find it amusing, since only a
> > few years ago I would most likely have been a centrist or left liberal; I
> > have steadily drifted into the libertarian quadrant and become more
> extreme
> > in my views. Somehow I had imagined that as I got older my views would
> > soften, but perhaps it is just that I'm turning adolescent :-)
>
> Maybe it will be a long adolescence!
Maybe that is another goal to strive for besides life extension: asymptotic
adolescence.
> A certain critic of posthuman ideas told me he fears life extension because
> he thinks the old will become more powerful and less likely to change
> ideologically in beneficial ways.
Well, the old are becoming more powerful even without radical life
extension (50% of the japanese population will be 60 or above in 2100), so
we would have to deal with that in any case.
Often I think this fear is due to the stereotype that old people are set in
their ways, and that makes them natural conservatives. There might also be
an element in that old people tend to have acquired funds throughout life
and hence are richer, which in public choice-ish self interest would
suggest there is at least a bias in certain political questions. But I'm
not certain how strong these effects really are or if they are truly bad.
And even if they are, it would IMHO still be ethical to go for life
extension.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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