Yin-Yang (Was: Call for papers)

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
07 Jul 1998 13:52:41 +0200

Leonardo Gonzalez <lion@MIT.edu> writes:

> I would love to contribute some writing. I wrote a paper over a year
> ago, which now resides at www.mit.edu/people/lion/Yin-Yang.html
> Any comments would be appreciated.

Just some throughts as relating to transhumanism.

The great strength of the asian systems is that they are flexible (i.e. don't break down because some people doesn't believe in them or because everything doesn't fit) and have a "systems view" of things. The drawback is that they tend to get stuck in 'cycles', seeking to adapt to and accept the status quo rather than change the situation since change will in the long run just return to the origin.

I think one could make an interesting synthesis of the eastern 'cyclical' point of view and the western 'linear' point of view (ouch, these terms are tired!); a transhuman philosophy that realizes the possibility of irreversible change and progress through both deliberate and self-organized change without getting caught in dualism or comfortable passivity.

(Although I don't buy into that everything has a natural counterpart; what is the natural counterpart of the number 17? Is it -17? 1/17? 4711? Is the question meaningful at all without a context? Is it meaningful in all contexts, or just some?)

-- 
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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