On 9/29/98 Robin Hanson wrote:
< I for one am very curious to understand exactly
what they mean by science sticking its nose where it
doesn't belong. >
Not sure exact understanding is possible in such
matters, but a very intelligent (though lengthy)
essay on this subject that may be of interest is Erik
Davis's "Technoculture and the Religious
Imagination", available at
http://www.ljudmila.org/nettime/zkp4/05.htm
Extropians and "mystical positivism" are even
mentioned in this text, eg:
"... within the frenzied edges of Extropian
technoculture -- Artificial Intelligence, digital
immortality, and the radical separation of body and
mind".
This is not an anti-science rant by any means. For
example, part of the conclusion notes:
"We all know the neo-Luddites are wrong -- we cannot
and should not escape technology. But neither can we
escape the technologies of the self, the inevitable
problem of how we engineer, direct (and release
control over) our own emotions, intuitions, and
energies, our own qualities of awareness and
imagination. If we abjure one apparatus, we find
ourselves plugged into another, so why not probe and
explore the technologies of the sacred?"
P.S. A revised and expanded version of Davis's
article is also available, in several parts, in the
Nettime archives
http://www.factory.org/nettime/archive/0788.html
continuing at 0787.html and 0786.html.