"Freeman Craig Presson" <dhr@iname.com> writes:
> On 8 Aug 99, at 13:34, Technotranscendence wrote:
>
> > Question: How do you think dialectics relates to transhumanism and
> > Extropianism?
Isn't much of the best in transhumanism and extropianism just dialectic arguments? I re-read some old extropy issues on the flight home from Extro, and was impressed by some of the pro-con articles where email debates had been turned into useful policy analysis of e.g. nanarchy.
> Most of our discussions today don't require better logic[1], they require
> better communication about premises.
I guess one could think of a transhumanist "technology of dialectics", the application of technology (i.e. mainly software) to the problem of improving dialectics through (say) FAQs, hypertext, backlinks, various forms of filtering etc. This would mainly improve the communication, especially by extending the effective memory span of participants.
> Postscriptum: I expect sapients will always enjoy conundra. Questions that
> show us the limitations of thought are valuable and entertaining. Too high a
> Spock factor will make for a very dry intellectual future.
Didn't Spock find conundra fascinating? In a world of Spocks, only the Kirks will feel bored :-)
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