From: G.P. <gdotpdot@newsguy.com>
>Samantha first, have been attacked for simply stating fact.
Nope, I was first to be attacked.
>Blind denial of objective reality does not seem very extropian to me.
It is wrong that [...] or Americans should be ashamed that [...] or they had no
right to[...] or the 911 incident was unfortunate but [...] is not objective reality.
I also do not believe her recommendations on how to achieve world peace has
anything to do with the real world, in fact her advice was as lethal as saying
drinking a bottle of iodine will cure baldness.
>It is a fact that many in the underdeveloped non-Western world DO hate us
Yes. So what? Major world powers are never universally loved and never will be,
deal with it.
>Recent history shows that past corrective actions did not work.
Alas that is all too true, firing cruse missiles into empty huts does not work.
> Perhaps we should try something else.
We are, this time we're killing lots of people.
Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org> Wrote:
>extropianism isn't about short-termism. In the long term, she is *right*.
The great thing about making pronouncements on long term stuff is that you don't
have to worry about being proven wrong. I can't help but laugh when some pompous
scholar says that if present trends continue by the year 2060 this and so will happen.
Present trends never continue. Besides, to get to the long term you must first pass
through the short term and I worry about surviving the next 2 years.
>We *do* need a fundamental shift in human behaviour,
Do we now, wow, well then we're going to need a massive program of human
genetic engineering. I'm not sure how much good that will do between now and
the fourth of July however.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:21 MDT