Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> wrote on Tuesday, November 30, 1999 2:56 am,
> Everyone has said everything they're gonna say about qualia. I propose
> this topic be designated a dead horse and banned by voluntary consensus
> from the list. If anyone would care to go over the Extropian archives,
> extract all the posts on the subject, and organize them into some kind
> of giant message tree, it would make a nice tombstone.
Unfortunately, this is a common pattern for Extropians. We cannot debate any area of serious disagreement. Qualia, guns, abortion, homosexuality, the copy question, Privately Produce Law, politics, mysticism, etc. have all been banned at various times because useful debate was not possible. I'm sure many more examples could be found by going through the archives.
How useful can this list be if debate fails upon any real difference of opinion? How can we debate or disagree while maintaining useful dialog?
-- Harvey Newstrom <mailto://newstrom@newstaffinc.com> <http://harveynewstrom.com> Author, Consultant, Engineer, Legal Hacker, Researcher, Scientist.