Re: A Race of humanoid drones for labor.

Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Mon, 2 Sep 1996 14:22:05 +0200 (MET DST)


[The title of this thread has become subtly ironic :-)]

On Sun, 1 Sep 1996, Chris Hind wrote:

> >} 21st century. You will see alot of people getting REALLY smart REALLY fast
> >And if they don't worry about the people not adapting, someone's going
> >to be REALLY dead. I can't say which side it will be, of course.
> Let them eat cake. :) No, there would be a rebellion so we must develop
> memes to cram more info into the shallow minded.

Either that, or learn how to build fortresses. And I think most us prefer
to avoid that.

The big problem is that regardless of how good we are at memetic
distribution, there will be differences that grow exponentially. What we
truly need, is an ethics, a society, a system of being that can handle
extreme differences between people - not just in wealth, but also in
knowledge, goals and form of being.

But spreading good memes are always a good idea. [Exercise for the
reader: is this meme good?]

> Here is an idea. We should
> list all the things (ie. trances) you can do by concentration and thinking
> as well as techniques that make memes highly contageous (sp?) and then
> create a meme such as the Gaia theory with an extropian twist to spread
> extropianism like a religion across the globe. Could work!

Not necessarily as a religion (but Church of Virus is working on that),
but as a good idea. I think the self-help memes could be combined and
enhanced in some ways.

A sketch of good "meat" for the meme:

Creativity techniques (questioning assumptions, using random objects in
new combinations, etc)

The idea that you can control your mental state and growth (which is
*very* subversive to many people)

Mindmapping, mnemonics etc: "Our brains are trees or webs - use it!".

A sketch of useful hooks:

Good for you, will help you (we tend to do things that are good for us,
and try to help our friends by giving them the idea)

Cool (Some memes give social standing to those who follow them)

Funny.

Ideally, this meme or meme-complex should be compressed into a slogan,
which can spread and open up minds to the main meme complex (a bit like
how a virus enters a cell).

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Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
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