From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Jul 20 2003 - 13:52:57 MDT
Hubert had written
> > In some extreme cases I guess it is appropriate to attack someone
> > personally, so she or he gets a chance to reevaluate his/her thoughts.
> > Whenever it comes to the support of killing people for any cause whatsoever,
> > except for self defense I think I even have the obligation for a personal
> > attack.
I think you are being stupid.
It never accomplishes anything whatsoever to engage in personal
attacks. At least it doesn't with people of any individuality
or who have any backbone at all. Not only that, but it has
nearly zero information content. Look at my opening blast above.
What does it convey except my own state of mind, and my own silly
intolerance?
I can agree that if we were all in a control room aboard an atomic
satellite circling the Earth, and Robert said, "Let's just destroy
North Korea---it would take only about 300 H-bombs", then perhaps
one probably should not suppress one's emotional reaction. But
that's because Robert may be standing too near the button, and one
needs to get his attention (like he says below). But for God's
sake THIS IS A DISCUSSION. If I want to BLOW UP THE WHOLE WORLD
BECAUSE i THINK THAT SUFFERING IS BAD AND HAPPINESS IS HARDLY
ANY GOOD AT ALL, THEN IT IS POINTLESS FOR EVERYONE TO JUST GET
EMOTIONAL AT ME.
Sorry. (I hope that my mixed irony/loss of self control is not
without its entertaining aspects.)
Robert writes
> In this case I would have to side with Hubert
Traitor.
> -- there are extreme cases where one has to whack someone in
> the side of the head to get them to "reevaluate his/her thoughts"
> (myself included).
Not in a *rational* email discussion. I have too much respect
for you to suppose that I cannot get your attention through
logical and rational argumentation.
> > When Robert Bradbury made his sick nuking proposal the other day, he did
> > express a monstrous, ultimate example of the ugliness of utilitarian
> > philosophy, moral depravity and mega-fascism: wiping out a huge group of
> > humans for his beloved fetish, called technological advance.
You see, Hubert, there is a fascist threat implicit in your
language. You know what we do to sick people, don't you?
We round them up and ultimately send them to clinics, or,
in more blunt language, re-education centers, or cutting to
the chase: the gulag. If you can just get ENOUGH people to
agree with you that certain thoughts and actions are *sick*,
then you are well on your way to enforcing thought conformity.
Don't these tendencies within you scare you at all?
I appeal to your rational mind, and what I hope is your love
of free expression. Name calling and personal attacks are
ultimately a threat---when it comes right down to it---a form
of textual aggression that bypasses the rational parts of our
minds and strikes fear into our primate centers. Get unpopular
enough and... well, you know..., the midnight knock on the door
will be coming.
In skeptics like me, moreover, the very fact that you resort to
calling Robert's proposal "sick" provides a strong hint that not
only would you prefer (in some deep dark recess of your mind) to
use force to silence or control others, but that you happen to
lack objective, rational, and logical arguments against the
proposal itself!
Robert bows once again:
> Yep, I'll plead guilty, on some days I'm a hard-core extropian --
Weak-kneed traitor and sycophant.
But finally Robert now resorts to Extropian, rational discourse:
> i.e. we either advance civilization as fast as we possibly can
> (complexification) or we might as well write it all off now as
> a pointless exercise (odds are given our current understanding
> of physics we all end up dead anyway)
Either/or? Sounds like a semantic error to me.
> -- so all you are arguing for is the extension of an entirely
> futile existence for billions of people who happen to think
> they have "free will" (realizing of course that their experience
> of "pleasure", "pain", "free will", etc. has been dictated by a
> random set evolutionary accidents.
Futile existence? Sorry, I missed a segue here. But anyway,
maybe you need to read Dennett's new book "Freedom Evolves".
Futility is in the eye of the beholder, whereas there happens
to be NO conflict between free will and determinism. Of course
I am the product of accidents of evolution, but happy day---here
I am!
> Evolution doesn't care whether humanity survives or becomes extinct.
> If you are going to propose that we should "care" about humanity
> then you need to explain what parts of it we should save and why.
We need to save ourselves (and the rest of the universe from
remaining dead like it is now) because that would be enjoyable,
provide satisfaction, fulfillment, and meaning. (Given adequate
technology, it will be easy to wire our brains to experience
those and even more that we cannot even now imagine!)
> With regard to functioning as a fill-in for "Hitler, Goering
> and Goebbels" you will have a hard time making such labels stick.
Attaboy! You tell him, Robert!
> The reasons for this are as follows:
> a) I have no agenda of my own to push (the only agenda I am looking at is
> the extropian agenda which I view as a possible path for the maximization
> of the longevity of intelligence in the universe);
> b) I don't strongly care if I survive.
I do not disapprove of your (a), that is your choice.
As for (b), your brain is simply not working quite
right (as you know vastly, vastly better than I).
You logically should care very much that you survive
because untold gratification, ecstasy, fulfillment,
joy, satisfaction, contentment, varishing, skrenning,
and vastening are just around the corner. (The last
three taken from Henry Kuttner's "The Proud Robot",
wherein the robot experiences things as yet unknown
to humans.) (The "vastening" has an entirely
different meaning than the transhumanist usage.)
So however you currently feel (and I'm with you---often
my life is no bed of roses), logically one must admit
the very real possibility of future bonanza.
Logic grabs you by the throat and FORCES you to acknowledge
that immesurably vast upcoming gratification is a possibility.
And even if there were only a one-percent chance of getting
there, you MUST logically appreciate it! You MUST repeat
these truths all the time, regardless of how one feels.
Lee
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