RE: Optimism [Was: flame wars]

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Jul 21 2003 - 20:52:26 MDT

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    On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

    >
    > > Bryan Moss writes:
    > >
    > >> I say the following with complete confidence: there will
    > >> be no Yudkowskian Singularity, the copy is not the
    > >> original, the creation of the first assembler will not cause
    > >> an immediate revolution in manufacturing.
    >
    > ### Wow, the poltergeist of complete confidence about the future is haunting
    > the list again.

    Rafal hits the mark... I hereby nominate this observation as
    "right-on". The reason being that I'm perhaps currently in the
    community dog house (perhaps with reason) for trying to wrestle
    with the problem of how to manage our collective "future". If
    it were possible to trust Bryan's predictions then I could have
    avoided the problem entirely.

    Mind you -- I trust the opinions of others on the list enough
    (even though I have not been able to go through Bryan's comments
    in detail because I've been dealing with other problems) to
    believe that most of Bryan's recent posts may be extremely useful
    but the above citation (which of course may be taken out of
    context) does raise an eyebrow or two.

    Hmmm... I think we need an extropian definition for "hubris"
    that goes significantly beyond that which I may (on rare
    occasions) demonstrate.

    Which raises some interesting questions -- Eliezer's or Robin's
    hubris is justified, generally apparent and is an aspect of
    their personalities that one includes in "who they are" (completely
    justified IMO). But one has to wonder (at least I do) -- where
    is Anders' hubris? Is it accumulating somewhere? Is it lurking,
    waiting to spring out upon us? Should we all be glad he lives in
    a country where it is dark much of the year -- or should we be
    really worried.

    I don't know.
    Robert



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