Sorry for my delayed response, but I've been out of town on a snowboarding
foray (shudder of delight); sorry for the curt reply, but now I've got a lot
of work to catch up on (plain old shudder).
In a message dated 3/17/01 1:10:53 AM, Robert (bradbury@aeiveos.com) wrote in
relevant part:
>If we assume that extropian principles are those striving for
>increasing complexity and sophistication (this may be vulnerable
>to attack, but lets assume it for a minute) -- and *if* we assume
>that conscious entities are inherently valuable and you cannot
>infringe on their right to self-determine whether or not they should
>continue to exist do we not have an inherent conflict?
I'm not sure it's helpful to grant the first assumption even arguendo, as it
does not specify whether extropians seek to increase complexity, etc. at a
*personal* level or a *universal* one. I'd argue for the former
interpretation on a number of grounds. That takes care of much and maybe all
of the supposed conflict with the second assumption, though I would want to
hear more specificity about the rights of sims to processing cycles. Do they
have a welfare right to computational resources? I should think that the
same arguments against welfare rights generally apply in this instance,
though perhaps sims bear some sort of ward/guardian relationship with their
sysops. But in that event, the sims lack full moral agency and thus cannot
claim fully liberty rights. So the supposed conflict between extropian
principles and sims' rights becomes simply a hard choice in circumstances of
limited resources--unwelcome and perhaps even tragic, but not fatally
contradictory.
T.0. Morrow
http://members.aol.com/t0morrow/T0Mpage.html
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