> In large part, I think most of us agree on certain aspects
> of what a 'sane' person would be, as particularly outlined
> in Max More's Extropian Principles - Pancritical
> Rationalism, Practical Optimism, the use of Korzybski's
> E-Prime, as well as the assistance of advancing
> technological augmentations...
I'll have to disagree on several points here. First, I think is possible to be completely sane and irrational. A person who knowingly chooses a noncritical epistemology and metphysics--a devout Christian, for example--is not rational, but otherwise functions adequately according to eir own sub-optimal choices, can interact usefully with others, and is otherwise not "insane", in the sense that ey is competent to make eir own choices, even if they are bad ones. I've always seen E-prime as a gimmick vaguely related to clarity of thought and expression, but it is so easy to come up with murky E-Prime and precise English that I'm not convinced it's a good thing in general. Finally, I'm not yet entirely convinced that optimism is optimal. I do see some of Max's points as valuable, but most of them are just rational. I can't think of a single decision I have made in my life on the basis of optimism that wasn't just a rational choice for other reasons, and even if there were a connection, I wouldn't call a pessimist "insane", even if ey was unpleasant to be around. Indeed, I might seek eir advice before embarking upon some risky venture to see if ey had better ideas about what might go wrong.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC