Singularitarians (was Guns)

Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Thu, 3 Jun 1999 09:05:16 -0700 (PDT)

> > Question: As us Extropians accelerate faster and faster away from
> > "mainstream" society ( or even more extreme, the great teeming unwashed
> > masses), how do you see society as a whole reacting to us?
>
> Huh? Society is catching up to the Extropians, while the Extropian
> ideology per se is basically standing still. Look at _The Matrix_!
>
> The Singularitarians are as extreme as transhumanism gets - does anyone
> dispute that? - and I'm as extreme as Singularitarians get, and I, at
> least, don't think your average guy is going to notice much difference
> between me and Robin Hanson.

I thought Robin was a Singularity skeptic--one of the few things I agree with him about. I remember the panel discussion at Extro3, when everyone seemed to more or less agree with Carl Feynmann's model of an intelligent being inventing a more intelligent being and so on, Robin was the only one to say "Wait a minute; people don't create things in isolation, economies create things." Of course it may well be that a Singularity will be achieved when we get to the point of doubling the whole economy in a short time.

But more on topic (there was a topic here, wasn't there), I think it can be good to measure public reaction to ideas, and indeed some previously radical Extropian ideas are becoming less so. Perhaps we are stagnating. If one is not being attacked by the public as an extremist, then one isn't thinking forward enough. 

--
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