Re: Extropian Standpoint on Capital Punishment?

Dr. Rich Artym (rartym@galacta.demon.co.uk)
Wed, 11 Sep 1996 08:36:06 +0100


In message <Pine.SOL.3.91N2x.960910133338.10635D-100000@bingo.nada.kth.se>,
Anders Sandberg writes [left-right axis corrected]:

> A left-right scale for collectivism vs. individualism,
> A forward-backward scale for change vs. conservatism,
> An up-down scale for movement towards the future (transhumanism) or towards
> the past (i.e back to nature luddism)
>
> Extropianism is for example right-forward-up in this diagram.

I like Anders' addition of more dimensions to the description space, but
Max's point is very important I feel: to paraphrase it, nothing is black
or white anymore. Anders' placement of Extropianism in the above space
provides a very good example, because in the black-and-white world all the
most common futurist ideologies lie at the same right-forward-up corner.
Certainly transhumanism and Extropianism and even my TransIndividualism
become indistinguishable under that coarse 0/1 quantisation.

To take Max's point on board, we need to get out of the black-and-white
world and accept the continuum within the cube. Only then will we be able
to speak about the shades of grey that make up the real world, and in so
doing, those labels that cause everyone such aggravation might hopefully
get left behind.

Even better than that, this approach opens up the possibility of genuine
scalar comparison along the dimensions selected, and that is halfway
to having strongly objective discussions about these elusive subjects.
That would be a significant achievement.

Rich.

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