Go "Old Farts" Go!

Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Tue, 3 Dec 1996 20:52:23 -0800 (PST)


Hal Finney writes:
>I agree with Max's general point here, and in fact I wonder if there
>shouldn't be something about critical thinking and skepticism added
>to the Extropian Principles. It's great to be optimistic, energetic,
>and future oriented, but at the same time you have to be very careful
>that you don't get sucked into some seductive but misleading ideas.

I'd like to say that I've been pleased by the degree of skepticism of
claims of all sorts shown on the Extropians list lately. One person
posts some enthusiastic but not particularly rigourous analysis of
some future change, and then one or more others jump in to point out
the holes in their analysis. I love it! I wish we had the last
month of messages archived so we could point people toward it, esp.
those who think of us as a bunch of loopy Calif. "its all going to be
great" airheads.

Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/