From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Sat Jan 25 2003 - 13:33:41 MST
I've had a couple of off list exchanges over the last day
or so that have in some ways enlightened me and in some
ways depressed me.
As some of you know, I sometimes go into "rant mode", in
part to get people to sit up and do some self-examination.
You can label this message semi-rant mode.
I'm on the board of the Extropy Institute. I'm one of the
more frequent contributers to the list (because I have
more free time than most of the other board members).
As I've explained to some people off-list recently I'm
always *forcing* myself to face extropic priorities.
How can I call myself an "extropian" or consider myself
to be a responsible board member if I do not do that
as often as I can look at myself in the mirror?
So how do I set up my extropic priorities?
Aging, malnutrition/starvation (perhaps poverty), AIDS, Malaria,
perhaps murderous tyrants, ...
I take them in a very rigid line of what destroys the most
concentrated information (e.g. human lives) each year. (This is
not guaranteed to be the best approach -- one could take an approach
that tries to save the greatest number of future lives which might
result in a much different weighting.) But it *is* an approach
that I can look at, put some numbers on and evaluate the
extropic "return-on-investment" that I may be receiving.
In my (perfect) world we would be allocating resources
to defeat these problems on a pro rata basis -- to the
extent of the problem so should be the resources devoted
to solving them. I realize that is an idealistic perspective
but it forces one to examine "How close does my "personal"
allocation of resources come to an optimal allocation that
I would like to see for solving the problems?".
I am forced into a conclusion that the ExI mailing list
is pretty far from that ideal. In large part because many
of the conversations do not focus on a couple of key questions.
(1) Will my making these comments make any real difference?
(2) Will the comments produce some "activity" that results
in progress on the "extropic" scale (either the one I've defined
for myself or your own personal scale)?
If you do not answer those questions before you hit the reply
key, then I don't think you can legitimately consider oneself
an extropian. You don't have to answer the questions affirmatively
but one does need to engage in some self-examination as to one is
adding "signal" to the list or whether one is producing nothing but
noise. And then adding "signal" is perhaps not enough -- is that
signal going to produce concrete changes in reality? If it doesn't
produce concrete changes in reality (presumably of an extropic nature)
then *why* the f*** are you wasting your time posting to this list
if for any other reason to listen to oneself go mumble mumble mumble?
The question is "Do you merely want to be right?" or "Do you want
to see reality (really) change?". If you want to see reality (really)
change it is probably not going to be by debates & postings to the
extropian list -- it is going to be by getting away from the extropian
list and discovering avenues that produce real action.
My 2 cents, semi-rant mode off.
Robert
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