From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Mar 29 2003 - 04:24:16 MST
On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 05:58:44PM -0800, Cory Przybyla wrote:
> What are recommendations for the best way to spread
> transhuman memes to the more resistant population,
> which also seems to be in the vast majority?
The key is making the memes thinkable. If you were
promoting (say) socialism, environmentalism or
conservatism you would find it far easier, since these are
memes that belong to the "playing field" of people. They
might disagree vehemently, but these ideas are part of the
accepted discourse. Transhumanism isn't part of it, and
hence will not be easy to spread or get people to take
seriously. Even if many people know about an idea it will
not be part of "real" discussions - a lot of people know
about the Raelians and their views, but they are not taken
seriously.
The key is not to try to spread the meme widely, since
that will mainly fail to convince people in the current
situation. Instead it is to enlarge the playing field to
include transhumanism as one view it is possible to have.
That requires another strategy.
> Now I know a lot of people on this list have probably
> had successes dealing with the
> professional/intelligensia, but since we definetely
> need as least some of the working class, the middlemen
> of society (I'm not being insulting, I'm one of them),
> to come around I'd like to know if anyone has had much
> success intriguing people on transhuman memes. Or if
> anyone just has suggestions on things to say, ways to
> approach this.
Where do these people get their ideas from? Who determines
what is acceptable or serious to think, and what isn't?
The answer is that it is the intelligensia that does this,
in a kind of cascade effect: the obscure discussions among
academics affect highbrow journals and their pundits, who
in turn speak with politicians, experts and media. And the
media spreads out the memes from this core group. The flow
of memes is to a large extent unidirectional; at least the
flow "downwards" is far more intense than the "upwards"
flow. This means that if you want to reach the "common
people" you will have far more effect by making your case
to the central core and then let is spread memes than to
spend time convincing people you meet.
Still, everything helps. One good way of making people
more amenable to think about transhuman things is to show
them "evidence" from the media - "Look! These nobel prize
winners are in favor of genetic engineering, and here is
their explanation why. You can check their arguments for
yourself. And here is an article about how the handicap
organizations are wrestling with bionics. And over here is
a paper about memory enhancement and how much Wall Street
invests in it. Do you still think I'm a lone crazy?"
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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