From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Apr 04 2003 - 12:36:19 MST
On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 03:03:57PM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> Ok, I'm going to bring up a topic and may get thrown
> back into the dust for doing so but here goes.
>
> Can anyone currently subscribed to the ExI list cite
> an actual example where due to the list discussion they
> "changed" their mind?
Yes. I became a libertarian rather than strongly apolitical (which was
my teenage creed), and realized that ethics does indeed matter (rather
than being a game for philosophers). I can't point to any particular
post that caused that change since it was rather the effect of
participating in the discourse and having to defend my arguments with
good reasoning. So maybe I didn't change my mind, but I rather grew up.
> Memes are selfish -- they presumably have self-preservation
> motivations and selection criteria. How in the blazes
> can anyone offering an opinion on the ExI list hope to
> "change" someone elses mind? Perhaps a way of looking
> at this is that *all* debate/discussion on the ExI list
> is completely futile -- i.e. it is *never* going to
> produce a productive result -- it violates the "perpetual
> progress", "self-transformation" and "practical optimism"
> principles from the get go -- in turn it violates the
> "rational thinking" and "self-direction" principles --
> why engage in arguments (discussions) that you have no
> hope of winning? [Key point being that winning requires
> people shifting meme-sets and they (the meme-sets) are
> going fight to the death to prevent that.] Are many
> of the list discussions taking place under principles
> of fantasy (i.e. that one can ever change another persons'
> "mind" -- e.g. in effect "execute" a meme-set they may have.)
How fiercely will you defend your opinion about the melting point of
lead or the number of genes involved in photosynthesis? Most likely you
are not attached to those opinions at all, and would gladly change them
if you got better information. Similarly for a lot of more contentious
issues; it might take a lot of examples and evidence, but over time you
would change your mind. There might be memes that are so fiercely
embedded that we cannot change them at all (since we ignore all attempts
to do so), but there is plenty of good things to discuss and learn
anyway.
The point of a mailing list is not to create a memetic monoculture with
the best memes, but to allow memes to spread, recombine, compete and
evolve into new memes.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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