From: Alex Ramonsky (alex@ramonsky.com)
Date: Tue Jun 17 2003 - 12:43:04 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>Amara Graps wrote,
>
>
>>I consider it a lost battle.
>>
Well...having 'lurked' on a few threads without joining in recently,
although the afterburn lingers long enough to make me nervous about
joining in this one, I do feel there is a more positive and realistic
outlook on the list now than at anytime in the last 2 years.
>
>I tried in the beginning to correct what
>errors I saw, but it became an enormous chore. The answer for me is
>to not respond to what little that I read that misrepresents me.
>
There are a lot of very clever people on this list. By 'clever' I mean
they know a lot of facts, are competent in maths and the sciences, take
an interest in world (or at least US) affairs, and are very very good at
the sort of skills that enable us to pass IQ tests.
There is another organisation which is fairly similar to the extropians.
It is MENSA. One can join (subject to that all-important IQ, of course),
and, similarly, discuss matters of religion, politics, ethics and logic,
as well as special interest groups for sci-fi., bird-watching or whatever.
The two lists have a lot in common. 1. There is a subset of people who
think they are more intelligent than people with low IQ. They are not.
They are just more clever. 2. There is a subset of people who think that
religion and/or politics are a great deal more important than scientific
evidence would imply. They are not. They are just louder. Subset 2 in
both groups has something in common. Roughly 80% of its members are
unprofessional, rude, immature, emotionally challenged, and insecure in
that arrogant, derogatory way which only facile cleverness can accomplish.
These people have a great ability to construct arguments in complex
networks of semantics. They can do almost anything with words in the
same way that you can prove almost anything with numbers and statistics,
regardless of its truth. What matters to them is not the issue under
discussion, whatever it is; what matters to them is polishing their egos
and saying 'I am right. Mine is the superior intellect.' These people
treat their Left Hemispheres like Arnie treats his muscles,
unfortunately at the expense of the midbrain and frontal cortex. There
is not a scrap of creative intellect available to them and they never
actually _do_ anything. They talk and talk and criticise a lot, yet seem
unable to plan, construct or achieve anything concrete or even in
imagination (which may be the problem). They are, to put it kindly,
'emotionally challenged'.
Remember I am talking about a subset here; not the whole group. You
'do-ers' know who you are. Without you, we are all lost : )
What matters is that in both groups, subset two is the noisy part. The
whole group gets misrepresented as subset two jumps on every topic and
every discussion and reduces it to toilet level. Serious debaters
vanish, if they've got any sense, the moment unprofessional, immature
behavior starts hitting the fan. Anyone with any degree of intelligence
cannot help but notice stupidity.
Harvey and Amara's comments are both timely and enlightning. I attempted
to make this point about a year ago but my comments were mistaken for an
attempt at censorship. Censorship is not necessary wherever discussion
is civilised.
It's about time we took responsibility for these memes that are being
connected with us in the public eye, without our apparent knowledge or
consent. If the ExI list content could actually work _against_ us in
relation to the singularity, what are we doing? said Pooh, scratching
his head and walking around in circles...
AR
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