From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 10:40:17 MDT
Many people have contacted me offline because of recent comments I have been
making. I have a long history of being frustrated with the Extropians
movement and particularly this list. I drop out, I drop in, and I argue a
lot. I was among the first subscribers to this list at the end of the '80s
decade. Now, I have just turned 40, and I am not sure that we are
accomplishing anything.
Instead of arguing over historical activities or pushing the burden of proof
back and forth, I have decided to start a new discussion to try to address
my fears.
My biggest concern right now is that, in general, most Extropians lack the
scientific expertise or understanding to support the evaluations and
predictions we make. I fear that we are more like salespeople and
advertisers who make unfounded claims for their product with no support. We
are almost like a cult that selectively quotes scientific articles to
support our pre-conceived ideas. Without going into examples, I am
constantly seeing people quoting scientific studies and totally
misrepresenting what the study says. More often than not, people on this
list dispute the study's final outcome and then reinterprets the data the
way we want, and claim that the study supports our viewpoint.
How do we know if we know what we are doing? One idea I had was to find out
how many experts we had in each technology area. This idea was quickly shot
down with people disputing "experts" and arguing that non-experts are
important too. While this is very true, it didn't help my suspicions that
we are mostly outsiders merely guessing at this stuff. If we aren't
experts, (or maybe even anti-expert!) then on what basis do we claim any
knowledge or support for our ideas that are outside the mainstream?
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, IAM, GSEC, IBMCP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> <www.Newstaff.com>
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