My Fears

From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 10:40:17 MDT

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    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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