Re: How Extropians Live Their Lives was: Optimism

From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Sun Jul 20 2003 - 18:16:06 MDT

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    On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 09:47:54AM +0200, Anders Sandberg wrote:
    > On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 07:14:49PM -0700, Dan Fabulich wrote:
    > >
    > > Perhaps my imagination is simply drained, but it's hard to see what kind
    > > of work I can usefully do in my free time, to contribute to the
    > > ultratechnologies.
    >
    > goals (or even worse, dangerous or subhumanity-causing). Here we need
    > people participating in the public debate to make the transhumanist
    > position acceptable at the negotiation table, here we need people

    As I said years ago, worrying about selling transhumanism or extropianism
    might seem premature when humanism and the Enlightenment aren't exactly
    secure. Being a math or science tutor might be a specific way of helping
    other people toward our world. Don't worry at all about exposing them to
    nanotech or AI ideas; just help people not be afraid of numbers, or to
    understand what goes on in science. You can do this as a volunteer (might
    have to, for younger kids) or for money. (I'm trying to do that here,
    although I haven't gotten many responses yet. Haven't put out flyers yet
    either, though, I'm just on a math department website. The risks of passive
    optimism. But I helped one woman with calculus and a man with simple geometry
    and fractions.) There's also being an English tutor, of course.

    Seem like small stuff? It is. But there are 280 million people in the US
    alone, never mind the rest of the world. Face it, almost anything you do will
    be small, because the world is big. But it's made up of lots of small
    actions. And there are lots of other ideas: participating in public debates,
    writing public letters, being a political activist, holding a seminar, writing
    a book, yadda yadda.

    -xx- Damien X-)



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