From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Aug 02 2003 - 15:12:35 MDT
Emlyn writes
> > > We have the whole space of wonderful, complex extropian
> > > ideas to play in; can we drop this moronic crap?
> >
> > What I simply do not understand is how threatened you
> > sound and feel. We *do* have convincing and thoughtful
> > arguments rejecting a great many bad things, and we should
> > not feel put upon to demonstrate from time to time.
> > Some doubter may ask over and over why evolution works,
> > and it would be a big mistake to say that enunciating
> > the reasons was a waste of time.
>
> Sometimes it takes a bit of heat under the collar to motivate writing a post
> like that one. Maybe I'm just human after all. Emotions will creep in at all
> kinds of inconvenient times, the pesky things.
I think that the emotions should be there *all* the time,
and that your essay was a wonderful example of how to
integrate them into one's rational exposition. As I said
before, one should only be semi-confident of one's conjectures
when both one's thought and feelings are in alignment.
> I was pretty angry at the time.
Yes, but no one could tell, which is the *important* part.
And again, I commend you for it.
> I have this hazy idea that genocide is at the extreme edge of
> a package of very nasty memes that are gaining currency
> nowadays in western geopolitics, a package that includes xenophobia,
> intolerance and self righteousness.
So what else is new?
> Fear of the unknown, and ignorant petty selfishness, qualities
> which seem to be encouraged more strongly as time wears on,
Not at all! What decade do you suggest exhibited fewer such
qualities or in which they were less pronounced? (I actually
entertain almost exactly the opposite dread: xenophobia and
intolerance evolved for a reason, and a hand-over-fist abandonment
of those impulses will simply result in the abandoners to be
replaced over time by those less high-minded.)
Things have been getting better for so long that *complacency*
is also something I worry about.
Lee
P.S. As for your question about how safe one feels, I was
thinking that I felt safer than ever---until someone pointed
out that the West really is indeed more vulnerable to terrorist
attacks than we thought before. I think that my own sense of
increased safety simply comes from my repeated acquaintance
with the fact that I am just one person (in the U.S.) out of
2.8x10^8 targets, and that despite the way the newspapers
always dwell on the negative, people who are aware should
be more and more comfortable with the fact that the negative
incidents are truly the exception.
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