[extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare

[Brett Paatsch]

Giu1i0 Pri5c0 <gpmap at runbox.com> writes:

> Teilhard    ... was involved in a scientific hoax. But at the same
> time he made a[n] honest attempt to reduce the gap between
> science and mysticism, 

Gui1i0, like you, I like honesty, but how can you tell Teilhard
made an honest attempt? Is the reduction of the gap necessarily
a worthy goal? Must all gaps be closed?

> and he is one of the few writers able to inspire some of that
> sense of awe and wonder that, I believe, we also need to
> cultivate.

Are you in danger of losing your sense of awe already? Does
the whole universe the whole sphere of science and the interplay
of persons have no surprise and wonder for you now? (Please
feel free to treat these questions as rhetorical or not).  Hundreds
of generations of homo-sapiens made do with lives that were short
and imbued with meaning within the context of being short. Heroism
was possible. Things had context. For everything there was a time
and a season under heaven. Want to change that? Quite a few
don't  - how do you figure their motives are they just nitwits or 
could they have some insight into what makes a good life too?

> I agree with Natasha that there are more important things
> [more love and understanding, story-telling, poetry, imagination,
> laughter, fun and companionship] but I would not dismiss 
> religious mysticism either yet. 

Religious mysticism like any other form of mysticism is not exactly
the problem in my view, the problem is the disproportionate
amount of power that flows to a few in democracies when the
many don't or can't think. But the power is not an enabling power
it is a handicapping one. The problem is that the many still vote
and they vote for bread and circuses and promises that cannot 
be kept. Power is not so easy to dismiss as mere mysticism but
it is because mysticism works so well that power concentrates in
the hands of handicappers, many of whom do not realise that
they are themselves handicapped.  

> It has been a very powerful force in the evloution of  humanking,
> for the good and for the bad but always powerful. Perhaps what
> we need is rethinking Teilhard in view of modern science.

Why? The good that men do is often interned with the bones
whereas the evil lives long after. Why not let it be with Teilhard? 
Do you want to retain every skerick of ever person that is good
and noble and let not a single part fall. So do I sometimes. But so
what?

>  Note that if the things we use to say in this forum come
> true, we will soon witness an evolutionary breakthrough 
> caused not by random mutation and selection, but by conscious
> and purposeful intervention of  thinking beings (ourselves).

We say many things in this forum, sometimes good things, insightful
things and sometimes less so. But if the less insightful things go 
unchallenged then maybe they stick too and maybe they should
stick.  

Do you really think that evolution happens "out there" Gui1iO with 
you (or me) watching as observers or do you think rather that it
evolution is a construct, that the mind and matter split is guff and
that what we think is as real as what we do?  I think the notion of
evolution bringing inevitable progress (by the lights of any
subjective individual is) likely to be wrong. Evolution as a process
is indifferent to individuals even as it is moved along by the actions
of individuals. We are more than our genes, this we know, but we
are still determined in part by our genes and we cannot do without
them. There is no proof in principle anywhere (that I can see) that
personhood persists with the passage of the substrate on which it
is based. That is an article of pure faith of belief. 

Everything can be explained away as evolutionary and as inevitable
*after* it happens, but try predicting what evolution will do for you
next week and you'll see how useful evolution is as a construct for
fashioning a particular future. 

Now some of the above may be unadultered crap, but if it is not 
exposed as unadultered crap then it is going into the ears of anyone
and possibly the brains of anyone that reads it. Do extropes let
people poo in their pool? ;-)

Or are long posts ignored - hint take a look at the read count
its indicative, but not conclusive as not all read that way but some
do and bayes says if I am not mistaken that every piece of factual
information can enrich the theory.

Regards,
Brett