[extropy-chat] Priorities: Longevity, food or viruses?

[Anders Sandberg]

I think it is a mistake to see the organic movement's resistance to
biotechnology and Kass' bioethics as different things. Politically they
come from different ends of the spectrum, but there are many intriguing
memetic links (*) and for all practical purposes they can be viewed as
stasist in Postrel's sense. And they are smart enough to work together
with other groups that are similarly minded, forming powerful political
forces. This is  an area where we must fight memetically, to a large
extent by doing the same: by linking to other fellow minds, finding key
issues to battle and to formulate ideology so that it may spread.

Then we have the practical issues. If we can come up with smart solutions
to issues of viral mutation, the stability of modern agbio in times of
disruption or similar matters, we should go for it. Being an example by
doing something is powerful memetics. But the "we" here is most likely the
people who come up with the ideas and technologies, it is they who have
the real chance to get them turn real. We others can just cheer them on.
Because when it comes to allocating resources we are all individuals ("not
me" noted a borg) and have to allocate our time-effort resources where we
think we make the most benefit. As a movement it seems likely that the
efforts we spend "for the movement" should be directed at what benefits
the movement the best, and that is likely the memetic issues (since that
is really the only thing that defines us).


(*) The organic movement seems to have originated from a far more
conservative bed than it currently is: religious utopian communes,
Kellogg's style religious-nutritional dieting and food scares (where
bodily impurity was equated with spritual impurity) and various romantic
back-to-the-land movements. In Europe these had some very naughty links to
the messy idology of a certain Reich (on the other hand, what movement
didn't?). At the core there still exists a fundamentally conservative view
that nature is right, and regardless of whether you put God behind it, see
nature as God or just talk about a "natural order" that mustn't be
disturbed the result is the same and nicely compatible once you see beyond
surface politics. This also means that countering practical arguments
against GMO or transhumanism only deals with surface issues, we should
actually discuss the deep ones too, like our view on the meaning of
(trans)life.


-- 
Anders Sandberg
http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa
http://www.aleph.se/andart/

The sum of human knowledge sounds nice. But I want more.