[extropy-chat] Gentle Seduction (was Alexander, fish, barrel)

[David Lubkin]

At 08:42 PM 1/23/2004 -0800, Spike wrote:

>Smart-ass jokes make news stories readable.  A certain percentage of 
>people will read the stories, laugh, then stop laughing and realize that 
>the extropians are absolutely right.  Thats how I found this outfit: 
>article in Skeptical Inquirer about 7 or 8 yrs ago.

Sometimes there's a delayed effect. A relative wrote to me once, "Your 
predictions always sound impossible, and then I wait a few years, and they 
mysteriously come true."

Has anyone looked at what has been effective in luring and persuading 
people into embracing (or at least acknowledging) space industrialization, 
nanotech, genemod, libertarianism, cryonics, life extension, etc.? And, 
conversely, what doesn't work?

Has one of the following had a markedly greater effect than the others --

(a) seminal books or articles ("That Which is Seen and That Which is Not 
Seen," The Age of Spiritual Machines),
(b) short stories or novels ("The Gentle Seduction," The First Immortal, 
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress),
(c) tv or movie (The Patriot, Highlander (tv, not movie), Dark Angel, The 
Six Million Dollar Man),
(d) print or broadcast journalism (John Stossel, Nova, Scientific American 
Frontiers),
(e) eloquent public speaker (Kurzweil, Bear, Sowell, Friedman, Bova), or
(f) committed friends or relatives ?

I assume we need as many avenues as possible simultaneously for as long a 
period as possible, because (a) some people are persuaded by one route and 
not another and (b) most people are persuaded through repetition. But if we 
know that certain specific pitches have shown the best results, that's 
where the central focus should be.


-- David Lubkin.