[extropy-chat] Hubert Mania's comments

[Greg Burch]

I've been out of the country on business with only intermittent email connection, have tons of paying work to catch up on and am only now SKIMMING posts to this list from the last week.  From what I can see, Robert's post was entirely personal and not in any way an expression of "extropian" ideas.  I think he was wrong, although I tend to agree with him about the significance of the threat to civilization posed by militant Islam.  Perceiving that threat can lead one to wrong conclusions about the proper use of force, especially if one hasn't made a close study of history or ethics.  Thus, although I perceive the threat of militant Islam to be dire indeed, I find solutions such as the one mooted by Robert to be morally wrong and ultimately ineffective, anyway.  Instead, unfortunately, I think the world is fated to suffer from a dangerous and painful inefection of the Islamic mind-virus for a very long time.

Hubert Mania's had an extremely negative view of ExI and this list for a long time.  I'm not surpised at all that he would pick a post like Robert's to tar our whole community of common interest.  He's wrong, but then that's what people do when they think they're "fighting for the soul" of something.  They see things in Manichean terms of good guys and bad guys and think that it is important for "their side" to win at any cost, including misrepresenting the views of a lot of people.

Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net