[extropy-chat] Bashing the brand (was Neural Engineering)

[Anders Sandberg]

fredagen den 19 mars 2004 13.09 wrote Brett Paatsch:
> From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury at aeiveos.com>
>
> > Now, many of you may remember my rather infamous
> > "lets nuke Afghanistan" post of a couple of years ago.
> > This was based on my utilitarian/extropic argument ...
>
> I have to agree with Hubert that this sort of use of "extropic" is
> likely to be harmful to the Extropian brand.

In this case Robert made a mistake, since his reasoning was almost purely 
utilitarian (a brand that I think *rightly* has become harmed by its 
applications) and had very little to do with extropian thinking (other than a 
willingness to go outside the frame of the traditional human). 

However, I hope the neuroengineering discussion can produce a bit more light 
than the former discussion - the issue here is far closer and far more 
problematic. We already have crude tests for psychopathology that could be 
used to find if somebody is a potentially violent person. How should they be 
handled? It is not trivial, although the more radical applications implied by 
Robert in his post (perhaps accidentally) almost certainly are immoral and 
impractical. But cognitive liberty is a serious matter, and not well explored 
in the study of citizen-state or citizen-citizen interactions. 

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

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