[extropy-chat] Top scientist asks: is life all just a dream?

[Samantha Atkins]

On Nov 21, 2004, at 6:00 PM, Rik van Riel wrote:

> On Sun, 21 Nov 2004, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
>> However, the polarization where one sees people like oneself as
>> reasonable and everyone else as bloody weights on the human potential
>> needs to be examined and if possible overcome long before we have the
>> ability to upload anyone.
>
> Enforcing tolerance is a form of intolerance itself.
> I don't think I would want to force anybody to give
> up their ideas, beliefs and/or delusions.
>

Did I say anything though about "enforcing tolerance"?  I don't believe 
I did.  What I talked about cannot be achieved by force.  It can only 
be done by self-examination and transformation.  I doubt we can afford 
to neglect this work for much longer.

> My feeling is that we will have to live with the fact
> that there will always be people around who are
> intolerant of some thing or another - especially of
> other people's religious or social ideologies.

Yep.  But we do get to decide if we are going to do so ourselves or 
not.   It is a good question how to arrange the world, physical and/or 
virtual, so that even rather xenophobic and aggressive groups can exist 
relatively peacefully without significant danger to others.

>
> Add to that the fact that many people, especially
> religious ones, are not in search of immediate
> paradise for themselves.  They are securing their
> place in the afterlife.
>

But why are they securing their place in the afterlife if not because 
they do not believe that any sort of relative paradise is possible here 
in "this vale of tears"?  What if they discovered they were wrong about 
that?  They also believe that death from old age/disease is inevitable. 
  Many of us would like to show that that isn't so either.


> An afterlife that cannot be reached if they choose
> immortality; an afterlife that might be risked by
> abandoning the body that god gave them, to upload
> themselves into "some soulless machine".
>

That is one possibility.  However I doubt if many would cling to that 
interpretation if actually convinced a paradise better than what they 
imagined was possible without dying and without being at the caprice of 
an unknowable and inscrutable god.


> These people have good grounds for viewing our
> transhumanist and/or extropian beliefs with distrust.
>

There are indeed ample grounds for viewing our beliefs and ideas with 
distrust.  We should view them with distrust ourselves as they are in 
some respects quite raw and not fully formed.

> Until either point of view is proven true, they both
> hold similar validity.  I am firmly on the extropian
> side with my personal beliefs, but that doesn't mean
> that my extropian beliefs are any more (or any less)
> valid than other beliefs.

Hmm.  A POV is neither true nor false per se.  Personal beliefs are not 
sacrosanct territory not open to examination by self and others.    If 
you don't think your own beliefs are valid then you frankly have no 
business holding them!

Now on the other hand, I do believe that a particular POV is a point in 
a process space of learning and growing.   People do evolve through 
different POVs over time some more, some less.   At any particular 
moment it can't be said that one POV is "invalid" because later one 
will see things differently.  POV is contextual with one's knowledge, 
freedom to question/examine, psychological structures of the moment, 
culture and so on.    What I was attempting to get at with the comment 
starting this thread is that the entire spiral of human development is 
in fact valid at every point.  But this does not mean that some points 
are not higher/more inclusive/more capable of producing greater 
possibilities than others.    We must stop warring with and disowning 
one another because we have different POVs/believes.   Of course you 
don't see that except from a certain point in the spiral.   Make sense?


- samantha