[extropy-chat] Politics: Transhumanist Social System

[Adrian Tymes]

--- The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> You said it, Adrian. I have tried on several
> occassions to start objective non-partisan threads
> about politics, and 2 posts into it, the partisans are
> already name calling and grand-standing.

*nods*  Many a thread on this list has gone to my Trash folder unread
after being taken over in precisely that manner.

> It may be
> necessary to create an abstract fictional "model
> society" with problems similar to our own as an
> exercise. Then everyone can objectively think of
> solutions to these problems, rather then resorting to
> partisan ad-hominem and such.

Nice idea, but if it's abstract and fictional, couldn't people just
make up whatever facts and data they wanted to satisfy their theories?
For example, in a society with strong democratic traditions but an
increasingly politically active luddite religious movement (which
itself may be a not entirely accurate analog), how would one calculate
the chances of a law being passed to outlaw all research into nanotech
and human-affecting biotech?

> In fact, it would be
> great to find a scientific "model" for economic
> entities that would lend itself readily to
> experimentation without violating human rights.
> Similar to the way that mice are used to "model" human
> physiology without resorting to Josef Mengele type
> human experimentation.  

The lack of such is why social sciences are often seen as "soft",
compared to the "hard" sciences such as biology, chemistry, physics,
mathematics, and their derivatives.