[extropy-chat] Reccommendations for a mailing list

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Giu1i0 Pri5c0 <pgptag at gmail.com> wrote:
> But listen to me
> guys, this is GOOD. Discussing politics means that
> we are actually
> starting to discuss how to get there.

It would be, if the politics were relevant.  Part of
the problem is that the politics being discussed were
only barely tangentially related to extropy, if even
that much.

> On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 22:24:27 -0500, Joseph Bloch
> <jbloch at humanenhancement.com> wrote:
> > And now, having seen it, a substantial percentage
> of Extropians seem to
> > want to plug their fingers firmly in their ears,
> cry "LA LA LA" at the
> > top of their lungs, and pretend that politics
> deserves to be shunted
> > aside to some ghetto of an email list because it
> is "boring" or
> > somesuch. Yeah, THAT'S effective.

Again, it's not boring, it's just that the politics
being discussed were irrelevant.  Maybe Bush stole the
election, maybe he didn't.  It Doesn't Matter To This
List's Topic.  (Some counter that politics always
matters to everything even remotely connected to
reality, since the politicians can always outlaw
things and grant - or not - funding for things.  Said
arguments miss the distinction between discussing how
to convince politicians to pass a certain law or to
fund a certain project as opposed to simple general
discussion of politicians' viewpoints and characters.
The latter can be argued as a necessary part of the
former, except that it's only useful as a part, and
only when discussing specific proposals, not as the
entirety of the discussion in absence of any specific
proposals.  It is this latter, useless-to-this-list
discussion that we try to weed out.)