[extropy-chat] Bill Moyers' Comments - Global EnvironmentCitizenAward

[Samantha Atkins]

On Jan 8, 2005, at 10:03 AM, spike wrote:
>
> ... I would think there are more important matters at hand. Or is this 
> sort
> of response just diversion in the face of that which one feels 
> powerless to
> change?  - samantha
>
>
>
> I did do something about it.  In the recent election, W and that
> tall senator guy were both religionistas.  I voted against them.
>

As did I.  Obviously it was not sufficient (remotely) to deal with the 
problem.

>
>
>
> Bill Moyers:
>
>
> ... even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream 
> could
> yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could
> radically alter civilizations...
>
>
>
> Moyers seems to speak as tho radically altering civilizations and
> overwhelming changes are a bad thing.  I see this radical change as
> a most promising development.  The threat of religionistas with
> political power is indeed an issue, but I anticipate a change in
> the next 10 to 15 years that may be the salvation of humanity.  We
> will surely work out wearable computers with continuous links to
> the internet.

Having the world's economy and ability to feed itself largely fall 
apart plus destruction of a lot of very valuable people, resources and 
goods would be extremely un-extropic.   It could also quite easily fuel 
a repent-and-get-right-with-God hysteria that makes today's problems 
with fundies look utterly insignificant.   I am sure that you would not 
see those sorts of radical alterations as remotely conducive to our 
goals.

Such a disruption may nearly flat-line high tech development, life 
extension work and so on.   Scarcity severe enough that mere survival 
becomes problematic tends to do that.

>
> Most of us here enjoyed having about 20 points tacked
> onto our IQs by having access to the internet.  We suddenly
> had the biggest library in the world brought to our desktops.
> The Google came along, the second member of the holy info-trinity,
> the tool that allows us to find things.  The third and possibly
> most important development is to have the contents of the
> internet with us 24-7.  When we get that, it will be immediately
> obvious that anyone without that connection is the modern
> day version of a hermit, irrelevant in every important way.
>

We won't get it if the world falls apart abruptly or more slowly to a 
significant degree first.  That is the point.  Hell, we won't even get 
it if we can't get the bureaucrats sufficiently out of the way.

The point being that only seeing the very promising technological 
progress and what can be done from here without watching out for and 
attempting to avoid or ameliorate dangers that could stop progress dead 
in its tracks or reverse it is quite myopic and potentially deadly.


- samantha