[extropy-chat] Death Toll

Jeff Davis jrd1415 at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 11 21:56:17 UTC 2005


--- Dirk Bruere <dirk at neopax.com> wrote:

> Jeff Davis wrote:
...
> >Training oneself to escape the instinct-mediated
> >"trap" of tribal loyalty is arguably Transhuman
> >Enhancement One.

> IMO less to do with 'instinct' and more to do with
> defending those who share common values.

In a tribal context values are arbitrary except
insofar as they are identifiers of tribal membership. 
If their values compel tribal members go over the
cliff, then over the cliff they go.  Instinct--tribal
instinct adhered to--all the way to the sudden stop. 

> Transhumanists, and indeed PostHumans will not
> 'escape' this tribalism and survive.

No.  If survival is the goal, then you get there by
rational behavior.  If multiple individuals with
similar values act in concert, their survival ***as a
group*** may be enhanced, but the similarity to
tribalism is merely coincidental.   

An occasional correlation in the outcomes of rational
and instinctive behavior cannot make instinctive
behavior more than "seemingly" rational.  A case might
be made that instinctive behaviors dispassionately
evolved in the wild, on the basis of gene "selection",
are "rational" by virtue of the correlation of
survival and environmental conditions.  However,
virtually by definition, human, transhuman, and
post-human "environments" are/will be "engineered", in
contrast to the "wild" environments of proto- and
early humans.

Best, Jeff Davis
 
"I know it is a weakness of human nature to become
emotionally invested in inconsequential tribal spats,
but people who want to be transhumanists need to be
able to get past that almost as a prerequisite.  In
fact, a good portion of the transhumanist ideals are
all about shedding this behavior."
                       j. andrew rogers
 


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