[extropy-chat] re: Fear and Hope

[Amara Graps]

Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu

>Perhaps this is obvious to others, but it recently occurred to me that
>hope usually needs something more specific to latch on to than fear
>does.  You might fear strangers in general at night, but you need to
>know something specific about a person to feel hope about him.  You
>might fear death in general, but you need to hear something specific
>about a medical treatment to have hope in it.

>Similarly it seems to me when descriptions of a future technology are
>very vague, fear is much easier to generate than hope.  But when the
>description of a technology becomes more specific, hope is easier to
>find.


That is an interesting thought. Tendencies to vague fear might indeed
be easier than tendencies to vague hope, and I think it is useful
to know about tendencies to fearlessness too. I am curious to know how
common are fearless tendencies. And are tendencies to fearlessness
and vague fear culturally dependent?

My poll question:

If you were in the Pacific on a sailboat, and dropped anchor to a
relatively shallow depth *but you could not see the bottom*, in order
to take a rest in the calm sea and swim -

Would you be fearful of the unknown and unseen bodies swimming under
your body/feet ?

Amara