[extropy-chat] The Cassini Division

[Bryan Moss]

Dirk Bruere quoted Ken Macleod in The Cassini Division:

> "Life is a process of breaking down and using other matter, and if 
> need be, other life. Therefore life is aggression and successful life 
> is successful aggression. Life is the scum of matter, and people are 
> the scum of life. There is nothing but matter, forces, space and time 
> which together make power. Nothing matters, except what matters to you.


It has always seemed to me that once you accept that the mind is 
basically the brain, and is therefore spatial, you can no longer make a 
strong claim to "rugged individualism."  "You" might not always have 
"your" best interests in mind.  However, there's no reason to believe 
psychological boundaries follow physical boundaries either.  "What 
matters" and "you" are no doubt full of social concepts and there isn't 
any more reason to arbitrarily deflate them on the basis that you're a 
physical entity than there is to retain individualistic concepts on the 
basis that you're a physical entity.  Given this, "what matters to you" 
is probably full of more things than matter, forces, space and time, and 
is probably more complex than "do whatever is in your power."  Unless 
you suck.

Value relativism, then, should lead to conservatism, not individualism.  
But, of course, value relativism *can't* come from the sort nihilism 
Macleod alludes to, because, again, there's no reason to run around 
arbitrarily deflating concepts like "value" while retaining all the 
concepts that allow you to brood about it afterwards.

> Might makes right and power makes freedom. You are free to do whatever 
> is in your power and if you want to survive and thrive you had better 
> do whatever is in your interests. If your interests conflict with 
> those of others, let the others pit their power against yours, 
> everyone for themselves. If your interests coincide ith those of 
> others, let them work together with you, and against the rest. We are 
> what we eat, and we eat everything."


Ethics is complicated.

BM