[extropy-chat] Still confused:)

[Robert Bradbury]

On 8/30/06, Anna Taylor <femmechakra at gmail.com> wrote:

> The enormous information that most people need to read even to
> commence to grasp some of those ideas.


Yes.   To effectively be able to grasp the concepts involved in
transhumanism you are talking multiple college level courses.
One could easily see degrees devoted to the topic (which would
involve 2-3 years of college level courses).  You have to keep in
mind there are multiple PhDs theses and college level textbooks
(Nanosystems, Nanomedicine, etc.) upon which many of the concepts
rest.

There are so many opinions and organizations dealing with different
> issues, unless someone is extremely motivated to learn, I don't see
> how most of the general population will ever be able to keep up.


They aren't -- other than in the limited way they adopt subsets of the
technology
such as cell phones, Blackberries, iPods, and in the not-so-distant future
cars which drive themselves.

I truly believe that technology will accelerate whether I like it or not.


Yes, this is the first thing one has to accept to realize there is a
problem.
(There is only a small fraction of the human population that really love
increasing rates of change.)

  I do wonder what will happen once technology reaches a point that the
>
humans that are not knowledgeable of such information will be left behind.


They aren't "left behind" so much as there is a class division developing.
Just as we have the "poor" and the "rich", the "uneducated" and the
"educated"
we will have the "techno-savvy" and the "techno-illiterate".

Although I'm not supposed to mention religion, I can't grasp how the
> world of technology is going to interelate with the world of religion
> when scientists in general choose to either not talk about it or
> ridicule it as well as religions that deny evolution and refuse to
> progress with time.


Change is hard.  Particularly when a large fraction of the population was
indoctrinated with historic meme sets before they developed the ability
for rational thought and learned the knowledge foundation necessary
for thinking about "reality".

Religion can coexist completely with technology so long as it is comfortable
confining itself to the area of "unresolvable beliefs".  It is when you try
to move
those beliefs into "reality" or "policy" -- such as should or should not
scientists
manipulate stem cells, the human genome, develop artificial intelligences,
uplift animals, etc.  So long as religions confine themselves to personal
reality
and not force their individual historic realities onto the evolving
technological
reality things will be fine.  Only if the people who have an investment in a
specific
religion being the *one* true religion and try to overlay that onto the
technological
reality is there a problem.

As the technological reality is the one we really live in then the religious
realities
are only noise around the edges.  The problem will be if those with the
various
religious (or political) agendas try to force themselves onto the
technological
reality.  One can see these tensions in places like North Korea, China and
Iran.

Religion plays a huge role on the planet earth, whether I like it or
> not, how can technology and religion coexist?


They already are.  In fact religions are using technology to increase the
spread
of their memes to those who are susceptible to them.  I ultimately come back
to genetics -- the desire to survive is built into our DNA -- when push
comes
to shove most will choose to follow those paths which clearly enable
survival
(i.e. lifespan extension technology, genome upgrades, uploads, etc.) while
those who have chosen to blindly follow the historic meme sets will
gradually
become extinct.  (Nice to watch natural selection in action :-)).

Now, of course the desire to reproduce is also built into our DNA, but as
the
technologies improve to make education cheaper (witness for example
Negroponte's work on laptops for the 3rd world at $140 each), Wikipedia,
universal web access (via cellphones) people will manage reproduction better
and children will have better information sources than the local village
witch doctor (minster, priest, etc.).

Anyhow, just some thoughts i've had, thanks for the response and links.


If people aren't aware of them the recent books by Sam Harris and Danniel
Dennett
may be good places to start on how we engage in the "science" v. "religion"
collision.

Side note to PJ -- you are correct regarding "bilingualism".  We need a lot
more "popular"
work explaining these ideas to people in easy to understand terms [1].  I
would suggest a
strong emphasis on ideas built into people -- desire to survive, desire to
live freely,
desire for ones children to have the best opportunities, etc.   If you
translate TH ideas
into those terms they will sell themselves.

Robert

1. It would be interesting to know the sales numbers for TSIN -- I would
expect them to be low because not many people will pick up and read a 650
page heavily referenced book.
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