[extropy-chat] Protect ourselves to prevent a return to the middle ages

[Robert Bradbury]

Mehran, a number of days ago, said:

"The Message of the Elohim is the proof for the Elohim's existence, for
their claims and for the fact that they are our scientific creators and that
they were the ones who sent the
Prophets."

The problem is that this is an assertive declaration.  Mehran may not be
asserting anything more than what Rael has asserted this to be true.  Like
any and all assertive declarations it suffers from the fact that anyone can
assert anything.

I can assert that "None of you exist.  All of you, the scientific evidence
for the world & universe, the history of ExI, and all of the messages on the
ExI list came into existance the second that I started typing this message.
I am synthesizing reality and its background history as I go along."
(Damien must surely know a SciFi story or two based on this line of
reasoning.)

The problem lies in how one determines Rael's assertion is more valid than
my (or any other) assertion.  Reading books just isn't going to do it for
me.  It is going to take some really strong direct experience.  Spike comes
close to the mark.  When the UFO guys land in my back yard and just leave
books, I'm going to say "Sound and fury signifying nothing".  If they want
to stay a while, I'm going to haul them off to MIT and have them put under
and X-ray machine, a light microscope, an electron microscope, an AFM and
anything else I can lay my hands on to determine what they are made of and
how they work.  And when I've convinced myself that they are based upon
technologies significantly more advanced than ours currently are (e.g.
really cool nanotechnology or even femtotechnology) then I'll sit down at
the table and ask, "So are you just passing through or have you really been
messing with the history of this system -- and if so why?"  Now problems
will arise if they say to me, "Oh you won't find any advanced technologies
in us, we are simply the nanotechnologically created biological
instantiations of extremely evolved uploads (or AIs) sent here to
communicate the *true* word to you."  At that point, I'd probably start
looking for the nearest gun shop so I could purchase a gun and commit the
minor unextropic action of killing them.  (This is a minor unextropic
offense since the upload/AI can always manufacture other instantiations at
relatively low cost.)  Representatives of advanced civilizations (or their
surrogates) walk on this Earth at high risk unless they are willing to prove
their case.

It is quite reasonable for any "new guys" on the block to incorporate all of
the "previous guys" (the prophets) because selling a new meme set to people
minds it is easier if it involves an enhancement to what is known and
accepted rather than a totally novel system.  I'd find it much more
interesting if Rael was claiming that the miracles of Jesus or Moses or ...
were based on nanotechnology and provided some concrete proposals as to how
they were accomplished.

Robert
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