[extropy-chat] Movie review- Renaissance: Paris 2054

[Robert Bradbury]

On 11/27/06, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/27/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > one of the fundamental questions enshrined in Max's extropian
> > principles.  Do you base your existence on "rational thought" or not?
> >
> > So *long* as people believe and act on the basis of nothing more than
> > their thought about a thought (a belief) we have problems.
> >
>
> Could you clarify?  I took the first sentence to mean it is good to 'base
> existence' on "thought."   The second sentence indicates that believe and
> action on "thought about a thought" is a problem.


I guess I should have put an emphasis on *rational* thought.  Thoughts in
and of themselves are relatively useless other than from the fact that they
are the substrate that yields those which are ultimately valuable.  Thoughts
in general are like a gene pool.  Applying the selection criteria "this is a
good thought because everyone else believes it is a good thought" generally
sucks.  Applying the selection criteria "this is a good thought because it
make logical sense and reality keeps demonstrating over and over and over
again that it makes sense" is IMO a better approach.

I wouldn't give you the time of day for a useless thought.  Aaahhh, but for
those that are rational *and* useful, those I'd be willing to pay cold hard
cash for.

Do you believe... (hmm)... think... (hmm)... logically deduce (?) that
> someone like Hegel <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/> (& wikipedia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel>)
> should be considered an extropian of the first case, or a trouble-maker of
> the second case?


I'll leave trying to understand philosophers (or commenting on my
perceptions of their understandings) to another day.

Robert
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