[extropy-chat] Space colony behind the moon?

[Russell Wallace]

On 10/19/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:

> But shouldn't we stop reinforcing perceptions that people have that the
> frontier is someplace "out there".  It is instead within our minds regarding
> what is and is not really possible -- call it the "pre-nano-reality wall".
> That is the open frontier that we need to overcome because that undermines
> the perception of resource shortages which in turn plays off of the
> predisposition (presumably genetic) to roam, accumulate resources and make
> copies of ourselves.
>

*shakes head* It's not really about resource shortages, never was. Oh, in
the ancestral environment it was about resource shortages in the sense of
_evolutionary causation_, but even then not _psychologically_. What drives
conflict is pride, hate, the lust for power and the thrill of wielding it
once obtained, the joy of watching _them_ suffer - the referent of "them" is
almost infinitely fungible, but the drive is constant. I remind you that you
yourself once proposed a campaign of nuclear genocide against "faith-based
thinkers", and when you abandoned that you didn't move on to something
driven by better motives, only to something more socially acceptable -
having people tortured and raped for typing words on a computer keyboard.

I had a conversation awhile ago with someone who believes we'll have
magic-genie nanotech here on Earth. Was he saying "great, no need for
conflict then, we'll have plenty of resources"? No, he was proposing a
global, inescapable tyranny with authority to arbitrarily suppress
technology in case the dreaded other uses it to obtain power.

Are you wondering who this man was? Some luddite spokesman, some fringe
lunatic, you're thinking?

James Hughes, high-ranking member of the frigging World Transhumanist
Association.

No, the super-nanotech mythology is not the answer. Practical nanotech as a
means to Diaspora - that might get somewhere.
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