[ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto

[Samantha Atkins]

Lee Corbin wrote:
> Natasha writes
>
>   
>> At first I thought [the "Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto"] a bad
>> joke, and then I thought it just plain bad taste.  Now I think it is ignorant.
>>     
>
> Exactly!
>
> Consider the most recent rejoinder from that quarter:
>
>   
>>> Which fucking world do some of you airheads live in? Are you all on
>>> valium of something?
>>>
>>> 506 murders per day
>>> 833 rapes per day
>>>       
> (etc.)
>
>   
>>> Thats -your- fucking world you pricks. You stand by and blather and
>>> posture while the world burns.
>>>       
>
> While the world "burns"??   What planet has the writer been living on?
> How could anyone be so incredibly ignorant?  Does he ever employ
> percentages, one wonders? It's as though to this person everyone is still
> living in a string of very small villages somewhere, and that those numbers
> do not need to be considered relative to 6,000,000,000 people---the vast,
> vast majority of them who are almost unbelievably better off than centuries ago.
>   
I don't find this dismissive style productive.  Our world is burning 
despite its prosperity.  Our current position is no stable nor is it 
obvious at all that we will do (or even reasonably understand) what is 
necessary to advance it. 

> If I thought that the writer---who unfortunately, I must say, seems to have
> lost his mind---were able to absorb new information that conflicted with
> his over-wrought beliefs, I would urge him to read Bernstein's "The
> Birth of Plenty".   You can actually find the whole first chapter on-line at
>
>   
Accusing someone of having lost their mind is not reasonable.  Please 
restrain yourself.   Disowning on this level does not seem useful. 

Nor is a long quote disagreeing with one interpretation of a single 
aspect terribly useful.  But the material is quite interesting so I 
immediately ordered the book.   Thanks for mentioning it.

- samantha