[ExI] Striving for Objectivity Across Different Cultures

[Stefano Vaj]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> Oh, I myself don't ever make that particular mistake, to my knowledge.
> Really.  For example, unlike the "enlightened liberal" who sees penal
> institutions and places to arrogantly reform and "correct" the objectively
> improper behavior of the broken or misguided prisoner, I see the
> prisoners as my equals. They have one set of values and I (and we!)
> have another set.  So it's merely them or us.

Absolutely.

Of course, ad personam arguments do exist, meaning that if you can
find a common ground with a criminal, or, say, with a neoluddite :-),
you can show them the "error of their ways", namely in terms of
inconsistency with one part or another of *their own* worldview.

But at the end of the day, different views and choices cannot always
and entirely be reduced to rational mistakes. In fact, when I see
"moderate", "sensible", "responsible" transhumanists going out of
their way in seek of general acceptance, or loudly complaining to be
perceived as revolutionary,I am under the impression that they are the
first who do no accept that the idea that somebody may in fact be
actually averse to our, or their, ideas, not out of ignorance or bias,
but simply because they actually... do not like them.

> If one side has machine guns, and the other side spears, then I
> know who'll be superior at war making.

Interestingly, exactly this argument was raised in a recent thread in
the Italian H+ mailing list. Let us say that on one side there is a
colonel giving his platoon  machine guns, on the other side a powerful
shaman that can make his men invulnerable with an enchantment and
throw lethal curses, and that soldiers and tribesmen go to battle.

While we could in principle admit that the soldier and the tribesmen
simply inhabit different realities, the first reality seems to have
some obvious Darwinian edge, as far as competition amongst realities
goes, on the second, namely in the sense that in the clash of the two
the second tends to be overcome and disappear.

Or, even though theoretically the shaman might go as far as to claim
that he is the one who actually won the battle, this is what happens
in your and my shared reality, the only we can sensibly speak of and
care for.

This, I believe, has strong implications for the transhumanist view of
technoscience. One need not be a naive XIX century positivist to see
or admit that technoscience is a *superior* (in the qualified sense
discussed above) form of magic, in comparison with other forms known
to our and other cultures.

Stefano Vaj