[ExI] Having enough money to boldly go into the future (was re: Extropian index and list)

[Bryan Bishop]

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 7:53 AM, BillK<pharos at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/19/09, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>> I'm admit I'm one of those most guilty of contributing to threads on
>>  politics, economics and religion, and I agree these threads mostly
>>  have little to do with extropianism.
>
> If you desire to boldly go into the future, then you probably want to
> have enough money to be an early adopter of the latest tech. (Early
> usually = expensive).
>
> I doubt if the first rejuvenation therapy regime will be 10 USD/month
> at Walmart.

Okay, okay. I'll bite. I think you're wrong on that point, and I also
suspect that many others hold the same belief that you need to have
enough money to boldly go into the future. You said *want*, which
isn't the same thing as *need*, but many people get these two confused
and end up thinking that they need what they want, or want what they
need, or something, so it's best we be careful when we're trespassing
in these salty seas. So, it probably isn't a terrible crime that I am
suggesting that some people might be thinking that they need money in
order to do any of the following: boldly go into the future, become an
early adopter of latest tech, be a part of some of the first
rejuvenation therapy regimes, etc. But is this true? It's entirely
possible to be a healthy, living human while broke. It's also entirely
possible to be mostly broke and working in a lab (whether at an
institution or in a garage) working with cutting edge technologies--
to me, that seems to be where the more extropy exists. After all,
buying "extropy" with money isn't necessarily the better way to go
about hoarding extropy or developing extropy.

As for an extropian index, that sounds somewhat like the old SL1
through SL4 classification system. Maybe it's time someone revisited
that idea and developed it a bit further or a bit more broadly into
something other than a linear classification system.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
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