[ExI] Hard Takeoff

[Stefano Vaj]

On 29 November 2010 06:02, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> What?  You don't think attempting to maximize the outcomes that ensue is worth thinking about at all?   You think it is presumptuous to even bother to attempt to predict alternatives and do what we can (which admittedly may not be a lot) to make more desirable outcomes more likely?   If you do think this are you in the do-nothing camp re technology and how it is deployed in the future?  I don't think so judging from your activities but perhaps I am mistaken.

No. I think that while there have always been, and probably there will
always be, a struggle for technological superiority, the fundamental
confrontation today is between those who would like, for whatever
reason, to relinquish or more plausibly to control and/or freeze
promethean researches and paradigm-shifting developments, and those
who favour their very continued possibility (accepting of course the
9usual risks we have been facing at each step of our evolution).

Accordingly, I think that the mission of transhumanism is to present
the case for the second option, and organising grass-root activism to
this effect. Sure, as a citizen, I would be crazy to oppose security
and safety measures and sometimes reasonable compromises, especially
when the costs and risks and the progress-hindering potential of the
latter are relatively negligible. But I do not see so much need for
our engaging in the defence of such values, since they are already the
main obsession of our entire culture.

-- 
Stefano Vaj