[ExI] A question to the moderators WAS: Self-directed Evolutionand the Future of Man

[giancarlos]

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Giulio Prisco" <giulio at gmail.com>
> To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2010 8:51 AM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] A question to the moderators WAS: Self-directed
> Evolutionand the Future of Man
>
>
> As I said, I welcome and praise Giancarlo's organization of the
> workshop and look forward to seeing more and more constructive
> contributions and initiatives from his side.

Thank you, Giulio. My aim is to set up a fruitful exchange between academic 
institutions and organized transhumanism in Italy, which I think is 
something substantially unexplored in our country.

> But I believe Fabio will concede that, in the past, it has not always
> been so. And, reading through the list archives, it is evident which
> of the two "camps" takes more frequently the initiative to attack the
> other. As a matter of fact, Fabio's "camp" seems to have been more
> frequently guilty of "initiation of violence". In particular
> Giancarlo, whose recent and constructive initiative I can only praise,
> had previously posted _only_ personal attacks against Stefano to this
> list.

I think you should entirely reasses your very 'personal' idea of what a 
"personal attack" is.

I (we) never attacked Stefano *personally*, on the contrary I (we) 
frequently and publicly recognized his intelligence, knowledge and 
shrewdness. What we did and will continue to do is to criticize his peculiar 
idea of transhumanism (sovrumanismo), tightly linked to a communitarist, 
hierarchical political view, where the individual is totally subdued to an 
elite, and the "masses" are "domesticated" by an "aristocracy" of the kind 
that emerged "after the Neolithic". And we usually support our claims 
providing links and even translations of relevant italian passages.

As you can easily recognize, these aren't personal attacks, but a (maybe 
sometimes harsh, but absolutely legitimate) criticism of Vaj's ideas and 
political view, in order to (try to) avoid the confusion, at least here in 
Italy, between transhumanism and Vaj's 'sovrumanismo' (confusion that became 
more likely to occur after Vaj undertook the role of AIT national 
secretary).

On the contrary, personal attacking is exactly the strategy of those who 
reply to these claims saying that the persons making the claims are "trolls, 
defamators or conspiracy-mongers". Not to mention the repeated public 
disclosures of private facts, which involved Fabio and me.

Description of Personal Attack 
(http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/personal-attack.html)
<<A personal attack is committed when a person substitutes abusive remarks 
for evidence when attacking another person's claim or claims. This line of 
"reasoning" is fallacious because the attack is directed at the person 
making the claim and not the claim itself. The truth value of a claim is 
independent of the person making the claim. After all, no matter how 
repugnant an individual might be, he or she can still make true claims.>>

> I wish to conclude by exhorting all Italian transhumanists to focus on
> promoting transhumanism in their respective political and
> philosophical circles, and try putting personal differences aside.

As a future of inter-communal conflicts, and intra-communal rigid caste 
division is not extactly the posthuman future we (the Italian Transhumanist 
Network) want, I'm afraid that your abstractly praiseworthy suggestion is 
quite difficult to put into action. But we can try.

Giancarlo