[ExI] Transhumanism, PsyWar and B.E.P.’s “Imma Be”

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Wed May 26 16:09:09 UTC 2010


--- On Wed, 5/26/10, AlgaeNymph <algaenymph at gmail.com> wrote:
Much of the
rhetoric is about "evil elites," the sort of thing we've never given a
good answer too beyond "it'll get cheaper eventually" and
"it'll trickle down eventually." (Emphasis mine.)
Given history, it will be an elite who first gets this technology.  The question is,
which elite?

Suppressing it will only work locally (say, in the USA and Europe), if it works at all
(which there is much reason to doubt).  Other parts of the world will not suppress it.
Like it or not, the technology is coming - but any tech can be used for good or evil.
(Even atomic bombs resulted in more peace than war, terrifying though the peace
was at times, mainly because of who built them and when.)

Therefore, do you try to suppress the tech and guarantee that someone else, with
moral values far different from your own, is the first to master it (if maybe a bit
delayed)?  Or do you make sure your side is the one to get the genie out of the
bottle first?

Some would say that buying even 1 more year without this technology is worth
sacrificing everything that comes afterward.  They tend not to dwell on this
being because they won't be experiencing as much of it: it's 1 less year of their
lives.  One might point out to them that, even if they plan to die and not care
about what happens afterward, we plan to extend our lives - living right alongside
our children and our childrens' children, doing our part to make sure our continued
existence at least does not burden them (better technology, expanding the
carrying capacity of humanity's residences, and so on) - so we bloody well DO
care about the indefinite future, and therefore object to their short sighted, selfish
irresponsibility.

(This, also, is part of why they object to significant life extension, or even outright
curing death.  They'll be forced to care about the future because they'll be living in
it, and they are uncomfortable with that responsibility.  How dare we make them
give a damn?)
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