[ExI] Transhumanism, PsyWar and B.E.P.

[Adrian Tymes]

--- On Thu, 5/27/10, David Lubkin <lubkin at unreasonable.com> wrote:
> Another piece of the hostility, which also applies to
> possible
> cures for diseases and to cryonics, is that these measures
> cannot possibly work because if they did, they could have
> been
> used to save my loved ones. It is unacceptable that I might
> not
> have done everything possible to save them, so they can't
> be
> true.

Indeed.  They forget that the cures don't work *yet*, but are
being developed.  (With the exception of cryonics, of course,
but that can be excepted as, "said loved one didn't want to
go that way".)  Technology can fundamentally alter certain
parts of human society: look no further than the Internet,
20 years ago vs. today.

> (And why *aren't* we well-financed, given how
> science-fictional
> some of the investments of Bezos and Allen are?)

The philosophical wing is not.  The investments tend to be
meritocratic, going directly - if sporadically - to the
technology we advocate.  (Space?  Sure.  Genetic engineering?
Getting some.  Cryonics?  Not so much, but it has what it
needs to operate.)

Although, I have wondered: one of the pluses of what we
advocate is that, effectively, there will exist a lot more
wealth to spread around.  Various aspects of H+ can be
crudely stated as, "...and X increases the world's
economic output, and anyone who wants to participate
profits from doing so."

(Note that "who wants to participate".  In a way, we advocate
certain things becoming like literacy.  Sure, you don't
physically *have* to read, and many humans got by just fine
for ages without knowing how.  But there was always a
competitive advantage to knowing how to read, and once
printing became cheap, this advantage proved itself to be
overwhelming.  Today, children are required to learn how to
read because history has proven its advantages.  In that
sense, we are akin to those in the time of Gutenberg,
advocating that children be taught how to read, when this is
very much not yet the norm.)