[ExI] Status as human motivator

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 2:58 PM, Olga Bourlin <olga.bourlin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> (and, furthermore, he never said anything
>>> about feeling guilty working on Wall Street).
>>
>> If he doesn't, he should.  :-) Keith
>
> OK, facetious element notwithstanding, what a cavalier comment, Keith.
>
> You have no idea the kind of discrimination scientists of black
> African descent have had to deal with.

I had no idea that Jones was of African descent.  I probably would not
remember it even if I had met him in person, to me it's just not
significant.  I would not cut him any slack on that account.

It should be a *hanging* offense to employ scientists or engineers in
the kinds of stupid games they play on Wall Street.

For that matter it should be a hanging offense to play those games at
all.  They don't help in the slightest with the problems (particularly
energy) that are all too likely to be the cause of death for most of
the race in the next few decades.

> I have known a few of them
> personally during my lifetime, and many of their stories have made me
> cry.   In a society with structural racism such as ours,

Not my society, Monkey Boy.  (Buckaroo Banzai)*

Gender and Ethnicity (Jargon file)

snip

The ethnic distribution of hackers is understood by them to be a
function of which ethnic groups tend to seek and value education.
Racial and ethnic prejudice is notably uncommon and tends to be met
with freezing contempt.

When asked, hackers often ascribe their culture's gender- and
color-blindness to a positive effect of text-only network channels,
and this is doubtless a powerful influence.

Also, the ties many hackers have to AI research and SF literature may
have helped them to develop an idea of personhood that is inclusive
rather than exclusive -- after all, if one's imagination readily
grants full human rights to future AI programs, robots, dolphins, and
extraterrestrial aliens, mere color and gender can't seem very
important any more.

> why would you
> begrudge someone’s choice of finding a way to financial independence?

I don't begrudge anyone who takes the highest paying job they can get.
 It's just stupid that people are not being paid big money to solve
the big problems.

> Point your “guilt” arrow towards racist scientists such as William
> Shockley, will you?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Statements_about_populations_and_genetics

"He thought this work was important to the genetic future of the human
species,"  For me and Extropians who think about it, this is a big WHO
CARES!  The human species doesn't _have_ a "genetic future."   People
are who they are in the present and genetics will be under full
control just before genes no longer matter at all.

Keith

*"It’s not my God damned planet, Monkey Boy." John Lithgow’s character
was a Lectroid from planet 10. They were not evolved from apes. To
them, humans have not evolved very far past apes.

> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 1:49 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Olga Bourlin <olga.bourlin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> If you feel guilty about working on Wall street, that's your problem.
>>>>
>>>> Keith
>>> (and, furthermore, he never said anything
>>> about feeling guilty working on Wall Street).
>>
>> If he doesn't, he should.  :-)
>>
>> Keith
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