[ExI] Dealing with transhumanism bashing

[Mike Dougherty]

On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 8:34 PM, Joshua Job <nanite1018 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can give it a try. You say 96% of the population won't upload or otherwise
> make radical upgrades. That may well be true, at first. But as the decades
> and centuries wear on, it will change. People will be more comfortable with

Right.  I don't think it takes much "vision" or predictive power to
imagine this.  Look at the Amish.  Sure, they can teach their kids to
value hard work on the farm - but their culture dwindles.  The view
tourists get is probably as [in]accurate as the anachronistic
recreations of colonial settlers at Williamsburg.

I wonder, Alan, if you'd sacrifice any amount of your limited
resources (time, money, etc) to keep a habitat of neanderthals alive
and well in your backyard.  Maybe you say you would, at first.  Over
the course of years, I expect the novelty would wear off.  Maybe you
could charge admission fees for others to go look at them - and you
might have enough profit to make it worth your continued support.  But
after a while the novelty wears off again.

Ultimately, I think the problem you'll need to solve is that novelty
wears off more quickly as exponential change happens.  At some point,
the old yields to the new.  Uploads will likely rediscover this
principle when their replacement threatens them.