[ExI] far future

[Keith Henson]

On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 4:00 AM,  William Flynn Wallace
<foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am a psychologist and want to avoid all topics that are just beyond me
> because of my education and my age (72).

You have me by a year.

Would like to ask a psychological question and see if you have any suggestions.

I have, after considerable effort, found what seems to be a solution
to the energy, carbon, climate and even economic malaise with a method
to produce energy cheap enough to make synthetic gasoline for a dollar
a gallon.

Some of the people on this group have followed this work for close to
a decade now and it builds on work that goes back to the mid 1970s.
Not to get too technical, but it involves collecting solar power in
space where the sun shines 99% of the time and beaming the energy to
earth using microwaves.

Take it as real, reasonably economical, low environmental damage etc.

It runs into serious opposition, a lot of it from people of
considerable influence who have decided that the not so distant future
will include a massive die off of the human race back to one or two
billion people. They tend not to talk about this belief, but when you
mention that there might be an alternative where with lower energy
cost, where people could be much better off, they get really hostile.

Any thoughts on why people are fixated on this belief?  It's almost
like an unspoken religion to them. Second, any thoughts on how to get
around this resistance to good news?

If you can frame your answers in evolutionary psychology terms it
would help.  I find a lot of weird human behavior makes better sense
that way.  Google sex drugs cults for a bit of my musings on this
topic.

Keith Henson
Ur-transhumanist (according to RUSirus)