[ExI] far future

[William Flynn Wallace]

I am being asked as a psychologist why people believe strange things, often
things that would help themselves and others, but they are opposed and get
really sanctimonious about it.

I remarked to my son once (he is as impatient as I am with fools) that he
must remember that half the population is below average by definition.  He
replied that it was remarkable to him that half were ABOVE average.  He had
it right.

My magnet school seniors all scored zero on a simple logic test I gave
them.  Logic has to be learned and schools don't teach it.  Given that and
the 100+ cognitive errors some crazy evolution has given us, it is
remarkable that anything ever gets done properly.  General semanticists
have estimated that in any given conversation only about 25% of what is
intended to be communicated is.

(I'd like to see some data on apes and whether they suffer from cognitive
errors too.)

Whoever said that without the top 1% of the population no progress of any
kind would be made, hit it on the nose.  That's why I want in my book to
narrow the population down to those folks.  No fools to suffer (pun
intended).  bill w


On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 10:26 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

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> *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:
> extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *William Flynn
> Wallace
> *…*
>
> >…As an aside:  I have written help and gotten an incomprehensible return
> that looks like some sort of programming commands and does not address my
> questions:  how do I find out the topics people on the list are interested
> in?  When I click on reply does my email go only to my correspondent?  Or
> to everyone?  If you could just take a minute to explain this site to me it
> would be a big help.  Thanks! Bill Wallace
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> Hi Bill,
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> I assume someone has posted you offlist by now.  I was away camping since
> Friday morning.  This is what we are about:
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> http://www.buildfreedom.com/extropian_principles.html
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> The reading list needs updated, but the principles are as good as new.
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> Your question might be a good reminder for several on the list who are
> recent.  List protocols are that if you hit reply to anything, it goes to
> all subscribers.  We are a transhumanist group, but as you can see we are
> very open minded about what constitutes on-topic discussions.  There are
> more focused transhumanist groups such as Eugen’s transhumanist tech, where
> he is super strict about staying right on topic, but ExI-chat is
> comfortable pitching a broad tent.  One line replies are allowed, goofing
> and comedy are allowed.  Good thing: they would have thrown me into the bit
> bucket 15 yrs ago otherwise.
>
>
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> When you reply, trim out everything except the relevant comment, then post
> below it.  Try to keep it to no more than 5 posts a day, or if you go over,
> make sure it is something really timely or extremely interesting to
> everyone.  I won’t do anything much about overposting until someone starts
> to complain or I get bored with whatever it is you are over-yakking about.
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> Be nice, be fun, you are among friends here.
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> Post away, me lad!
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> Your friendly omnipotent ExI moderator,
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> spike
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
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