[ExI] I Miss The King of Extropia

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 19 16:32:42 UTC 2016


​Scientists know they couldn't get elected because they do things backward.
Scientists use science to figure out what to believe, but voters know that
the better way is to first decide on what the truth is and only then see if
there is a scientific reason to justify that belief; and if there isn't
believe it anyway.

 John K Clark ​


I do not hesitate to call this a profound statement of the psychology of
the average person, particularly the religious ones.  The only thing
missing is what I would add to the end:

"....believe it anyway, and become antiscience."

Billions are taught to believe their holy book ab ovo.  Then later they get
exposed to rational thinking, which often opposes their holy book, and so
they retreat to that book and dismiss other opinions.

I wondered if anyone has studied the children of atheists....so I Googled
it and found the following highly interesting links:

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=studies%20of%20the%20children%20of%20atheists
.

I also found that rational problem-solving was higher in those children,
though that finding is not surprising as the empathy one was to me.  OTOH -
Haidt found that conservatives were morely likely to be religious and less
likely to score highly in the care/harm dimension - a measure of empathy.

bill w

On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 12:04 PM, Tara Maya <tara at taramayastales.com> wrote:

> I agree, Spike. The only salvation from technology that I think could
> salvage the system at this point would be a “Boomerang.” If we were able to
> cure old age (not even death, necessarily, but the big debilitating
> diseases of old age — cancer, heart disease, dementia, frailty — and
> millions of Boomers were suddenly hale enough, physically and mentally, to
> stay in or re-enter the work-force, then the demands on medical care and
> retirement funds would be much reduced. We’d have an economic boom. Though
> it would be pretty hard on Millennials trying to compete.
>
> A little more fiscal responsibility from our government would still be a
> good thing, imho.
>
> Question: If people have a longer healthspan, will the net wisdom (which
> is different from general intelligence) of the population increase?
>
> Tara
>
>
> On Jul 18, 2016, at 7:55 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
>
> My prediction: the fed will start by publishing phony manipulated
> inflation numbers.  (Oh wait, never mind, they are already doing that and
> have been for a long time.)  Federal pensions, including (or rather
> especially) Social Security will be increased at that number, a percent or
> two, as prices increase at a far higher rate.  In this scenario, it isn’t
> entirely clear exactly when the system failed, but it will be clear enough
> that it did at some point.  The evidence will be the numbers of elderly
> living in poverty.
>
> A PhD in economics is not necessary to see this coming, and in some ways,
> already here.
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160719/3373c800/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list