[extropy-chat] BIO: Stem Cell Genes

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Sat, 27 Dec 2003, Brett Paatsch wrote:

> I mean that I think we try and kid ourselves a bit about how easy
> things are, we are tempted to go for sugar coated solutions that we
> don't have to work quite so hard to achieve.

No no no.  Its never easy -- I've clearly been in situations
where resources made it appear easy in current time only much
to my regret make it clear that it was difficult in the future.
You should always assume changing the meme set is going to be
very very difficult.  However the rewards (be they saving humanity
or millions of potentially future extropic lives) would seem to
justify the effort.

This raises an interesting point (which trails back into
the recent points made by Matus) -- Is an extropian
fundamentally going aginst their programming?  Is promoting
the survival of another individual with better knowledge/
meme sets a better strategy than promoting the survival
of oneself?  [Begs a strong issue of if ones self
survival probability is low whether one should transfer
that interest to ones offspring or humanity in general.]

For a decade or more I've seen people running around declaring
themselves to be extropians -- but I have yet to see a reasonable
definition of how one breaks this down when push comes to shove.

Simply put -- where do I get in line for the lifeboats being
lowered from the Titanic?

Robert