[extropy-chat] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 5, Issue 11

[Daniel Matthews]

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 03:13 pm, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote:
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 11
> Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 19:51:54 -0500
> From: Brent Neal <brentn at freeshell.org>
<snip>
> >Isn't revolution destructive and entropic, whereas evolution is creative
> > and extropic?
>
> Except when its not. :)  Evolution does have dead ends, and sometime you
> need a little bit of "creative destruction" to get things back on track.
> Since we're being Xtian-obsessive today, I'll point to Martin Luther as an
> example of that.

Evolution has no direction as such, therefore "dead ends" are not a question 
of a "wrong path" whatever they were, they were fit until the context changed 
so much that they are no longer fit patterns.

>
> The American Revolution was one too.
>

I'm sure all those deaths could have been avoided, if more enlightened humans 
were guiding society at the time.

> >Where are the meme engineers when you need them...
> >Even a bad human behavior is "fit" if it propagates and is stable, you
> > can't just rip it out of society without replacing it with a functionally
> > equivalent meme that is more to your philosophical liking.
>
> Can't? or shouldn't?
>

Yes one or the other. ;o)
Probably "shouldn't", but that is an assumption as the possibility needs to be 
tested before "Can't" can be considered invalid. Then there is the argument 
that "can't" expands to "can't, if you wish to avoid entropy, i.e. social 
chaos of some form".


:o) Dan.
dan at 3-e.net