[extropy-chat] BM's comments

[Greg Burch]

Natasha wrote this:

> Again, It is not my responsibility to read the email list.  
> I will not step in to direct the traffic flow of ideas on 
> this list.  That would be the worst thing I could do.  If 
> so, you will have another transhumanist list run by one 
> person in command. The beauty of this list is directed by 
> the flow of ideas.  You all keep threads going and you all 
> can stop threads from growing.  All of you could have 
> boycotted Robert by just not responding to his thread.  

I can't say it better.

Beyond this, let me make some comments on Robert Bradbury.  No, Hubert, I'm not going to say that he's the nicest guy you could meet in person.  What I will say is that Robert's had a prominent voice for years because of his scientific imagination, not his diplomacy, moral sense or social insight.  To be as brutally frank as I care to be, Robert's probably naive and ill-informed when it comes to most things that would fall into the latter categories.  But that's true of the vast majority of the science- and engineering-types that make up a significant part of this community.  That's one reason that I began to become more personally active here; because over ten years ago I saw that here was a community with a great resource of scientific creativiy but that, with some notable exceptions, suffered from a deficit of knowledge and insight into what might be called the humanities.  It's a simple fact of life in our age -- the modern age -- that much of our material progress has sprung from indivduals who have a lot of scientific creativity but who aren't good communicators with the majority of the human race and who have trouble coming to terms with the social implications of their work.  The deplorable rejection of scientific reason by the "humanities culture" is one result of this.  When one of our scientific luminaries says something awkward or painful that makes you cringe, it doesn't serve the cause of progress to just shout "fascist!" and stomp off.  Isn't it better to be patient and try to work back to the foundations and try to educate and reason?

Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
http://www.gregburch.net