[extropy-chat] people being people

[Greg Burch]

That was a sad episode, indeed.  If any college should have been a recruiting ground for would-be extropians, it should have been MIT in the late 90's.  But unfortunately those guys and their pamphlet burned that possibility for a couple of generations.

P.J. O'Rourke once described a bad public policy strategy (I forget what it was) as "like giving liquor and car keys to teenage boys."  I'm afraid the brief, bad history of the so-called "MIT Extropians" is a good example of the same trope...

GB

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Damien
> Broderick
> Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 3:10 PM
> To: reason at longevitymeme.org; ExI chat list
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] people being people
> 
> 
> At 01:29 PM 2/10/2005 -0600, Reason fwd'd:
> 
> >in the autumn of 1997, I got a letter from a tiny group calling 
> itself the 
> >M.I.T. Extropians. They had mailed an inflammatory—and wholly 
> >unauthorized—eight-page pamphlet to the entire incoming freshman class, 
> >myself included. In it, they praised hoary teenage standbys like 
> Ayn Rand, 
> >Beethoven, and Nietzsche; waxed philosophical about life extension, 
> >cybernetics, and neural networks; and disturbingly issued 
> several sweeping 
> >statements about women and minorities, lashing out against affirmative 
> >action and M.I.T.'s liberal diversity policies.
> 
> Who were these sweeties? Anyone know? (I have a vague memory of 
> Max or some 
> other extropian bigwheel dissociating the extropes from this self-named 
> splinter group.)
> 
> Damien Broderick
> 
> 
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