[extropy-chat] Famous author self destructs inpublic!Filmateleven.

[Brett Paatsch]

Mike Lorrey wrote:

>> If you look at the above link and the ones around it you'll see
>> that I went quite a distance with you (in terms of time spent
>> and lines of your text I had to read to check out what you
>> had to say, and I was happy to do that, but I didn't get much
>> by way of concrete feedback when I asked for it, and in terms
>> of you developing your ideas I don't know if much came of it
>> for you).
>
> Ah, well, I wasn't aware you were looking for feedback. I have
> been under a bit of stress lately and haven't been paying too serious
> attention to things here other than the semi-daily browse through the
> posts. I appreciate you've gone a distance with me, and any lack of
> feedback may indicate that I either agreed with you or did not disagree
> strenuously enough to want to add to the debate.

You are in the US. I am in Australia. We are international. If I know that
I can rely on you to act like an adult I can bring you up to speed on stuff
you don't know faster than you can learn it first hand yourself AND vice
versa.

The debates over stem cell research and abortion and a host of other
things that I know you are interested in as well as other people on
this list are not debates that are specific to this list they are the issues
that define the times in which we live and that give us the opportunity
to participate in them.

I know from personal experience that I cannot take on all the issues
of the times on my own, the supply lines break down, because there
are not enough smart people or good faith to hold them open. The
most powerful politician in the world is the United States President
and he cannot take on all the issues in the world on his own. He
doesn't have enough power to do that even if he had the competence
to use the power he does have sensibly.

If we want the future to be better than the present (both personally
and for people generally) then we have to work with what we have.

I know you to some extent and trust you to some extent and am
willing to empower you to some extent (ie. make you more effective)
because to do so is a good investment on my part in building a better
future.

But I am not going to give you feedback or encourage you to do
the sort of things you want to do anyway, indefinately, if you don't
look like you are going to do them sensibly.

And I am going to want some payback from time to time, in that
if I ask you to do something simple like check out a link and tell me
if you find it persuasive or not, (or to stop aggravating Samantha
for the shear sport of it - Samantha is a person that I might disagree
with quite often just as you do, but she will be working to improve
the world you and I want far more effectively if she doesn't have
to  wrestle with your strawmen ever five minutes) and you don't do
it I will remember that you didn't do it and I will integrate that fact
into my future investment planning. I don't want to help empower
people who when empowered are only going to be bigger pests.

Developing arguments and tools for persuasion on an open list can
be risky in that political opponents get to see the next thing coming
and to prepare their reaction to it. On the other hand not doing it
risks not empowering as many allies as you might want as quickly
as you might want so its a balancing game.

>> This meant that I didn't know if I had wasted my time trying to
>> talk to you or not. If I can never effect you enough for you
>> to treat me as more than a type then why should I continue
>> to try and treat you as more than a type?  You and I are mortals.
>> We want to think our time spent and invested in others is not
>> wasted, or at least I do. Aren't you the same?
>
> Generally so, but I've been trying to not be so emotionally invested in
> this list, because it has disappointed me so frequently in the past. If
> that is seen as detachement or disregard, I apologize.

No apology necessary. The list isn't a friend. The list is a forum. If
people look to the list to be a friend they will be disappointed. If
they look to other *posters* to be friends then they may indeed make
international friendships and international business associates and...
well you get the idea..

So why am I writing this on the list rather than just to you? Because
I have enough of an understanding of psychology and politics to know
that others will read it and others will get something from it too.

I am not an extropian, but I am someone who likes some of the people
who post to the extropian list (and in fact dislikes almost none of them).

The extropy brand may flourish or flounder but the extropy brand is
not the same as the brand each of us wear as our names. I can't stand
behind the whole extropy philosophy because the whole extropy
philosophy whatever that is may develop more slowly than my own
personal philosophy and I would then not want the political baggage
of the more slowly moving one.

The forum of political operation is the world it is not this list. This list
is a vector. This list is a place I come to hear what people I have come
to respect think about stuff. Should this list fail then the people who post
or posted here will still be the people that posted here and the failure
of the list or of extropy as a brand would not be the same in my mind
as the failure (or success) of the people who post here.

Brett Paatsch