[extropy-chat] Interesting comment on a blog

Jef Allbright jef at jefallbright.net
Tue Dec 5 15:47:13 UTC 2006


Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote:
> What I found interesting and worth reporting is the last 
> sentence, which may sadly be correct:
> "If we can not handle people who look a little bit different 
> from us, ir decorate their bodies a little bit differently, 
> how will we handle people who look nothing like us, or do not 
> have human bodies at all? It is no accident, I think, that in 
> the Matrix, is is the humans, not the machines, who 
> (literally) throw the first stone."

Actually, in regard to the kind of innate tendency to feel repulsion
which you mention here, the feeling is strongest when the difference is
slight and close to home.  It is much easier to accept that strange
people (or machines) do strange things when such events are at the
fringes of our sphere of moral self-identification. 

A practical aspect of this is that we are challenged to overcome such
prejudices only to the extent that we interact outside that self-defined
sphere.

- Jef




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