[ExI] Groups

[hkhenson]

At 08:08 PM 6/16/2008, Brent Allsop wrote:

>Transhumanists,

snip

>Group think is all about powerful governments and the top 
>controlling the masses with invasive laws and powerful militaries 
>and police forces.  We are about quantitative and concise 
>reputations and systems that allow the individual to utilize such to 
>simply ignore any disreputable spam and scam.

As disconcerting as it is, I suspect on evolutionary psychology 
grounds that governments largely reflect the people they rule.

>We are also frustrated at the terrible way progressive, should be 
>leading people, tend to always live by "my way or the highway" and 
>their tendency to always "run away screaming" from any kind of 
>cooperative and social effort to help push societies still primitive 
>herd based morals forward.  Transhumanists, as proven by their 
>repeated failures at any type of organization and cooperation, or 
>ability to work together, are an extreme example of this.

Largely correct, but they are not the only people with a historical 
record of failures.  It's worth looking at the common characteristics 
of other such categories of people to see if there are common 
elements we can understand.  It might also be good to look at people 
with similar characteristics who are effective in organization and 
cooperation.  (If any can be identified.)

>We are tired of all this, and how such leaves the masses to be 
>controlled by the faithless fear and war mongering bastards at the 
>top that think they know what is better for people at the bottom 
>than they do.  It's time for intelligent people to finally do the 
>co-operative work required to develop systems that can enable us to 
>recognize there is something way better than dieing and rotting 
>everyone in the grave.

Probably everyone here--or at least a substantial majority--agrees 
with you.  Why are we so ineffective?  For example,  I think I know a 
way to get humanity out of the energy crisis, but the chances are not 
good that I will be able to interest enough people for the new 
concept to even be evaluated.  It seems likely that there is a 
fundamental mismatch between people like us and the ability to get 
real world changes implemented.

Keith