[ExI] Groups

[Brent Allsop]

Natasha,

Thanks for this feedback.  And I in no way was dissing the great people 
that have been doing the superhuman work of cooperating and attempting 
to organize Transhumanists and how well some of these people have 
actually worked together despite any differences.  Everyone knows trying 
to organize people that want nothing other than to "run away screaming" 
from any kind of social cooperation, in the past, has always been a 
thankless impossible task akin to 'herding cats'.

Lee Corbin asked:
<<<

"Why are we so ineffective?"  is a very good question. Of course, it
should be placed in some perspective such as "compared to what?
compared to whom?".

 >>>

Compared to the tens of millions of very well organized people that 
support the LDS prophet, and the billions of well organized catholics 
that support the Pope...and so on.   These few popes and prophets 
dictating what all the youth are to be taught in Sunday School and what 
the masses will here every week in church are who has all the moral 
power.  All this while Transhumanists either fracture into ever smaller 
organizations heatedly bickering over trivial differences, or just 
"running away screaming" from doing anything to try to cooperate and 
make a difference.

Because of all this well organized influence by the popes and prophets, 
consider what camp most of the herds are in on topics such as these:

http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/50

The greatest idea in the world is completely useless if only one person 
knows about it.  Without organization and cooperation you have nothing.  
Traditionally, the most effective organization structure has been a the 
hierarchy.  Having a "God' at the top of a hierarchy lends nicely to 
such an idea, so why do you think society tends to believe in such an 
absurd and faithless idea, like there is a God out there hiding from us?

But, is a hierarchy really the best way to organize?  There are so many 
obvious problems with a hierarchy.  Like they are terrible bottlenecks 
since there is no way the guy at the top can manage all issues, let 
alone understand the infinite subtleties of all issues.  Even if the guy 
at the top did have the ability to literally talk with God, there would 
still be a terrible bottleneck issues attempting to help and direct all 
of society.  And this is to say nothing of the corruptibility of such 
hierarchical leaderships once they are established.  These problems are 
the only real reason so many intelligent people don't  like 'organized 
religion'

But, obviously, the way of the hierarchy is starting to wain, primarily 
because of our improving ability to communicate.  Already, the printing 
press has enabled us to at least implement crude voting mechanism, and 
crude slightly less hierarchical 'separation of power' type 
organizational structures that has been a huge social step forward.  
But, we have long way to go, especially when it comes to specification 
and direction of 'moral' or 'religious' issues.

I believe morals should be based on what people really want, and that 
the more diversity of want the better as we seek to get all people 
anything they could possibly want.  If this is true, then all moral 
authority should be based on concise and quantitative measures of what 
it is people want; especially all the people at the bottom in grass 
roots ways, as apposed to some guy at the top who thinks he knows what 
the masses want better than they do.  If you think about it, then, the 
only thing holding us back, the only thing empowering the hierarchies, 
is our in ability to communicate, concisely and quantitatively just what 
it is the masses want.  For if you know, concisely and quantitatively, 
what the masses truly want, real time, and the leader at the top is 
pushing for something he wants instead, then shouldn't he be thrown out 
on his ass?

All transhumanists seem to faithlessly accept the current sorry 
situation where only the popes and prophets have any moral or religious 
influence on society, and we have no ability to organize in any 
effective way.  As if there is nothing we can do to make anything 
better.  But is this truly the case?  In fact I think now is the final 
days of the moral damage these hierarchical religions are doing to 
society.  Once we can know concisely and quantitatively what everyone 
wants, then we will finally have no more need for such hierarchies.

Imagine what could happen if we got several thousand Transhumanists to 
indicate concisely and quantitatively what they believe on the above 
canonized topics.  Then imagine the herds attempting to keep up by 
attempting to go viral, and  by creating their own camps to defend what 
the popes and prophets are teaching against what is so obviously true 
and rational.  Certainly, as the popes and prophets see this ability to 
communicate taking away their moral power, as they watch the members in 
their hierarchies start to diminish, they will be tempted to advise 
their flocks to not participate right?  But of course, this is precisely 
what we want.  Any such evil or refusal to 'play' with everyone together 
should have no moral influence over society.

And the majority of sheepish people, the ones giving all the power to 
the  popes and prophets will obviously not be interested in playing 
right?  They don't want to have to think about things, they just want to 
"follow the prophet".  This is why so many sheepish  people haven't even 
thought about the above canonized isseus.  And this is what is killing 
us, morally, today.  But, in todays dynamic, intelligent, and  informed 
world, don't you think this will tend to lead to their demise?

If you ask me, the next big thing in the world is not going to be just 
technological.  It is going to finally be using these communication 
technologies to do something powerfully social.  In fact you can see 
this exploding, right now, before our eyes.  The primary enabling 
technology will finally be something that enables the masses to 
communicate, concisely and quantitatively, and in real time, precisely 
what it is they all want, value, and believe.

And once you have that, and can apply such to reputations in 
quantitative ways, then suddenly you don't need any more hierarchical 
police states and restricting laws.  All you have to do is set up 
reputation systems, where the masses can efficiently, concisely and 
quantitatively communicate the reputation of everything, in real time, 
and then suddenly it becomes possible to simply ignore all the spam and 
scam.


Lee also mentioned other problems like:
<<<

Finishing Usually Requires some very Unpleasant Work

 >>>

But that is the glory of a wiki system.  It is never finished.  The 
masses just occasionally visit a page, and if they have a quick idea of 
how to improve things, they do so.  And things just get better, more 
concise, while the best most true camps, as determined by your preferred 
sorting / valuing algorithm, just continue to grow in easy, fun, social, 
competitive ways - all together - the more diversity the better.  It can 
be set up so the diversity drives everyone forward, instead of ripping 
everyone apart.  And it's not that hard to indicate just what it is you 
want, if there is already a camp close to what it is you do want.

Also, Natasha, I would really like to know, concisely, and 
quantitatively, which things you do not agree with.  And it would be 
nice to know what everyone else that thinks differently believes on all 
this or how we can give the power back to the intelligent masses.  Just 
saying you disagree with some things, or just 'running away screaming' 
doesn't help any of us to know what you disagree with.  I think the more 
of any of this kind of disagreement there is, the stronger it can make 
us all, if it can all be concisely stated and quantitatively measured in 
real time.

Thanks,

Brent Allsop



Natasha Vita-More wrote:
>
>  
>
> *Brent Allsop** wrote:*
>
>  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.  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.
>
>  I don't agree entirely with you Brent.  Transhumanist have worked 
> very well in "groups" but unfortunately some of the "groups" have used 
> group-think to position themselves against other H+ "groups".  So it 
> is not that H+ers cannot work together, it is that more attention is 
> often placed on a group as being better than another group.  Why is 
> this?  The most often culprits are religious, political or 
> sex-oriented divisions.  Tiresome, yes.
>
>  
>
> Toward more co-operation ,
>
>  
>
> Natasha
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  
>
> Natasha Vita-More <http://www.natasha.cc>
>
> BFA, MS, MPhil/PhD Candidate, Planetary Collegium
>
> Faculty of Technology, School of Computers, Communication and Electronics
>
> University of Plymouth, UK
>
>  
>
> Arts and Design - NBIC+ Convergence <http://www.transhumanist.biz>
>
> H+ Europe <http://www.transhumanism.eu>
>


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