Snow Crash, the tabby cat, is not an extropian.
We’ve spent the majority of the week moving–an experience which is, for most cats, traumatic. We’ve relocated from a three-bedroom apartment to a one-bedroom apartment–and we had too much stuff to fit in the three-bedroom, so, as you might imagine, the new place is rather a wreck.
Snow Crash has spent much of the past week in hiding. He quickly learned to open the cabinet beneath the sink in the bathroom, and there he has stayed, hiding from the frightening and overwhelming upheaval in his environment:
Molly, on the other hand, is having a ball. She loves very little more than exploring new places, and the new apartment, with boxes piled to near-ceiling height everywhere, has given her endless little nooks and crannies to explore. She’s had a blast poking her nose into, under, over, around, and through everything she can find, and just to make things even more delightful, it all keeps changing! Every time we come into the new place with another armful of boxes, we rearrange stuff and there’s more to explore! If she could have her way, I’m sure she’d have us move twice a month. I don’t think Molly has stopped purring since we took her over.
According to the Myers-Briggs theory of personality types, the majority of the population, by a wide margin, is “Guardian” personalities. Guardians, the theory goes, are people who favor consistency, conformity, rules, order, and continuity in all things. Guardians are uncomfortable with change, particularly social change; fond of hierarchy; and feel threatened when things stop being like they were. A Guardian is the personality most apt to say things like “We do it this way because that’s how it’s always been done.” Far rarer are personality types which embrace and even thrive on change, which discard systems that don’t work well and refuse to cling to them merely because they are traditional.
Now, you may argue that the Myers-Briggs personality types are flawed. The granularity is poor; there’s a lot of overlap within the personality types…whatever. Be that as it may, there are clearly people in the world who favor continuity over function, who feel threatened by change, who prefer safety and stability even when that stability comes at a cost to others; and there are people in the world who embrace change, who seek to improve the way things are done, who look to drive society forward, technically and socially. And no matter which way you slice it, these two philosophies are inherently incompatible.
America in the dawn of the 21st century is a bad time and a bad place for social conservatives.
On the surface, this may seem like a wonderful time to be a social conservative. The conservatives dominate all aspects of American politics; Fundamentalist Christianity, and the rigid, dogmatic inflexibility that accompanies it, is so powerful that the American president is among its number; the political party to which he belongs has become little more than an extension of the ultraconservative religious right, and has openly embraced and championed the causes of social conservatives. A good time to be a conservative indeed.
But do you feel that? That vibration underfoot? Bet you thought that was the enormous, unstoppable juggernaut of conservative zeal passing by, right? Wrong. That’s a seismic shift. That’s tremendous pressure building up along the fault lines of American social politics. That’s the earliest warning signs of an approaching earthquake that will rearrange the landscape in ways that many people don’t have even the slightest idea about…at least not yet.
You can already see some of it coming. The skirmishes being fought right now over gay marriage, over polyamory, over the asinine and intellectually bankrupt doctrine of “intelligent design,” these are the opening salvos in what will be a long, bitter war whose outcome is already decided.
Every single time the Guardians have waged war against social change–every single time, from the days of Galileo to the end of slavery, from the civil rights movement to women’s suffrage, every single time the Guardians have lost. Change is inevitable. Social progress is inevitable. No matter how many times we go down this road, the result is always the same–the people who have been denied their full and complete participation in society at large win in the end. Always. Gay marriage? Get used to it; it’s going to happen, just as surely as the end of slavery. This is a story we’ve seen before, and no matter how the forces of tradition may scream and fight (and plant bombs and drag people behind pickup trucks), anyone with any understanding of society already knows how this story will end.
And in the grand scheme of things, it’s nothing, really. It will make as much difference as the elimination of ancient and bigoted laws barring mixed-race marriage made–society, if that’s all that changes, continues on more or less as it was before, despite the inane squawkings of a few indignant traditionalists. The sky didn’t fall when women started voting, the world didn’t end when blacks married whites, and the universe won’t collapse when men marry men or women marry women–by and large, it’s just not really going to change all that much.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The social conservatives who fear gay marriage, polygamy, and the teaching of evolutionary theory are missing, as they often do, the real upheaval.
Snow Crash is not an extropian.
Snow Crash is not an extropian. It’s hard to be an extropian when you fear change. Extropians and transhumanists generally have noticed something that other people have missed–the technological and social change gripping the world right now, the shifts in society and gender and economics and politics that are fuelling wars and creating redefinitions in the most basic institutions of Western society, these aren’t like other changes. These are the tip of the iceberg–because now as never before in human history, technology is changing in ways that are increasingly rapid and increasingly unpredictable. We’re nearing the really bendy part of the exponential curve, the part where things start getting really, really interesting.
We like to think we’re advanced. We like to think the Information Age is a marvelous new thing, that we’re enlightened and advanced far beyond those poor primitive savages who lived, oh, a hundred years or so ago. In reality, this is nothing like the truth. The most advanced technology we possess today is still embarrassingly primitive, still just a notch or two up from flint knives and bearskins. Our ability to make things is still horrifically crude, wasteful and inefficient, little more than increasingly sophisticated variants on the same old primitive themes we’ve been using since far before the Industrial Revolution. But that’s changing, and if you think that wars for oil and social chaos because a couple gay men in San Francisco want to marry each other are a big deal, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Back in the 1800s, the official stance of many religions was that black people did not have souls. This was a socially convenient stance, because if these people didn’t have souls, then they weren’t really people at all; the thing that separates man from the lesser animals, it was reasoned, was possession of a soul, so if black people didn’t have souls, then that cleared the way for exploiting them the same way one might exploit an ox.
It was all bullshit, of course. Wasteful, appalling, immoral, costly bullshit that required a major war and at least two civil rights movements to fix. But let’s think about this for a moment. If we find it so easy to deny personhood to an entire class of people based on the color of their skin, imagine how easy it will be to deny personhood to an entire class of people based on the fact that they are birthed outside a womb. Or uploaded into a machine. And if you think these things are impossible sci-fi fantasies, you’re not paying attention.
In the past, social change has generally meant changes in religious traditions, or changes in civic arrangements, or changes on political or economic structures–prompted, usually, by changes in technology. We’re on the horizon of changes in what it means to be human–changes in how we see ourselves, changes in how we think about the very things that separate us from other animals, changes in those things which differentiate us from every other form of life we know about. And oh, my God, is that going to make people upset.
We are social beings; we live in a social landscape every bit as real and relevant as the apartment my cats are in. Right now, we are where the cats were a couple weeks ago–a few little things are changing, stuff is disappearing from the shelves and cardboard boxes are appearing on the floor. Something’s up. We have an advantage over the cats, though; they could not possibly hope to anticipate the cataclysmic rearrangement of their lives that was coming, whereas we can, if we have the wit to do it, look ahead and see that these things are signals of a greater change than we might imagine, and see that our entire environment is about to be turned upside-down.
Most people fear this. Most people can’t even handle the idea of a trivial rearrangement to what the word “marriage means, much less complete redefinition of what the word “human” means.
Snow Crash is not an extropian. Molly, though, very well might be. And there’s a lesson in there.
Snow Crash was, and still is, traumatized by the move. Molly could not possibly be more delighted. The move was inevitable; neither one of them could have done anything to stop it. But one of them is happy and the other is not, and the choice about which to be is a choice we can make.
Shelly argues that you don’t have to be a neophile to be a transhumanist. That may be so, but it certainly helps. And in times like these, those of us who embrace change, who welcome it and adapt to it, have an enormous advantage over people who don’t.
Snow Crash, the bioLuddite.
Snow Crash, the bioLuddite.
stodgy pride! well, sort of…
Advantage, yes, and if we’re talking survival of the quickest, then it is a crucial advantage. However I don’t believe that neophilia and neophobia take place discontinuously all the time. The pattern of a given personality may have one overall bent, but there are also those who wait and see and question. I don’t particularly think that those people are backward, even if they must fight against a reflexive drive to check for traps when handling ideas or phenomena that don’t fit previously understood patterns. Novelty and innovation are exciting and vital to our evolution, but daily life requires more or less steady nourishment — it may sound like an atavistic remnant of our less technologically advanced ancestors when someone prefers to test and taste miniscule amounts to check for poison before preparing the odd new vegetable for the whole village’s next meal, but I just can’t see a huge disadvantage in some degree of cautiousness when it comes to radical change. Because if one doesn’t know what will happen, what happens might not be something good, and it makes sense to some people to prepare for the worst while attempting to discern the best.
Of course in relation to social change, my little set of tropes doesn’t even quite sound right to me, and I made it — simply because I know that holding back the progress of any class of sapient creature is wrong and in fact bigoted. However I have to cut a little slack for the stodgy ones who progress not quite as fast as seems right to us — in a democracy (which we haven’t quite lost to republic) those people are the bourgeoisie, and there are so darn many of them that they keep things going — useful things like libraries and hospitals as well as not so useful things like public schools and the Hibernian Society. Why do you think tyrants monkey with the middle class? Because if anyone’s going to push broad social change through, it’s going to be the largest reasonably prosperous segment of a population. They are the ones who have leisure time to think and to devote to helping others, and who can still recall the experiences that help them to sympathize on a robust moral level with struggle and unfair situations. They can also get quite stubborn when riled. And they vote.
Re: stodgy pride! well, sort of…
You’ve got a point- there is a middle ground, and from an individual standpoint it’s not always best to be the first in line to embrace the bleeding edge.
It seems likely that the first person destructively uploaded is going to end up more noise than signal. The first person put into a cryo tank will probably end up as a gooey corpse with freezer burn (sorry, Dr. Bedford- I hope I’m wrong). The first AI to declare it’s civil rights will likely find itself re-formatted. It’s the whole “the second mouse gets the cheese” idea.
The trick, then, is to figure out where the sweet spot is, and as technological advance accelerates it seems that the sweet spot is approaching the front of the wave. The second nanotechnological superpower (whether it be a nation, corporation, or in his underground lair) is going to have a hard time of things. The third might as well be the twentieth.
these are the opening salvos in what will be a long, bitter war whose outcome is already decided.– how many bullets did you find while packing? Just wondering.
I like this. Speaking of which (sort of),
Re: stodgy pride! well, sort of…
“…it may sound like an atavistic remnant of our less technologically advanced ancestors when someone prefers to test and taste miniscule amounts to check for poison before preparing the odd new vegetable for the whole village’s next meal, but I just can’t see a huge disadvantage in some degree of cautiousness when it comes to radical change.”
Well, yes and no.
If we’re talking about change for the sake of change–yes, it’s true that change can be either good or bad, and the second mouse (as says) often gets the cheese.
But at the same time…
Certain things are simply wrong, and they remain wrong no matter how much tradition supports them. Slavery was wrong, though it took the Industrial Revolution (which made it obsolete) to eliminate it.
And therein lies something very interesting. The South never had a chance during the Civil War–not really. The North was wealthy, industrialized; the South, poor and agrarian. The fact that the North had more resources and more industry than the South is directly tied to the fact that the North was more socially progressive. Reliance on slavery, resistance to change, opposition to industrialization–these things doomed the South before the first shot was fired.
Even today, if you look at a list of the five most liberal states in the Union and the five wealthiest states in the Union, the lists are one and the same. Similarly, if you look at the five most socially conservative states and the five most impoverished, again the lists are the same. This is no accident. Socially progressive ideology goes hand in hand with wealth and power, for many reasons, some of them direct (if you build a society which says that all women should be kept silent in the home or that all blacks are inferior and should not be educated, you deprive yourself of the contributions these people can make), and some of them indirect.
The upshot is that while many people fear the unknown and distrust the novel, remaining bound to tradition has a cost too–and that cost can be surprisingly high.
The bourgeoisie may keep things running, but they also keep things back. In their habits, their insistence on tradition and continuity, sometimes they impoverish all of us, morally and economically. But they’re not even the real problem. There are those who abhor any change of any sort, always, working in any way they can to keep the world exactly as it is–regardless of who it hurts. I mean, for God’s sake, we had to call out the National Guard over something as trivial as the notion that black kids and white kids should be able to go to the same schools! This is not healthy caution; this is reactionary, and it’s reprehensible.
Re: stodgy pride! well, sort of…
Certain things are simply wrong, and they remain wrong no matter how much tradition supports them.
Absolutely. However, when something wrong goes on for years and years, there has to be a way of ending it that also addresses the roots of the problem and how to keep the same mentality that created and furthered the unjust tradition from remaining hidden. It is frustrating that rapid change brings destabilization, and something has to keep society from breaking into bastions of extremism. Perhaps I’m hopelessly ENFP, but it seems to me that someone who has struggled with their own addiction to the old ways and come to see the rightness of change has the power to become a bridge between the vanguards of r/evolution and those who seem hopelessly hidebound. Someone like the guy who does that blog, calls himself a reformed dittohead, name is escaping me at the moment. I’m not saying that the stodgy ones who are slow to change are right or more virtuous than the enlightened thinkers who are ahead of the times. I’m saying that they have their place in the process. They’ve learned on their own terms that the change is right and necessary, but they remember the other way of thinking too and can refute it in a unique manner because of that understanding.
I don’t disagree with your point, at any rate.
I’d really like it if more people thought like you. Sometimes I do, and other times while I can see where you’re going with some of your ideas and beliefs about transhumanism and human interaction potential, I must admit I’m not always ready for them on a gut level. They are exciting ideas though, and I am interested in seeing them come true and living in a world in which they do so.
stodgy pride! well, sort of…
Advantage, yes, and if we’re talking survival of the quickest, then it is a crucial advantage. However I don’t believe that neophilia and neophobia take place discontinuously all the time. The pattern of a given personality may have one overall bent, but there are also those who wait and see and question. I don’t particularly think that those people are backward, even if they must fight against a reflexive drive to check for traps when handling ideas or phenomena that don’t fit previously understood patterns. Novelty and innovation are exciting and vital to our evolution, but daily life requires more or less steady nourishment — it may sound like an atavistic remnant of our less technologically advanced ancestors when someone prefers to test and taste miniscule amounts to check for poison before preparing the odd new vegetable for the whole village’s next meal, but I just can’t see a huge disadvantage in some degree of cautiousness when it comes to radical change. Because if one doesn’t know what will happen, what happens might not be something good, and it makes sense to some people to prepare for the worst while attempting to discern the best.
Of course in relation to social change, my little set of tropes doesn’t even quite sound right to me, and I made it — simply because I know that holding back the progress of any class of sapient creature is wrong and in fact bigoted. However I have to cut a little slack for the stodgy ones who progress not quite as fast as seems right to us — in a democracy (which we haven’t quite lost to republic) those people are the bourgeoisie, and there are so darn many of them that they keep things going — useful things like libraries and hospitals as well as not so useful things like public schools and the Hibernian Society. Why do you think tyrants monkey with the middle class? Because if anyone’s going to push broad social change through, it’s going to be the largest reasonably prosperous segment of a population. They are the ones who have leisure time to think and to devote to helping others, and who can still recall the experiences that help them to sympathize on a robust moral level with struggle and unfair situations. They can also get quite stubborn when riled. And they vote.
Re: stodgy pride! well, sort of…
You’ve got a point- there is a middle ground, and from an individual standpoint it’s not always best to be the first in line to embrace the bleeding edge.
It seems likely that the first person destructively uploaded is going to end up more noise than signal. The first person put into a cryo tank will probably end up as a gooey corpse with freezer burn (sorry, Dr. Bedford- I hope I’m wrong). The first AI to declare it’s civil rights will likely find itself re-formatted. It’s the whole “the second mouse gets the cheese” idea.
The trick, then, is to figure out where the sweet spot is, and as technological advance accelerates it seems that the sweet spot is approaching the front of the wave. The second nanotechnological superpower (whether it be a nation, corporation, or in his underground lair) is going to have a hard time of things. The third might as well be the twentieth.
these are the opening salvos in what will be a long, bitter war whose outcome is already decided.– how many bullets did you find while packing? Just wondering.
I like this. Speaking of which (sort of),
I’m just looking for a chance to use the word “transfeline.”
Molly is a transfelinist. 🙂 Perhaps you’ll get to meet her soon.
I’m just looking for a chance to use the word “transfeline.”
Re: stodgy pride! well, sort of…
“…it may sound like an atavistic remnant of our less technologically advanced ancestors when someone prefers to test and taste miniscule amounts to check for poison before preparing the odd new vegetable for the whole village’s next meal, but I just can’t see a huge disadvantage in some degree of cautiousness when it comes to radical change.”
Well, yes and no.
If we’re talking about change for the sake of change–yes, it’s true that change can be either good or bad, and the second mouse (as says) often gets the cheese.
But at the same time…
Certain things are simply wrong, and they remain wrong no matter how much tradition supports them. Slavery was wrong, though it took the Industrial Revolution (which made it obsolete) to eliminate it.
And therein lies something very interesting. The South never had a chance during the Civil War–not really. The North was wealthy, industrialized; the South, poor and agrarian. The fact that the North had more resources and more industry than the South is directly tied to the fact that the North was more socially progressive. Reliance on slavery, resistance to change, opposition to industrialization–these things doomed the South before the first shot was fired.
Even today, if you look at a list of the five most liberal states in the Union and the five wealthiest states in the Union, the lists are one and the same. Similarly, if you look at the five most socially conservative states and the five most impoverished, again the lists are the same. This is no accident. Socially progressive ideology goes hand in hand with wealth and power, for many reasons, some of them direct (if you build a society which says that all women should be kept silent in the home or that all blacks are inferior and should not be educated, you deprive yourself of the contributions these people can make), and some of them indirect.
The upshot is that while many people fear the unknown and distrust the novel, remaining bound to tradition has a cost too–and that cost can be surprisingly high.
The bourgeoisie may keep things running, but they also keep things back. In their habits, their insistence on tradition and continuity, sometimes they impoverish all of us, morally and economically. But they’re not even the real problem. There are those who abhor any change of any sort, always, working in any way they can to keep the world exactly as it is–regardless of who it hurts. I mean, for God’s sake, we had to call out the National Guard over something as trivial as the notion that black kids and white kids should be able to go to the same schools! This is not healthy caution; this is reactionary, and it’s reprehensible.
Molly is a transfelinist. 🙂 Perhaps you’ll get to meet her soon.
Well Timed
I just finished a section of Jarod Diamond’s “The Third Chimpanzee”, where he discusses the biggest change for humankind thus far, the agricultural revolution. Turns out, paleopathologically reading the bones of those in both hunter/gatherer and agricultural societies, that more people suffered more ill health in the agricultural societies. Many factors are to blame, including a limited diet, the inability to travel to where the food is, social upheaval as a result of “surplusses”, etc.
Turns out also that the hunter/gatherer lifestyle was not abandoned. Rather, the farmers, with their greater albeit less healthy numbers, simply displaced the gatherers, taking all the good land for themselves and leaving the marginal real estate to be gleaned.
I do hope that the next wave offers folks a choice of neuleben, and does not displace the Olde Humans, or relegate them to the deserts or tundras. It would be nice to have a large reserve of organs to harvest should the need present itself. 😉
Well Timed
I just finished a section of Jarod Diamond’s “The Third Chimpanzee”, where he discusses the biggest change for humankind thus far, the agricultural revolution. Turns out, paleopathologically reading the bones of those in both hunter/gatherer and agricultural societies, that more people suffered more ill health in the agricultural societies. Many factors are to blame, including a limited diet, the inability to travel to where the food is, social upheaval as a result of “surplusses”, etc.
Turns out also that the hunter/gatherer lifestyle was not abandoned. Rather, the farmers, with their greater albeit less healthy numbers, simply displaced the gatherers, taking all the good land for themselves and leaving the marginal real estate to be gleaned.
I do hope that the next wave offers folks a choice of neuleben, and does not displace the Olde Humans, or relegate them to the deserts or tundras. It would be nice to have a large reserve of organs to harvest should the need present itself. 😉
Normally, I’d agree with you(and our ethical and intellectual compasses certainly tilt in the same directions), but I’ve been reading some rather convincing contrarian viewpoints lately, both courtesy of the Long Now Foundation.
Philip Longman makes a good point that social and technological pressures leave us facing a Population Crash rather than the oft-predicted, oft-angsted over Boom. Which means that the only groups currently producing offspring at greater-than-replacement levels are conservative religious groups.
(even the Third World is headed into population decline through a mix of famine, AIDS and several decades of pre/post-natal care and contraception programs finally having some effect.)
Bruce Sterling’s lecture on “The Coming Singularity:Your Future as a Black Hole” is also a good, well-pointed talk about how all the SmartPeople aren’t going to be swept away from this earth in a Rapture-like cataclysm into shiny starfaring metal robot bodies, first wiping the planet clean of TheDummies.
Bacteria, Algae, sponges, etc. didn’t all just vanish the moment the first bony fishes or amphibians showed up.
So while I generally agree with you, I felt I had to mention a few possible road-bumps along the way.
Normally, I’d agree with you(and our ethical and intellectual compasses certainly tilt in the same directions), but I’ve been reading some rather convincing contrarian viewpoints lately, both courtesy of the Long Now Foundation.
Philip Longman makes a good point that social and technological pressures leave us facing a Population Crash rather than the oft-predicted, oft-angsted over Boom. Which means that the only groups currently producing offspring at greater-than-replacement levels are conservative religious groups.
(even the Third World is headed into population decline through a mix of famine, AIDS and several decades of pre/post-natal care and contraception programs finally having some effect.)
Bruce Sterling’s lecture on “The Coming Singularity:Your Future as a Black Hole” is also a good, well-pointed talk about how all the SmartPeople aren’t going to be swept away from this earth in a Rapture-like cataclysm into shiny starfaring metal robot bodies, first wiping the planet clean of TheDummies.
Bacteria, Algae, sponges, etc. didn’t all just vanish the moment the first bony fishes or amphibians showed up.
So while I generally agree with you, I felt I had to mention a few possible road-bumps along the way.
There’s a famous Dean Inge quote, that goes:
“There are two kinds of fool.
One says, ‘This is old, and therefore good.’
And one says, ‘This is new, and therefore better.'”
Thought that was appropriate. But speaking as a Guardian (and an Inspector, at that) I like another of his quotes:
“When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: ‘My dear, we live in an age of transition.'”
IMHO, not all new things should be so immediately embraced, and a lot of things which have been demanded over the protests of ‘Social Conservatives’ actually *are* leading to the downfall of society as we know it…
…but that’s exactly the plan, the destruction of Society As We Know It, so that it can be replaced with another model. Personally I’d rather the devil I know than the devil I don’t know, even if it means denying a few select their God Given Rights (despite the obvious contradiction here, that being that they don’t believe in God).
After all, didn’t you even say, “and the universe won’t collapse when men marry men or women marry women–by and large, it’s just not really going to change all that much” — if that’s true, then why change anything? Just to humor the few? Leave it be.
But I do agree with you that all these new watershed events are going to change the landscape quite a bit. I’m actually looking forward to Zombie Plagues, Clone Wars, and Skynet. The very concept gives me unlimited ideas for my Afthermath! campaign…
As agonizing as the torments of a new hell might be, I’d still prefer a new and different devil. But I hate boredom more than confusion or pain. Even if I do have to remind myself of that on many occasions when I’m making a change that is hard but better than the old regime.
“Personally I’d rather the devil I know than the devil I don’t know…”
Fallacy: you’re assuming there’s a devil in the “don’t know” region. If there is a devil in the region you know and might be a devil outside it, then leaving your region improves your odds. This, incidentally, ties right in to that “choice” refers to at the end of the article. – ZM
“After all, didn’t you even say, “and the universe won’t collapse when men marry men or women marry women–by and large, it’s just not really going to change all that much” — if that’s true, then why change anything? Just to humor the few? Leave it be.”
The same reasoning could be applied to not letting women vote or not letting blacks marry whites.
You see, here’s the thing. The ridiculous, asinine lunatics of the Religious Right who go around wailing about how homersekshual marriage will RUIN MARRIAGE!!!! and DESTROY SOCIETY!!!!!! and all that nonsense are just absolutely pathetic; it will do no such thing. It won’t make any difference to society whatsoever. Not a bit. The same number of people will still get married to people of the opposite sex, and life will go on just as it is now.
So why let it happen, if it’s no big deal?
Because it’s no big deal to society, but it IS a big deal to millions of individuals who are presently denied access to things that we as heterosexuals take for granted, and that’s wrong.
Any person who supports institutional bigotry is wrong, period. Every society which institutionalizes bigotry ends up better when those institutions are disassembled; there has never been an exception. We as a society benefitted when slavery ended. We benefitted when women voted and held positions in government and industry.
We’re not talking about embracing change just for the sake of change; change for its own sake is as harmful and destructive as tradition for its own sake. We are talking about embracing change that increases the level of participation of all the people in society.
Of course, it doesn’t really matter. History has already written the end of this script. The Guardians could not stop racial integration, they could not stop the emancipation of blacks, they could not stop women getting the vote. Oh, they fought as hard as they could; they invoked tradition, they pounded the Bible, they declared from on high that society was DOOMED if these awful, awful things happened. They predicted that abolishing laws against interracial marriage would leed to mass rape and anarchy in the streets. And in the end, they could no more stop it than they could stop the weather.
Gay marriage is the same way. It’s going to happen; all the doomsayers and all the social conservatives can huff and puff and plant pipe bombs and grab sniper rifles and throw bricks through windows, but it’s not going to change anything in the end. Never in American history has anyone who’s ever resisted any civil rights movement ever succeeded.
IMHO, not all new things should be so immediately embraced and other Extropians are supporting the idea of jumping blindly into whatever the future brings and unilaterally declaring all of it “good” without first looking at managing the potential risks and pitfalls. They’re not, and I think it’s growing increasingly important that people realize this.
I get the feeling that you’re under the impression that
Even the most pie-in-the-sky, Drexlerian Extropian (I think I’ve just described either myself or FM-2030!) acknowledges that the technologies the future is likely to bring carry with them unprecedented potential for harm if they’re not handled properly. There are a lot of problems that need to be solved and a lot of questions that need to be answered now, before these technologies arrive, lest we stumble headlong into catastrophy.
Fortunately, there are already organizations which are working on these issues, and have been for some time. Both the Foresight Institute and Extropy Institute have as their main goals not just the promotion of new technologies, but also their responsible assimilation into society. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence is specifically addressing the “Skynet problem” you make reference to.
If you’re interested in learning more about the pre-planning efforts going on, as a starting point I suggest doing some research (gotta love Google!) into Eliezer Yudkowsky, Ray Kurzweil, and the numerous responses to the now-infamous Bill Joy article in Wired. These are important issues, and a lot of very sharp people are working on them.
This is interesting and helpful. Thank you.
Another resource you might like is the book Citizen Cyborg, by James Hughes. It’s a transhumanit book, but it’s not about technology–it’s about society, and specifically about how to integrate new technologies into society in a way that’s just, equitable, and fair. It’s an amazing read, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Very cool. Thanks!
Do you have a copy I could steal^H^H^H^H^Hborrow? I have a couple of rather lengthy car rides coming up, ‘ya know… 😉
Oh, if you’re interested in the quirky history of transhumanism, Rapture by Brian Alexander is a light, fun read, and manages to touch on most of the key transhumanist issues. It’s more about the culture within the various sub-groups of the transhumanist movement than society as a whole, but it’s definitely entertaining.
I don’t have a copy (yet!)–I was reading through‘s copy. But I will soon, and then you’ll all be DOOMED! Mwah hah hah…
Oh, sorry, was thinking about something else for a minute thee. I mean, I will soon, and then you can borrow it…
There’s a famous Dean Inge quote, that goes:
“There are two kinds of fool.
One says, ‘This is old, and therefore good.’
And one says, ‘This is new, and therefore better.'”
Thought that was appropriate. But speaking as a Guardian (and an Inspector, at that) I like another of his quotes:
“When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: ‘My dear, we live in an age of transition.'”
IMHO, not all new things should be so immediately embraced, and a lot of things which have been demanded over the protests of ‘Social Conservatives’ actually *are* leading to the downfall of society as we know it…
…but that’s exactly the plan, the destruction of Society As We Know It, so that it can be replaced with another model. Personally I’d rather the devil I know than the devil I don’t know, even if it means denying a few select their God Given Rights (despite the obvious contradiction here, that being that they don’t believe in God).
After all, didn’t you even say, “and the universe won’t collapse when men marry men or women marry women–by and large, it’s just not really going to change all that much” — if that’s true, then why change anything? Just to humor the few? Leave it be.
But I do agree with you that all these new watershed events are going to change the landscape quite a bit. I’m actually looking forward to Zombie Plagues, Clone Wars, and Skynet. The very concept gives me unlimited ideas for my Afthermath! campaign…
Re: stodgy pride! well, sort of…
Certain things are simply wrong, and they remain wrong no matter how much tradition supports them.
Absolutely. However, when something wrong goes on for years and years, there has to be a way of ending it that also addresses the roots of the problem and how to keep the same mentality that created and furthered the unjust tradition from remaining hidden. It is frustrating that rapid change brings destabilization, and something has to keep society from breaking into bastions of extremism. Perhaps I’m hopelessly ENFP, but it seems to me that someone who has struggled with their own addiction to the old ways and come to see the rightness of change has the power to become a bridge between the vanguards of r/evolution and those who seem hopelessly hidebound. Someone like the guy who does that blog, calls himself a reformed dittohead, name is escaping me at the moment. I’m not saying that the stodgy ones who are slow to change are right or more virtuous than the enlightened thinkers who are ahead of the times. I’m saying that they have their place in the process. They’ve learned on their own terms that the change is right and necessary, but they remember the other way of thinking too and can refute it in a unique manner because of that understanding.
I don’t disagree with your point, at any rate.
I’d really like it if more people thought like you. Sometimes I do, and other times while I can see where you’re going with some of your ideas and beliefs about transhumanism and human interaction potential, I must admit I’m not always ready for them on a gut level. They are exciting ideas though, and I am interested in seeing them come true and living in a world in which they do so.
As agonizing as the torments of a new hell might be, I’d still prefer a new and different devil. But I hate boredom more than confusion or pain. Even if I do have to remind myself of that on many occasions when I’m making a change that is hard but better than the old regime.
“Personally I’d rather the devil I know than the devil I don’t know…”
Fallacy: you’re assuming there’s a devil in the “don’t know” region. If there is a devil in the region you know and might be a devil outside it, then leaving your region improves your odds. This, incidentally, ties right in to that “choice” refers to at the end of the article. – ZM
By the time my novel gets finished, the collected writings of may render it trite. You, sir, are a genius. I may need to up the ante in my storytelling. – ZM
By the time my novel gets finished, the collected writings of may render it trite. You, sir, are a genius. I may need to up the ante in my storytelling. – ZM
“After all, didn’t you even say, “and the universe won’t collapse when men marry men or women marry women–by and large, it’s just not really going to change all that much” — if that’s true, then why change anything? Just to humor the few? Leave it be.”
The same reasoning could be applied to not letting women vote or not letting blacks marry whites.
You see, here’s the thing. The ridiculous, asinine lunatics of the Religious Right who go around wailing about how homersekshual marriage will RUIN MARRIAGE!!!! and DESTROY SOCIETY!!!!!! and all that nonsense are just absolutely pathetic; it will do no such thing. It won’t make any difference to society whatsoever. Not a bit. The same number of people will still get married to people of the opposite sex, and life will go on just as it is now.
So why let it happen, if it’s no big deal?
Because it’s no big deal to society, but it IS a big deal to millions of individuals who are presently denied access to things that we as heterosexuals take for granted, and that’s wrong.
Any person who supports institutional bigotry is wrong, period. Every society which institutionalizes bigotry ends up better when those institutions are disassembled; there has never been an exception. We as a society benefitted when slavery ended. We benefitted when women voted and held positions in government and industry.
We’re not talking about embracing change just for the sake of change; change for its own sake is as harmful and destructive as tradition for its own sake. We are talking about embracing change that increases the level of participation of all the people in society.
Of course, it doesn’t really matter. History has already written the end of this script. The Guardians could not stop racial integration, they could not stop the emancipation of blacks, they could not stop women getting the vote. Oh, they fought as hard as they could; they invoked tradition, they pounded the Bible, they declared from on high that society was DOOMED if these awful, awful things happened. They predicted that abolishing laws against interracial marriage would leed to mass rape and anarchy in the streets. And in the end, they could no more stop it than they could stop the weather.
Gay marriage is the same way. It’s going to happen; all the doomsayers and all the social conservatives can huff and puff and plant pipe bombs and grab sniper rifles and throw bricks through windows, but it’s not going to change anything in the end. Never in American history has anyone who’s ever resisted any civil rights movement ever succeeded.
15th Aug , 5
nice to see you’re downsizing! I don’t know your circumstances, except that you’ve got 2 cats! But real change can only come around if effluent people are down sizing. I live in a suburban neighborhood that makes me sick: All around me there is change – new cars every few years, new furniture before the old one has seen its day, compulsory holidays by airplane to some crummy seaside. And what for? Any excuse to work in some crummy job & contribute to the government’s war machine.
All poor people want to live like the rich & once the rich live simple, poor lives, the real poor won’t need to climb the social ladder anymore.
I’m pleased that you’re against the fundamentalist nonsense & hope for change. But I read some depressing news: Lots of Yankees are escaping the pressure by moving to Canada. I understand them, but it won’t help any positive change in US of A.
keep on writing, Vita
15th Aug , 5
nice to see you’re downsizing! I don’t know your circumstances, except that you’ve got 2 cats! But real change can only come around if effluent people are down sizing. I live in a suburban neighborhood that makes me sick: All around me there is change – new cars every few years, new furniture before the old one has seen its day, compulsory holidays by airplane to some crummy seaside. And what for? Any excuse to work in some crummy job & contribute to the government’s war machine.
All poor people want to live like the rich & once the rich live simple, poor lives, the real poor won’t need to climb the social ladder anymore.
I’m pleased that you’re against the fundamentalist nonsense & hope for change. But I read some depressing news: Lots of Yankees are escaping the pressure by moving to Canada. I understand them, but it won’t help any positive change in US of A.
keep on writing, Vita
IMHO, not all new things should be so immediately embraced and other Extropians are supporting the idea of jumping blindly into whatever the future brings and unilaterally declaring all of it “good” without first looking at managing the potential risks and pitfalls. They’re not, and I think it’s growing increasingly important that people realize this.
I get the feeling that you’re under the impression that
Even the most pie-in-the-sky, Drexlerian Extropian (I think I’ve just described either myself or FM-2030!) acknowledges that the technologies the future is likely to bring carry with them unprecedented potential for harm if they’re not handled properly. There are a lot of problems that need to be solved and a lot of questions that need to be answered now, before these technologies arrive, lest we stumble headlong into catastrophy.
Fortunately, there are already organizations which are working on these issues, and have been for some time. Both the Foresight Institute and Extropy Institute have as their main goals not just the promotion of new technologies, but also their responsible assimilation into society. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence is specifically addressing the “Skynet problem” you make reference to.
If you’re interested in learning more about the pre-planning efforts going on, as a starting point I suggest doing some research (gotta love Google!) into Eliezer Yudkowsky, Ray Kurzweil, and the numerous responses to the now-infamous Bill Joy article in Wired. These are important issues, and a lot of very sharp people are working on them.
This is interesting and helpful. Thank you.
Another resource you might like is the book Citizen Cyborg, by James Hughes. It’s a transhumanit book, but it’s not about technology–it’s about society, and specifically about how to integrate new technologies into society in a way that’s just, equitable, and fair. It’s an amazing read, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Very cool. Thanks!
Do you have a copy I could steal^H^H^H^H^Hborrow? I have a couple of rather lengthy car rides coming up, ‘ya know… 😉
Oh, if you’re interested in the quirky history of transhumanism, Rapture by Brian Alexander is a light, fun read, and manages to touch on most of the key transhumanist issues. It’s more about the culture within the various sub-groups of the transhumanist movement than society as a whole, but it’s definitely entertaining.
Yesterday evening, I was talking to some people and the conversation veered around what we believed in. I said I believed in change and I was called narrow-minded?!
BTW, you have used polygamy instead of polyamory in one of the lines of the essay. Do an search and replace.
-Vijay
I said I believed in change and I was called narrow-minded?!
For believing in change? Huh? That makes no sense at all.
Yesterday evening, I was talking to some people and the conversation veered around what we believed in. I said I believed in change and I was called narrow-minded?!
BTW, you have used polygamy instead of polyamory in one of the lines of the essay. Do an search and replace.
-Vijay
I don’t have a copy (yet!)–I was reading through‘s copy. But I will soon, and then you’ll all be DOOMED! Mwah hah hah…
Oh, sorry, was thinking about something else for a minute thee. I mean, I will soon, and then you can borrow it…
I said I believed in change and I was called narrow-minded?!
For believing in change? Huh? That makes no sense at all.
Great stuff, Tacit.
And good to find a new source to keep in touch.
Moving from a three-bedroom to a one-bedroom. Well, you’re a better man than me to attempt such. Talk about shoe-horning.
Hopefully by now, the chaos quotient is down a little and the kitties are calming.
We’re down to one (from three). And she’s manic whenever there is any change.
.
It’s been a rough move; we’re only now starting to get the new place inhabitable, a process that’s involved getting rid of lots and lots of stuff. 🙂 The kitties have adapted to their new home, and are happy as clams. It took Snow Crash a while, but he’s finally made this place his home.
I’ve added you to my friends list; welcome aboard!
Great stuff, Tacit.
And good to find a new source to keep in touch.
Moving from a three-bedroom to a one-bedroom. Well, you’re a better man than me to attempt such. Talk about shoe-horning.
Hopefully by now, the chaos quotient is down a little and the kitties are calming.
We’re down to one (from three). And she’s manic whenever there is any change.
.
It’s been a rough move; we’re only now starting to get the new place inhabitable, a process that’s involved getting rid of lots and lots of stuff. 🙂 The kitties have adapted to their new home, and are happy as clams. It took Snow Crash a while, but he’s finally made this place his home.
I’ve added you to my friends list; welcome aboard!