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Excerpts from Farlops Industries

Utopia?

A scan of a Soviet propaganda poster. Sigh. The Soviets were such optimists.

I believe some pretty sketchy things:

Given that I believe all that (I blame years of science fiction and an abortive career in physics.) more reasonable stuff like space elevators and the cure for aging are pretty tame.

But what I never understood about these subjects is how they drive some people to get all, well, starry eyed and religious about them. There is always something about the future that gets people all dreamy. They assume somehow paradise will emerge and everything will get all cleaned up and solved. Then the handwaving starts:

I flatly and categorically disagree with this handwaving. It's handwaving like this that got us into serious trouble in the past. The trouble with most thinking about technological singularities is that it encourages sloppy thinking. A lot of people in futurist circles reach a point in their exposition where they get very vague on how to get from here to there.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon. I remember, as a child back in the Seventies, reading these beautifully illustrated essays in an encyclopea about Gerard O'Neill's space colonies and then watching video from the Apollo-Soyouz mission. Even then the juxtaposition was very informative to me. I think what I learned was that the eventually the future becomes the present and the wonderous becomes commonplace and problematic.

I keep harping on this point but, I repeat it here. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. This suggests to me that the idea of Heaven and Utopia are logically flawed.

Futurists would do well to avoid this kind of thinking.

Published Sunday, March 25, 2007 2:59 PM by Mr. Farlops

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Sgaileach1 wrote on March 28, 2007 10:41 AM

Not really much agreeing or disagreeing is going to do about it.  All the potential in the universe and the best I see this species accomplishing is collusion to monopolize and push peddle pre-obsoleted technology and distributed human networks of pseudo-cyborg clones proudly marching to the nanotech invasion of the soul.  

As evidenced by their glorious space program, they will either do and settle for next to nothing in complacent or well-intended naiveté, or pursue the most heinous, invasive, greed motivated and disgraceful application of a covetous exclusive and warlike overcompensation it can muster.  Why press the tyranny button?  "Why because we're ignorant of course, and because we can."  Seems to be the only reason they do anything anymore, as any integrity or moral compass seems to have been lost to them long ago.

Or perhaps their insanity finally drove us forsaken refugees of reason to the point of no longer seeing any reason to help them succeed.  To the contrary, I see every reason to hold this species back from ever venturing into space, achieving longevity, or doing any of these wonderful things they proclaim in the name of their corporate and materialistic gods.  

When that sort of evolutionary leap is afforded only to such a minority of arrogant overlords while the disproportionate poverty and suffering of the planet goes unheeded and unaided by an equal evolution of the trickle-down of that immense privatized wealth, all we are witnessing in this mad house of Earth is the birth of another Galactic Federation.

Monkeys with really big sticks.

 

Mr. Farlops wrote on March 29, 2007 6:15 AM

I don't agree with your position either, Sgaileach1. It implies that we are doomed to wallow forever in a boring and artificial loop of misery and repression. I believe that is also too simplistic.

Look at the world around us. There are wonderful things and horrible things and everything is constantly changing. I think this has always been the case for humanity.

The significant thing that has changed in modern times is the rate at which things are changing. It's much faster now and it may continue to accelerate in many areas for some time to come. In that basic sense Vinge is right but he really wasn't the first to notice this.

What I object to is the unjustified assumption that accelerating change will automatically result in hell or heaven. What's more likely is that accelerating change will resulting in something bizarre and ambigious. Every era of civilization has been bizarre and ambigious, horrific and wonderful and always, always, always frustratingly contradictory.

Who knows what horrors and wonders we'll see in the eons yet to come? Who knows what post-humans will kvetch about in the days yet to come?

 

robertjoellewis wrote on March 31, 2007 12:36 AM

Wonderfully expressed, Mr. Farlops ... however, would you not say that if you described your life in 2007 to an ancestor from, say, 500 BCE, that individual might see it has at least heaven-like?

I agree that nothing happens in Utopia ... but could it be approached like it were a "limit" as in calculus? I am not sure about this one. Things will always be bizarre and ambiguous to those individuals engaged in the environment, but people living in worse-off environments might fantasize that these environments are paradise.

No  one wants to live in Utopia because utopia (apart from its existence being logically flawed) is boring. Think Greek tragedy, think Neitzsche .... etc...

I would like to hear a response to this idea since I have hit a cognitive road-block. (This is my exciting Friday night.)

 

Abolitionist wrote on March 31, 2007 5:55 AM

Maybe the belief in the power of the future leads to a form of bystander effect;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Predictions can inspire and challenge assumptions as well as delude. I think everyone will be necessarily vague about how to accomplish the objectives of Transhumanism/Abolitionism - as this will require ongoing debate.

 

urchinstar47 wrote on April 2, 2007 11:18 AM

Ab, our goals are not same as yours.

To everyone else I would say that I would prefer to go with bizarre and ambiguous.

 

Abolitionist wrote on April 3, 2007 8:24 AM

"Ab, our goals are not same as yours."

What are the Transhumanist goals? and why?

 

urchinstar47 wrote on April 3, 2007 8:44 AM

Our = most posting and active members here (as it seems to me).

Transhumanism is an emergent philosophy analysing or favouring the use of science and technology to overcome human limitations and improve the human condition.

As such it has no furhter goals other than overcoming human limitations per se.

We could generalise on the policies of large transhumanist group such as the WTA (we could say that WTA stands for majority of transhumanist, and, to my knowledge at the very least, we would not be far too off). The WTA (and its leading people) has an insistance on choice on how and why and even wether to change something about ourselves. It has stated goals of supporting reproductive and other freedoms that are in conflict with your own stated policies and intentions.

 

Mr. Farlops wrote on April 5, 2007 3:24 AM

Only time for a brief note before turning in for the night,

Robert Joe,

I agree that, at least in terms of health and education, even poor people live better than our ancient tribal anscestors. But at the same time, the solution to old problems just opens new unexpected ones for us to grouse about. Could the ancient Egyptians have ever imagined psychiatrists and e-mail spam or holes in the ozone?

I'm pretty sure will solve those problems too or make them irrelevent but the solution of each problem only opens new vistas for opportunity and disaster. The main problem I have with Utopia is that implies an end point. We all reach nirvana and "snuff out." Nothing happens after that point.

Boooooring.

I'm willing to entertain the idea that Utopia might be something like heat engine efficiency or the speed of light, we can get arbitrarily close but the amount of energy expended to climb each decimal point gives us diminishing returns at some point.

Whenever I come across a situation that results in diminishing returns, I like to question the assumptions upon which it is based. This has happened several times in physics, where lateral thinking has got us around limits imposed by older models. But every time we jump outside the old systems we find that new systems have new unexpected limits. And so it goes forever.

Abolitionist,

Well, you and I have debated over this for a long time.

As long as the HedWeb Program says that there is no end-point, that there will be no stasis in some Huxleyian, soma stupor, I don't have a problem with it.

Some of your statements lead me to believe that's not the case, though. The goal of HedWeb seems to be "Absolutely everyone will be infinitely happy or ELSE!" That's stasis. That's boring and I reject it.

 

Mr. Farlops wrote on April 5, 2007 3:27 AM

I also wanted to mention that, looking over it now, this is not really one of my better posts here. Oh well. Maybe my next one will be better.

 

Abolitionist wrote on April 6, 2007 9:48 PM

"Abolitionist,

Well, you and I have debated over this for a long time.

As long as the HedWeb Program says that there is no end-point, that there will be no stasis in some Huxleyian, soma stupor, I don't have a problem with it.

Some of your statements lead me to believe that's not the case, though. The goal of HedWeb seems to be "Absolutely everyone will be infinitely happy or ELSE!" That's stasis. That's boring and I reject it."

infinitely happy or else we'd make them suffer? lol

http://www.abolitionist-society.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=715

 

Mr. Farlops wrote on April 7, 2007 11:04 PM

Well that isn't exactly what I meant, Abe. I meant that your vision suggests that it's happiness OR freedom. No one is given a choice.

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About Mr. Farlops

Pace Arko is the humble secretary to and occasional stand-in for Mr. Farlops, who is a secretive mastermind with mysterious allies and even more mysterious enemies. Pace keeps his base of operations in Seattle and poses as a freelance web developer so as to not alarm the public. You can read more about him on his site: www.farlops.com

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The posts here will be cross-posted from some relevent, original posts on my own site. My own site (www.farlops.com) will often discuss other things aside from transhumanism--mostly web development and accessibility issues, gaming, music and other boring, self-indulgent burblings. I won't bore you with that here. If you want to contact me, use BH's private message function or go to my site and use my contact page.

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