Re: psychoceramics: Book Review: The good kind of kook

["Nathan Shumate" <n--@1--.com>]

> 1) I've missed the review in your post, capsule or otherwise
> 2) Keept out the HTML crap out of your email. Yeah, and get a decent
mailer.

1) What did you want, criticisms of his theme and subtext?

2) Sorry.  I was trying to configure something to read another person's
post to me in HTML, and didn't change the settings back.  Back off.

>  > Regis.  On top of having the best title in the last ten years, Regis
>  > showcases those areas of science normally seen as crackpottish (but we
know
>  > what REAL crackpots are, don't we?), such as cryonics, nanotech,
private
> 
> So far I can see the only difference between crackpots and visionaries 
> only time can tell. A priori, no go.

The idea was that there was nothing technically impossible in any of the
"kooky" ideas -- i.e., nanotech is not technically impossible, it's only
far beyond our current ability to manipulate matter.
 
>  > enterprise space flight, L5, terraforming, solar seeding, mind
downloading,
>  > cloning, etc.  It's great to see "kooks" who are just slightly on the
>  > fringe instead of way past it.  The true common thread runnign through
the
> 
> 1) Cryonics is, per definition, only validable in the future. So it is 
>    no area of scientific enterprise, albeit making use of science.

The idea is that, with nanotech a possibility, there's no reason that
nanotech couldn't  conceivably reconstruct a frezzer-burned human.

> 2) it's _uploading_, if you want to choose a 'USA Today'
>    terminus. Also, search for MURG and 'Cyberworm project'.

I'm just using the terminology from the book, as given by it's proponents.

> 3) recall above difference between kooks and visionaries being
>    discernible only in the backsight. Ridicule is cheap, reliable
>    crystal balls scarce.

Wrong.  A kook makes assertions based on tenets either demonstrably false
or demonstrably unprovable.  Nothing proposed in Great Mambo Chicken is
outside the laws of physics.

>  > chapters is the attitude, in Regis' words, of "fin-de-siecle hubristic
>  > mania" -- the idea that man will someday have total dominion over the
>  > universe through steady advances in science.

> I am not aware of this statement to be in the tenets  of either
> extropy or transhumanism. As it stands, it is hogwash.

"Transhuman" was used by one of the subjects of the book to mean the status
of humanity once the physical body is no longer a restriction -- through
down/uploading, etc.
 
>  > Nathan Shumate
>  > Fringe Benefit Analysts, Inc.
>  > 
>  > "Si hoc signum legere potes, operis in rebus
> 
> Yeah, I can read the fucking .sig. Besides of HTML crap in it, that
> is. 
WHAT THE HELL CRAWLED UP YOUR TAILPIPE?!

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