Why doesn’t everyone get excited about transhumanism? Why aren’t all people fascinated by augmented and virtual reality, radical life-extension, brain-uploading, and The Singularity? “The Casual Transhuman” examines H+ topics from the layman’s perspective and give suggestions on how transhumanists can spread their ideas without looking like crackpots to the world-at-large.
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Posted by
Intomorrow on 11/15 at 05:21 PM
“America is the most advanced country in the world, depending on your point of view. Yet nearly half of all people in this great country truly, deeply, completely believe that even basic concepts like evolution, the Big Bang and even electricity are entirely fictional, and that those who “believe” in these ideas are lost at best, or at worst pure evil.”
“Based on the constancy of psychological processes” wrote Ravi Batra concerning outmoded economic thinking; it is also true of creationism: in the Midwest and South creationism is a dominant religious belief. Every day I talk to or overhear Christians discussing how the odds of the cosmos coming into being without God are the odds that a tornado in a junkyard… well, given the prevalence of such talk you are familiar with the argument. Since America has been a more or less religious nation since 1776, and back to Jamestown going on 400 years, it isn’t surprising the uneducated ignore science to the degree they do. Plus the Europe America derived from was Christian for more than a thousand years.
What is surprising is how educated Midwesterners and Southerners hold onto creationism.
Posted by
Intomorrow on 11/15 at 08:54 PM
Here’s something on the Hoyle “tornado in a junkyard, Jumbo Jet” quote; most of you know what it’s about, yet perhaps Chris and one or two others do not:
http://www.ebonmusings.org/evolution/tornado.html
Posted by
SHaGGGz on 11/15 at 11:00 PM
Asimov was wrong: democracy does in fact mean that, at least when it comes to voting, and politicians are adept at exploiting this fact. This dynamic is nothing new, and its concentrated prevalence in certain parts of the US is unsurprising, given their history. At least those with the courage of their conviction that their tribal fetish wouldn’t allow them to come to harm can put this hypothesis to the test, autodarwinate and kindly self-deport from the gene pool.
Posted by
contraterrine on 11/19 at 06:10 AM
With public policy in the USA deliberately dumbing-down education and the flourish of allowed mediocrity in much of the rest of the world none of this should be in the least amount surprising.
Instead of teaching kids logic and giving them the tools for critical thinking we have a sit down and shut up approach.
Education has been replaced by deliberately boring learn-by-rote conditioning, supplimented by developmentally dangerous and toxic drugs such as adderall and ritalin mostly given to boys, no surprise there as boys are often denied recess or rough and tumble physical activities which help with being able to sit and process lessons.
Drugs which make so many billion for big pharma being pushed onto children, that in reality mostly do not need these drugs but would flourish if given optimal nutrition, plenty of appropriate learning at home and teachers who give a damn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujuDvwSOFto
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