Blurring Lines
Mike Treder
2009-07-29 00:00:00

So, in this entry I’ll take a slightly different approach to the issues and try to describe a somewhat more nuanced position.

Beginning again with the matter of religious belief...the concentric circles illustration could be interpreted to mean that atheism is the "best" or "most correct" attitude for technoprogressives to take, but that's not what I wanted to express.

A better way to show the range of IEET positions on the topic might be a spectrum, like this:



Many, perhaps most, technoprogressives are atheists or agnostics. Some, however, are believers in a faith tradition, whether Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, or something else. Where lines might be drawn is when tenets of religious doctrine start to overrule science and reason, but it's admittedly fuzzy.

Similarly on the question of anthropogenic climate change, there is no single "correct" way for technoprogressives to think. Most of us probably favor quick and rather dramatic action to combat global warming, although there are others who say it's not that urgent, since emerging technologies soon will make the problems fairly easy to solve. As I stated before, however, anyone who would flatly deny the existence of global warming does not demonstrate the scientific reasoning to be taken seriously within our community.



By introducing a different topic, the probability and imminence of a Technological Singularity, we can see that there are some areas where our opinions cover the spectrum. Many technoprogressives expect an "intelligence explosion" and/or a rapid change discontinuity to occur during the present century, but how soon that might be and how certain they are about it is not well defined.



We're open to discussion here about a full range of ethical, legal, and social questions raised by emerging technologies. Our preference is to approach such matters from a starting point of scientific rationality and political liberalism, and we'll certainly make an effort to guide conversations in those directions.