From: Ben Goertzel (ben@intelligenesis.net)
Date: Mon Nov 13 2000 - 22:27:25 MST
> As for 'extreme libertarians' being no more correct than 'extreme
> communists' - it is hard to argue this without knowing what you
> mean when you
> say 'extreme' one or the other.. But my wife has something to say
> about this.
> She spent her childhood in a communist country - Romania, which was quite
> communist at the time. Her opinion is this: communism is a known
> evil that has
> murdered more than one hundred million people in this century alone.
> Libertarianism has no such track record.
Agreed
> I am in no way attempting to steer the conversation
> politically; but I cannot
> allow such a beautiful philosophy to be misrepresented,
> especially when it is
> so intimately, perhaps inextricably tied to extropian goals and ideal.
I agree, libertarianism is a beautiful philosophy. But, philosophy is not
precisely art...
E.g., I find Nietzscheanism an amazingly
beautiful philosophy -- more so than libertarianism -- but I still think
it's dangerously
wrong on some key points...
If I misrepresented libertarianism in my article, it was not intentional.
Everything I said about
it was drawn directly from conversations with libertarians, and from the
writings of libertarians.
It is hard to avoid imposing your own views when you interpret someone
else's very different
views.
I really enjoy discussing AI stuff with you guys, so I hope that the
differences in our
political views won't piss you off too much...
to be totally frank, I have to admit to being a bit too sensationalistic in
that article, in order to
get the publisher excited. Hey, I'm human too... as of now at any rate ;>
ben
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