X-Message-Number: 17216
From: "Gary Tripp" <>
Subject: anarchy is bad?
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 11:57:25 -0400

Louis Epstein responds in Cryonet Catchup July 29-Aug 1:

    #17148: Re: Nanotech and Diversity [Gary Tripp]

>>Diversity, of course, is intimately bound to our sense of identity and
>>hopefully we will retain memories of our history but my speculation is
>>informed by an abstract view of the essential philosophical underpinning
>>that animates our behaviour. Without doubt, the insane banter of new age
>>spiritualists will be found to be either inconsistent or untenable. The
>>influence of nanotechnology will be devolutionary in the extreme and
>>will preside over an era that will be pretty close to anarchy.

>A very serious danger of it.

Why should anarchy necessarily be a bad thing?
History is replete with examples that demonstrate the fact that central
authority has, more often than not, been a most prolific source of evil.
Witness the demise of communism and the rise of free market reforms
throughout the world. These are good proxies for central authority vs
anarchy. Morally speaking, what group of individuals has the right to tell
me how to conduct my own affairs as long as I don't encroach upon the
freedom of others.

>>In such an environment diversity will take [CARE] of itself. I anticipate
and
>>look forward to a point in our future that will be tantamount to an
>>explosion of diversity.

>Something better anticipated with dread
and strategies for prevention.

The nature of life is that it should proliferate with wild and reckless
abandon. This is to be encouraged in spite of the fact that in an abstract
sense many explorations of diversity will be subsumed by more general forms
or some excursions  may lead to an evolutionary cul-de sac. My speculation
that the number of logically consistent frameworks may be very few in number
should not be construed to imply that somehow diversity is bad; rather, it
the only way that can lead to progress.

/gary

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