Forget the singularity. Forget immortalism. The people are not ready to hear these things yet. The true potential of our technological frontier is too immense, and the inevitable conclusions to be drawn from acknowledging it are too alien and removed from our accustomed ways of thinking.
You all need to begin at a much more fundamental level, at a place rooted in the real world that people can understand, and then proceed from there, step by step. Telling someone working at the post office or in your local Denny's that it is inevitable that our brains will be computerized is not going to work. You will appear to most people to be insane.
People are ready to hear this stuff. We live in an age of the internet and gene splicing and space travel to name a few. Your right though, we dont have to unload it on every demographic at once, every one of them is different.
I wouldnt tell somebody at Dennys that our brains are inevitably interfacing either, but I would mention the work going on around it. I would also offhandedly mention life extension and how it may seem a bit far off but that in an age of gene splicing to cure diseases and nanobots who fit on the head of a pin by the hundreds and all that, that it is only a matter of time now, and that the cause has recently picked up steam on shows like 60 minutes, colbert report, ted talks, barbara walters special, etc.. Informing people rather then entering it as a debate of the points, and using things like appeals to authority work. There is a list of techniques like that collecting on line
36 of this project list. Its called "Combating the pro aging trance." They arent fool proof, but its a good place to help build on them and work on them.
We live in an existence filled with dreamers and thinkers, a lot of people want to beleive in something great like this. Most people in the world beleive in some form of invisible man in the sky. They want to beleive. They want something to grasp on to and give them hope, they want a common cause to fight for.
Other general techniques to getting through to people besides unloading on them all at once, like you say, that isnt the best way to do it, is to remember that people generally need to hear about a concept from around 3 or so different credible sources before they begin to beleive it. So if they hear somebody like us talk about it and it doesnt get through to them, then eventually many of them are going to hear or see a blurb about it on tv or a newspaper somewhere. Then they may drive past one of the conferences or something like that and then many of them are going to be much more apt to start beleiving this. I cant tell you how many life extension supporters Ive found who said they got into it when they saw Aubrey on tv or in a magazine or something. All of our memeing pays off, it all comes together in the end.
We also want to follow up when we can and keep a technique in mind that some people call the wedge. You get somebody talking about a concept, crack open thought for the idea in their head, and then you follow it up by bringing them more and more information from other people and sources over time. The
internetworking team on line 39 here is one good example of this, please join that today. You go to other forums, start a topic about this. People comment on it opening the idea in their head. Then another internetworking team member or two comes along later and wedges the idea a little wider into their head by making some positive comments of support and informing more about it. Then as the discussion develops some links and life extensionists names are passed around and finally you invite them back to Imminst, or MF, or CAR or wherever.
It's a simple process, repeated many times in human history.
The name of the game here, for the first step in the process, is to change people's expectations about what is possible. This is not done by unloading the entire picture on people, but by raising people's expectations about what science is about to do for them personally.
The way to do this is by finding a real problem, such as a specific disease which you project to be cured by a technological advance which is characteristic of the types of advances that lead to the result of singularity. Then you educate the patient populace about it, perhaps through an online community, and in so doing, introduce the concept of technological advancement. By informing the patient base about the technological advancement that has a real concrete impact in their lives, a cure, you will hint at the other possibilities this kind of advancement raises.
Thats one good technique on working to get through to certain demographics. If you want some more help outlining and discussing projects for this then let me know. Please also consider fitting them in on the project that collects ways to combat the pro aging trance on line 36 of that project list.
The real problem this group and many singularitarians have is insularity. What this community needs to do is actively look for communities and problems anchored in the real world and introduce the mindset of technological optimism. This is what Science Fiction novels did for many of us in the late twentieth century, and it is the first step of many to widespread recognition of the validity of singularitarian claims.
More to come.
Good idea, we have collected many projects for working on things like this in that projects list. Its called
LEEEP, the over view topic about it is here.
Edited by brokenportal, 13 February 2009 - 08:38 PM.
