9/08/2008 PERMALINK
A Meme Set for Avoiding Extinction in the Era of Super-Empowering Technologies. What are HUMODS? Beings able to proactively modify and enhance their own designs : the step beyond homo sapiens on the phylogenetic tree : homo novo [ homo = man ] [ sapiens = wise, rational ] [ novo = to make anew, refresh, revive, change, alter, invent ]

Meme 1: Our Cosmos generates an endless abundance of unique lifeforms and subjects them to survival of the fittest challenges to promote the evolution of increasing levels of adaptability and resilience. It further function as an Intelligence Generation Engine by periodically creating mega-challenges for which intelligence and capabilities, well beyond those currently possessed by humans, are required for the continued survival of a species.

Rogue asteroids, comets and black holes, ice age causing super volcanoes, species-ending plagues, atmosphere stripping cosmic dust clouds, planet scorching mega solar flares and gamma ray burst -- all serve to insure the extinction of any species that fails to quickly enough develop sufficient intelligence to anticipate and successfully counter all such threats. It is suicidal for a species to keep all its eggs in one basket for a moment longer than is absolutely necessary.

Meme 2: In our Cosmos, extropy is life. Open, inquisitive minds using open science to determine as rapidly as we can the nature of every aspect of the Cosmos all around us is the key to maximizing the longevity of our kind. Those that constantly rethink, refine and adjust techniques to better meet the opportunities and challenges ahead are rewarded with knowledge that cures diseases, lengthens lifespans, creates better tools that make toils less burdensome and life more rewarding.

Meme 3: Dogmas are death, the destroyer of extropy. Struggles over superfluous idealogical and religious dogmas have claimed hundreds of millions of innocent lives, plunged entire civilizations into superstition, famine, chaos and even dark ages lasting for centuries. Regard nothing as sacrosanct.

Meme 4: Fostering and embracing rapid innovation and change is essential to developing the resilience necessary for you to thrive as an individual and for our kind to avoid extinction. Pursue most avidly the new technologies that can extend your own cognition, lifespan and capabilities.

Meme 5: Oppose the development and utilization of WOMO (Weapons of Mass Oppression) capable of allowing small elites to exert dictatorial surveillance and control over a city. It is the path to species self-destruction.

Meme 6: The best predictors of a social order's success is how well it encourages the production of new economic utility by and for its members and how well it prevents wealthy elites from exploiting their control of existing wealth to stifle and inhibit the creation of new economic utility by others. A social order that grants monopolies of any kind (even so-called "intellectual property" monopolies often sold as promoting innovation), retards the creation of new utility and fosters dangerous concentrations of power and corruption that will ultimately bring on stagnation and decline.

Meme 7: We need to become a space faring species and should first colonize the asteroid belt, which contains the wealth to allow us to push beyond and inhabit other star systems.

When planets form they go through a molten stage, when most of the valuable metals sink into the core and become unrecoverable. Scientists tell us that most of the metal deposits in the Earth's crust were seeded there by asteroid impacts after the Earth cooled and the crust formed. The heavy metals with which we have built our tools and power our reactors came from the asteroid belt and a thousand times more recoverable mineral wealth exists there than is available on Earth and Mars combined.

Meme 8: The right meme set is the key to the survival and progress of our kind. Spreading these memes to as many capable minds as possible is the best way to insure that they can be refined to achieve our highest possibly destiny.

CLICK HERE to forward a link to these memes to your crowd.