[Wikipedia-l] The t-word

[Jimmy Wales]

I see that 24 is very upset about the people who are in favor of the
Singularity.  (Eliezar Yudkowsky, for example).  I think this is very
odd.  I mean, it's odd to be _upset_ by a very small group of people who
are basically not having any particular impact on the world.  I mean, he's
upset about people who are interested in "downloading" their consciousness
into computers, which is basically a science fiction concept at the moment.
Why be upset about it?

Many of his other comments are very odd, as well.

I think that the word "troll" is very overused.  To my way of
thinking, it refers to a person who is "trolling" as a joke or
something.  Sincere people with strange ideas are not trolls.  Even
sincere people who are hostile, argumentative, uncooperative are not
trolls.  A troll is _insincere_, that is, they say things only for the
shock value, only for the purpose of upsetting people.

But consider this statement:
Someone wrote:
>24: "the people" don't need you to speak for them. They're capable of speaking for themselves,

24 responded:
>several classes of people apparently do - Great Apes, those in
>Developing nations without much net access or English vocabulary, and
>even those Anti-globalization movement types who don't participate in
>net or Global Greens top-down games.  If they come here and say
>anything, they will soon be driven away by LDC, Axel Boldt, yourself,
>and other white trash.

Great apes (bonobos, gorillas, etc.) are a class of people for whom 24
alleges to speak?  "white trash"?  To me, these don't sound like
positions sincerely held, but positions chosen simply to generate more
heat than light.

--Jimbo