I was kidding. Some people aren't.
There is a line of thought in the Singularity movement along the lines of thinking that the purpose of self-augmentation, intelligence amplification, and so forth is to make us more than we already are. That the bandwidth we have now, both to create and to appreciate, will be so much greater than it is today that what we will be is literally incomprehensible to who we are now. We will be able to take the raw stuff that we are: our memories, our sensoria, and our emotions, to create whole new worlds of art, and music, and interaction.
There is also a line of thought in the Singularity movement that seeks to ban some colors, some sounds, some feelings from our palette. Those who feel this way argue that the palette of our selves is better off without them. Sometimes, it's hard to disagree: disparity for arbitrary reasons, such as race or gender, enables no one. However, while the goal may seem admirable, the method is infuriating: We'll eliminate racism by making everyone the same color. We'll eliminate gender disparities by making every neuter.
It seems so odd that this should be posted just days after I posted Honest Question: Linia said, "Your people founded their society on the idea that the war of the sexes was so horrific, so tragic, so destructive to human dignity that they did everything they could to erase gender from their consciousness. For the rest of us, thanks to robotics and AIs, women are as free as men and gender's only role these days is as color and spice and all its wonderful aspects, not its tragic ones. It is the wrestling match of the sexes, not the war: play hard, play fair, nobody hurt." She giggled, then became serious. "The Elvangoreans didn't free themselves from anything. They just made themselves boring."
Somedays, I think I may have a better grip on the future than most. Today is definitely one of those days.
There is also a line of thought in the Singularity movement that seeks to ban some colors, some sounds, some feelings from our palette. Those who feel this way argue that the palette of our selves is better off without them. Sometimes, it's hard to disagree: disparity for arbitrary reasons, such as race or gender, enables no one. However, while the goal may seem admirable, the method is infuriating: We'll eliminate racism by making everyone the same color. We'll eliminate gender disparities by making every neuter.
It seems so odd that this should be posted just days after I posted Honest Question: Linia said, "Your people founded their society on the idea that the war of the sexes was so horrific, so tragic, so destructive to human dignity that they did everything they could to erase gender from their consciousness. For the rest of us, thanks to robotics and AIs, women are as free as men and gender's only role these days is as color and spice and all its wonderful aspects, not its tragic ones. It is the wrestling match of the sexes, not the war: play hard, play fair, nobody hurt." She giggled, then became serious. "The Elvangoreans didn't free themselves from anything. They just made themselves boring."
Somedays, I think I may have a better grip on the future than most. Today is definitely one of those days.