Comments | elfs: I was kidding. Some people aren't.

elfs

I was kidding. Some people aren't.

Feb 14, 2006 22:08

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 ( Read more... )

shrill, transhumanism

Comments 6

acelightning February 15 2006, 06:53:49 UTC

I agree entirely with you. The way to eliminate inequality isn't to make everyone and everything exactly the same - it's to create so many differences that no one of them can claim superiority over any of the others. Also, people will be too busy having fun with their differences to worry about things like gender, class, color, etc.

nbarnes February 15 2006, 10:23:25 UTC

If we, as a culture (at that point, defining ourselves as a species is kinda missing the point) had the power to actually radically change ourselves in such ways, while having a culture of freedom and openness and honesty... we'd get bored in a few years and go back to having gender and skin tones and hair.

Thought control, the real science of it, leads to monoculture. It has nothing to do with our ability to implement changes, and everything to dow with authority's ability and desire to control. Freedom and power together bring diversity, not monoculture.

If we preserve our freedom (someday that looks like a pretty long and hard fight yet; the Enlightenment appears to not have stuck so well as we might have thought in 1967), then all the power to make ourselves boring won't matter. The fashion designers among us alone will keep people visually interesting. We're far too vain, as a species, to accept boring. Evolutionarily speaking, boring has never been adaptive.

nbarnes February 15 2006, 17:09:16 UTC

The Enlightenment appears to not have stuck so well as we might have thought in the 1780's. Heck, you could even say that it hasn't stuck so well as we thought it would in the 1600's.

-Malthus

mouser February 15 2006, 14:38:31 UTC

I think I picture the conversation between myself (or you or anyone with more than one active brain cells:

Them: "You just don't get it!"
Us: "Yes I do. You're an idiot."

In my mind, I have many conversations like that...

mothball_07 February 15 2006, 16:42:15 UTC

We'll eliminate gender disparities by making every neuter.

You're thinking about this ALL WRONG. We don't need neuter - we need interchangeable hot-swap accessories...I'm SO there! [humming detachable penis...]

There is also a line of thought in the Singularity movement that seeks to ban ...

And there will be, in any culture. People are scared and there will always be those seeking to remove the thing they find distasteful and using the prettiest argument they can think of.

fagricipni February 17 2006, 07:54:05 UTC

elfs said (of the beliefs of others): We'll eliminate gender disparities by making every neuter.

While I understand your viewpoint on that option, I want the ability and right to apply that option to myself. I may not make that choice, but I want the option.

elfs said in a Pendor story: 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.What I really want is the freedom to decide to change gender; we have that in a limited way now, but my imagination leaps forward to nano-machines that make an X chromosome all introns and synthetically generate a Y chromosome or can duplicate an X chromosome and make a Y chromosome all introns. Or if a person doesn't want to retain the data for reversion internally, just make something indistinguishable at all levels from someone who was born the person's current gender. Even with the current poor kludges, I've considered gender reassignment, but that and the cost are ( ... )