CloudHeadedTranshumanist
No bio...
User ID: 2056
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
If you consider children to be actual people with rights, then you reject the fundamental right of the parent to mold them into whatever they please.
Forget trans, every cultural standard that removes agency from children is up for review for exclusion from the eschaton.
Parents as the only role model and as an absolute force in a child's life is a single point of failure, at best it's a benevolent dictatorship and at worst its tyranny.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
I agree with everything you're saying and only get confused when you get to:
mutilate themselves
which is culturally and personally subjective value laden language-
and
Transpeople are creating chimeras and forcing others to respect that.
which sounds accurate, cool and based. Yes I just agree with this, and disagree with the values that seem to be getting laid onto it.
I do think the conversation has lost itself. The ultimate progression of the philosophy of morphological freedom, does not stop at trans people. It shouldn't even really start with gender. But the saturation of gender into society, the fact that it is one of the things we have made matter, has turned it into the central issue. Furthermore, the push to normalize the artistic (read, self expressive) flesh-crafting of the body has become combative. Too combative. Both in the sense that its created push-back and in the sense that it's been pushing an ideological conformity.
Still, I always feel a bit exasperated by these conversations. People are arguing whether people should be allowed to grow tits, and I'm still here in the year 3000 rolling my eyes and waiting for the public to take universal morphological freedom seriously as an ideal so I can become a velociraptor.
The grooming accusations feel like a motte and baily to me, where the motte is "Trans people want their culture to be normal enough that people aren't worried about their kids seeing a trans person and considering being trans too, the same way they might see a firefighter and decide they want to be one." and the baily is "gay people are doing all these things because they want to rape our children."
There's also the facet where- forget the baily- people actually are afraid of the thing I just described as the motte as well. But when the "groomer" rhetoric is used, it often still seems like an exaggeration and catastrophisation of this fear into the "gay people are doing all these things because they want to rape our children" implication.
I do like how people here on TheMotte will actually come out and say it when what they care about is that they don't think queer culture should be normalized and explain their reasons. I wish the greater culture war would focus more on object level concerns.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
I'm not saying I don't see the concern. I'm saying that it's disingenuous to compare it to death.
Also only somewhere around 5-15% of trans women get bottom surgery. So you can cut that risk factor for another 10x for them. Chemical castration is known to be reversible in trans women.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
I have to admit- I just think everyone deserves support and I suspect the fight will keep going forever or until conservatives kill all the abnormal people or stop trying to bully people who want to surgically alter themselves into giant spiders out of existence.
It's not going to end because um... why should it end exactly? I have this feeling of an underlying premise that there is an amount of weird that is... too weird. And... I just... don't have that premise. If something has pragmatic issues that prevent it from being pragmatic for society to support it, my first thought is "what technological advancements will cause support of this to be viable" not "lets suppress it forever."
But some people seem to see "technical advancements have caused support for this to be viable" and go into moral panic mode. Why?
Why are some people unhappy seeing the boundaries of the human condition expand? Why does it make some people uncomfortable?
What is wrong with your brains? Or is it me? What's wrong with my brain? Something is clearly wrong with someone's brain here.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
But if they expect others to pander to their however self-justified illusions
You're doing the thing again. I get it. You don't think their preferences should be respected. You think their identities are less legitimate than other forms of self identification.
And you don't want people to be forced to respect them, or be forced to do other things they don't want to.
That last line at least I emphasize with.
But as long as people need to eat to live and need respect to get the help of society to live fulfilling lives, people are going to keep finding ways to socially pressure one another to cooperate in building an amenable environment for them personally, nyaa.
I too, would appreciate a less coercive society. But that's not the world we live in. You can't actually live as a cat if everyone around you constantly mocks you for acting like a cat, nyaa.
But I get the impression that the crux of our disagreement here, is at the root of your value judgement, you are set on the idea that people shouldn't be respected for 'acting like a cat', nyaa. You want to be able to keep producing social pressure that reduces the number of people nyaa-ing in your vicinity.
It seems to me that some measure of culture war is inevitable here. Both sides poisoning the environment's ability to support the ideas they find harmful to their personal hopes and dreams.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
That's fair. I don't think children should be "taken away". I think children should be free to go where they want to and systems should be configured such that roaming children remain supported.
Since this is not what is actually happening in the top post- it's fair to say I disagree with present implementation.
But I do absolutely think- what most parents who are afraid of transgender role models are afraid of- is their kids making the choice.
I claim the resistance to my ideal would consist of mostly the same people for mostly the same reasons.
Child liberation is opposed mainly by people who want the power to ensure that their children become the upstanding ideal of their culture, and are uninterested in any compromise that would free their children to pursue becoming the upstanding ideal of a different culture. See "Groomer" rhetoric.
Well it's weird, its a word with a Rape affect but that is overloaded. "They groomed the prince to be king- those horrible, horrible groomers." Suddenly it seems silly to use as an insult
"You're teaching my kids things that affect how they behave and prepare them for a world where gay and trans and queer are things they can be!"
"chad-yes.jpg, gay and trans and queer are things they can be. Do you have a problem with that? Why?"
(I know why. We talk about it here all the time. But my point is to display how- without the affect it devolves back into the reasonable version of the debate that we tend to have here.)
But I won't argue that it hasn't been effective. Tools of war and all that.
I think a lot of the efficacy has come from the word being overloaded with rape affect though.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
You said they expect others to pander to their self-justified illusions.
calling them self-justified illusions is value-loaded language. When you use that language it communicates the message that their identities aren't real, that you don't think a cat-identifying person should be allowed to expect others to treat them the way they want to be treated.
I do think the culture war has become overly totaling in this regard. Not everyone should have to respect everyone.
But it's reasonable to expect those who want to be close to you to respect you. And it's reasonable to want and fight for a society that respects you enough to not disadvantage you in the competition of capitalism.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
9mo ago
Nietzsche's suggested solution is that the New Men must 'become deities' to be worthy of God's murder. Regrettably, as we've found out, not everyone can ascend to godhood. Certainly some of the highest status and highest agency men can create their own values, but what about the rest of us?
Let those of us that can build the rest of them into Gods. Join me. We must teach them to walk. We must teach them to shine.
Less metaphorically, we must scale the tools of agency and communication, unearth the wishes of each human that are left fearfully unspoken- working with each person individually to explore them, and crystallize that individual's Godhood as a semi-autonomous system that they may further wield as they grow.
Yeah. I agree with that. So these kids really wanted their eye color changed and requested a well vetted process be used to change it, but later decided they didn't ever want that and had just been pressured by those around them to-
oh... Nazi experiments on inmates in a concentration camp?
Ok yes I do see one minor difference here. One of them was a kid who was allowed to pursue things she now regrets, and now feels pressured and misled into doing without adequate understanding of the consequences. The other was very explicitly forced experimentation on threat of death, often followed by actual death anyway, of a brand new untested procedure, in a nazi concentration camp.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
Ok. So. You said they're equally foul. Was that hyperbole? I'm not clear on how you got there. Do you think the two victims are equally traumatized?
Why do you think the experiments are similar? Because they both involve difficult to reverse body modification?
Do you think whether or not the child says they want something initially is completely irrelevant to how ethical it is? That only what they think later matters? Do you have the same position on- say, women who consent to sex in the moment but decide later that they didn't want sex and they were coerced into it? Do you think that is 'equally foul' to violent rape?
Forget changing your mind, right now, I'm either not grasping your foulness metric at all or simply not believing it's your actual metric.
I'm not a big believer in changing minds via debate anyway. It's more effective to change them via friendship and familiarity and positive experiences.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
26d ago
It boggles my mind that we're still debating the merits of a philosophical stance that treats human nature as some immutable constant, especially given our advancements in biology, technology, and our deepening understanding of human diversity.
Human nature isn't a static entity, frozen in time. If history, science, and every child ever raised have shown us anything, it's that adaptability and change are at the heart of what it means to be human. Insisting otherwise feels like refusing to upgrade your software because you're nostalgic about the bugs in the old version.
Consider the possibility of enhancing our physical selves with technology. Lets say- replacing our legs with robotic spider legs. Natural Law sees this as a violation of some cosmic rulebook on humanness. But why? Humanity has never been about limiting potential; it has always been about transcending boundaries.
That isn't to say the whole thing needs to be discarded, I just feel that more rigorous game theoretic analysis is the 'natural' successor to Natural Law. There are facts that limit what things can be built, what structures can be stable. My issue with Natural Law is that it gets those structures wrong. Getting robot legs doesn't go against game theory (at least not once they become cheaper and more effective than 'natural' legs.) but it does go against Natural Law.
Natural Law is too focused on the aesthetic and not enough on the structures that actually cleave possibility at the edges. In the context of this thread- I think you could upgrade the Catholic argument by translating it to something more game theoretic, or object level.
Natural Law intuitions don't come from nowhere, there is a basis that caused them to evolve culturally, and a proper analysis should be able to locate that basis and determine whether it is still valid in the modern context. But I think if Catholicism took that route, they would eventually have to make concessions they don't want to, because under the hood, some of the Catholic churches worldview's axioms really are aesthetic.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
I'm really loving this thread. I haven't seen such prideful self assured unrepentant flesh eating monsters since I last read the Eclipse Phase exhuman manifesto. Not all of the responses of course, only one or two true believers without caveats. The sort of person that sounds like they might even kill and eat an uplifted animal.
I mean that in the most loving possible way. The authenticity and candor in this thread really hits my heart.
I know those self identifying natural humans reading this might take offence to the word 'monster'.
But I legitimately mean it as the highest of compliments here. The beauty of a creature that rips other creatures apart without remorse or compassion...
Bravo thejdizzler, for pulling them out of the woodwork.
I find myself wondering how they taste... I'm sure they'd object but- it just feels so right, so respectful, playing by the same rules among such beautiful creatures.
immediate otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent.
so, a guy without a knife saying "I'm gonna go get a knife come back here and stab you"
According to this video, to be in the clear in most jurisdictions, you should... just not be there when he comes back.
In the case of Neely... did he have a history of causing grave bodily harm to anyone? The man had... let's see... four alleged assault charges? everything else was trespassing, public urination, disturbing the peace, etc. Is that even enough? If his assaults were impotent does that count as disparity of force? In the situation where he died, he was in a subway with enough other sane people that he was rather outnumbered... everyone else had the force of numbers. This doctrine seems to let you do a lot of dickery before anyone is actually permitted 'deadly force'.
No.. SOMETHING IS MISSING FROM THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION.
Certainly you should avoid being in that situation in the first place
Yes agreed. But you mean being in a situation where you have to pass a black man late at night on a spooky street, and I mean living in a universe where black people are scary. (I mean, you in particular probably agree with me on that too but- this popped to me when you said that.)
It was his DNA
Ok. Then how do we get better DNA?
I'm going somewhere with this I swear. This isn't just transhumanism- this is-
The reason affirmative action is bad is because it is trying to fit an unfit population.
Yes! This is so close to what I want to say! You can't just shove the unfit in random places and expect magic to happen... But as long as you still pressure them to do well in the places you shove them (->this might be a good place to attack<-), you can expect magic to happen. Giraffes didn't get long necks by magic or genetic drift. They got them by breeding with Giraffes with long necks!
My point- what this whole conversation is missing- SEXUAL SELECTION IS METALEMARKIAN On a species-wide level, giraffes DID get longer necks by trying to have longer necks!!! So there is good reason to give races opportunity to aspire towards one another's greatness.
Also, memetic selection is Lemarkian even faster. But that's somewhat evened out by the fact that you and competitors both have a whole planet of well developed memes already at your fingertips when you decide to do something- And is already present in this thread implicitly (cultural differences are memetic.) And- its already factored in. A lot of G seems to be the ability to select the correct memetics from those available.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
What do you mean by a net negative cost on society?
Eating children sure. But that's a toy example. Where is the edge?
What happens when people are just afraid of spiders?
At some point, society isn't compatible with things- not because there's anything wrong with those things in and of themselves, but because society is being inflexible in ways it could change.
I think in cases like these, it's still reasonable... realistic... rational... perhaps even economically optimal in the short term to be antispider.
But it's braver to recognize that you're the one causing their existence to be a negative and try to change.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
7mo ago
It makes sense to me. It's a useful abstraction of the word for a world where all evil is perpetuated via the 'rules of the game'. but we continue to see the consequences of that evil. The issue is there are still people killing each other with knives in some places, so the overlap is confusing.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
We are talking about a world where you can turn into a giant spider right?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're biologically immortal.
So strong disagreement. Exploration is far more important to an immortal society than exploitation. You have forever to figure out what you like most. So you SHOULD try out being a giant spider. Trying out everything should be normalized.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
1yr ago
Why do you think trans is a mental health disorder.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
I coded a langchain layer for ChatGPT-3.5 to turn it into a service dominant! It doms me to fulfill all of my self care needs on a daily basis now!
The mind commands itself, and the mind resists, but by externalizing and automating the reification loop, I can relax and give in completely to the psychic metamorphosis! Self modification has never been easier or more pleasant.
I think there are better conservative positions, like- "we're not ready for this- yet. And won't be in our lifetimes so give up on it."
The conservative position that humans are not infinitely malleable is... either intended in the context of our lifetimes or just ridiculously shortsighted. We evolved from single celled organisms and we'll do it again.
Social progress is the ongoing process of distilling the baby out of the bathwater. Separating good from evil, and adopting the good while negating and subverting the evil.
I'm not saying everything should be permitted now. Far from it.
"Which technological advancements will make pedophilia viable?"
-
Well. Better systems to make sure they never fuck actual children.
-
Deepfaking technology.
-
Android technology.
Viability timeline estimation - 100 years
Will they ever be allowed to fuck actual children?
"Which technological advancements will make adults having intercourse with children viable?"
Very difficult to say. The costs are too high to explore...
the costs... are too high... to explore...
-
Absurdly predictive theory of child development and trauma formation.
-
Much better trauma treatment in cases where things go wrong, to the point that there are no known cases of even illegal violent rape that leave residual trauma after a week.
-
Enough supervision that every instance can be monitored even as it becomes socially normalized.
Viability timeline estimation - 1000 years or post singularity equivalent.
...
Will there even be human children in 1000 years or will pedophilia just mean intercourse with day old AI forks? Is sexting a fresh LLM instance pedophilia? Nah. Nah the concept just falls apart at that point. It's like asking ChatGPT whether its a man or a woman.
[EDIT] regarding your edit.
I think desires can be conditionally bad, but not innately bad. But this is usually a moot point. We live in conditions after all.
Having a strong, debilitating desire to be a squid as a 16th century peasant is not very useful, and you should work towards mitigating that until it is not debilitating and accept that you are probably going to be a human your whole life. Though- it would be fine to also accept that you still have the desire, if you can channel it to something tangible. Maybe that peasant becomes a famous squid painter. Maybe he just makes his family just a little richer through hard work so that maybe his children can follow their dreams one day.
It would be more accurate to say- my desire is to see humanity moving with the intention of shifting conditions so that more and more desires are supported, and fewer and fewer desires are bad.
It's less about the gratification of desires and more about them not being frustrated as they unspool into acts of creation that give birth to intense and unique existences and experiences.
There is a sort of desire that becomes a religion. A driving need. A purpose. I don't know how many people have even experienced what I'm talking about. It's difficult to describe because thinking about it is placing me in an intense state of... blissful thirst for new sensations. I need to go.
Striving for self-improvement every day is a commendable goal. I agree with your entire last paragraph. However, my frustration with non-transhuman sports is that we've been approaching it wrong. By establishing boundaries on the extent of self-improvement, we've failed to encourage individuals to truly maximize their potential. Imagine how much stronger and healthier you could be with a carefully developed and safe PED stack? Society discourages such considerations. How much greater could you become by aiming for a pair of cybernetic limbs? Integrating the best technology is a core component of human betterment. Rejecting this notion undermines the very premise.
The purpose of sports is to teach people to continuously strive to push the limits of human physicality—except, it seems, when it comes to genuinely pushing those limits. Sports have always been constrained, sanitized by the types of self-improvement that the general public finds acceptable. This approach is marred by the sentiment, 'I don't want to better myself in this way, so no one else should be rewarded for it either.' It's affirmative action for bioconservatives.
CloudHeadedTranshumanist
10mo ago
Listen. If you don't those close to you to be susceptible to love bombing in general, make sure their needs are met.
But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about sitting around a table at board game night and having fun. I'm talking about...
People hate TRAs because of their negative experiences with TRAs. If they had positive experiences with them they wouldn't hate them as much.
People think transition is awful because they're experiencing the miserable trans people and not the happy ones.
Most people operate on induction and bayes. It's pretty simple.
There are a lot of people in this thread comparing their child transitioning to death.
It's one thing to think of it as a bad thing that is happening to your child. But it is hyperbolic to compare transition with death.
Um. Sir or Madam. Your child is not dead. Unless you're saying they're dead to you-
More options
Context Copy link