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For the folks here who talk heatedly about trans issues - I want to pose a thought experiment. Let's say it's the year 2300, and people can quickly, cheaply and painlessly switch their sex from male to female, and vice versa. There are no long term side effects, and it's as simple as going to buy a pill from the corner store.
On top of that, fertility issues have been handled, babies are grown/raised by artificial wombs and many different types of family structures are available with parents being able to choose what works best for their preference. Gender and sex can play a role if needed, but only for those who wish to have traditional families. It is not socially stigmatized to raise a family with two women, or two men, etc.
If this all were the case, would you have issues with people transitioning genders/sex still? If not, at what point along the line do you think it becomes okay to freely switch?
See, I know that people in the rationalist sphere like to believe that thought experiments such as this one are very useful and compelling, but personally I see no value in entertaining something like this. You’re asking what would happen if humans were entirely different than they actually are, in a fundamental way, and if we had access to magic. Why is this worth spending time thinking about? Your hypothetical scenario is wildly implausible. We don’t have technology even remotely close to what you’re proposing. Do you have any concrete reasons, aside from general techno-optimism, to believe that anything like this will be possible, let alone affordable for the great mass of humanity? If not, you might as well ask, “If everyone woke up tomorrow with the ability to read minds, what would be the legal and philosophical ramifications of that?” Answer: They won’t, next question.
I would actually be curious to hear people's takes on this. Unfortunately it's not super salient to the culture war so may be off topic here. If I remember I'll post it in the Friday fun thread.
The very first episode of the anime Kino's Journey explored this topic. I highly recommend the show, though its exploration of the various scifi concepts in each episode tends to be mostly pretty banal.
Sadly, the original anime was better than the remake.
That said, I'll point out that actually, we can communicate mind-to-mind in limited capacities- that's what internetworking computers and VT-100s that fit in your pocket enable. And... well, I don't really see much inconsistent with the state of that nation in the first episode with the world of today; people just can't stand to speak to each other any more.
The trick is that actually having full mind-to-mind access would necessarily mean people would instantly be able to tell good faith from bad faith; and at that point the point becomes more or less moot since you actually could objectively cleave between those that actually require special treatment and, well, the fakers. (But then again, the truth of the matter probably doesn't actually matter anyway since we're still unable to reject the obvious fakes for unrelated reasons.)
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