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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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Wow, few things:

  1. Paragraphs help most writing by breaking it up into readable chunks. I'm not saying this will help here, but it does seem like the most easily addressable aspect of this ... thing?

  2. I'm not sure why you think you are liberal. Do you just like the way the word sounds? I can't figure it out. You are at most a "progressive" but I don't want to insult all progressives by lumping them in with you. I think you fit in best with communists / maoists / stalinists / etc. They share your belief in "everything will be great once I kill all the people on the right that disagree with me".

  3. Its always possible that you are a troll, and that is what some people will think here. I've become a big believer in a variant of Poe's law: doesn't matter how crazy it sounds there is someone out there that believes it. I'll treat the views you espouse seriously, even if the actual person writing them doesn't see them as serious.

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Most of the arguments I’ve read against transhumanism seem to boil down to some variant of:

I find that distasteful on a gut level.

I don’t find this convincing? If your best argument is “I don’t like it,” you may want to reassess your position.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that my gut instincts have evolved over millions of years of pressure, and wouldn't have done so for no reason. When I'm disgusted by the smell of shit, it's because it's unclean and I'm being warned to stay away. When I get an "off" feeling about someone, it's some long-buried threat detection instinct briefly flaring to life again.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that my gut instincts have evolved over millions of years of pressure, and wouldn't have done so for no reason.

Check what were instinctive "gut reactions" of "the people" to wearing glasses, autopsy of the dead, vaccination, anesthesia, open body surgery, blood transfusion, organ transplants and other medical treatments we now take for granted when they were first introduced.

ANCESTOR: Grandson? Are you mad? You let a Jew to poison you till you are unconscious, cut you open with knife, and then suck blood from someone else and pump it into your body? And you even pay the Christkiller for this satanic black magic? Are you even good Christian?

Pointing out the lack of limiting principles is always fun, and the best part about it is that it can be done both ways.

DESCENDANT: Happy birthday Grandpa! Go ahead open it! It's a gift card for the local CRISPR clinic, they have a new treatment for making penises grow out of your forehead, the first 5 are free! What do you mean you don't want it? Why do you always have to stand in the way of progress, grandpa?

Comparing my gut reaction to getting a dick on my forehead somewhere in old age to my gut reaction of succumbing to dementia and osteoporosis in old age... I'll take the dicks, thanks.

Sure. If there weren't obvious temptations to transhumanism, I wouldn't find it half as dangerous as I do.

That said, are you going to stop at dicks, gramps?

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