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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36339 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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How about a pallet cleanser?

In the other thread a few people brought up surrogacy, and maybe I've spent too much time with TERFs, but am I the only one that overwhelmed with the feeling of Lovecraftian horror whenever it's brought up? The feeling is even more uncanny, because it's like I slept through some great societal debate where everybody decided it's actually a lovely thing that should be celebrated. Although maybe it's not all that bad, there's a certain "how it started, how it's going" quality to the NYT headlines. In any case the casual way it's supporters talk about surrogacy freaks me out even more than militant pro-choicers.

Then there's the whole slippery slope thing:

  • Love is love, we have a right to get married just the same as you! - Yes I agree!

  • We also have a right to adopt! - Sure! I mean I have my issues with adoption in practice, but in principle if there are kids without parents, and willing gay couples to adopt them I don't see an issue.

  • We also have a right to biological children! What? Do you expect us to be ok with not having children?

Wait what? Yes I do! I'm all for tolerance, and living and letting live, but you're not going to make me see this as a lovely family moment, and anyway I don't remember signing on to turning a fundamental human experience into an industry when I supported the gay rights movement. Accept the limits of your biology, and move on.

Which brings me to Dase's idea "postrat «don't mean-spiritedly dunk on a rationalist» challenge (impossible)". Indeed, I can't help myself, and even though I used to be rat/rat-adjacent, I find myself having growing disdain for the entire philosophy. There's a meme that's slowly gathering momentum, that all the trans stuff, and 72 genders is just a foot in the door for transhumanism, and after I heard the idea for the first time, I can't seem to unsee it. This twisted ideology will drive us to throw away our humanity, turn us into a cross-over between Umgah Blobbies and the Borg, or trick us into committing suicide, because there's a subroutine running on some GPU somewhere, that's somewhat similar to the processes in our brains. Given the utter dominance of the trans ideology, the vindication of the slippery slope argument, and the extrapolated trajectory of these ideas, I believe we have no other choice - Transhumanism must be destroyed!

I don’t see any actual arguments in your post, just the fact that you’re unsettled over aesthetic differences. Why exactly must transhumanism be destroyed?

Also please don’t fall back on

losing our humanity!

We’ve been through this enough times that you’ll have to define humanity.

We anti-transhumanists need a schelling fence of some kind or other... why not erect it attempts to tinker with the reproductive process? Even if it's not an entirely rational line in the sand, neither is setting 18 years as the exact line for age of consent. Would you be open to getting salami sliced on that issue? One year, we agree 20 is okay. Next year, the debate goes, if 20 is okay, why not 19? Then, if 19 is okay, why not 18? If 18 is okay, why not 17? 16? We've been through this enough times that you'll have to define pedophilia.

Maintaining a line is important.

So you’re okay with cyborgs and life extension and swapping genders etc as long as it doesn’t mess with reproduction? I’ll take that trade.

cyborgs

No brain modifications is the clear schelling fence there.

life extension

No obvious schelling fence with this one

swapping genders

As long as the resulting persons remain infertile, otherwise it's interfering with the normal reproductive process. No making babies from bone marrow either.

What’s your issue with brain modifications? We’ve already massively modified our brain from homo erectus and I’m pretty happy about it.

I'm pro-brain mod, but there's huge dangers to the framework even with what we've done so far. The tendency for at least some mental enhancement drugs to zoom at least some number of their consumers right into bizarre behavior is pretty well-documented, and the line between cool mental trick and hallucination-creator can be somewhat surprising (if, uh, less so for the unihemispheric sleep people).

Trivially, 'but you have to do it right' is an obvious answer. I'm not sure people have a good understanding of how narrow 'right' is, here.

Not all values are compatible. Some are mutually antagonistic, making peaceful coexistence difficult or impossible. It's turned out to be surprisingly easy to achieve mutually-incompatible values with baseline human brains. Add in brain modification, and you jump straight to semantic apocalypse.

I’ll agree that brain modification could lead to some nasty outcomes, but overall I think the benefits outweigh the risks as with most technologies. I trust us to use it at least relatively wisely.

I’ll agree that brain modification could lead to some nasty outcomes, but overall I think the benefits outweigh the risks as with most technologies. I trust us to use it at least relatively wisely.

What's your conception of the consequences if, in fact, we do not use it responsibly?

From the previous link:

The million dollar question is really one of what happens once that shared neurophysiology begins to fragment, and sharing imperatives becomes a matter of coincidence. It has to be madness, one that will creep upon us by technological degrees.

Why does it have to be madness? Because we define madness according what our brains normally do. Once we begin personalizing our brains, ‘normally do’ will become less and less meaningful. ‘Insanity’ will simply be what one tribe calls another, and from our antiquated perspective, it will all look like insanity.

It’s hard to imagine, I admit, but you have to look at all the biologically fixed aspects of your conscious experience like distinct paints on a palette. Once the human brain falls into our manipulative purview, anything becomes possible. Certain colours, like suffering and fear, will likely be wiped away. Other colours, like carnal pleasure or epiphany, will be smeared across everything. And this is just the easy stuff: willing might be mixed with hearing, so that everytime a dog barks, you have the senstation of willing all creation into existence. Love might be mutated, pressed in experiential directions we cannot fathom, until it becomes something indistinguishable from cruelty. Reason could be married to vision, so that everything you see resounds with Truth. The combinatorial possibilities are as infinite as are the possibilities for creating some genuinely new…

And where does the slow and static ‘human’ fit into all this? Nowhere I can see.

And why should any human want to embrace this, when they are the ladder that will be kicked away? How could reasons be offered, when rationality finds itself on the chopping block with everything else. How do you argue for madness?

Perhaps our only recourse will be some kind of return to State coercion, this time with a toybox filled with new tools for omnipresent surveillance and utter oppression. A world where a given neurophysiology is the State Religion, and super-intelligent tweakers are hunted like animals in the streets.

Maybe that should be my next standalone: a novel called Semantica… I could set it up as a standard freedom-fighter tale, then let the sideways norms slowly trickle in, until the reader begins rooting for totalitarian oppression.

Every method of conflict resolution other than naked, merciless force is founded on the idea that the core nature of Us and Them is in fact fundamentally similar, that at some point we find common ground in our values. You are talking here about technology that could very easily render this idea empirically false. Merely calling this assumption into question in the last century caused a drastic increase in the concentration and intensity of human misery. It is hard to imagine how definitively falsifying it would work out better.

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What’s your issue with brain modifications? We’ve already massively modified our brain from homo erectus and I’m pretty happy about it.

Yes, "you're" happy about it. The non-human entity that succeeds us will be happy, too.

Assuming happiness or sadness is even a factor for it.

So do you think that we should’ve let homo erectus be the pinnacle of achievement, and that homo sapiens sapiens is a disgusting, horrible alteration that should be destroyed?

The extinction of any morally relevant species is tragic. I preferentially avoid tragic outcomes for morally relevant organisms closer in kinship to myself (I've donated more to my brother's medical expenses than to malaria nets for Ndugu.) But I am not filled with joy that those inferior pre homo sapiens vermin all died out, were outcompeted, were genocided, no.

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