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Notes -
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!
People should be allowed to make their own decisions with what to do with their body. When we stop sending men into the bowels of the earth to break their backs and risk collapse in order to supply our society with necessary materials I'll take the idea that people shouldn't be able to trade use of their bodies for money more seriously. If people are being coerced, as always, that is different.
No. It's not how society currently operates, and not how it should operate.
And even if I agreed to it as a principle, there are many more restrictions that should be removed first, before we allow surrogacy.
I'm not seeing much of an argument here. My take is grounded in the value of liberty, I can see some valid arguments for your position but I'm not going to put words in your mouth.
The problem with the "I'm not seeing an argument here" is that it's a fully general argument. For example, why should anyone value liberty?
I can give you a few that fit into your liberty framework, if sheer cosmic horror doesn't do it for you. For example, given the evolution of the internet, what makes you think we'll get Transhumanist Lalaland, where you get to do whatever you want, instead of one where you're bread, or modified on-the-fly to fit the fever dreams of some demented Gardener like Scott Alexander? Just because you can imagine a future where it doesn't happen, doesn't mean it's the most likely outcomes of that technology existing.
You could at least start by getting down to the values you think are being violated. It's unnatural and disgusting to you, ok that's not nothing. I won't pretend to be all that convinced on what your disgust should override liberty but at least I can understand your position and agree to disagree. Your previous response was not this, it was just pure opposition and a strange kind of opposition that doesn't seem to really reflect reality as the right to engage in surrogacy is actually how society does operate and, besides the new fangled version with all the fancy tubes and needles there were other forms of surrogacy like harams.
Short of a Butlerian jihad I've made my peace with what will be, technology is coming whether I want it to or not. I may as well attempt to adopt it into the values framework I have to work with.
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It most certainly is how society should operate. You have a natural right to do as you wish with your own body, to the extent that it doesn't harm others. To get involved in restricting that is tyrannical.
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