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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!
You yourself commented a few months back about doing a 'double-take' when reading some of my recent writing, suggesting (in different language) that I was becoming 'radicalized' on a few topics. One area you've counter-radicalized me is the conversation around falling birthrates in the west, and frankly, I'm coming to align more with the TwoXChromosome worldview that it's just a trojan horse for social control.
Don't get me wrong, I'm more concerned about the birthrate than I was. I'll even grant that surrogacy makes me uncomfortable, though more because I dislike the idea of disempowered people (surrogates in the third world are even more gross) being exploited in yet another way.
However, in the last 24 hours, we've had two comments explicitly shaming people who want to have children, specifically because the way they're trying to have children is aesthetically displeasing to you.
The limits of our biology are changing by the year. Will you make your children accept the limits of their biology and watch them be crippled by polio, or something? As Doglatine put it when seeing the reflexive support amongst locals for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, your position is boiling down to a reactionary rejection of anything the left and/or mainstream like, rather than a prospective, constructive worldview. So with that in mind, I have to ask: If, tomorrow, I invented a way to boost the birthrate comfortably above replacement (or to whatever arbitrary value you want), it's eugenic, it's whatever you want it to be - but it doesn't involve traditional, cis-het men repeatedly sticking their penises inside conventionally attractive cis-het stay-at-home tradwives followed by 9 months of pregnancy discomfort and childbirth - are you going to be joyful that we solved our demographic problem and charted a course towards our brave new future of eugenic John Von Neumanns? Or are you going to be upset that we didn't do it the way you wanted and those nasty degenerates are still having buttsex and dying xir hair blue?
If your answer is the latter (and I suspect for many of the Katja Grace haters it is), then yeah, I have to say TwoX are probably right about you.
Still reactionary. Have you ever laid out a positive vision for what you want the future to be, since you don't like mine? I'm curious to hear what you actually want as opposed to talking about those awful people doing things that you don't like.
I have never felt so misunderstood in my entire time in this community. Are you mixing me up with someone else? I did mention doing a double take on your opinions in a past conversation, but when have I ever expressed anything positive about eugenics?
Are you an anarchist? If not, can you explain to me how to lay out a positive vision for a society without resorting to any social control? If you are an anarchist, don't you see how it's a purely negative vision of rejecting any sort of structure?
I've seen this "you guys don't have a positive vision at all, you're just reacting to our glorious progressive revolution" going around, but I don't get how you can say it with a straight face. Remind me again who came up with the whole concept of "deconstruction" and was madly applying it to every positively created social institution we had over the past 50 years?
What's that bit about conventional attractiveness supposed to imply? Do I still win if we keep our current sexual dimorphism, 9 month pregnancy and childbirth discomfort, but everybody's really really ugly? How is this supposed to be any kind of dilemma to me anyway? When have I ever expressed a preferences for a race of Von Neumanns running around? Yes, I side with dysgenic trads fucking themselves back to the stone age, and it's not even a contest! But it's not really a test of my principles, whether or not I have positive vision, or whether I'm just reacting to you. If you wanted to set one up, you'd make me chose between blue-haired neo-agrarians reproducing exclusively via butt-sex, and a traditionalist Borg Collective. Setting aside that I don't even know what a "traditionalist" Borg Collective means, and uncomfortable questions about how the neo-agrarians got to reproducing via butt-sex, I will always side with the group that rates lower on the trans-humanist scale.
I know you noticed, and I know it surprised you, so why didn't you stop and reassess your view of us, and the implications of our beliefs, when you saw that the people actually expressing any kind of discomfort with the whole Katja Grace thread were Dase, Hlynka, FCfromSSC, SouthKraut, and me? You didn't even say a bloody thing yourself, until you saw Dase speak up!
Oh god, why am I the only one that has to answer reductio ad absurdums around here? Sure! Fuck it, I'll take one for the team!
Are you going to let a giant cyber-blob assimilate the planet because you don't want to stand in the way of progress, or something? Do you have a positive vision, or are you rejecting the blob just because you're such a reactionary?
Finally, back to the main topic - yes, let's pull that thread a little bit. Like I said, we now know for a fact that the slope is slippery, and as one of the people who made ruthless fun of conservatives for even bringing up the idea in the past, and someone who's horrified by the world around me, I would very much like to know what makes you think this whole thing is going to stop here? You don't like exploiting third world women? How about brain dead surrogates? They can't get any more disempowered than they already are. Please you give me the positive principle that is supposed to stop this insanity.
I was trying to head off anyone who might be upset about X so we could focus on what I think is salient for the discussion. I don't know what your views on eugenics are, but my base assumption is that most people here believe in HBD and most of those people support some form of eugenics.
Nope. I'm just here for the music.
I'd suggest you go on the internet, join a community (it could even be this one!) and just write. Try and convince your fellow (wo)man of your vision for the world without being a hater. You could also start a substack, write op-eds for legacy media, be one of those youtube influencers, talk to people in meatspace. Tell me about your tradwife utopia in good faith, how you want to get there, and engage in a respectful dialogue.
'No u' isn't a particularly convincing rebuttal. Moreover, it papers over the fact that your specific contribution is at least 90% complaining about 'bad thing my outgroup did this week.' Your idea of a palate cleanser, because the previous conversation was too toxic, is 'look at these gay fucks trying to be happy in a way I dislike. Major Cthulhu/body horror vibes here guys amirite?'
But alright. Come on, arjin. Whip out that meaty, utopian vision of yours and slap my dirty deconstructionist face with it. I'm ready for it.
Because you turn around and write the exact same thing as yesterday about a different group and are somehow blind to the fact that you're doing it! It's frankly hilarious that you think you're somehow morally superior to the trolls who were shitting on Katja for trying to be happy yesterday, even as you're turning around to shit on gay people trying to be happy today!
It doesn't surprise me at all that there's discord between the Rights who are sympathetic to rationalists and the Rights who aren't, and of course there are plenty of people here who I believe do have good moral character. In fact, I believe most people here probably are perfectly fine (almost certainly far above the median) in real life. The beliefs expressed here are just a small facet of everyone's personality.
But man, they do suck sometimes.
Why don't you, @aqouta and gattsuru get together and tell me when and what I'm allowed to write and get back to me. You complain if I say something, complain if I don't and I'm pretty sure the actual operative principle here is that you just don't like what I say.
Because you carelessly toss bombs like:
without making an argument beyond gay people trying to have children is icky, transhumanists are icky, transhumanists must be destroyed! Which leads 'accept the limits of your biology and move on' to be the closest thing to a principle I can distill from your post. Okay...can you elaborate on how I should apply that principle to the rest of my life? Or if that's not your actual principle, what is?
Brain-dead surrogates don't bother me any more than organ donation does. Put another box to tick next to the organ donation one for womb donation and problem solved. But moving on:
I don't have any objection to a woman choosing to use her body as a surrogate. I get uncomfortable when a woman is forced to choose between abject poverty, slightly less abject poverty flipping burgers or being a piece of womb-meat for ivy-league educated Chad and Jake who live across town. Even more uncomfortable when the woman is in the third world and faces even worse choices. We don't allow pharma companies to entice homeless people into super risky clinical trials with million dollar payouts, and I think the same principle applies here. On the flip side, we also need to incentivize people to work, so the economic carrots need to have at least some bite.
So...maybe utopia is some form of UBI that allows basic needs to be met while still allowing incentives for people to work if they can? Followed by a world where we could grow babies on command without physically incapacitating women for 9 months? Followed by a range of worlds enabled by speculative technology I can't imagine at the moment. I suppose if you boiled it down to principles, bodily autonomy, consent, general freedom in how you decide to pursue happiness balanced with the Greater Good? And, dare I say it, intersectional analysis when it comes to the dynamics between surrogates and couples trying to impregnate them?
Alright, now how about you tell me your vision?
You want to stop the insanity? Stop being a hater on the internet. Politely tell other people to stop being haters on the internet. Go grill some burgers.
Oh, they're here, but they tend to be on your side of this particular spat.
Cool, that's exactly what I'm doing. So I guess arguing against surrogacy isn't social control.
It wasn't meant to be convincing as much as it was setting boundaries. I'm not going to smile and nod as I'm being accused of something your entire movement is based on.
Oh, it's fair enough as a personal criticism, just not an ideological one. Also I think 10% is a pretty good result!
Fun fact: that's not what I said. I was criticizing surrogacy, and as curious_straight_CA helpfully informs us most of those are done by straight couples. The reason I brought up how we went from gay marriage to surrogacy for gay couples was to criticize the progressive ideology, and how it gets you to sign on to unobjectionable things in the name of tolerance, only to pull you down to agree to practices that are, frankly, horrifying. The best part - which you are currently engaging in - is when it tries to frame your objection to the horrifying practice as attack on an entire group of people, most of who have nothing to do with the practice.
I'm not blind to anything, and I'm fully aware of what I'm doing, and yes it is morally superior to criticize a practice not attached to any particular person or group, then it is to generate drama around particular person that - at worst - made some poor decisions in the past.
But that's my point - this isn't what's happening. I didn't not attack Katja because I'm sympathetic to rationalists, this whole thread is a swipe at their ideas.
I suppose it could be as simple as "good moral character", but I also have to feeling you're fundamentally misunderstanding us.
Now "transhumanists are icky" is something I said, and that is where the major Cthulhu vibes are coming from, and I'll defend every word of it. I take it you're not a fan of the bombastic style, and you'd prefer something more contemplative and precise, but cut me some slack, I was having some fun, and I didn't think you of all people would get so upset about some humor at rationalists' expense.
As to how the principle would impact your life, that's a fair question. Sorry for being flippant before, but sometimes it's hard to tell whether someone is setting you up for a dunk, or asking an honest question. Broadly speaking I think there's a relatively defined line around repair and enhancement, where repair would be completely fine, and enhancement would not. There might be some tricky areas at the boundaries, but there always are some with any principle. There are folks going around saying how that's what Catholics and Natural Law philsophers were advocating for. I heard these arguments when I was young, but I only half-remember them now so I don't know if I can sign under them 100%. Still, that might be something to look up if you want these arguments elaborated on.
On the other hand I think it's a fair question to ask about the other side of the boundary. If enhancement is ok, when does it stop? Is everything ok as long as it's voluntary? A lot of enhancements would probably quickly spread through the human population, because they make things more convenient, but are things that give us convenience always good for us? When I bring up my Luddism people sometimes ask me things like "what, so you would get rid of the Internet? You really don't see any benefit from it?" Sure I do! My career, and a lot of my hobbies are directly connected to it. I met interesting people that I would have never met otherwise... but it's hard to miss the downsides. My attention span got shot. I have way too little patience for normies, when people on the same wavelength are so easy to reach. I'm way less connected to local communities than I used to be before the Internet took off. Even Internet communities themselves went from a relatively flat distribution of many small groups, to an extreme Pareto distribution where a handful of influencers on a handful of platforms command the overwhelming majority of the attention. All of this happened voluntarily, and is now opening the door to tools of surveillance that could only be conceived by crazy mofos like Jeremy Bentham. And protections against state surveillance don't cut it either, if all this power is located at Google or Amazon, it's just as scary, even when it's completely voluntary, even when it's more convenient, even when it resulted from people pursuing happiness.
I could go on, I could bring up the rates of depression and mental illness and ask what if cutting everyone loose to pursue their own happiness just makes them miserable, I could ask what if we end up chasing petty amusements and as a result forget the basic skills required to keep the lights on, but let's bring it back to surrogacy and crazier transhumanist ideas like Neuralink, CRISPR, and whatnot - you really cannot see how any of this could go horribly wrong? Do we have no right to stop it, just because people agree to it? Even if it results in the replacement of the human species with some horror beyond my comprehension?
On a whim, I recently rewatched all the 90's Star Trek shows, the go-to reference for optimistic SciFi. A thought that struck me, was that virtually all of the optimism actually comes from what you'd describe as a reactionary rejection of progress, rather than "we abolished hunger", equality, rationality, post-scarcity and other reasons people commonly reach for. After all the Borg have all of those things as well.
With all the tech they have, it's a miracle that they're still recognizably human. The crew had encounters with aliens that were rewriting their DNA on the fly, and they only used their technology for a cure, even though the fact they could concoct a cure means they could turn themselves into whatever they wanted. Cybernetic implants and prosthetics exist, but are absurdly benign for their level of technology. Some of the most iconic episodes are about the crew being tempted by some technology or some advanced alien, and them rejecting that temptation. Their society is devoted to a variety of edifying pursuits: science, exploration, art, craftsmanship, and cultivating traditions. A charming thing about it is the rejection of hyper-specialization, it seems like all the crew members make a point to dabble in various arts even when they suck at them.
Then on top of that, a few words on relationships. TNG aside, my utopian society would encourage stable long-term (ideally for-life) monogamous relationships, strong family and community relations, a love as a higher value that goes beyond the warm fuzzy feelings.
Sounds pretty good to me.
So... how does that stop things like going from gay marriage to being demanded to clap for 14 year old girls getting mastectomies?
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Neither a dedicated HBD'er nor eugenicist, though I would suggest one can be the former without being the latter. Just for your files. There was a raise-your-hand thread in HBD support a while back but apparently this site's search function is failing me.
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I'm confused why I was invoked here, I did not think I would have left such an impression on you. I have never and would never tell someone not to write something especially if they believe in it. That does not mean I won't criticize what I see as poor arguments like that idea that conservatives need some positive vision to oppose what they see as corrosive ideas. I'm not even really properly a rightist.
Read the post linked before your name, and the comment of yours I replied to.
Ah, well yeah, I quite dislike the shaming tactic of "is this what we've come to?", I disliked it when Dase did it in this thread too despite recognizing the same low quality discourse that inspired it. It is, at the very least, consensus building - which is against our rules here for good reason. If you want to make a criticism I'd rather it be more narrowly tailored to the actual offenders, I think this is a value you'd find useful in other contexts. I've pushed back against Arjin in this very thread, something you don't seem inclined to give me credit for by whatever aggregation method you use to lump all us witches together. It's not even a matter of rudeness so much as a clear sign you are falling prey to Out-group homogeneity bias. I'm sure you are off-put by this same bias in the other direction quite frequently and quite justifiably in this place.
All the interesting discussions that have been had here and you decide that the proper measure that we should be paying attention to are the lowest quality threads you can find. The kind of gossipy nonsense I barely even resisted the urge to collapse and only returned to from a ping. I'm not even saying if you don't like it don't read it or don't criticize it. Definitely do that. But don't attack this place for giving you the opportunity to.
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Keep fighting the good fight Chris. Don't have much to add, but I enjoy your comments and your consistency.
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