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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!
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
We’ve been through this enough times that you’ll have to define humanity.
Can we not do play this postmodernist game?
What's your definition of X?
Oh, how about ABCD?
Oh yeah? What about edge case E? Is it X or is it something else?! You see! X does not exist you fool! Anything could be X!
Or are you genuinely having trouble understanding what a human is, or what fundamental human experiences could be?
Edge cases, and fuzzy boundaries aside, can we agree that by the time we've genetically modified ourselves to be a blob of flesh with hundreds of appendages, neuralinked ourselves into a hivemind, or uploaded our consciousness to the cloud, we are no longer recognizably human?
Because it's an existential threat to the human species? It openly wants us to transcend our very nature? It's right their in the freaking name!
I’ll ignore the clearly bad faith snark, and say that yes I don’t think humanity is as clear cut as you’d like to believe. Humans nowadays are different in incredibly drastic ways from our evolutionary origins, yet nobody has any issues calling us human.
As to your dig on post modernism, I barely want to give that any credence. Definitions and getting to the heart of a matter is the core of Western philosophy, something you presumably care about given your snide dismissal of what you mistakenly see as ‘post-modernism.’ Ever heard of a guy called Socrates? He was obsessed with definitions.
I think you can make a good case that a blob or whatever is still ‘human.’ Your argument makes no sense because it’s circular - you’re refusing to define what humanity means then using the term again as the crux.
It's not snark, and it's not bad faith. It's a real issue I have with this debating style. If there's a real lack of clarity or understanding, I'm happy to try to come up with a definition or point at a few examples. But if it's just a strategy to get the other side to run in circles and claim victory by default if they can't give you a definition that covers all cases, then I'm out.
I've been doing this long enough that I know how it goes. Even if someone does give a definition, the other side can just pick another word to chip away at:
What is woke?
Uh... how about applying Marxist class analysis to groups that aren't based on economic relations?
Oh yeah? What's the difference between Marxist class analysis from non-Marxist class analysis?
and so on, and so on, ad Infinitum, just so we never discuss the issue with the original thing that was brought up.
Yes. And even though I grew up using the Socratic method, and still find it hard to ditch the habit, I'm starting to feel real sympathy for the Athenians that decided they had just about enough of the guy.
Then can you make that case? In what sense is that blob human that a cat or an octopus isn't? Why am I the only one that has to give a definition that works with micron-precision?
It's not circular. We're not talking about mathematical abstractions, we're talking about things that have a real world reference. That breaks the circle.
I repeat - it's a real lack of understanding. I don't mean to be a jerk or use argumentative tactics, but I genuinely don't understand what people mean by 'human' when they have this discussion. If you mean biological, baseline human then I disagree. As I and others have pointed out throughout this thread, we're already far away enough from our ancestors to make that distinction meaningless in my view.
I'll give it a shot. To me the essence of humanity doesn't rely on anything biological - bipedalism or our omnivorus nature have nothing to do with it. You could say the core of being human, what separates us from the animals, is a sort of curiosity and indomitable will. I don't mean the Will to Power, just the ability to persevere in the face of long odds.
Our ancestors who were most human in this view were the ones who tamed fire, who created stone tools. Those who domesticated crops and animals, who painted in caves and build temples to their deities. Technology is a natural outflowing of curiosity, it makes use of the knowledge you've gained and allowing you to gain more.
Out of all of the life we see on the planet, humans are the only ones who have this divine spark - this is why to the Greeks, Prometheus was the one who gave us the great gift of fire, of knowledge. This doesn't mean technology is always good, but it can be used for good. And so far we've done a great job on the whole.
Even if we reach @self_made_human's future where our minds are uploaded and we live on a server farm on Mars, I'll still consider us human if we keep to our curiosity and will to overcome challenges. Ultimately our main goal has been, and should be, to defeat the Great Enemy - Death itself. All other concerns are secondary, and if you dig deep enough, the core truth of most things can be resolved into the drive to avoid death, convert entropy to order, or some other formulation.
I'll make it clear that I don't see this is a totalizing moral vision. I also care deeply about love, charity, forgiveness, and other moral traits. That being said, I also don't see humans as inherently good or bad. I'd be curious if this satisfies your idea of a definition.
I'd imagine being human is far different in your opinion!
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