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My uncharitable mental model of it is that liberals ran out of ways to paint conservatives as bigots.
Its important to the liberal worldview that they're the tolerant ones, and conservatives are the intolerant ones.
For a long time this was not a problem, because conservative had fairly negative views around gays, and to a lesser but still real extent non-martial sex.
Liberals won around those topics, the standard issue conservative now knows they're supposed to be respectful toward gays, and for the most part, they publicly at least, largely are.
They can be a little freer about complaining about non-martial sex, but they're very little they can actually do.
Liberals can't declare victory and go home though, its a forever culture war, so they need to find something that conservatives aren't yet tolerant of, so trans issues it is.
I have to admit- I just think everyone deserves support and I suspect the fight will keep going forever or until conservatives kill all the abnormal people or stop trying to bully people who want to surgically alter themselves into giant spiders out of existence.
It's not going to end because um... why should it end exactly? I have this feeling of an underlying premise that there is an amount of weird that is... too weird. And... I just... don't have that premise. If something has pragmatic issues that prevent it from being pragmatic for society to support it, my first thought is "what technological advancements will cause support of this to be viable" not "lets suppress it forever."
But some people seem to see "technical advancements have caused support for this to be viable" and go into moral panic mode. Why?
Why are some people unhappy seeing the boundaries of the human condition expand? Why does it make some people uncomfortable?
What is wrong with your brains? Or is it me? What's wrong with my brain? Something is clearly wrong with someone's brain here.
"Support" is doing a lot of lifting here. Should we not execute people who want to turn themselves into spiders? sure. Should we let them eat children because that's what spiders of their size would do? absolutely not. And I think a lot of people reasonable draw the line at "Anything that is going to impose a neg negative cost on society"
What do you mean by a net negative cost on society?
Eating children sure. But that's a toy example. Where is the edge?
What happens when people are just afraid of spiders?
At some point, society isn't compatible with things- not because there's anything wrong with those things in and of themselves, but because society is being inflexible in ways it could change.
I think in cases like these, it's still reasonable... realistic... rational... perhaps even economically optimal in the short term to be antispider.
But it's braver to recognize that you're the one causing their existence to be a negative and try to change.
There are some cost inherent to accommodating extremely strange expressed desires. "normal" existing at all as a concept has some strong net positive effect because people who might think turning themself into a spider will make them happier are often just wrong. Normalizing such a thing makes it more likely marginal people might try. If we're going to start saying we should be concerned with the wellbeing of others to the degree we're trading off on our own preferences then we ought to actually also consider the second and third order effects.
We are talking about a world where you can turn into a giant spider right?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're biologically immortal.
So strong disagreement. Exploration is far more important to an immortal society than exploitation. You have forever to figure out what you like most. So you SHOULD try out being a giant spider. Trying out everything should be normalized.
The metaphor is becoming unwieldy and much hinges on precisely what is meant by turning yourself into a spider. If it's not just cosmetics then it isn't clear to me a human consciousness can run on enlarged spider architecture. If it can't then there are many reason one might not want to try out being a giant spider as it is likely to be a one way trip. And if it can, and we're able then it seems certain we'd be technologically advanced enough for you to run your exploration in virtual worlds and need not burden normal society with any downside of your experimentation. If you see any difference between doing this exploration in total isolation vs doing it when others need to validate it then you've found the objection. People do not want to be coerced into validating everything for many reasons such as doing so reduces the value of their validation to zero.
Hmm, well this is interesting. Firstly, I do think my metaphysical positions on identity are part of why it's so easy for me to have my positions around this. I think of identity as very modular and ultimately rooted in teleology and memory. That is, if your memories and goals haven't been irreversibly destroyed, you aren't really dead. I'm fairly certain we're at a tech level where Americans are effectively immortal already. Memes are the DNA of the soul- that is not dead which can eternal lie- the internet is a phylactery.
As for running your exploration in a simulation- Yeah I think we're already sort of there and the technology is getting better and better. VR does need to be more embodied to be "complete" which may not be viable for centuries, but... you can already make a spider-sim preeety easily with current tech. It just takes a few weeks of gamedev. And you can also show up as a spider in all video calls. I definitely think people should start out with that before going full spider.
That is reasonable. I actually want my validation to mean things too. And in the short term some of it is also necessary. We need some form of, preferably non-coercive, information transfer that keeps systems actually working. People need to make the food. Money is a form of validation with respect to economic production (insofar as the economic system is doing its job). Long-term- I don't want to force people to validate things. But I also don't want to force people to need validation. I want things to be more consensual than that.
If people want to have the value of their validation be non-zero in my utopia, they can, but they have to find the people who care about their opinions on principle or out of respect.
Of course, personally, I'm going to want to join up with a group that is really into morphological exploration and reward one another with validation for doing stuff like making spider bodies. But it's fine if other people never interact with my community and want to be in places with different validation norms. I... don't have strong opinions on how early people should get exit rights and information about other societies. But if we really are immortal I'm willing to be patient. In the year 10,000 I expect I'd give the neo-Amish a full human lifespan if they wanted before tempting them with the posthuman afterlife.
But if what people really want is... the value of their validation to be inherently non-zero due to non-consensual forces? Like- "You have to keep working for me because you need food" or "you have to do what we say because we have a monopoly on your shelter." and... they're in this system without exit rights or it being opt in? I'm not a fan of that. Short-term- some of it is necessary but we should occasionally be double checking and asking if it's really necessary. Long-term I want enough individual capability and post scarcity that I can print my own food, shelter, and printers from free environmental resources.
I'm not sure to what degree people agree with me there and to what degree people just really value having non-consensual influence over others. I hear things about the stereotypical middle manager that give me concerns about the central goals of some humans.
This is itself a very idiosyncratic definition of "immortal" and I really don't think it's bringing more understanding to justify how unusual it is. When I say immortal I mean life without end, or at least without end outside of my control. Under your deifnition simply being alive and doing anything makes one immortal due to chaos theory.
I pretty heavily disagree that were anywhere near simulating what it's like to be a spider. Perhaps you mean human made to resemble a spider?
This might get right down to the core. It's my firm belief that there is more to the core of being something like a spider, Ior a woman for that matter, than mere resemblance. When a male wants to be a woman he's doing that wanting with the brain of a male, to change to a female includes changing the male brain into a female brain which itself destroys the identity. It's difficult to put into words how impossible this all is. There are things that you, as a coherent identity, simply cannot experience. There are walls that even with the most fantastic technology cannot be breached. A real, actually transformation of a human into a giant spider is fundamentally just killing a human and reconstituting the mass into a spider. It would in no real way be you.
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