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I am not advocating for any policy prescription or even expressing a real preference here.
Just pointing out that zeroing the thought experiment in on only gender identity is is pretty limiting once you assume the sort of tech level that this implies.
Sort of? You're suggesting taking the 'natural' biodiversity and homogenizing it. I'm suggesting that we could help people be satisfied with the biological/genetic card they've been handed, disturbing as little as possible otherwise. On the far end we could make people who were born with disfigurements or disabilities 'accept' who they are, but we'd also, presumably, be able to 'cure' these conditions and restore them to functionality.
I'm also pointing out the risk of people's preferences getting locked into weird edge cases because they decided to combine their DNA with Moray Eels and suddenly they have an irrepressible urge to keep eating raw fish and see absolutely NOTHING wrong with that, thank you.
The trick in both cases is that it would be hard to undo that process if it turned out to make people miserable over the long run.
Ultimately this is really a question of what 'voluntary' means in a world where we can edit our own psyches with drugs and genetic treatments. If we edit ourselves to 'lock in' a particular set of preferences, is that reducing our agency? Can one voluntarily agree to remove their ability to make voluntary choices?
I don't mind the furries doing what they will as long as all involved consent. I'm just wondering if there's any strong argument against telling furries "you might be happier if you adjusted your brain a bit to NOT think you're a wolf." If they agree and undergo a procedure that removes their bestial predilections, and thus forever cut themselves off from that lifestyle, how do we judge the outcome?
I guess this will rely somewhat on the social superstructure environment we're operating in.
Anyhow, I don't know why we privilege the world where everything gets exceptionally and increasingly weird and degenerate as our technological capabilities increase to one where things mostly remain within some (fairly wide) guardrails, but pure practicality governs our use of our powers. Neither one seems inherently more likely than the other.
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