Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What ever happened to the transhumanists?

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 448 posts

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#261

Post by yarg »

LesZedCB wrote: post #256
yarg wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did I say that they were mentally ill? (Misremembering other people's arguments is a poor strategy in a technical forum.) And regardless of what transhumanism as a whole is about, it will always be about continuation of sapience and its evolution through time. Biological or otherwise.

> The transgender community needs to stop pushing the notion that it's healthy and desirable; it's not - it's a devastating hormonal/fertility disorder. what exactly is your word for unhealthy and undesirable? you are clearly referring to dysphoria. i don't know if you realized, but the DSM has changed in recent years.

No mention of mental illness there, but you already knew that.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#262

Post by sangnoir »

yarg wrote: post #229
jeremysalwen wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trans people make body modifications that don't prioritize my values (fertility) Doesn't seem like a very strong argument that it doesn't fit into the cyberpunk ethos. Modifying your body for reasons you care about seems very cyberpunk, and exactly the sort of thing that other people would have moral qualms over, especially if they don't share your values. Certainly the technology could be improved for people who d…

A disingenuously paraphrasing quote? Sure thing. But I'm not espousing my values, but values vital to the continuation of life. Values that have been around for thousands of millions of years. Perhaps there's the potential for this to change, but it'll just be fertility in another form.

> But I'm not espousing my values, but values vital to the continuation of life.

> Values that have been around for thousands of millions of years.

I could make the same arguments about modern therapeutics for asthma and short-sightedness being againsts millions of years of nature.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#263

Post by yarg »

Rodeoclash wrote: post #255
yarg wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grow a hollow in a vat and insert the brain? It'd be prohibitively expensive for most, but why not?

It was free in the culture novels. So, the problem is with the fact we can't do it properly yet? Also, you mentioned environmental factors, is that thinking based on a paper or similar?

https://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?q=endocrine+disruptors+...

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#264

Post by LesZedCB »

yarg wrote: post #261
LesZedCB wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The transgender community needs to stop pushing the notion that it's healthy and desirable; it's not - it's a devastating hormonal/fertility disorder. what exactly is your word for unhealthy and undesirable? you are clearly referring to dysphoria. i don't know if you realized, but the DSM has changed in recent years.

No mention of mental illness there, but you already knew that.

sorry, you just disagree with them being happy even if it makes them infertile.

classic intellectually dishonest HN concern troll

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#265

Post by jl6 »

toofy wrote: post #210

We currently have a massive chunk of society who are losing their collective minds about people engaging in the very early iterations of transhumanism—transgender folks. I still regularly encounter people who are spitting angry against transgender folks and then later in the conversation will completely unironically talk about how much they love the cyberpunk genre. Not many of them realize they would be the weird cu…

I think if transhumans with augmentations wanted to compete with humans in sports, or if parents wanted to give their children irreversible experimental augmentations, you would find very similar concerns.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#266

Post by mkmk3 »

axblount wrote: post #215
causality0 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a one-dimensional line with pro/anti modification. For example, if you were against people integrating weapons into their bodies or upward-facing eyes into their feet for looking up skirts, that wouldn't make you anti-transhuman.

Right. But being able to live as your authentic self is a good thing, unlike your examples. Opposing good modifications is anti-transhumanist.

Idk, first the focus on body modifications in the context of what a transhumanist is is a bummer, I always thought imoroved thinking made more sense as the initial goal. And second, how do you determine what is someones authentic self, if theyre pursuing that or if theyre taking advantage of body mods to be pervy or manipulative or do xyz bad thing. Its entirely subjective. Not to say there arent solutions to separate safe mods from unsafe, just that the authentic self feels like too fuzzy a thing to use sincerely, at least I see it as some bundling of your personal values that could be cancerous as far as I know :)

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#267

Post by lostgame »

adrianN wrote: post #233
toofy wrote: post #210

We currently have a massive chunk of society who are losing their collective minds about people engaging in the very early iterations of transhumanism—transgender folks. I still regularly encounter people who are spitting angry against transgender folks and then later in the conversation will completely unironically talk about how much they love the cyberpunk genre. Not many of them realize they would be the weird cu…

I think a big fraction of the anti-transgender movement is not against adults modifying their bodies, but against a) children modifying their bodies, b) persons with modified bodies claiming to be the opposite gender thanks to their modifications (or indeed, before any modification). They probably would have much less of a problem with an adult replacing one of their eyes with an x-ray camera or whatever.

I wish that were the case - but it’s a significantly smaller fraction than it needs to be.

The largest fraction of the anti-transgender movement is clearly the American conservative Christian right, who has completely chosen to ignore human rights in favour of Old Testament values.

(Source: I’m transgender, and I’m terrified what’s going on in the USA.)

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#268

Post by stale2002 »

LesZedCB wrote: post #264
yarg wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No mention of mental illness there, but you already knew that.

sorry, you just disagree with them being happy even if it makes them infertile. classic intellectually dishonest HN concern troll

If you stopped acting in bad faith, looking for some gotcha, for one single second, you'd realize that by "unhealthly" they were referring to the effects of hormone treatments, which clearly have significant effects and side effects on the physical body.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#269

Post by [deleted] »

stale2002 wrote: post #268
LesZedCB wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry, you just disagree with them being happy even if it makes them infertile. classic intellectually dishonest HN concern troll

If you stopped acting in bad faith, looking for some gotcha, for one single second, you'd realize that by "unhealthly" they were referring to the effects of hormone treatments, which clearly have significant effects and side effects on the physical body.

[deleted]

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#270

Post by [deleted] »

stale2002 wrote: post #268
LesZedCB wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry, you just disagree with them being happy even if it makes them infertile. classic intellectually dishonest HN concern troll

If you stopped acting in bad faith, looking for some gotcha, for one single second, you'd realize that by "unhealthly" they were referring to the effects of hormone treatments, which clearly have significant effects and side effects on the physical body.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN