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What ever happened to the transhumanists?

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Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#331

Post by kuschku »

the_omegist wrote: post #286
dragonwriter wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . Nobody is " against trans " people, whatever that means What it means is “actively seeking to eliminate trans people, including by the simple expedient of killing them by means such as prohibiting care that is proven to greatly reduce suicidality in, especially, young trans people.” And lots of people—indeed, entire state governments in the US—are “against trans people”.

> “actively seeking to eliminate trans people, Put it such extreme and dishonest way, reducing sugar in food it an attempt to eliminate obese people... No , the attribute is not the object. > indeed, entire state governments in the US—are “against trans people”. So you deny the rights of a community of people to decide what they deem legal or illegal ? All this for the personal benefit of a (literal) couple of people…

> So you deny the rights of a community of people to decide what they deem legal or illegal ? All this for the personal benefit of a (literal) couple of people ?

I hate to invoke Godwin, but just because a society decides to outlaw belonging to a certain minority doesn't make it right. The NSDAP's Anti-Jew laws were also passed in parliament, but still those laws were very obviously wrong.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#332

Post by kuschku »

fastball wrote: post #309
Elinvynia wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transitioning for small children is literally just wearing different clothing. When they get a bit older, at most they can extremely rarely (due to people pushing against it, even though it reduces suicide rates and saves lives!) get puberty blockers. Those can then be stopped with minimal consequences if they decide that's not something they wanna do. What is actually cruel is FORCING kids to undergo their AGAB pube…

> undergo their AGAB puberty against their will It's also weird mental gymnastics like this that people are pushing against. For anyone who is not familiar with the acronym, AGAB means "Assigned Gender At Birth", and is push back against the fact that we broadly lump all people into either the male / female camp when they are born. It can be useful when talking about gender norms, etc – which are discussions worth ha…

> We are not saying "this is a boy" and then giving them testosterone when they hit 12 so that they match their "assigned" gender.

That's literally what happens, especially to inter people, though.

And sometimes even done for cis people if their natural hormone levels are too low, or rather their parents and doctors deem them too low (the child is never asked).

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#333

Post by yarg »

lljk_kennedy wrote: post #318
yarg wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of your ancestors had lives that were free or fair, but every last one of them was fertile.

What of people who were fertile but didn’t have children, through choice, medical reasons, death etc? Surely a person who is fertile but doesn’t have a child for any reason has the same net impact on the growth of population as an unfertile person (trans or not)?

Sure, but some causes of infertility are correlated and persistent.

If I'm exposed to poisons in the air or water, it's likely to happen to others as well - especially if it's at levels where it's not immediately noticed.

Many other causes of effective infertility are unlikely to impact entire groups of people across long periods of time.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#334

Post by concordDance »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #208
matthewmacleod wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is absolutely not true – Iain M. Banks' Culture novels are probably some of the most well-known works of fiction with themes of transhumanism, and would hardly be called dystopian.

The existence of an average citizen of the Culture always seemed terrifyingly vacuous and stagnant. 99.999% of the trillions of individuals that exist are not talented or interesting enough to produce any artistic works or scientific research (particularly compared with the vastly superior intellects of the Minds) of value so they simply amuse themselves any way they can, under the gentle care and supervision of the…

> 99.999% of the trillions of individuals that exist are not talented or interesting enough to produce any artistic works or scientific research

This sadly sounds like the modern world.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#335

Post by kuschku »

mkmk3 wrote: post #305
Elinvynia wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transitioning for small children is literally just wearing different clothing. When they get a bit older, at most they can extremely rarely (due to people pushing against it, even though it reduces suicide rates and saves lives!) get puberty blockers. Those can then be stopped with minimal consequences if they decide that's not something they wanna do. What is actually cruel is FORCING kids to undergo their AGAB pube…

Idk what the effect of taking blockers for 3 years and then realizing its a mistake would be. Do you experience puberty for the same duration, to the same extent? If youre male, are you going to be shorter for instance? Regarding clothing, maybe its just wrong to emphasize gender in the first place? I think a lot of people are cool with kids doing whatever, its just weird when the people around them start really reaf…

> Idk what the effect of taking blockers for 3 years and then realizing its a mistake would be. Do you experience puberty for the same duration, to the same extent? If youre male, are you going to be shorter for instance?

There's no negative effects, as long as you only delay it for a few years (e.g. 10-13) and not too long (you should have entered some puberty around 16, or things get complicated).

As soon as you'll stop, your natural puberty starts, with the same duration and effects it'd have normally.

Puberty blockers are actually an off-label use when used for trans people. Puberty blockers are originally used for cis kids who enter puberty too early, and this use is far far more common than the use for trans kids.

So if they're safe to use on cis kids to delay transition, they're definitely safe for the trans usage as well.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#336

Post by 314 »

yarg wrote: post #304
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"But I'm not espousing my values, but values vital to the continuation of life." There are no self-grounding values. You cannot objectively justify why fertility is the overriding value here, rather than, say, fairness, liberty or anything else. So yes, you are absolutely espousing your values. If you want to make an argument, make it, don't pretend it's self-evident.

Not all of your ancestors had lives that were free or fair, but every last one of them was fertile.

This argument is disingenuous: not only your direct ancestors contributed to your existence. You are also dependent on all of the aunties and uncles, and other members of the community around your direct line that contributed to their survival.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#337

Post by rsync »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #84
FFRefresh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with the thrust of what you are saying, in that we do need to think about the negative externalities of different technologies before scaling them out as a species. I am getting a little tripped up on your usage of 'the natural world' and 'environmental destruction' though. Aren't humans 'natural'? And if we are natural, shouldn't anything that springs from us also be 'natural'? We are subject to the…

Are you serious? An ant hill or a beaver dam are mere reorganizations of known matter types, and could be analogized to humans building things like walls. Stone, and even some types of mortar, participate in the great cosmic dance of Gaia [0], just like the works of the animals cited above. They decay, they are broken down by various processes over time, they are fashioned of things found in the environment. PFAS, by…

I invite you to learn more about termites, their physical mounds and their rearing of young.

Specifically, how a co-evolved gut parasite allows termites to do the things they do and requires a fecal transplant, at birth, for every new termite.

In the continuum between beaver dams and human highways this kind of physical and biological organization should figure prominently… and I hope you find it interesting.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#338

Post by yarg »

314 wrote: post #336
yarg wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of your ancestors had lives that were free or fair, but every last one of them was fertile.

This argument is disingenuous: not only your direct ancestors contributed to your existence. You are also dependent on all of the aunties and uncles, and other members of the community around your direct line that contributed to their survival.

No it's not; most of those people also reproduced. It's like Covid - think of the R number.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#339

Post by kuschku »

jl6 wrote: post #265
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.

Parents aren't giving their children any irreversible modifications though, that's not even legal.

All that's done is pausing puberty until the children are old enough to legally consent to changes, if they do want them. If they do not, puberty can be resumed at any time without any harm (puberty blockers are used significantly more often on cis kids whose puberty started too early than on trans kids).

No child is taking any hormone medication or getting any surgery to transition. Actually, hormones and surgery are frequently given to cis kids who are close to the line to inter, to better align them with their AGAB. But in trans healthcare,this is not a thing.

Usually at 14 or 16 trans teenagers can choose to take hormones, but still, no surgeries below the age of 18 for trans children.

The only surgeries parents can do to children legally are circumcision in cis children and heavy genital modification in inter children to pretend they're not inter.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#340

Post by rsync »

the_omegist wrote: post #295
daoist_shaman wrote: post #6

I used to identify as a transhumanist and believed that technology could do no harm. I was an adolescent donning rose-colored glasses, with a burning passion for science, technology, and improvement of our species. Only after an electrical engineering degree, 10-15 years of more wisdom, and dabbling in biohacking have I realized that we really have no clue about the massive deleterious impacts that technology has on…

> I believe humanity needs to pump the brakes and take a critical step back to evaluate the damage we’ve caused. I hope that it isn’t too late to try to fix what we’ve destroyed. What are you talking about ? You mention your engineering degree and experience to give you some authority but then you ruin this by saying what a 5yrs old kid could have said (sorry if it's harsh). Humanity won't "pump the brakes" because i…

There are different ways to “pump the brakes”.

The Jewish sabbath comes to mind.

How beneficial, and at what cost, would it be to block air travel or discretionary car trips, say, once monthly ?

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