What ever happened to the transhumanists?

Post by JetSetWilly » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 9:35 AM UTC

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #313

fastball wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Denying puberty blockers, which are easily produced, known to be acceptably safe, and can prevent physical changes, is forcing teens through a harmful puberty against their will.

Post by zo1 » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 9:59 AM UTC

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…

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 10:01 AM UTC

yarg wrote: post #260

space_fountain wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human race isn’t in an immediate danger of dying out for lack of babies. People are allowed to and do take many actions with a risk of sterilization. For goodness sake’s people get vasectomies and their tubes tied. This can’t be about fertility or else you should be out campaigning against the pill, condoms, and just plain old normal drinking. Also do you imagine grafting electronics, really progress of any kind…

I can assure you, my only concern here is inate fertility - (idiocracy aside) I don't give a shit about people deciding not to have children. As for the danger, population collapse is often precipitous - and by the time you notice it, is very hard to roll back. And it's not just our species impacted by the changes.

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

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.

Post by alexvoda » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 10:55 AM UTC

grog454 wrote: post #217

svnt wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition involves setting humanity apart from nature and then inverting the implicit superiority in doing that. Once you’ve taken those steps you can say anything people make that isn’t made by other animals is worse because it is unnatural. To me the essential idea is we have the scale and capacity to move global homeostasis in ways that few animals (at least since dinosaurs) have. Plastics are not unnatural.…

It's useful to distinguish things that are made with human influence and things that aren't, and it can be done without value judgments (one is superior or inferior). It's useful because of the disproportionate effect of synthetic things vs. natural things. No species prior to humans had the ability to obliterate all life on earth.