What ever happened to the transhumanists? • Hacker News Board

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#351

Post by alexvoda » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:04 AM UTC

svnt wrote: post #194

revolvingocelot wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't reading, or possibly understanding, what I'm writing. Granite seems fine to me, and even if it isn't, it is localized in ways plastic and PFAS aren't. Plastic is very different from almost the entirety of the planet earth. It doesn't occur naturally, and doesn't break down naturally; just like PFAS. You can obscure this fact all you like, but it's trivially true. >Natural poisons exist nearly everywhere. N…

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.…

Exactly as parent stated, there already are organisms evolving to consume plastic. The same is probable to happen for PFAS. It has carbon therefore it contains useful energy that some creature will eventually evolve to digest and outcompete other organisms.

That of course is to the detriment of the very properties we desire in these materials. Just as flooding the environment with antibiotics made them less effective, so will flooding the world with plastic will make plastic lose it's advantages. Just more slowly. This is another reason to not contaminate the environment with our externalities.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#352

Post by matthewmacleod » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:11 AM UTC

JetSetWilly wrote: post #341

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Allowing puberty blockers, allows children to make uninformed decisions with lasting and harmful consequences to their own body and future. That's why this issue has went to various courts, ascending the hierarchy, in England where it has been found illegal, legal etc. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_v_Tavistock and think how Keira Bell is likely to feel about your simplistic "it is safe" comments. It is a com…

It’s a bit silly that you’ve essentially written here “abandoning all nuance is bad, that’s what the other side does!”

This is ironic of course, since you’ve ignored the nuance that the Keira Bell case was specifically regarding the ability of children under the age of 16 to consent to this treatment themselves. It does not question the lawfulness of the treatment or guidance itself, and it has been clearly established that parents or guardians can give consent. I have absolute sympathy with Keira Bell and the struggles she has gone through, but it seems clear we should want to avoid using the legal system to intervene in clinical decision making to the greatest extent possible.

For the record though, I disagree with you - I don’t think it’s a particularly complex issue. It has certainly been ratcheted into a hot-button culture-war topic by quite a lot of ignorance and deliberate muddying of the waters though, which can have the effect of making things seem more complex than they really are. You’ve just done this yourself—even if unintentionally—in your comment.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#353

Post by alexvoda » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:26 AM UTC

daoist_shaman wrote: post #148

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…

I guess when I say “natural,” what I truly mean is “that which is not made by man.” Any substance which is found in the natural environment and mechanically altered does not count in my definition of man-made; this is essentially the same notion of natural that revolvingocelot points out. I think the crusade against “natural bias” is unfounded. Of course there are plenty of natural things that are not good for us—suc…

You are still anthropomorphousising nature. Nature does not intend to protect us from anything, much less from overpopulation. Nature does not intend anything as a whole. Each living creature simply intends to survive and multiply. Not changing anything about nature will also lead to our demise. Most non-human organisms (maybe all other than domesticated dogs and lifestock) are either ambivalent or opportunistically trying to kill us. Because we are made of carbon and therefore contain useful energy.

Anthropomorphousising I believe is the greatest and most wide spread cognitive limitation of humanity.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#354

Post by matthewmacleod » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:26 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…

Nobody is FORCING anything – that is just something our bodies do naturally

This is just a silly semantic game. Our bodies naturally do a lot of things that in some cases we’d prefer they not do. They love growing babies, or tumours, or falling apart in uncountable ways.

Withholding access to an available and desired medical treatment is broadly equivalent to forcing a patient to experience the effects of whatever the treatment is intending to prevent.

We are just far more likely to use the explicit term “forcing” in cases where that treatment is being withheld for ideological reasons - such as abortions or puberty inhibitors.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#355

Post by Joeboy » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:38 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #347

adrianN wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say adrianN is probably not a Nazi.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#356

Post by alexvoda » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:41 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #240

revolvingocelot wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior) You think that this describes post-modernism ? I thought post-modernism was all about, well, relativism. Upon looking it up, I'm amazed to discover that Kaczynski wrote "leftists", because the excerpted paragraph sure as hell describes the modern conservative. Raging against science and rationality…

You can't be in favor of relativism without thinking that relativism is true and it's opposite is false, or can you?

If you trully are in favour of relativism then you believe that relativism itself is relative.

There are viewpoints from which something is absolute, other viewpoints from which the same thing is a discrete spectrum with a number of options, and other viewpoints from which it is a continuous spectrum.

Most are tools for thought and they are merely the maps not the territory.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#357

Post by antifa » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:49 AM UTC

celdon25 wrote: post #162

notsapiensatall wrote: post #49

IMHO it's in a trough on the hype curve. Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again. The promises of devices like neuralink are decades away from widespread voluntary adoption, at least. You can get small things done today, as you could 10 years ago, but they aren't ready for primetime. Anecdotally, I got a small coated neodymium magnet implanted in a finger during my youth. It was cool as a college student, I cou…

> Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again. No, it doesn’t, and waiting for the iteration of tech-consumerism that resembles your childhood fantasies is everything that was wrong with the transhumanist movement. It attracted too many people who sat on the sidelines and did nothing to move the needle. It was a magnet for people who couldn’t cope with reality, which occasionally helped, but usually stirred chaos.…

> It attracted too many people who sat on the sidelines and did nothing to move the needle.

You'd have to be capable of pushing the boundaries of science and engineering to really push this needle. Plus the money is in oil/adtech and AFAIK this isn't low hanging fruit that anyone can just grab.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#358

Post by rpdillon » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:50 AM UTC

simonh wrote: post #321

ungamedplayer wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation for plenty needed.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15295192.2020.1... > Of the adult trans population, between 25% and 49% of individuals are believed to be parents (Dierckx, Motmans, Mortelmans, & T’sjoen, 2016)

Parenthood doesn't imply fertility. From that link:

> Trans parents may form their families in a range of ways, including through biological parenthood, step-parenthood, adoption, fostering, and assisted reproduction, with an increasing number of options available to trans people wishing to become parents.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#359

Post by alexvoda » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:50 AM UTC

filoeleven wrote: post #189

daoist_shaman wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people also have trouble separating ideas from individuals. Ideas are imagination. They aren’t real until they are actualized. They can be beautiful or they can be toxic. Ideas are one thing, but the transmission of them is another. The moment an idea is uttered is the moment that its meaning is jeopardized. Interpretation is the demise of the idea. People have ruthlessly killed each other for millennia because…

> Ideas are imagination. They aren’t real until they are actualized. > Ideas are one thing, but the transmission of them is another. The moment an idea is uttered is the moment that its meaning is jeopardized. Interpretation is the demise of the idea. Pleas explain why this is not incoherent.

This is Platonic philosophy. The dichotomy between the world of ideas where ideals and perfection is the default and the material world where everything is a corrupted version of an idea.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#360

Post by mkmk3 » Sat, Aug 06, 2022, 11:51 AM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #283

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.

I'm a furry. Does "being a (cuddly) werewolf" count as a weapon?

Fun example. Or does getting a giant ass, big fake breasts, filled lips, etc. get counted in the same lot? It's definitely funky, in terms of the ethics surrounding it. You could see it as buying into negative (in the sense that they're not equal) biological biases and taking advantage of them. Such a fun lens to consider funky cultural stuff.