[extropy-chat] Famous author self destructs in public! Film ateleven.

[Charlie Stross]

[ Just back from long meandering detour ... note different email 
address ]

On 4 Jun 2005, at 11:09, Russell Wallace wrote:

> On 6/4/05, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>> You didi not find his remarks inflammatory and unnecessarily so to
>> simply express a difference of opinion on abortion?
>
> And again comes the yapping of the jackals - of course your remarks
> and those of others during the debate have been equally inflammatory,
> but equally of course you wouldn't have dreamed of responding as you
> did if the numerical odds in the debate were against you rather than
> in your favor. Perceivest thou the beam in thine own eye (everyone
> thus involved, not just Samantha). Now I'm done with this.

It seems to me that the reason abortion is such a hot-button topic -- 
at least in the USA -- is that it is almost invariably introduced as a 
stalking-horse for other social agendas that are never explicitly 
dragged kicking and screaming under the spotlight.

It then becomes impossible to express an opinion on the subject of 
abortion per se without a whole slew of additional philosophical and 
social attitudes being attributed to one.

Furthermore, the presence of these off-stage agendas results in any 
attempt to discuss the matter on the net rapidly descending into a 
dogmatic quagmire because those people who *do* take a position on the 
basis of some other agenda promptly assume that any expression of an 
opinion on the matter of abortion is a place holder for an opinion on 
the rest of their weltanschauung. The debate promptly flies off into 
the stratosphere of ideology, completely losing track of the facts on 
the ground.

And for me, the key fact in the whole matter is our attitude to 
biological determinism. The human species as currently constituted has 
a reward-positive behaviour (sex) that can result in pregnancy. The 
whole thrust of human history demonstrates that we *can't* stop people 
having illicit sex, short of physical mutilation. Sex on its own 
wouldn't be the problem if it wasn't for the complicating factor that 
conception is an involuntary semi-random process associated with sex.

Can we maybe agree, as extropians one and all, that in an ideal world 
involuntary and/or unwanted conception wouldn't occur, and that as 
extropians are dedicated to the improvement of the human condition, 
figuring out how to make conception a process under voluntary control 
-- preferably wired into our neurohormonal axis by way of gene-line 
engineering -- would do more to alleviate human suffering than any 
amount of on-going gaseous blathering over whether humanity cuts in 
when the foetus reaches 10^5 cells or 10^8?


-- Charlie (irritated) Stross

PS: This really *isn't* the most pleasant thing to see first thing 
after diving back into the list after a few months away.