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

[Brett Paatsch]

Charlie Stross wrote:

> Can we maybe agree, as extropians one and all, that in an ideal
> world involuntary and/or unwanted conception wouldn’t occur,
>
> I can’t agree with that.

> > Two, “figuring out how to make conception a process under
> > voluntary control” was achieved ages ago. Don’t have sex - unless
> > your willing get pregnant
>
> Tell that to a rape victim.

You cut the bit where I said with some exceptions. Rape was one
I had in mind. Mythical deities impregnating virgins to create sons
for sacrifice is possibly another.

> I repeat: conception is *not* under voluntary control. Celibacy is a 
> condition which may be terminated involuntarily. (Moreover, it’s not an 
> easily maintained condition for the majority of people.)

Sure. Technologically though, we'd have very little problem making
pregnancy optional even today if the politics wasn't a factor.

> The subtext I see behind all this rhetoric about celibacy and the evils 
> of abortion is a total phobia of icky females enjoying sex, with a 
> side-order of the kind of deep unease about the flesh that --  
>  ironically -- the more technophobic commentators tend to attribute to 
> extropians.
>
>> To get gene-line engineering working as a solution as you suggest
>> it doesn’t just have to be technologically practical it has to be 
>> politically practical. Guess what the catholics and others who prefer
>> their solution to the one you propose would vote against your solution
>> in large numbers even if you could get a political party to put it on 
>> theagenda.
>
> Heh. “Politically practical.” We now have the sub-text out in the open.

I wasn't trying to hide any sub-texts. I think politically almost 
instinctively
and am often surprised that others do not. Its possible to consider morality
and ethics and technology and a bunch of stuff without looking at politics
I suppose but I tend to see things in terms of politics as well in that it 
is
in the political forums that ethics gets to be policy and bad policy
following from sloppy ethics (amongst other things) causes people to die.

> I should like to note that, along with the US state department, the  other 
> forces trying to scupper the UN WHO proposal that access to  contraception 
> and abortion should be basic rights available to women  world-wide were 
> the most barking batshit reactionary islamic  fundamentalists on the 
> planet -- notably the governments of Saudi  Arabia and Iran. These are the 
> same chittering dark-ages ass-hats who  think that vaccinating girls 
> against HPV is an incitement to  promiscuity, because the mere concept 
> that they could be infected by  their husbands doesn’t occur to them.
>
> The sub-text of the entire “human life begins at 10^6 cells/^10^3/1  cell” 
> debate is that a *potential* life is worth as much, if not more,  than the 
> *actual* life of the woman who is expected by the  anti-abortion lobby to 
> go through a somewhat hazardous medical  condition (which, in the wild, 
> has a 5-10% fatality rate) and then --  this is implicit in the whole 
> mess -- spend the next twenty years of  life surrendering their potential 
> for self-actualization to that other  formerly potential person.

That sentence is too hard for me to parse. I think you are strawmanning
the views of those who I disagree with as well but I can't tell.

As for the 5-10% fatality rate thats a higher statistic than the ones I
have, do you have a source for it?

>........................................Who then gets to do the whole same 
>thing (if  they’re female) or benefit from all that hard work (if they’re 
>not).
>
> As a non-American who lives in a country where at the last poll just 
> short of 90% of the population approved of abortion being available on 
> demand, let me say that I think this discussion would be ludicrous if  it 
> wasn’t evil.

So what are you a Canadian living in the US or what? I'm curious because
I know that you are an observer of developments in ideas futures and I
am wondering where in the world you are observing them from. I'm
watching from Australia.

>................ And it *is* evil when we get to the real loonies who  are 
>trying to convince the god-botherers that condoms don’t work, that 
>hormonal contraceptives are abortifacients, and that the only  acceptable 
>place for a woman is barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

Its ironic, but when you posted to the list recently you said that you
were irked I think that there was so much ranting going on. But now
I am struggling to understand what points you are trying to make
because you seem to have decided to rant along with us.

When you use words like evil I don't know if you are parodying the
US President or if you actually really think in such terms yourself.

> There are, incidentally, reasons why this highly damaging meme achieves 
> traction in modern religious communities. (Here’s a fairly acute blog 
> entry which puts it fairly concisely:
> http://hot_needle_of_inquiry.blogspot.com/2005/04/stable-strategy-set- 
> defectors.html)
>
> > Three, when humanity cuts in, as you put it, is not a trivial question.
> > Its an important one. And discussions about it that develop the
> > thinking of people involved in them are discussions worth having.
> > When Galileo looked through a telescope and saw Jupiter and its
> > moons he was seeing what was there. If the Pope had been willing
> > to look through the telescope the Pope too would have seen what
> > was there. Perhaps the Pope would have questioned whether he
> > could trust this new fangled piece of technology or not but at least
> > his taking a look would have progressed his thinking a long a bit.
> > Perhaps he could have had another telescope built. Perhaps his
> > eminence could have gotten the telescope deconstructed and
> > reassembled.
>
> Urban legends don’t aid the debate. Galileo was to a very large extent 
> *protected* by the then Pope, who was a friend of his; what got him  into 
> trouble was court politics, aggravated by his inability to keep  his mouth 
> shut at the right time. You will note that Galileo was *not*  burned at 
> the stake despite this being a fairly common outcome for  heretics at the 
> time ... and that the reason for the draconian response  to heresy was 
> that it had political implications: religious doctrine  was then the 
> accepted way of understanding how the world works, and  questioning its 
> veracity raised implications for the way state policy  was formed. That’s 
> *never* a safe or easy thing to do; we can see it  today in the way the 
> Bush administration treats science funding in  areas that don’t appear to 
> support their preconceptions.

A lot of urban legends likely have built up around the Galileo story,
and I am interested in what the real story was, but for present purposes,
not all that much. For present purposes the only point I really wanted
to make is that individuals including individuals with religious or faith
based world views that have consciences of their own and are willing
to exercise them can choose to look through the available equipment
be it a telescope or a microscope of whatever if they so choose. For
them to decline to look, is in my book, an indication that may well
be operating in bad faith, even in the terms that others of their faith
would consider it.

Brett Paatsch