[ExI] Is Transhumanism Coercive?

[Stefano Vaj]

On 24 October 2011 10:56, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> Nobody accepts the "right to remain illiterate" today - children are forced
> to learn how to read and write, at least partially because otherwise they
> will be unable to interact with society well as autonomous individuals.
>

I suspect this to be, at least for those who have not abandoned the idea of
popular sovereignties, a matter of *collective* freedoms, such as the ones
pertaining to the freedom of a given society to give itself the legal system
of its choice, which necessarily embodies certain arbitrary values which,
without requiring any universalist foundation at all, can well be specific
to that society's choices.

Even in this context, of course the debate remains open on whether a given
society should allow or impose enhancements, rather than prohibiting them.

But what is especially nice from a trashumanist POV in political and
cultural diversity and relativistic approaches, beyond the possible ability
of individuals to escape repression by voting with their feet, is the fact
that wildly Luddite inclinations are kept at bay in *all* the societies
concerned simply by the pseudo-Darwinian competitive pressures acting
*amongst*, rather than *within*, them.
-- 
Stefano Vaj
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