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On 1/11/11 5:42 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote:
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<pre wrap="">1) What is the boundary between "enhancement" and "medicine"?
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Medicine is considered an act of caring, unless it's professional
and technological and icky corporate bad. Enhancement is considered
cheating (steroids!), unless it involves Hard Work and <i>natural</i>
supplements.<br>
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<pre wrap="">1a) Does, say, curing cancer necessarily fall into only one of the two?
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Medicine, but it's a rich white man's disease. What we should <i>really</i>
be doing is preventing disease caused by Unhealthy American Diets.<br>
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<pre wrap="">1b) What about prosthetics?
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Medicine, because it's Restoring the Balance.<br>
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<pre wrap="">1c) What about prosthetics that exceed human baseline performance?
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Permissible only if the enhancement is accidental.<br>
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<pre wrap="">2) What part of "making life better for everyone (who wants a better life) and
eliminating many of the root causes of evil (resource scarcity, fear of death,
lack of understanding)" is not a long term and more complex form of "fighting
evil"?
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"But is it <i>really</i> better?" The people who control the
socially-accepted definition of morality feel that all you need is
love and organic gardening. Wanting more is Consumerism, which is
what the Corporations make you buy into! Instead, we should be
Respecting the Earth and Doing Our Part in the Community.<br>
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<pre wrap="">3) Is not part of the discomfort we cause, because we propose to do
something about evils that most people have accepted as inevitable?
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Oh, but you'll only improve quality of life for The Rich (who may as
well be the aliens from They Live) and create a caste system. Also,
without death, we'll have overpopulation and Rich People living
forever.<br>
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At this point, I expect you'll tell me that there's nothing I can do
about such people and that I should just ignore them. How is that a
good idea when they're not ignoring us while getting more people
listening to them than we are?<br>
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<pre wrap="">That last one may be the most significant part. People make up all sorts of
evil motives for us, but they rarely turn out to be true.</pre>
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How do we convince the public otherwise?<br>
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