[ExI] Fwd: Transhumanism and Politics

[Stefano Vaj]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
Date: Jan 24, 2008 11:47 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Transhumanism and Politics
To: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>


BTW, Stefano, a couple posts back you took our discussion
off-list....You can send the post to exi if you wish

On Jan 24, 2008 5:54 AM, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 24, 2008 2:28 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ### So would refraining from robbing a pharmacy be heroics?
>
> When the alternative is certain death? A pharmacy, a bakery, a
> life-vest closet, whatever. Titanic is a bad movie, IMHO, but it
> under-represents if anything the struggle for life in extreme
> conditions. Sure, we can expect a few to sacrify willingly their life
> for the common good or for others.
>
### I am still not sure why you are writing this. Obviously, there are
no "certain" alternatives. If you can't afford to pay for a drug, you
can try and earn some money the normal way, by making yourself useful
to others. If this is insufficient, you can beg for charity. If this
is insufficient and you are not good at burglary, well, you will die.
In other words, if nobody in the world cares enough about you to pay
for your medication, and you are too useless and poor to pay yourself,
you will die. So what? Millions of people die every year from
preventable problems (hunger, simple infections, violence, etc.).
Nobody really cares. I don't, and you don't either, otherwise you
would not be amusing yourself with transhumanist emails but you would
be busy making money to send to dying Ugandans. You are not demanding
that bakeries should be raided to collect bread for the homeless,
right? So why do you want to raid pharmacies to get drugs to old
people? If you see a beggar, you steer clear rather than offer to
bring him a warm lunch from Chipotle, don't you? So why do you make a
big deal of the possibility that some people could in the future be
dying of old age and be too poor to buy the elixir of youth? If nobody
really cares about them, they will die just like the children in Sudan
do today.

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>
> You overstate my argument for rhetoric's sake. Seppuku and surgery are
> vastly different from a psychological point of view, even though being
> both somewhat "self-administered" it is debatable if either is really
> violent. I am saying that normally people do not react any
> differently, say,  when executed on the basis of a judgment that is
> technically invalid because of a procedural breach or on the basis of
> a perfectly regular one; and that to be kept with a gun out of reach
> of air or food may appear equally violent to the person on the verge
> of dying.

### Good, so you agree that judgment must take principles into
account, and not appearances. That's all I wanted to say here.

----------------------------------
>
> > > No. It simply means that you have to consider the consequences of an
> > > attempt to establish and enforce exclusivity in respect to radical
> > > longevist therapy, both at social and international level. You may
> > > still wish to do so, but in such event you should be prepared to fight
> > > to death, quite literally, as the other party very probably would.
> > >
> > ### Oh, sure. Money must be spent to lobby legislatures to fully
> > enforce IP laws. Those who break them will be broken, by lawsuits, FBI
> > raids, machine guns, the usual enforcement armamentarium. This has
> > worked for hundreds of years, should last us till the Singularity. If
> > it fails, IP protection is gutted and pharma companies expropriated
> > (in an attempt to reduce the "exclusivity" you are talking about),
> > medical research will rely on trade secrets. If this fails, of course,
> > there won't be much productive research going on, and we will all die,
> > both the "credited" and "uncredited", as you call them.
>
> OK. If this is what is going to happen, then it is best if we start
> piling as many WMD as possible (on either side you are), because we
> are going to need them. First strike should also be considered, it
> could save lives at the end of the day. :-)

### The smiley next to a call for first-strike nuclear attack against
pharmacists - that's really a bit dissonant, wouldn't you say? Are you
really joking about slaughtering pharmacists and doctors if they don't
want to give away their services for free?

I really, really don't understand. You seem to be an ethically
concerned nice person. Yet as you start off with vague platitudes
about assuring access, you end up joking about mass slaughter of
innocent people. Why don't you say something like this: "I wish that
all people would have access to immortality technology. To assure
that, I and others like me will gladly buy such treatments for the
unfortunate few who cannot afford them. Obviously, there will be very,
very few such poor people, since almost everybody will be able to pay
the price by mortgaging a part of their future earnings - with
indefinite youth and perfect health, there will be always enough money
to go around. In this way, inventors will be rewarded assuring that
research continues on even better technologies, and everybody gets a
chance of immortality. "

Wouldn't that be nicer?

Rafal