From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Sun Sep 02 2001 - 08:52:11 MDT
On Sun, Sep 02, 2001 at 05:28:05AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
...
> So isn't the debate kind of meaningless? Skin color will no longer
> be a useful marker for the identification of people as belonging
> to a particular "clan". It seems to me that language is becoming
> the key factor for the "bin-ing" of people you encounter rather than
> color.
>
> And of course discussing policy based on any expectations about what
> 2050 is going to be like seems silly. We know that 2050 is going
> to be very different from any possible pictures of it we have today.
You're right about it being meaningless, but you're already thinking in
terms of the next fifty years being qualitatively different from the last
fifty years. Most people are still thinking in terms of 1951, and this
is particularly true of politicians who are conservative by disposition.
As for skin colour being variable in the future, look at Michael Jackson.
It's _already_ changeable. But there are psychological issues associated
with changing your skin colour which I think will militate against
changing your skin colour in certain directions. I would certainly
understand many black people _not_ wanting to lighten their skin, viewing
doing so as a tacit admission that racism is irremediable and the only
way to get ahead is to deny your own identity.
(Mind you, sufficient mutability of the pheontype may bring other
interesting effects. I can see a certain appeal in the idea of sentencing
rapists to a sex change, and unregenerate racists to become that which
they despise.)
-- Charlie
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