From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Mon Mar 04 2002 - 00:38:35 MST
On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, the animated silicon love doll wrote:
> So why bother using terms like posthuman, extropy, singularity, or any
> other words that most of humanity are unfamiliar with (and would quite
> likely consider our pursuit of them pointless)?
I never use those when talking to the mundanes. I used to use "transhuman"
a bit, but lately realized it's not a good idea. Just throwing interesting
concepts around is sufficient, and then, after a while you can mention
there's a group of people who's pursuing similiar interests. Anything else
comes over as cultism/preaching, and people are wired to shun that.
> We're not posthuman yet, as you pointed out.
Right, and since we're not that, let's keep to vanilla language, with a
bit of jargon from science & technology. It's totally up to the task.
> Gargoyles?
> Like in Snow Crash?
Gargoyles, as in wearable users. (Some of them actually refer to
themselves that way). Claims to technical leadership nonwithstanding, we
have only one here (that I can think of, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Lots of wannabees, though, as far as I can tell).
> But back to the original point - We don't know very much about gender. It's
> safe to say that sex is a biological trait. Many people feel a strong
> attachment to traditional gender roles - and they can have them. I've never
> felt male (I tried, when i was around 10, and I was not very good at it),
> and rarely have I felt very female (but I've done a better job at that than
> I have at being male). All the evidence I've seen points to gender being at
> least partially a social construct, and something that can be changed or
> ignored safely.
I would like to see evidence for change, given that sex is wired in the
brain, and we understand the brain a lot less then gender, and can change
it even less. Hormones do something, but it's not enough. And why should
this interest me, at all? Postbiology doesn't have to have a sexual
dimorphism, or at least this particular sexual dimorphism. Talking about
gender is about the same relevance to transhumanism as human genetic
engineering. I.e. very little to none.
> Or from a completely different angle - if I said "I went to the store and
> the black person behind the counter sold me stuff", someone would probably
> tell me that I'm being racist. "I went to the store and the man behind the
> counter sold me stuff" isn't something that most people will see anything
> wrong with, but it's essentially the same as the previous statement. Both
> contain useless, irrelevant information, that can be removed.
Sometime gender can be ignored, sometimes its use conveys valuable
information.
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