From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed May 29 2002 - 20:05:05 MDT
Hal Finney wrote:
>
> Asking what is or is not censorship is a semantic question and there is
> no unique answer. What we really want to know is what policies regarding
> controversial issues will best serve our needs. It's a hard question;
> at one extreme we have dogmatism and rigidity, but at the other we have
> chaos and absence of focus. Clearly we need some middle ground. It is
> a topic very worthy of discussion.
>
I disagree it is a "semantic question". Words have pretty
straightforward meanings at times. Censorship is prohibition of
the expressing of certain thoughts and opinions by the use of
force. Nothing else is remotely censorship. Saying "I
disapprove of this topic and its treatment and wish you would
stop or take it elsewhere" is not and never will be censorship.
To call it such is ridiculous.
>
> I'm not sure everyone understood Wei Dai's reference to the "Wisdom
> of Repugnance". This is a quote from Leon Kass, currently head of the
> U.S. President's council on bioethics and perhaps the most prominent
> opponent of Extropian concepts. He has a whole article on "The Wisdom
> of Repugnance" at
> http://www.princeton.edu/~wws320/Second%20Pages/06Reprotech/Cloning/Wisdom%20of%20repugnance.htm.
> It's a pretty appalling article:
>
> : "Offensive." "Grotesque." "Revolting." "Repugnant." "Repulsive." These
> : are the words most commonly heard regarding the prospect of human
> : cloning. Such reactions come both from the man or woman in the street and
> : from the intellectuals, from believers and atheists, from humanists and
> : scientists. Even Dolly's creator has said he "would find it offensive"
> : to clone a human being.
> : ... In crucial cases,... repugnance is the emotional expression of
> : deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it.
>
Just because you hear these words in one context where you
consider them unfair does not, of course, signify in the least
that some things are not repugnant and revolting.
> I think we should be able to agree that it would be a mistake to adopt
> the wisdom of repugnance as a moral principle for guiding our discussions.
> It would be validating some of the strongest anti-Extropian arguments.
>
The wisdom of repugnance is not what occurred. What occurred
was some people, especially some of the women on this list,
saying enough is enough when it comes to "discusions"
characterizing us as of less value than men and other
discussions all so intellectually discussing the permissiability
of killing infants. They had a good point. Namely that
intellectual discussion is no reason to lose sight of real
people you are slighting with a largely strained set of
arguments and of real issues regarding what kind of society we
wish to create rather than just airily exploring various
possibilities no matter how repugnant, is not very tasteful or
tolerable behavior. That point seems to be very much being lost
in this discussion. I find that quite dissapointing.
> At the same time, I understand and recognize the difficulty many people
> have when dealing with emotionally-loaded issues. It seems to me that
> a reasonable compromise is to accept that there are limits to what we
> can discuss, but not to glory in it. We are after all limited in many
> other ways; in intelligence, in memory (look at all the misattributions
> and errors we have seen recently), indeed in wisdom. All of these are
> limitations that we hope to transcend, and in the same way, we might
> hope that in the future we will have mastery of our thoughts to the point
> that we can think calmly even about issues which make us upset today.
>
Difficulty with emotionally loaded issues?!? Telling the women
on this list that women are generally of less value than men is
utterly inexcusable. Airily adding more intellectual hot air
without grasping the essential point does not help.
> Pending that Extropian future, it seems to me that there is a very
> simple and practical way that we can discuss many of these controversial
> issues without triggering the emotional reactions that people have found
> so upsetting. That is to recast the problem in a more abstract form.
> We are going to be dealing in future decades with artificial life forms
> about which we have few emotional instincts. Issues that carry heavy
> emotional baggage with regard to human beings can be discussed much more
> easily with regard to artificial life forms.
>
More abstraction will not make missing realities right in front
of your face less likely - it will make it more likely you do so
and more egregiously. We didn't find emotional reactions so
upsetting. We found rampannt bigotry and unfeeling discussion
upsetting and still do, the ones of us who are still here at least.
Please pay attention to the real level of problem that led to
some valued members leaving. Don't gloss it over.
- samantha
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