From: Vanessa Novaeris (novaeris@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Jul 15 2002 - 11:12:17 MDT
spike wrote:
<<(Sorry, I havent a clue how adolescence works with
the ladies, so please bear with me.) >>
I can't account for all females but I can speak for myself, and it was/is
pretty much the same :P
<<This observation leads me to believe that the appropriate medications
could conceivably delay onset of pubescence in humans. If it is shown that
there is a strong correllation between early pubescence and lowered academic
performance, we should be able to create the analog of athletic steroids,
except for aspiring young scholars. These would artificially delay interest
in sex, so the boys can study physics and trigonometry instead of anatomy and
physiology.>>
The key word I take issue with here is "delay." I can see how this would be
helpful to enrich education in those critical years of development. But once
you've optimized your scholastic achievement, what are you going to do with
all that you've learned? If the effects of puberty are merely being delayed to
a later point in time, my guess is that you won't be doing much.
It begs the question, is it more important to *have* more information or to
*do* more with the information you already have? I don't have the energy or
the desire to argue for either side - to me its a moot point that can only go
in circles & spin out a lot of unnecessary rhetoric. But you can call me on it
if you think there really is conclusive & compelling evidence for either case.
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't really matter how
long you delay it - its still only a delay & it will still have the same
general impact on behavior. Its been my own personal experience that sex was
a hindrence on my academic progress. It still can be distracting. *And by
"sex" in this context I don't mean the act itself as much as all the other
social crap that goes along with it
- like spike wrote:
<<Do you remember how you were immediately distracted from your studies,
agonizing over this girl or that, how you had to worry about dating, getting
a car, perhaps mopping floors at the local Burger Barn to support your car,
to support your social life? Do you remember that you were suddenly very
distracted with all manner of pointless exercises, drawn away from your
studies in perhaps the middle of the most critical developmental years? Did
you not waste your effort? (Hint: Yes. You did.)>>
So sex to me, since I don't plan on procreating EVER, seems essentially
pointless & without any real purpose. It seems like kind of a waste when I
think how that is time I could be spending productively to actually accomplish
something.
So if nobody ever thought about sex except to when it was time to hatch more
humans, clearly humanity on the whole would be waaay more productive. I
realize this is a tall order. But if the hormone surge can be delayed for
a number of years, why not delay it indefinitely? Why not eliminate the
distractions altogether rather than just delaying the inevitable?
So now I think gonads are a dumb idea & I want my new DNA to make me fully
self-replicating. I'm learning a lot from this list ;)
vanessa novaeris
While we're at it, can my new DNA make me solar powered? I'm sick of that food
comsuption/excretion thing - lets get rid of that too.
---- This message was posted by Vanessa Novaeris to the Extropians 2002 board on ExI BBS. <http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=61;action=display;threadid=52462>
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