From: Phil Goetz (philgoetz@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Jul 22 2005 - 15:48:59 MDT
> > Combine that with a Darwinian / Adam-Smithian view of
> > the universe, and it's hard to see how anything worthy
> of
> > the name "transhuman" could operate in a way that
> humans
> > would not interpret as hostile.
>
> This doesn't seem very clear to me. For instance, I am
> generally quite benevolent to dogs, and nearly all dogs
> tend to view me as such.
What you call "dogs" are descendants of wolves who have
been extensively genetically modified by humans to be
stupid, weak, and subservient, and never to advance
mentally beyond pre-adolescence. This "benevolence"
involves
depriving them of the freedom to roam for miles, and
to hunt, and to have a pack or a family, and often
involves sterilizing them or choosing their mates for
them on the basis of your aesthetic preferences. If
their owners do let them have children, they usually
take them away after a few weeks and sell them to
strangers, after which they will never see their parents
again. If they get sick to the point where we would
have to spend time taking care of them, we kill them
and tell ourselves it's for their own good. Strangely,
we never do this to our own parents.
Meanwhile, actual wolves have been deliberately,
aggressively exterminated almost everywhere on earth.
> Maybe a transhuman mind can be created that is benevolent
> to humans in the same way that I am benevolent to dogs.
I would rather be exterminated.
BTW, this is sounding harsh. I'm not actually angry
at you, Ben.
> Now, dogs of course were bred by humans to trust
> humans.... In the case
> we are now considering, it is the inferior beast (humans)
> that is creating
> the superior beast (the transhumans) rather than vice
> versa -- which is of course a far trickier situation....
I would rather view this as an issue of self-accelerated
evolution, than as an "us vs. them" issue.
- Phil
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