On Mon, Aug 13, 2001 at 07:25:27AM -0700, J. R. Molloy wrote:
> From: "Anders Sandberg" <asa@nada.kth.se>
> > Here is the text version of the speech I held at the TransVision 2001
> > conference in Berlin, somewhat extended (and likely far more dry). I would
> > love to hear comments and suggestions on it:
>
> Your argument in support of morphological freedom seems compelling, coherent,
> and comprehensive. Are there any current threats to morphological freedom? Any
> laws or regulations against it? Is there anything (other than technological
> limitations) preventing us from morphological transformation?
Yes. While laws worldwide do vary, at present morphological change is
highly regulated and in general placed under the control of medical
establishments not allowing morphological changes outside fairly
narrowly defined areas of curing disease and elective surgery - not to
mention the restrictions on chemical alterations of the mind or
performance. Overall the trend seems to be towards more freedom, but
that requires continual intense debating and also making sure we do not
end up with a lot of disparate rights but no overall right to our
bodies.
I think there is a certain internal resistance in most people to change
their bodies because it means dealing with changing one's self-image
(this is why transsexuals are far more eager to do it than many
handicapped - their self-images are from the start different from their
bodies and remain so, while many disabled people adapt their body images
to their bodies). Since most of us are human-looking from the start and
have human-like self images I guess radical changes will not easily
occur for a long time. Similar things goes for mental restructuring.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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