From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Nov 23 2001 - 05:49:33 MST
Frederick posted a useful commentary with some references
regarding the tendency people have to warp external reality
to bring it into agreement with their internal reality.
Then posted a link to the "I AM A MURDERER" page, which I'm
not going to include becase Frederick also should have included
a "not to be clicked on by the squemish" warning!
I question why he feels it focuses on the issue of "denial".
The entire discussion there is based on accepting a belief system
(Christianity) and attributing "words" to "God" for which there is
little concrete evidence. The page is about a contrived denial of
a system of beliefs which is itself based on denial (because of an
underlying assumption that "miracles" are "real").
> (My suggested solution to the "abortion dilemma" is to develop the
> technology to remove a fetus from a mother's womb and have it
> survive and grow in another woman's womb or in a "mechanical
> womb." But this isn't really relevant to my current enquiry.)
Agreed (about it not being relevant). However, from a scientific
standpoint one should recognize that the development from a
blastocyst into an embryo into a fetus into an infant is a
fairly "continuous" process. Losing the information content
contained in that process becomes increasing undesirable the
later it occurs. However, even infanticide could under some
circumstances be an acceptable form of triage
(see: http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=triage)
such as when a mother may seek to maintain sufficient bodily
resources to feed an older infant.
In considering the information loss associated with an abortion,
one may wish to balance that against the information loss that
occurs with the incarceration of 28% of the black and 16% of the
hispanic men in the U.S. at some point in their lives [SciAm,
Dec 01, pg 28, DOJ estimates]. There is a loss of tax dollars that
could be devoted to more productive purposes, a loss of security
due to people committing the crimes that put them in jail, loss
of productive lives that evidence suggests are more likely to
result *if* the children are "wanted" by the parents, etc.).
Rather than allocate research dollars to preserving information
which may only contribute to greater information loss in the
future (given the current foster care system in the U.S. which
tends to produce criminals in some situations) -- it would seem to
be a better idea to (a) produce birth control methods for males and
females that are reliable to 99.9999999% of their uses and
allow individuals to utilize them *before* they become sexually
active; (b) develop methods for putting fetuses into biostasis
*until* such time as statistics suggest that it is highly likely
such individuals can mature in an environment that does not foster
the development of criminals.
One might even go so far in a really extropic society as to prevent
the possibility of reproduction until one has been sufficiently
educated that one has a moderately successful chance of raising
contributing members of society. The idea of allowing people to
drive other peoples lives before having demonstrated an ability
to successfully drive their own makes very little sense to me.
Of course this raises the question of whether humans have a
fundamental right to create really screwed up lives for other
humans.
Robert
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