From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu May 09 2002 - 19:30:41 MDT
Actually, I think my point was that Dark Angel is a
seriously good drama that illustrates a lot of
extropian, as well as libertarian, ideas and generally
without the luddite/statist bias so common to network
TV action shows. To reduce it to - wow, look at those
boobs! - does a major dis-service. While I might not
be attracted sexually to the character - Dark Angel -
portrayed in the series, I would certainly find a lot
of admirable traits in someone like that in real life,
and she could count on me to take her back, if it came
down to it. DA is a soldier and an immature teenager
with a lot of attitude, and I'm sure that she was
drawn that way deliberately to attract that teenage
girl audience. But still not a bad person at all -
just annoying. A little maturity and insight would
certainly make her more attractive. I've never found
pouting anything but nauseating, personally, and Alba
herself looks a little uncomfortable and uncertain in
those opening cheesecake poses, suggesting that she
might be more attractive in real life, at least in
those respects.
As far as anti-extropian sentiments in the show, my
take is that technology is treated pretty much
neutrally. The baddies use it to try to get an edge,
as always, but many of the heroes and good guys in the
show are serious techies. This recent big showdown
episode pitted people who were deliberately
genetically engineered - never mind that the motives
and methods were unethical - against people who think
that their "blue blood" genes from a 7,000 year
breeding program make them supermen, and that everyone
else are goyem - cattle. They kill their own kids who
aren't genetically pure. The genetically engineered
Manticore products include both good and bad guys, but
the essential thing is that they recognize that
humanity an sich transcends these trivial variations,
and that it's what you're for or against that makes
you important.
In the process of all this, of course, a lot of people
- especially the kids (especially the teenage girls at
which DA was originally targetted) - are no doubt
thinking "wow, I wish I had some of those cat genes."
A greater openness to the idea that genetic
engineering might be a really good thing in itself
would be worth the show, regardless of how realistic
the portrayal is. I mean, with stuff like "Crouching
Tiger..." out there, can any action show avoid some
visual hype and still be taken seriously?
Still, the fact is that chimpanzees are a LOT stronger
than we are (technically, yes, I know that we are in
fact chimpanzees.. ). An enraged chimp can allegedly
grip with a pressure of up to 2000 pounds. And cats
can move awfully fast when sufficiently motivated.
(Try starting a glow plug plane engine indoors
sometime in the same room as your favorite cat. Just
don't be between it and the exit.) I've studied crows
for some years now, and I can tell you that their
visual acuity is almost unbelievable. They can tell
the difference between little chunks of real bread and
visually almost identical chunks of styrofoam fake
decorator bread from over 100 feet. They can also
spot and recognize individual humans, as well as other
individual crows, from 100 yards or more. And how is
it that those African grey parrots can be so smart,
with those little tiny brains? I would guess that
they have evolved some really efficient neuronal
hardware.
In fact, it would seem highly unlikely that we humans
have the best possible genes for much of anything,
given the constraints of the evolutionary selection
process. So, finding other creatures with better
genes for particular traits might very well be
feasible. Further evidence for the possibility of
improvement comes from drugs. It is possible to
briefly jack up the physical or mental performance of
a normal human to several times normal - with some
serious costs and risks. In my younger days, I've
stayed awake for a week straight, and personally
experienced verifiable mental speedups of about five
to one on occasion, so the hardware can be pushed - at
least when you're young.
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