From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri May 24 2002 - 06:13:27 MDT
On Fri, 24 May 2002, Amara Graps wrote:
> Yes, Lee's letter was strange. A large volume of others on this list
> too. Spending time hating rather than adoring and cherishing and loving?
> What a waste. The treatment of life I've seen here makes me feel like
> throwing up.
Having stepped in this doo-doo myself (from the perspective of a
utilitatian approach to creating a better future) and being a
member of the you can suspend your copies camp (if they are
running on your hardware). I would like to offer a few comments.
I would warn that I have *not* read most of the related discussion.
Why is infanticide a useful discussion? For the same reason that
triage is discussed in medical school (we don't have an infinite
amount of resources) and the fact that the existance of world
hunger makes passive (or active) infanticide a reality. The NY Times,
I think, yesterday mentioned that perhaps as many as 5 million
people in South Africa are facing starvation. Mothers have to make
choices about whom to feed and people may die as a result of those
decisions. That is the reality of the world we live in today.
Why is infanticide -- perhaps -- a poor topic for the Extropian list?
Because the intelligence and resources of the people on the list
could be better devoted to the extropic topic of how to solve world
hunger rather than spending many hours debating the fine points of
whether people should have the freedom to create societies or even
think about creating societies where infanticide is acceptable.
Infanticide is perhaps a reasonable thing to discuss but it would
be more useful perhaps on one of the Usenet groups, e.g. soc.culture.*,
soc.rights.* or sci.environment groups.
For Amara and Gina, I would offer up the question of whether or
not, in Greg Stock's posthuman world, you feel it should be legal to
allow other posthumans to turn their empathic feelings down to zero?
The really sticky point behind the Joy, Fukuyama, et al camp is
"What are we when "we", or some subset of "us", when ve view
there as being little difference between recycling our old cars
and recycling 5 year old children?". If we say "*that* must never
come to pass", then we have doomed the civilization --
there can be no space colonization, there must be a police
state everywhere, etc. I think that may be part of the
perspective that Lee is coming from.
If you don't "have" your emotions, then they "have" you.
But I don't think the debate here is going to teach us much about
the problems of living together as different cultures that Star
Trek hasn't already taught us over the last 30 years or so.
It is going to be a long tough road, if we make it at all.
But for the people who want to spend time creating a world with
more freedom, I'd suggest a little less emphasis on theoretical
discussions and a little more emphasis on solutions that would
allow mothers in South Africa to avoid being forced into decisions
about which of their children survive would be a pretty extropic
thread.
Robert
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