From: den Otter (otter@globalxs.nl)
Date: Sat Aug 30 1997 - 15:34:24 MDT
> On Wed, 30 Jul 1997, Prof. Jose Gomes Filho wrote:
>
> > . In the future, it will be possible to change the colour of the
> > hair, eyes or even skin... Obviously, depending on the wish of each
> > individual... This is a very interesting possibility, also because
> > of racism.
Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> Yes. I think racism as we see it today will start to wither as the
> concept of a biological race becomes completely arbitrary (I look
> forward to hear the neo-nazis scream when the first blond, blue-eyed
> aryan is born to black parents :-). Unfortunately, racism will likely
> move more towards a cultural level - it is not the genes that are
> inferior, it is the memes.
Indeed, cultural "racism" is the way of the future. It may be soon
possible to change things like skin, eye and hair color but reliable
(re-)programming of the brain won't probably be possible for a long
time to come. So the intelligence of people will remain a variable,
and consequently so will the memes they follow. Dumb people
are very likely to "get involved" with stupid and destructive memes
like religion, communism, fascism etc, and may very well become
a serious threat to the evolving transhuman. The irrational masses
will only become more dangerous when "given" advanced future
technologies like nanomachines or body augmentation. It's like
giving a machine-gun to a cave-man...(That's why we should have
some kind of safe retreat, in case things go wrong. Space is the
most logical place to go, for many reasons. It's too bad that
everybody relies on the likes of NASA to do all the pioneering;
there are afaik not even *plans* for an extropian-orientated
space program).
There is nothing wrong with "discriminating" against other memes;
after all, they _are_ inferior to the forerunners (the transhuman
philosophies) of the "master meme"; the most practical and
pleasant one that is to replace all others. Have the courage and
honesty to say: yes, my meme is the best and your meme sucks
(and I'll most certainly kick your ass if you try to interfere with my
development ]:-)
> The first decade or so the process will likely be rather one way, to
> white, but after that more people will want to change in other
> directions. There is a real possibility of an entire generation of
> whites with black parents, followed by a "brownlash" (couldn't resist
> the pun) as color becomes chic.
>
Probably...just like some people today think that the waif "heroin look"
is somehow chic & sexy. Underneath that aryan exterior there still
will be a negro soul...people will still hate eachother, just not at first
glance. The change of skin won't solve the problems of unevenly distributed
intelligence (in the broadest sense of the word), the real cause for
racism.
DdO
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