From: Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Aug 30 1997 - 14:14:10 MDT
At 09:30 PM 8/29/97 -0700, Hal wrote in response to:
>Kris Ganjam's
>> I can pay some, or many women
>> in any of many nations to bear and rear my son(s).
<snip lots of stuff about his cloned `son'>
>> What about if I made a clone of myself,
>> made it sign a contract, then gave it a lobotomy so it couldn't back out?
Hal:
>Giving your clone a lobotomy without its permission would be illegal,
>and wrong.
Curious how the child - the `son', or more accurately twin brother -
abruptly becomes an `it' in this thought-experiment. I'd had the
impression that extropians were by choice and principle averse to killing
other human beings whenever they felt like doing so, or just because, and
in the absence of a lethal threat from that other human person, it was to
their advantage.
And while I'm being sanctimonious, preachy and politically correct, I
suppose I might as well add that I detest the suggestion that evil,
rampaging, mother-fucking nanites should henceforth be coded as `black
goo'. Are people here *really* so deaf to the coded and offensive
implications? Here's an alternative - I know it's not as neat as
spectrum-coding, but what about `war goo'? Uber-goo is not a colour, after
all...
St Damien Broderick
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