From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@calweb.com)
Date: Thu Sep 11 1997 - 20:22:03 MDT
> Lee Daniel Crocker: Evolution is not "kind" or "unkind"; it is
> nothing more than a mathematical consequence of a certain set of initial
> conditions: replication, mutation, competition. Far better to understand
> and make use of an existing effect than to try to fight it. You might as
> well try fighting pi.
>
> Me: What a defeatist attitude for an extropian. Fuck Pi! If I have
> to struggle for billions of years with String Theory or wormhole physics
> to beat pi, I will!
Interesting idea, but not very useful. It takes /more/ creativity and
imagination to work within (self-imposed) constraints than to merely
speculate wildly. Anybody can imagine magic; the hard part is to
imagine magic that actually plays by the rules as you know them and
then make it happen.
Ignoring the present reality--or even for a moment forgetting its
constraints--can lead to disaster. Take, for example, the present
reality that men and women are physiologically and psychologically
different from the moment of birth. That's a constraint many of us
would like to get rid of, and one we might very well be able to get
rid of with higher technology. We all want freedom of choice, and
egalitarian ethics; but assuming we're there already is bad.
In the 70s, about 50 infant boys who suffered botched circumcisions
(and don't get me started about that barbaric nonsense) underwent
gender "reassignment" upon the advice of their doctors, who believed,
despite evidence to the contrary, that if the boys had surgery to
create a semblance of female genitalia, and were raised and socialized
as girls, that they would become normal girls. The result was
predictable: hand the "girl" a doll, and he makes it a soldier; come
adolescence, nearly all of them chose to re-socialize as males
despite their lack of equipment, and most spent years in therapy.
A few doctors put their egalitarian dream ahead of their scientific
integrity, and 50 boys were physically mutilated and psychologically
damamged. Dream of the future all you want, but /act/ on reality.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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