The Posthuman Frame
by rsbakker
Everyone interested in the Posthuman or the Singularity more generally simply has to read David Roden’s Posthuman Life, even if only as a theoretical Rosetta stone, a way to organize their arguments against other positions. Ideally, though, they should look at it as the first genuinely sustained attempt to discern the landscape of possibility confronting us absent anthropocentric biases–at least as far as anyone has been able to get. I’ll be reviewing the book soon, but I thought the following, extended quote worth posting here as a prelude.
Understanding how the relation human-posthuman should be conceptualized is key for understanding [speculative posthumanism’s] epistemic scope. Are there ways in which we can predict or constrain posthuman possibility based on current knowledge? Some philosophers claim that there are features of human moral life and human subjectivity that are not just local to certain gregarious primates but are necessary conditions of agency and subjectivity everywhere. This ‘transcendental approach’ to philosophy does not imply that posthumans are impossible but that–contrary to expectations–they might not be all that different from us. Thus a theory of posthumanity should consider both empirical and transcendental constraints on posthuman possibility.
What if it turns out that these constraints are relatively weak?
In that case, the possibility of posthumans implies that the future of life and mind might not only be stranger than we can imagine, but stranger than we can currently conceive.
This possibility is consistent with a minimal realism for which things need not conform to our ideas about them. But its ethical implications are vertiginous. Weakly constrained [speculative posthumanism] suggests that our current technical practice could precipitate a nonhuman world that we cannot yet understand, in which ‘our’ values may have no place.
Thus, while [speculative posthumanism] is not an ethical claim, it raises philosophical problems that are both conceptual and ethico-political.
Conceptually, it requires us to justify our use of the term ‘posthuman,’ whose circumstances of application are unknown to us. Does this mean talk of ‘posthumans’ is self-vitiating nonsense? Does speaking of ‘weird’ worlds or values commit one to a conceptual relativism that is compatible with the commitment to realism.
If posthuman talk is not self-vitiating nonsense, the ethical problems it raises are very challenging indeed. If our current technological trajectories might result in a world turning posthuman, how should we view this prospect and respond to it? Should we apply a conservative, precautionary approach to technology that favours ‘human’ values over any possible posthuman ones? Can conservatism be justified under weakly constrained [speculative posthumanism] and, if not, then what kind of ethical or political alternatives are justifiable?
The goal of Posthuman Life is to define these questions as clearly as possible and to propose some philosophical solutions to them. Although it would be hubristic for a writer on this topic to claim the last word, my formulations do, I hope provide a firm conceptual basis for philosophical and interdisciplinary work in this area.
David’s project, in other words, is not so much to answer the question of the posthuman as it is to provision theorists with an exemplary frame, one that not only provides definitional clarity, but an understanding of the boggling dimensions of the problem space facing anyone who dares hazard guesses regarding the posthuman. I know mastering his vocabulary–and therefore his clarity–is one of my primary goals.
Three Pound Brain 
I feel like it’s only a matter of time before someone mentions this:
“I teach you the posthuman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb of the great tide, and return to the animals rather than overcome man?
What is the ape to men? A laughing stock or a painful embarassment. And just so shall man be to the posthuman: a laughing stock or a painful embarassment”.
Zarathustra indeed. I can only marvel, reading Nietzsche anymore. Think of the cartoon the post-structuralists made of him!
Reblogged this on Tom Hewitt – PhD Research Blog and commented:
I am fishing for a word other than ‘frame’ to describe David’s approach. Having said that, frames are much on my mind at the moment!
You can put the blame (or the frame) squarely on me, Tom 🙂
Sorry to hijack the thread, but I was impressed by this article in the NY Times. I know Graziano has been discussed before but I feel like he takes a more eliminativist position here than he has in the past, not that I closely follow him. And it is pretty cool that this bit of consciousness skepticism is in the NY Times.
His position stated here seems pretty close to BBT’s main claims, but Scott can attest to that idea more accurately.
From looking at comments only, it seems to be taking personhood and selfhood as if they are for us, and so can be manipulated like they are plastic and with that, raising the question of how that turns out. Seems a bit dualist to me. Doesn’t seem to take into account the idea we are what we are to forfil a life sustaining niche. You can’t change what you are and expect the niche to suddenly follow your new permutation. Seems to be treating the moral spectrum as quite seperate from life support questions.
Then again, I didn’t even read the first six pages!
Taking bets on whether scott takes issue with the material in the agency chapter!
I’ve hashed out my agency ‘concerns’ with him before. It’ll come out in the interview, I’m sure. David and I overlap on many different points, but our visions actually quite different.
This looks great!
Thanks for the heads-up.
I haven’t downloaded his new book yet, but am looking forward to it. David seems to be holding that line between academic and the common reader and scientist exceptionally well. It’s always hard to walk that narrow line between two rhetoric’s. We live in an age when the barriers between academia and the common reader are beginning to waver, since the mass of readers are becoming more and more educated. Breaching the walls is almost imperative.
I noticed you chimed in on the Cogburn blog about Pete Wolfendale’s new book, too. I agree… we need more confrontational works, the power and imagination as well as conceptuality to wake people up from their scholarly slumbers. We need agonistes… more the merrier.
Hey craig, how is his new book? I suppose what I find most problematic about brandom’s approach, which has become a key fulcrum in the articulation of this “new transcendental realism” is how he manages to dissimulate such a gratuitous metaphysics behind this veneer of respectable formalist austerity. I just find objective idealism to be highly dubious. He himself says that we ourselves dont necessarily have access to the compatibilities and incompatibilities entailed by our commitments, so what guarantees that a bunch of people interacting together neither of whom have access to the compatibilities and incompatibilies entailed by their own comitments could somehow emergently bring about the compulsion of the concept to become adequately refined. Peter elaborates that deontic scorekeeping in in this expansive sense of hegelian social cybernetics as captured by brandoms formalism enjoys a kind of independence from implementation or its realization in its conditioning ‘substrate’, but I think this is just what is at issue. If you watch brandom’s lectures on hegel he likes to sneak in this little parenthesis (if all goes well) or (when all goes well), without saying much if anything about when things go wrong, or how anyone knows they are going right. Can the actual brain’s workings as bequeathed to us by cognitive neuroscience *manage or implement deontic scorekeeping functions*, and its not enough for them to say that this is the wrong level of functional analysis because these is clearly an interface involving the brain. What we need to know is what is required to implement deontic scorekeeping and are brains up to task. Is unadulterated memory enough? Do we need a pen paper? Are the memory structures of extent institutions enough? What kind of action perception cycles linked up with information recording and memory practices actually do the job of tracking commitments and keeping deontic scores. I think its interesting that brandom hones in on “trust”, because that seems to be the only way to get something like this off the ground–through reciprocal “trustings”; but that just underscores how the sociology of knowledge attribution *actually empirically works* in societies, which I take it that he wants to move beyond.
Yea, for Brandom there is a priority of pragmatics (doing) over semantics (meaning) in which doings are deontologically prior to being, and that deontology replaces ontology completely in the sense that doings exhaust being.
In many ways I’m more of a base or libidinal (drive) centered materialist. The notion that pushes against intentional positions of any stripe. Brandom’s notions of a normative philosophy of “giving” and “taking” of reasons with its fusion of Sellars and Hegel seems to follow the typical course of Idealism into all its traps. As you said: “Peter elaborates that deontic scorekeeping in in this expansive sense of hegelian social cybernetics as captured by brandoms formalism enjoys a kind of independence from implementation or its realization in its conditioning ‘substrate’, but I think this is just what is at issue.” I agree. This type of thinking will give everything (i.e., Justice, Law, Norms, etc.) over to the machines. I almost want to parody this with the old aestheticism wherein
“Live? Our servants will do that for us..”
― Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, Axël
Which I’d change to “Think? Our machines will do that for us.”
That’s where Brandom’s notions will lead us…
This going to happen regardless, simply because the speculative morass heaped about ‘thinking’ can scarcely touch what is actually going on. This is one big way my understanding of the posthuman deviates from David’s, I think. Even though he eschews normativism and phenomenology, he’s still willing to buy into some traditional understanding of the efficacy of our folk psychological concepts, and so willing to debate the question of the posthuman in terms of a disconnection between this system and more sophisticated, distributed systems. For me, ‘humanity’ is as much a matter of buying into a faux self-conception than anything else, which would make me a ‘critical posthumanist’ in David’s schema, the difference being that I have no truck with the intentional opportunism (or tendentious eliminativism) that characterizes everyone else he categorizes as critical posthumanist. ‘Subject’ bad, but ‘good’ good! For me, posthumanity has both an epistemological as well as an ontological phase: the technical capacity to create beings capable of disconnection in David’s sense, turns on knowledge that reveals the heuristic nature of ‘humanity’ to begin with. The ‘humanity heuristic’ dies when it is no longer functional. The posthumanity heuristic dies when our descendants find something more powerful than mechanical cognition. I fall asleep wondering what the x heuristic might look like…
I’d only add that Transcendental Realism, which Brassier characterizes as “a new compact between metaphysics and epistemology: transcendental realism in the former and revisionary naturalism in the latter. There is a reality that transcends the bounds of possible human experience set out by Kant, but we are learning that it is populated by ‘things’ about which it is proving increasingly difficult to say ‘what’ they are using the resources of sense currently available to us. We will have to forge new vocabularies to be able to say what these things are.
As a poet thinking about the old Romantic Sublime, which beyond all other things was about augmenting consciousness or transforming and adding new senses that humans as of yet do not have (i.e., the Romantic poets were the first posthumanists in the sense of wanting to transcend humanity through metamorphosis – take your pick: transhumanism or modifying existing humans, or posthumanity or that indefinable that David’s work is dealing with).
Where Brassier says: “We will have to forge new vocabularies to be able to say what these things are.”
I would change it adding the Romantic turn: “We will have to forge new senses to be able to see what these things are.”
Great point regarding the Romantics. I would say ‘when we forge new cognitive systems’ to ratchet our way to even newer cognitive systems!
Good questions, all. Normative metaphysics is the last gasp of noocentric romanticism. “Trust” is code for stage-setting, and normativists always cleave their spin on the Davidsonian line. My ‘blind mechanic’ ramblings on reason amount to an attempt to paint a naturalistic picture of ‘trust’ (what I call ‘harmony’ or the sum of native and learned ‘attunements’). When you import this picture back into any normativist account, the post hoc, as opposed to the ‘a priori,’ nature of the latter become pretty clear, I think.
Scott, in fairness to David many of the foremost researchers in AI also do the same thing, where they talk about intelligence which have access to modifying their own “goals”, have protocols to deal with ‘self preservation’ and so forth.
Craig, I can understand the appeal of libidinal materialism, but I would probably simply agree with Meillassoux’s notion that those views still engage in ‘subjectialism’. In what sense do rocks and rivers have ‘drives’? When we speak of drives in human beings we understand by this a compex field which does not unproblematically unfold as rivers unproblematically follow the path of least action.
All the foremost researchers in all the cognitive sciences do the same thing! This is why they so desperately need a madman such as me.
“We live in an age when the barriers between academia and the common reader are beginning to waver, since the mass of readers are becoming more and more educated. Breaching the walls is almost imperative.”
I actually think the opposite is true, that what makes it seem that way (sometimes) is simply the vast number of unemployed academics out there. As the rigours of specialization become more extreme, it makes sense that people will turn to stereotype heuristics to economize more and more, as well as to intellectual counter-identifications that spare them the niggling sense that they really are simply ignorant. I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. What is vanishing is that the opacity between ingroups no longer retards the consequences of this latter dynamic. ‘Cretinization of the masses’ used to be a phrase the masses had to work to encounter.
The age of intellectuals laughing up their sleeve in private is done like dinner.
Problem with that is that if the scientists and intellectuals close inwardly into their in-group speakeasies or ivory towers the rest of us barbarians will come an pull their towers down and probably cannibalize the whole lot; or, at least sink them all in shit and terminal degree-zero. Did this happen in Rome? Greece? The notion of elites living in their cages sounds like pure decadence. Sade would have loved it, not to say Boccaccio… 🙂
Hello Scott! Just wanted to give you some feedback–I don’t know if I speak for anyone other than myself, but I don’t really care for the definitions on your twitter. I chuckled at first and then the expectation of repetition set in. I would prefer silence + an occasional (maybe weekly or even monthly) something else. Could be an update or an opinion you have or something you like eating so we can mindless agree with you and favorite it and retweet it. What do you think? -A CONCERNED FAN AND SEXY NURSE
Not many do! They’re aimed at pretty narrow audience, and I grimace all the time thinking how they must read to those outside that narrow zone. But then the same could be said about the blog, the books, the tone, the topics, the vocabulary. The crazy thing is, I’ve actually come to regard losing followers as a sign D-chirp success. The same goes for ‘Likes’! I don’t know what my problem is. But like I said when I began, building a crossroads between incompatible empires is what this whole thing is about. This is where I dwell, and the degree to which it alienates others, triggers defensiveness, dismissiveness, superiority, dislike, moral umbrage, is simply the degree to which I have made my point. Very few people know what to do with me, anywhere, ever.
So the experiment continues. When the fantasy series is done and the market has made its decision, I’ll take a hard look at it all. If the gamble pays off, though, if SA becomes truly big, then I think I will have created something genuinely relevant and perplexing.
Honesty is always appreciated.
LOL, ur fantasy is awesome! U r the tolkien-beyond-tolkien! But your defense of definitions smacks of rationalization! Please, master, do not succumb!!!
He’s a rogue thinker, BF/Madness. It’s probably more an issue with having less shadow to hide in now in order to deliver his back stabs, than the stabs themselves.
When you say “the fantasy series is done” does that refer to the Aspect-Emperor or the entire series?
By the way, Bakker. People on Westeros have been ‘spreading the word’ that you’re not going to write the third series of the SA, especially now since they’ve figured that your Canadian publisher has dropped the series. Not only that, but some are saying that you said that the third series is unlikely to be published.
Since this BS (I’m hoping that that’s what it is) is turning new readers away from starting the series, I think an update to clarify these things would be helpful at this point.
Ah, Westeros. Penguin dropped me (opting to distribute Overlook’s edition instead) before WLW came out, so that’s very old news – older than the blog, in fact! All I’ve said is that I can die happily, with AE complete, since it finishes the story arc I’ve been sitting on since a punk. Writing the last series depends on how whether anyone gives me money to buy food while I write the last series. If no one does, which is always possible in the biz, then I’ll have to get a straight-job, and it’ll just take that much longer for it to come out. I’m actually in a quite enviable position, self-publishing-wise.
So tell them that if they want to be right in the short term, keep scaring people away from the series! 😉 Otherwise, I never stop writing. It’s just something I always do. I… can’t… seem… to… stop… writing…
I was referring to AE, in that comment, btw. If it doesn’t convince people that something quite different is going on, nothing will.
That said, I really don’t blame people for losing faith. But I haven’t, and since I live nearest the monster, I know exactly how alive it is.
@Callan, fairly sure BF is MG not Madness. Its MG’s twitter handle afterall. Thought I’d just throw that out there.
—
Its interesting that such “old news” never gets disseminated. The whole community subsists on rumors it would seem. I’ve never heard of the penguin thing until nowish, at least no officially. It would seems that you need a better PR team.
Also, one point of contention, if your goal is to build a crossroads, wouldn’t you want to be attracting people to it rather than repelling them? I fail to see how you can claim to be building a crossroads if no one shows up… If the only road there is your own… What am i missing? Maybe crossroads isn’t a great analogy. Seems like you’re building Ishual, a lonely place in the mountains for like minded individuals to study in solitude, rather than Sauglish.
Bakker’s main critics at westeros boil down to a half-dozen individuals who continually regurgitate the same tired stuff; it was boring five years ago and it’s pathetic now, but loudness does draw attention: the FauxNews formula. That said, I doubt the minor chorus of disaffected hurt your sales that much (really, the fact that your name is constantly on the front page of the lit. page probably has garnered you more sales than less). The main issues regarding commerciality, or the lack thereof, stem from the density of the writing, the lack of overt sympathetic characters & the wish fulfillment fix, the fact that the genre is fundamentally conservative and so tailors conservative expectations (which this series does not cater to), the brutality, the preponderance of misanthropic philosophizing coupled with a lack of humor to level the bleakness, etc. etc.
I’m glad you wrote the series; it’s influenced my own writing, and I’m glad it’s at least reached a formal conclusion in TUC. I do think it might be in your benefit to write a stand-alone or two, drawing from the various histories of your world, and make them as “commercial” as possible while adhering to your personal style. Easier said than done.
ppptttthhhhhh
Doesn’t that largely depend on the specifics of scientific discoveries not yet made ?
Also, I am not sure that any discovery might (by the virtue of being known) render the human heuristic “non-functional”.
There might be a discovery that allows for a vastly superior heuristic (cognitive system, whatever), but that won’t somehow automagically make human brains go “pop!” unless (typical) human mind turns out to be a kind of a system that is liable to fall into infinite loop (or some other abnormal state) when the scope of its introspection exceeds some “natural-ish” threshold
Read an article the other day where sillicon valley companies were offering to freeze female applicants eggs as a recruitment incentive. To help ‘even up the field’ (where capitalism is not in any way a field, but I digress)
I think the game ‘Deus Ex 2’ touched on this, but what’s next – offering mind augmentations to help ‘level the field’?
You can’t provide your own food. You’re not allowed to just provide your own shelter (land taxes). You’re rendered non functional in as much in a cost/benefit analysis of providing you food and conditions simply isn’t efficient compared to supporting entity X. It wont be instant – it’ll be over time, so as to take advantage of normalisation. It wont even necessarily involve the meat death of the meat you’re used to surrounding you.
Gestational surrogates? Wet nurses? Nannies?
Michael, did you just include the science lab stuff of artifical fertilisation and implantation, with all the invisible third parties that involves, right next to the ancient stuff (ie, it has millions of years of field testing) of wet nurses and nannies, where you’re dealing directly with the only other person involved?
No stretch there at all?
The article actually mentioned gestational surrogates as a ‘where the heck is this going?’ example.
If the goal is to allow businesswomen to become mothers without any adverse career effects or physiological heavy lifting they will need the whole gamut of ancient and modern techniques. And as was discussed regarding the previous post, they will need other, usually less financially well off women to make their sacred spaces available for rent. One might say that gestational surrogacy and wet nursing are varieties of sex work. The New York Times had a few interesting takes on the issue:
Because work is sacred.
What I hate is how people cannot seem to natively differentiate between PVE and PVP, to use some MMORPG terms. PVE is person Vs environment, and I get the desire to evangelicise fighting against the environment, battling against storm and drought, toughing it through. That’s a fair thing to promote.
But because people can’t differentiate the two, when PVE gets promoted, so too does PVP. Person Vs person. Which is the bulk of the capitalistic system.
What the fuck is so wonderful about people pitted against other people that this reproductive invasive technology seems some sort of good thing to apply to women, if they want to be ‘real’ women? Ie, businesswomen? But I guess you wont say PVP is wonderful, it’s that work (aka, PVE) is evangelicised. And like the Inchoroi’s addition to the tusk, PVP gets to tag along on that evangelical ride even though it has no place there.
And no, I don’t advocate PVP being okay for men, either. Here’s a question – if being castrated would help be a better businessman, shouldn’t that happen? We can freeze your sperm and all that! We’ll have it arranged someone else will shoot it into your wife or designated target at the right time.
Doesn’t sound liberating? But you’d be better at business! Level playing field! Wonderful, surely?
One might say that gestational surrogacy and wet nursing are varieties of sex work.
If you call gynocology ‘sex work’ then I’ll atleast think your paradigm is consistant. Otherwise it just seems like changing the names of things from one to another, just in case it convinces the other guy. No consistancy to base any reasoning on. Chaotic alignment.
they will need other, usually less financially well off women to make their sacred spaces available for rent.
At this point I’m wondering if you’re parodying the whole idea and I’m being a stooge in taking it as advocation (much like some of Scott’s critics take him as advocating).
When a society loses its communal sense of the sacred individuals within that society become free (so to speak) to choose their own sacred. In a capitalist society naturally many of them will choose money. The perverse thing about this sort of choice is that for most of human history the sacred has meant in large part those things which should not be exchanged for money. (In this respect see Acts 8:9-24.) I might question the wisdom of a woman choosing to sacrifice the most fertile years of her life on that altar, and I might question the collective wisdom of a society organizing itself so that such sacrifices seem wise, but I do not question the right of any woman to choose that sacrifice.
Men can have vasectomies.
If the gateway to the temple is sacred, surely the temple must be more sacred still. If it is sin to grant entrance to the gateway for money then surely it must be more sinful still to grant entrance to the temple for money. If the temple is not sacred, then the gateway is also not sacred. If it is prostitution to grant access to the vagina for money then surely it is prostitution to grant access to the womb for money. If it is merely sex work to grant access to the vagina for money then it is merely sex work to grant access to the womb for money. Whether the organs of increase of a woman are sacred or not sacred is for each woman to decide, because we as a society have renounced our communal right to the sacred.
In my own writing I have always tried to achieve a whimsy which is fundamentally serious, and a sacred which if fundamentally profane.
Interestingly, the brilliant young women being courted by Apple after graduating with honors in electrical engineering from Cal Tech and having her eggs frozen seems to have something in common with the brutalized, drug addicted strippers and prostitutes we spent so much time pitying in the last post. They both seem to have renounced any sense of their sexual/reproductive selves as sacred. They might both be said to be trading some part of their sexuality for money.
Just seems empty phrases perporting to be some kind of structure (like a life support structure), Michael?
When a society loses its communal sense of the sacred individuals within that society become free (so to speak) to choose their own sacred.
What’s with the intoning of this like it’s ‘something’ rather than nothing? When a bullet enters the brain pan, the brains are free to choose their own path out the back of the head. Yeah. So what’s the useful thing (to anyone) here you’re talking about?
but I do not question the right of any woman to choose that sacrifice.
This is like bragging you don’t check to see if you’re going to back over your own children when leaving the driveway?
Don’t question peoples right to work in sweatshops either – and find it a source of nobility to ask no questions as well, if you want.
And where’d such a ‘right’ come from, if society is ‘free’?
Men can have vasectomies.
Abstract.
because we as a society have renounced our communal right to the sacred.
Except you call work sacred, still.
I’d like to further provoke and give rope to how your argument has made it clear it’s not about people (who happen to be women) and instead become about some sort of ‘sacred’ thingie, but I’m not that good a writer.
Clearly it’s about the condition of the ‘sacred’ that this subject revolves around, for you. Not the condition of people.
@ Callan
Okay, important distinction, are you saying castration proper (as in, removal of the testes) or permanent sterilization (as in, vasectomy) ?
Because the functional difference (and thus the nature of the choice in question) is pretty profound, and my humble subjective opinion on the matter would also differ profoundly depending on which procedure you actually have in mind.
P.S.:
Also, if I understand correctly, the company in question does not insist on ovary removal or tubal ligation of the women involved, merely offers to freeze some eggs free of charge.
I wouldn’t call myself conventionally religious but I like playing clerics and druids.
You seem to know what’s best for women. What do you think they should do? And what should happen to them if they don’t do what you say?
If they don’t do what I say, then I’ll set up a fiscal desperation trap for them, where to get money for food and dignity they’ll do what I want, then I’ll say I was totally respecting their right to choose the whole time (the whole time I was forcing them to pick the card I wanted, like a magician forces you to pick the card he wants). Come to think of it, I’ll do that to everyone.
So I’ll tout how I respect their right to choose, while I conveniently forget the threat they are under, driving them into this or that act.
That’s what I’d do. Oh, and be sanctimonious while touting that respect. To really rub salt in the wound I’d made.
01,
I remember a male comedian once saying he thought pap smears involved some kind of quick surface wipe of the ol’ vag. He didn’t realise it was an uncomfortable and even painful procedure.
As is harvesting eggs, as I recall. It isn’t just ‘freezing eggs’. It’s not that perfunctory, like her getting her nails done or something.
Since were talking surrogacy pregnancies as well, I’ll say for that, full on castration.
But really the question is one to make a male goe through medical procedures for the sacrosanct alter that is work. Or if we can’t think of any such example for men, does that show work is designed for men – and that we are performing medical procedures on women to make them fit the thing that’s designed for men? Is that equality, or just meat grinding women into the shape of man, the superior sex?
For non surrogacy pregnancies, go with vasectomy. Which is actually a fuck of a painful operation as well.
The exercise is one of putting yourself in the other persons shoes. Trying to find technical dodges out of this procedure not being like that procedure just shows you have no interest in putting yourself in the other persons shoes. Stop being male and arguing technicality.
My point was not about whether it is “unpleasant” or “perfunctory”, especially since both qualifiers of yours are subjective, and the procedure in question is not mandatory for employment in company in question.
My point was that neither egg harvesting nor surrogacy are in any meaningful way equivalent to permanent removal of an important hormone-producing gland and/or external genitals.
That’s like comparing shaving (which I found exceedingly unpleasant. Past tense because a permanent technological solution was found) and facial surgery.
Unless you happen to believe that childbirth (we assume natural childbirth, though as you might have already guessed I happen to be rather sympathetic towards elective C-sections) is inherently destructive to female genitals, that is hardly equivalent.
Vasectomy is a surgical procedure, just not a very “scary” one, by modern standards (then again, neither is egg harvesting and/or tubal ligation)
And as far as I am concerned, I am all for men freezing their “preshus fluidses” and then undergoing elective vasectomy.
Another option, for those who don’t want typical fatherhood but still want to leave a genetic trace on the history of humanity for some obscure reason would be to donate sperm to relevant centers, then undergo vasectomy (hilarious fact – sperm donation is the most effective reproductive strategy available to the modern human male, and may turn out surprisingly decently paid if you have good motility and spiffy paperwork).
And preempting the obvious question, yes, I did (though frankly, career has very little to do with my decision)
I don’t think that “offering reproductive options as benefits” counts as “retrofitting for work”.
However, more generally, I don’t see anything wrong or worrying with career enhancing modifications, and will consider such options if they will become available in my lifetime.
Like said above, I don’t see how surrogacy is equivalent to castration unless you also insist on certain unfavorable childbirth conditions
And anyway, surrogacy is a transitional solution. There is nothing particularly magical about the uterus. Complicated, yes, magical, no.
So eventually we will be able to carry out gestation without the need of a living person’s services.
And speaking from experience, I wouldn’t describe vasectomy as “fuck painful”, but that’s subjective and probably depends on what other painful things you have experience with.
The exercise is one of finding what do you consider to be “other person’s shoes” and why.
Because we don’t have direct read access to subjective experience of a female third party, and more importantly, because of the fact that women aren’t obliged to share a single perception of “value” and “experience” shared across the entire gender (so what is “painful” and “undesirable” for one woman might be “cool, I get to freeze eggs for free, that’s awesome” for another woman) we absolutely have to pre-negotiate our hypothetical, metaphorical “shoes”.
And if we’re arguing specific procedures, we’re already arguing technicalities.
That’s like comparing shaving (which I found exceedingly unpleasant. Past tense because a permanent technological solution was found) and facial surgery.
Is your subconcious trying to give me material?
Yes, it is like comparing shaving to surgery, when you go and get a technological solution – ie, surgery!
You do know they have to hyper stimulate ovation to get an egg? This isn’t like getting your ears pierced.
But the way your acting – well this is what I imagine: It’s never talked about just the extent of the surgery involved. Never talked about amongst men, who are clueless like the comedian about pap smears. Women buckle down and accept this status quo, because peer pressure of being business woman heroines. And a really patriarchal situation rather than one of equality soon sticks itself in.
And as far as I am concerned, I am all for men freezing their “preshus fluidses” and then undergoing elective vasectomy.
Well that’s a random support.
No doubt if someone was threatening them with a gun to do it you’d be all ‘oh well I don’t support their ‘choice’ now – they are being threatened!’
Yet despite your ‘secret song of the executive’, you see no capitalist gun being pointed.
However, more generally, I don’t see anything wrong or worrying with career enhancing modifications, and will consider such options if they will become available in my lifetime.
Do you see anything wrong with going past a union picket line?
This is like listening to someone saying they will spray some ozone depleting gas into the air around them and god dammit, it’s ‘their’ air to do it with.
Do you think there are any broader socio-economic ramifications to such modification, or do you honestly think it just affects you? (maybe I’m coming down hard on something which isn’t common talk, yet – but hell, even the video game Dues Ex 2 touched on enhancement job wars)
The exercise is one of finding what do you consider to be “other person’s shoes” and why.
No, it’s not. You can’t be fucked playing the game – it’s time to put money on the table, but you want to play for match sticks. Okay, you don’t want to buy in. But then you aren’t playing the game. You have to get your imaginative wallet out and put yourself in someone elses surgical slippers to play. You don’t try to make it about me – that’s not the game. Just don’t think it’s a victory of discussion to simply ignore the rules of the game propossed.
Haha, good one. Subconscious is such an asshole, exposing my general preference towards subjectively comfortable and spite towards “traditional”
But hey, the point still stands.
Egg harvesting may have ominous complications, but those are rare, and the procedure itself does not induce permanent impairment.
Thus, comparing egg harvesting with the removal of gonads is quite inadequate.
I am well aware of the fact.
My claim about inadequacy of equivalence between egg harvesting and castration is based solely upon the fact that egg harvesting does not guarantee a permanent functional or cosmetic impairment (in fact, majority of people undergoing egg harvesting do not develop any notable complications)
I am also aware of the fact that it is offered as “perk”, and not a mandatory employment criterion, which kind of undermines your entire line of reasoning.
I don’t recall claiming equivalence of that kind.
By the way, piercing is perfectly capable of causing severe, life-threatening complications (rarely so, of course)
First, I merely point out that drawing equivalence between a procedure that is not supposed to, and in most cases does not, cause permanent alterations to one that, by its very design, does, is more than a little inadequate (come to think of it, even vasectomy isn’t a very adequate comparison because it is, by design, supposed to induce a permanent functional change)
Second, with this being “perk” and not something mandatory for enrollment, the entire line of argument you propose is pretty moot.
Third, I don’t see how offering women additional woman-specific options can be seen as patriarchal
It is fundamentally similar to covering woman-specific contraception methods (hormonal contraception and IUDs aren’t devoid of complication potential, you know, and yet covering them would not have been seen as problematic by anyone except maniacal abrahamic cultists)
Oh, come on.
You know I’m pretty consistent in my support of human modification and in my distaste towards “natural” and “traditional” 🙂 (but of course, the problem with randomness )
By that logic, we’re already forcing people into undergoing brain modification (also known as “training” and “education”)
And unlike the much maligned egg perk (which is, by definition of “perk”, pretty much optional for the employee), the “education” thing (which is essentially nothing but a very protracted and inefficient brain modification technique) is very much mandatory in many fields
Also, if a given career requires some kind of procedure you have reservations against (be it an education you find useless, training you find too harsh and dangerous, or a medical procedure you deem unacceptable), you’re allowed to choose a different (perhaps less lucrative) employment option, so nobody (not even the inherently inhumane corpse execs!) is “holding” a “gun”.
Unless you’re willing to speculate that anyone has a “natural” right to any career, irrespective of training and abilities, which would be… very unorthodox.
Depends on what the hypothetical metaphorical union is picketing for and whether I’m even partial to this particular union.
If the hypothetical metaphorical “union” happens to be concerned with the prospect of employers paying for “superhuman sci-fi body mods” and employing modified “superhumans” preferentially, then I am afraid that my interests and that of the “union” in question do not appear to be aligned.
Imagine, if you will, a lifeform that can live in normal Earthlike conditions, but actually benefits from lots of hard UV.
Your ozone layer shtick does not align well with its interests and proclivities, even if said ozone layer’s presence does not cause suffering proper.
[insert “I didn’t ask for this” / “I’d totally ask for this” DX2 joke]
With game refs out of the way…
I believe that modern-baseline folks will eventually be as unemployable as proper human-baseline folks (savanna-dwelling, disease ridden nomadic folks without any education and limited tool use skills) are now.
Which, of course, does not mean that “modern-baseline” folks should die (I am, after all, partial to the informal cult of the yet unborn machine god, not some abrahamic skymonster cult)
I am all in favor of life-long unemployment support.
Ideally all watched over by machines of loving grace 😉
Since this is merely a philosophical discussion here, none of us could get fucked here, except maybe for extremely permissive and vague definitions of “fucked”.
What I dislike about your proposal is the sheer volume of questionable equivalences you are trying to sneak in.
For starters, even if we refuse discussing equivalence of procedures (which is a can of worms we discussed extensively), the subject at hand is coverage of a voluntary reproductive procedure as a “perk”, not something that is in any sense mandatory for employment in said company.
Then, there’s the whole issue with you trying to establish equivalence between a procedure that, outside of rather unlikely complications, is not supposed to case permanent functional alteration, to one that does, which does not appear to be a sound line of reasoning.
You seem to be willing to discuss something along the lines of “is it acceptable that there exist careers that require significant rearrangement of reproductive behavior to truly succeed” and / or “is it acceptable to carry out surgical modifications to enhance job performance”, which is fine.
However, it just so happens that procedures that prompted this discussion (both surrogacy and egg donation) do not have permanent functional alteration as their goal or guaranteed consequence.
Trying to establish some kind of equivalence between those procedures and procedures which do, in fact aim to induce permanent alterations (and typically do induce said alterations) is just Huxleyesque trickery.
Egg harvesting may have ominous complications, but those are rare, and the procedure itself does not induce permanent impairment.
Thus, comparing egg harvesting with the removal of gonads is quite inadequate.
You win a match stick. When you’re willing to play for real stakes, get back to me.
My claim about inadequacy of equivalence between egg harvesting and castration is based solely upon the fact that egg harvesting does not guarantee a permanent functional or cosmetic impairment (in fact, majority of people undergoing egg harvesting do not develop any notable complications)
This just sounds like the men who push a woman to get the morning after pill. Because it has no notable complications. So the woman should do that.
Again, no male equivalent suddenly ends in match stick arguments. Trying to handle other people through technicality, while expected other people to treat oneself with heart and sympathy!
I am also aware of the fact that it is offered as “perk”, and not a mandatory employment criterion, which kind of undermines your entire line of reasoning.
Despite your ‘secret song of the executive’ or however you put it, as cognitive science experiments show, you put almost no effort into actually thinking out the ramifications of what the other party is saying. You know the term ‘escalation’. You know capitalism isn’t a big hug fest. What starts a ‘perk’ becomes, if other fuckers are to keep up, a requirement. Think of how you require a car for work – no, having a car is not a choice, though I bet you feel like you made an empowering choice in buying one.
But when you think about it in a lazy way, that treats the world as static as an amarican sit com, it’ll always remain a perk and just a wonderful option granted. It’d totally always be a choice.
By that logic, we’re already forcing people into undergoing brain modification (also known as “training” and “education”)
Yup.
Also, if a given career requires some kind of procedure you have reservations against (be it an education you find useless, training you find too harsh and dangerous, or a medical procedure you deem unacceptable), you’re allowed to choose a different (perhaps less lucrative) employment option, so nobody (not even the inherently inhumane corpse execs!) is “holding” a “gun”.
Awww, I’m ‘allowed’! What else do they allow me? To breath? Thanks so much for that allowance!
But I’ll reverse it and show a way I’d agree with you – in some sort of structure that is built so people can always access some method of getting food and shelter and an a way that is fairly even with others (ie, cardboard boxes and soilent green for some, mansions and caviar for others is not fairly even), I would agree with your proposition.
No such structure is in place. I’m suspecting you come from a middle to upper middle income and start to project that fairly pampered world as being how it’s structured for everyone, rather than being a product of larger exploitation.
Further, that avoiding jobs that suck would slowly take you (and proceeding generations) down the upper middle/middle/lower income pegs. Till only a few disgustingly rich and their pocket armies (pokearms) remain.
OR you’d say it’d all work out and you have a choice.
Unless you’re willing to speculate that anyone has a “natural” right to any career, irrespective of training and abilities, which would be… very unorthodox.
Jeez, it has to a right to ANY career or we have to stick with the status quo rat race? False dichotomy.
If the hypothetical metaphorical “union” happens to be concerned with the prospect of employers paying for “superhuman sci-fi body mods” and employing modified “superhumans” preferentially, then I am afraid that my interests and that of the “union” in question do not appear to be aligned.
Because down in your heart you know you’ll come out of that modification arms race a winner, right?
Trying to establish some kind of equivalence between those procedures and procedures which do, in fact aim to induce permanent alterations (and typically do induce said alterations) is just Huxleyesque trickery.
Yeah, yeah. I see you offering no equivalent example – an example you would find emotionally equivalent, even if everyone else in the technically anal world disagrees with it having any equivalence. Fuck the technical, were talking genuine feeling. Your genuine (on the honour system) sense of a male equivalent to the procedure. Till you put that stake on the table to play over, you’re playing for match sticks and I already gave you your burnt out match stick.
I can not speak on behalf of “men who push a woman to get the morning after pill”, since I happen to handle contraception on my end of the transaction (fairly radically so), but I definitely don’t recall voicing any expectations about “heart” and “sympathy”.
Maybe it’s some kind of thing specific to “pushy” males fond of morning-after pills…
This is prime example of slippery slope fallacy, and can easily be expanded to any other conceivable bonus another party might offer in employment transactions (They cover cosmetic dental interventions ? one day they might make cosmetically appealing teeth mandatory! They cover contraception ? One day they might make UID / hormones /shitwatnot mandatory! )
The fact that there could be a slippery slope in a given direction doesn’t mean that there would be one.
And, preempting a story that makes me cringe like hell, no, frogs don’t work like that too.
ERROR: CAN NOT RELATE
Reason:
My employers never required me to have a car, and in fact, I only got one when I got someone to drive it for me, since I loathe driving.
I suppose “employers making a car mandatory” are a US-specific shtick (I heard a lot, and I mean a lot, of horror stories about how your public transportation is full of living hell and whatnot, though when I visited USA, I didn’t find getting around to be particularly miserable)
Why do you even care about being “even” with someone ?
Would moving Rothschilds out of their mansions and into refrigerator boxes somehow make John Doe’s box more comfy ?
It seems to me that one should strive to provide subjectively comfortable, subjectively fun and fulfilling lifestyle to the unemployed, not to pursue some preposterous “caviar equity equation”
Actually, many EU countries already provide fairly decent living conditions (and numerous re-training opportunities) for the “long-term unemployed”, and, as advanced labor-saving solutions continue to eliminate whole swaths of previously existent employment opportunities, such programs will have to be expanded further (where extent already) or created de-novo (if nonexistent)
I realize US of A has a unique ultra-capitalist
mightdiligent-work-makes-right mentality going, but US has “too much of a good thing” problem with capitalism anyway.I don’t even think that providing full time comfortable habitation and decent quality (nutritionally and organoleptically sound) food for the permanently unemployed would be much of a problem for a high-automation society. If anything, medical services and entertainment might prove more challenging.
Well, I could tell you the story of my life and even play you the songs of my people 🙂 but that would be hardly constructive on them internets.
Let’s say that I just happen to observe that even the most “abjectly poor” in modern world in general and in certain more decent jurisdictions specifically happen to have a lifestyle that is vastly more comfortable, more safe, and at the same time more interesting, than that of an average peasant or even very minor nobility in, say, Middle Ages.
I see no fundamental reason why a “close-term future” society would not be able to raise the “minimum possible” life quality for its constituents to the quality of life typical for twencen middle-class members.
For crying out loud, decent countries in EU don’t keep their unemployed starving and homeless already, so it is definitely not impossible even with merely modern technology.
Suck is subjective and overly flexible. Depending of definition of “suck” one could definitely see moving to better paid positions as part of a quest to avoid “jobs that suck”
Though I will admit that most “baseline” jobs are going to eventually become simply extinct (thus it’s more like “eventually a lot of skills that guarantee employment now will be as useful as being good at browser games)
Either there is some natural right to employment (which is an… unorthodox idea), or some people will end up unemployed by virtue of not having skills and knowledge (aka brain mods 🙂 ) that someone is willing to “rent”, or become extremely unhappy due to subjective distaste towards the available employment options.
As technology improves, there will be less and less a “modern baseline human” will be capable of offering (much like proper-baseline human would have a hard time finding any kind of employment – though frankly, by modern standards our freeroaming ancestors would probably be considered “disabled” and would be under permanent care of authorities)
I just happen to think that there is no reason (okay, no good reason, since harboring conservative values could probably count as a “reason”, even if not a particularly good one) for making unemployed people suffer and/or die.
Ensuring that they have a comfortable, safe and entertaining life is an engineering problem, and not particularly terrible one at that.
Of course.
But then again, I don’t think of human modification “arms race” as a zero-sum game.
Human immune modification (aka vaccination) is not a zero-sum game.
Human brain-modification (its only currently practical form, known as “education”) is currently not a zero-sum game (and most decent states actually provide citizenry with varying degrees of access to this “education” thing for free)
I find the very notion of “emotional equivalence” of various events to be highly questionable (what if anything would one person’s opinion about emotional “equivalence” of any given two procedures prove?)
Personally, I consider that egg donation to be quite emotionally equivalent to vasectomy. Both are moderately painful and somewhat (but not particularly) risky, and both are meant to hack around this annoying reproductive biology we happened to inherit.
So about as close as two different procedures can be without being merely “tweaks” of the same thing
Surrogate pregnancy is a separate thing.
I might approximately equate it with crab fishing, but that’s because “crab fishing” is what my memory brings up if I rapidly try to think of a rather dangerous job that doesn’t get appreciated enough.
Bah! Crab Fishing!
Crab Fishing ain’t got shit on the body horror which is the female side of mammalian reproductive cycle. IMHO no amount of cultural sugarcoating can make this stuff less unsettling. Especially natural birth. Eugh.
But for someone who doesn’t find the whole affair uncanny and inherently unpleasant, surrogacy would probably not that much unlike donating a chunk of your liver (liver does grow back, if I recall correctly, so it’s a relatively friendly procedure)
This is prime example of slippery slope fallacy
This is what I’m finding is coming up more and more – the absolutely certain ‘fallacy’ claimer.
Fallacy has simply become the new way to shoot down something without thinking – in other words, generating the ‘fallacy fallacy’, where someone calls something a fallacy fallaciously, as the claim is actually true.
I’m sorry, you got a hint of something – could you just describe the maths (in simple form) of the model and by maths, what results you think it’ll lead to? Instead of shouting ‘slipery slope’ as if that somehow means anything by itself?
I’d say your falling into a fallacy fallacy – but the thing is, I don’t know (or otherwise I’d be too, even if it turned out I was right). Want to join me in not being sure ones fallacy call applies (ie, being so damn sure that one doesn’t actually have to work with pesky evidence)?
Your understanding is already flawed when you think anything will be made ‘manditory’.
You just wont get the job if you don’t have X. It’s that fucking easy. It’s the same as manditory, but no one has to use that dirty word and can instead seem very open minded.
And, preempting a story that makes me cringe like hell, no, frogs don’t work like that too.
*Insert clip of captain america saying ‘I don’t get that reference’*
ERROR: CAN NOT RELATE
Of all the car obsessed people in all the world, one had to walk into my bar who aint.
I thought I was on a sure bet with that one. Oh well, match stick to you.
It seems to me that one should strive to provide subjectively comfortable, subjectively fun and fulfilling lifestyle to the unemployed, not to pursue some preposterous “caviar equity equation”
What’s the difference?
To me it sounds kinda like all the ‘subjective’ qualifiers is that we’ll make sure the guy in the box thinks he deserves it, so as to find it comfortable in that regard (“Atleast I’m not on a river of lava! Ah, such comfort in comparison!”)
And actually throwing the Rothchilds out would help a tiny bit, as they’d build a new, which takes workers and materials – ie, it spreads the wealth around a tiny bit. Someone might have a bit of extra in their pocket and throw John Doe a buck they might otherwise have kept!
Actually, many EU countries already provide fairly decent living conditions (and numerous re-training opportunities) for the “long-term unemployed”, and, as advanced labor-saving solutions continue to eliminate whole swaths of previously existent employment opportunities, such programs will have to be expanded further (where extent already) or created de-novo (if nonexistent)
You’ve spent maybe a couple of weeks (like, not a year, cause that’d be crazy long!) living like that?
Genuine question – you might have lived it for a genuine part of your life and found it okay. In which case it counts as some evidence for this discussion.
Let’s say that I just happen to observe that even the most “abjectly poor” in modern world in general and in certain more decent jurisdictions specifically happen to have a lifestyle that is vastly more comfortable, more safe, and at the same time more interesting, than that of an average peasant or even very minor nobility in, say, Middle Ages.
So do a lot of prisoners in western jails.
Is your argument really ‘Shit man, you don’t have the plague! Be thankful and don’t question my caviar!’?
It’s just a dodge – you talk about ‘well, they have it better than shitty era X’
Just say what you think they deserve – less than you, simply because they didn’t happen to be born in your position. Why not say it?
Let’s indulge some fiction – you are actually the imposter. Someone traveled through time and swapped a child from a ‘better than a peasants life’ family with a child from the people you think are your parents. To teach the other child a lesson about humility. But now you’re in the ‘well, they’ve got it better than a peasant!’ way, as the swapped child.
Suck is subjective and overly flexible. Depending of definition of “suck” one could definitely see moving to better paid positions as part of a quest to avoid “jobs that suck”
Oh jeez, did you just try to say that the good jobs will be the better paid ones, as your argument?
Ensuring that they have a comfortable, safe and entertaining life is an engineering problem, and not particularly terrible one at that.
Why do that? It’s just their subjective tastes that are in the way of working, right? They should learn to swollow!
And it’s not wanting to make them suffer or die…it’s just not putting any effort into not making them suffer or die. How is not making an effort to do that malicious?? (even as the government claims all lands as it’s own, ie no one can start trying to look after themselves unless they are plugged in/have money. Well they can try on bushland, until the bulldozers and cops are sent in)
I don’t think of human modification “arms race” as a zero-sum game.
Then you are shit at capitalism and will lose. That game, anyway. But build a game which isn’t zero-sum and I grant, maybe you’d win at that and by it’s nature it aint zero sum.
Human brain-modification (its only currently practical form, known as “education”) is currently not a zero-sum game (and most decent states actually provide citizenry with varying degrees of access to this “education” thing for free)
Pfft, how much knowledge is going from ‘enough to get you a job’ to only ‘enough to get into another class that might get you a job’?
Escalation. People worship learning, as if it it’s great when the more people learn, the less anything they know is worth anything. Just classic supply and demand mechanics there, man. More supply of knowledgable people, the less that knowledge is worth. It’s not that different from zero sum.
Personally, I consider that egg donation to be quite emotionally equivalent to vasectomy. Both are moderately painful and somewhat (but not particularly) risky, and both are meant to hack around this annoying reproductive biology we happened to inherit.
I’m just not seeing vasectomies done for the sake of work.
It is different when done for the sake of work. Like having sex for the sake of work is different from just having sex, is different – if that doesn’t seem different, then were not just talking past each other, but you’re talking past a lot of other people as well.
That would only work when evidence that demonstrates the claim being true has been presented.
Which isn’t your case.
You haven’t even tried to fashion a more insidious and sophisticated Volokh version* of slippery slope. What you presented is just simple “It will go from A to B because that’s how things are and are going to be”.
Let’s review:
“You know the term ‘escalation’. You know capitalism isn’t a big hug fest. What starts a ‘perk’ becomes, if other fuckers are to keep up, a requirement. Think of how you require a car for work – no, having a car is not a choice, though I bet you feel like you made an empowering choice in buying one.”
Is anything of the above “evidence” or even “superficially sensible speculation” ?
I don’t have to, since it wasn’t me making a positive assertion along the lines of “What starts a ‘perk’ becomes, if other fuckers are to keep up, a requirement” or mayhaps an even more egregious claim of “having a car is not a choice” 🙂
It’s your… uh… claim. And right now it is deployed without evidence, and happens to have the classic slippery slope structure of “if A happens, B will follow and B is BAD”
By the way, a little sidenote – if you worry about perks becoming requirements within context of female genital affairs, you should worry about contraception being covered by employers, and not egg donation, since contraception is directly involved with the so-called “pregnancy problem” while egg harvesting does not affect this mythogenic problem, at least not in a direct and well-measured manner.
Now we’re getting volokhish* 🙂
Again, this is nothing but plain assertion on your part, this time wrapped in a hypothetical scenario about an underhanded and sneaky employer.
However, at the very least, it could only apply to perks that have at least a perceived likelihood of asymmetrically benefiting the employer, and an ability to meticulously enforce an unwritten policy (which isn’t very common and definitely hard to do across an entire job market of a given country).
But even with those caveats, it’s still just a hypothetical scenario turned into a rhetorical ploy, not unlike “gun registration will lead to gun confiscation because…” shtick (see below)
You know, the “slowly boiled frog” story that various conservatives often use as “proof” that legalized divorces will lead to cannibalism?
Well, not only that such application of this story is bullshit, the story itself is (unsurprisingly) bullshit – frogs just don’t work like that and, in fact, if slowly heated, will only tolerate the rising temperature till a certain threshold is reached (that is, a slowly heated frog behaves the same way as quickly heated frog).
We should just ignore this pesky “deserves it” bullshit.
It’s just a silly quirk of human cognition, and a damn unstable one at that (which would prevent us from constructing any reliable framework for producing this elusive sense of worth)
Comfort and safety, on the other hand, are measurable (we already do that to prevent companies from trying to push uncomfortable and/or dangerous estate onto the market). Ensuring that human beings have habitation that is sanitary and offers comfortable environmental conditions irrespective of income or lack thereof is not physically impossible, and with advanced automation it might also become rather cheap (as a matter of fact, many jurisdictions already do that, though there’s definitely room for further improvement in this area, pun intended).
Providing humans with an organoleptically attractive and nutritionally sound ration irrespective of income or lack thereof is also not physically impossible, and is already done in many jurisdictions.
Providing people with a source of free and varied entertainment as well free educational opportunities is quite doable with modern technology, and something we more or less already do (albeit often clumsily, inefficiently and borderline unintentionally)
That sounds distinctly like that Z-guy from Fifth Element… Zorg or something 🙂
1) no “personal experience” would count as evidence in any reasonable discussion fullstop. Because that’s not how reasonable discussions proceed
2) if you’re curious about my experiences, I grew up in a place that was, sadly, not EU (and not a “first world” country at all, for that matter).
My argument is “it is technologically feasible and, per my subjective judgement, ethically and socially desirable, to provide people with organoleptically palatable and nutritionally sound food and comfortable, safe shelter, as well as entertainment and educational opportunities, free of charge, if they are unemployed for any reason and can’t afford those things”
And if said people insist on devouring fish eggs and having trinkets made of yellow metals, as well as more refined forms of entertainment (posh theaters, playing Crysis n+1 at 60 fps, whatever), they should use the educational opportunities to find out socially acceptable ways of assuring they have access to fancy fish eggs, yellow metal trinkets, or what have you.
Because I think that “deserve” is a preposterous notion.
Universe is fundamentally unfair and hostile to life.
Life is random, cruel and short.
I don’t think that “deserving something” or “earning something” even has any meaning outside specific enforceable legal frameworks, and my inclination towards providing the poor/unemployed with housing, food and stuff has nothing to do with the question of whether they “deserve” this kind of support (I don’t even see a way by which I could debate what “the poor/unemployed” “deserve”)
wasn’t born rich, wasn’t born in the EU/USA/other-non-shitty-country, and am not “white” unless you have some very unconventional idea of whiteness
Just, you know, for the record.
So what ?
Like I said, life’s unfair.
No, I said that whether or no the “good” job and the “well paid one” coincide depends on definition of “suck” (or of “good job” if you so like) which is flexible, subjective, and pretty much random.
Matter of subjective preference.
Also, societies that care for unemployed (even the mythogenic “slackers”, if such are to be found) are typically safer, and are more favorable for risk taking, creative types ( I hope that a randroid reads this and pops an aneurysm 🙂 )
I don’t recall claiming malice on any part, so I can’t answer your inquiry.
Also, most civilized countries offer simple folks opportunity to get underdeveloped land for development (from skmming your chat with Third, I reckon you’re Australian, and I don’t know if Australia does that kind of thing though)
Maybe you should, like, read the laws or something (again, don’t know Australian laws and gov. initiatives on this matter. Maybe your government hogs land in an extreme fashion for some weird reason)
LOL.
If by “capitalism” you mean “crazy randroid laissez-faire hole”, then I’d like to remind you that pure laissez-faire is nowhere to be found (not even in China**).
If you mean “capitalism” as seen in modern first-world countries (even as over-the-top capitalistic as USA), then I’m living in one of those right now and am doing pretty fine.
In fact, my current employment is example of non-zero-sum games in modern first-world capitalism, since the infrastructure that allowed me to leave my country of origin and find a particularly lucrative way to rent my mind to highest bidders 🙂 (thus vastly, by orders of magnitude, improving the quality of my life) was put in place by entities pursuing their own goals, with no concern for well being of mine.
I think you are confusing a “non-zero sum game”, which is a game where “participant’s gain (or loss) of utility is not exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s)”, with some kind of “nice” game where all participants are “guaranteed” to have a positive utility outcome.
Depends on your definition of “class”.
Nopers.
Even the uneducated and the homeless benefit from an increase in educated people.
In general, technological progress tends to benefit all members of society, even those that can be only tangentially considered “members” (for instance, while our healthcare and law enforcement are far from perfect, they benefit even the most marginal members of society. Case in point – in most decent Western states you are entitled to emergency care irrespective of your employment and housing status, and even in USA, which is notoriously hostile to the unemployed, you can’t just go and cut up homeless people to ribbons without cop-shaped repercussions)
Also, well-educated societies tend to move towards less “cutthroat” policies, thus benefiting the most disadvantaged and defenseless members of society disproportionately more (mind you that I’m quite fine with that!)
You confuse “non-zero-sum” with “nice” or “comfy”.
I’m not seeing egg donations being done “for sake of work” either (if anything, egg donations do not prevent pregnancies, so you should better direct your concerns at employers who cover contraception)
[cpt. Obvious] Of course it’s different, you’re getting paid, silly![/cpt. Obvious]
On a less whimsical note, that difference (both its existence and its specific value) is entirely subjective and very dependent on technicalities you so dislike.
Depending on technicalities and subjective peculiarities, it might even be a profoundly positive difference.
_____________________
*
In case you’re sincerely interested in slippery slope fallacies and (ab)using them, there’s also a “Volokh” version of slippery slope fallacies (named after prodigally bloodsucking conservative law prof, Eugene Volokh) , when a large number of superficially sensible speculative scenarios is presented to lend plausibility to the “slippery slope” progression (A classical “volokhish” claim would go approximately along the lines of “gun registration will lead to gun confiscation because it makes it easier for the gubberment to round up gun owners and because it makes the public perceive gun ownership as privilege and not a fundamental right”, though usually the claim would be more convoluted).
Basically, Volokh version of slippery slope is hard sci-fi turned into a rhetorical ploy.
It is a vastly more insidious fallacy than “simple” slippery slope since it has a layer of superficially plausible arguments covering up the fact that the core mechanism underlying the alleged progression from A to B is left obscure.
_____________________
**
Its deeply ironic that China, with its earnestly communist ideology, has become one of the most viciously exploitative, if not THE most viciously exploitative capitalist hellhole on this poor little planet.
This is what I’m finding is coming up more and more – the absolutely certain ‘fallacy’ claimer.
Fallacy has simply become the new way to shoot down something without thinking – in other words, generating the ‘fallacy fallacy’, where someone calls something a fallacy fallaciously, as the claim is actually true.
That would only work when evidence that demonstrates the claim being true has been presented.
Which isn’t your case.
More fallacy on your part.
Of course, I have to prove your position is wrong or otherwise your position remains right.
You’re traveling down the same track the religious do when no one disproves their gods, thus their gods are confirmed.
It also indicates you’re not engaging in speculating on ‘alternate futures’. You’ve got one future and you’re playing the ‘disprove it or is remains the true future’. You haven’t even tried to fashion a more insidious and sophisticated Volokh version of slippery slope. What you presented is just simple “It will go from A to B because that’s how things are and are going to be”. But like a preditor focused on its prey so much it forgets itself, you can’t see yourself doing this.
Is anything of the above “evidence” or even “superficially sensible speculation” ?
No, you seem to have gone into full religious lock down – I could say a slinky released at the top of some steps will end up at the bottom but you’d give no charitable thought to how the intermediary steps could occur and insist no such progression is possible.
It’s your… uh… claim.
No, you’ve got a claim as well and you’re playing the religion card of if the other guy can’t disprove yours (or prove his) that must mean your claim is correct.
Actually we could both be wrong. But if you can’t humour that (or worse, pretend you don’t have a claim here), then this is boring and I’ll let it go, let it go…
Atleast the religious and others who will own up to having a claim have, at the very least, some fun fiction to work with (or it might not even be fiction! Even funner!)
Going to own up to some claims of your own? Or somehow think you can both argue but not actually be working from a claim in arguing? Interesting claim…
Nope, you don’t have to “prove my position wrong”
But you have to present some evidence for your claim (and it was you who came forward and made claim of “escalation” while I have made no opposite claim)
That is correct.
I am not speculating on alternate futures.
I am merely playing with the inherent arbitrariness of such speculation.
“alternate futures” conjured from imagination and intuition are worth as much as “plausible pasts” conjured by evopsych. They’re good enough for a cool sci-fi technotriller, but not much else.
If you were just brainstorming a book/game idea, then please pardon me from impinging upon your noble activity so tactlessly 🙂
That is incorrect.
I do not have any specific alternate future in mind for this discussion, merely pointing out that certain aspects of yours are just speculative assertions.
Which would be fine for a sci-fi work of art.
But I was under impression that you were not engaged in writing a work of fiction.
Actually, a smart religious person (a Jesuit 🙂 ) would assert a specific deity, but would ask you to disprove “gods in general”.
Most specifically definable deities aren’t that hard to disprove.
However, that isn’t our case.
Our case is like that:
1)
you make a specific “escalation” claim and provide some peculiar “car as bonus turned requirement” example.
2)
I am profoundly perplexed by your example and make a remark regarding it, while failing to notice (let’s be frank – I am doing this as a form of leisure and don’t devote my full time and attention to philosophical arguments) that the entire “escalation” claim of yours is entirely unsubstantiated beyond your peculiar and highly objectionable car remark, thus being a classic example of a naked slippery slope
3)
later on, I do point out that your entire “escalation” claim is a slippery slope and you have not substantiated your assertion
4)
you claim that I should prove an assertion that is opposite to yours instead of demanding evidence for your assertion
Do note that at no point do I demand disproving any claims of mine. Merely ask as to whether there is evidence (beyond questionable car anecdote – which still makes me curious, by the way) that behind your claim as to course and nature of escalation.
Actually, that progression isn’t quite as simple, and slinky’s success at passing a stair would depend on peculiarities of a given slinky’s design and stair’s architecture (do bear in mind that not all stairs are slinky-friendly), so the seemingly obvious nature of your analogy is deceptive (not a problem – it’s common for analogies to be like that 😉 )
However, to me, your case lacks even the slinky’s deceptively simplicity.
You just assert.
And you provide a really weird car example which only reinforced my skepticism of your claim (does answering “I commute” really seal your employment fate in Australia? Are there any, like,
speaking of charitable reading and other such “argumentative goodwill”, I even went as far as to point out that there are medical “bonuses” that would make way more sense than “egg donation” as subjects of “employer escalation”
I essentially gave your argument a better specific target than the one you’re hitting right now! How can one be even more charitable?
I don’t recall making any specific claim regarding “escalation” of employer relationships, beyond tacitly offering you a better (IMHO) target for escalation concerns (which hardly amounts to a proper claim)
Ctrl+F ain’t helping me out. Maybe you can quote that part where I made a specific “escalation”-related claim ?
Humor what? An arbitrary hypothetical scenario?
I can appreciate it as a work of art, a curious and stimulating work of fiction.
Again, if we’re engaging in artistic “what if”s here (What if employers start dropping people who refuse to freeze a few eggs “for the future”? What if employers start dropping people who don’t know who William Hickman is? What if we both are actually a colony of space alien nanomites?), then the concerns I expressed above do not apply.
Actually, arguing without a specific claim isn’t that hard when you can rely on your interlocutors to make various claims.
It isn’t a stable strategy (your interlocutors eventually stop making any meaningful claims), but it’s a fun one while it lasts.
A chunk of my reply went missing (stupid smartphones!)
In that chunk, I wondered whether there is any evidence as to Australian employer preferences regarding “driving VS commuting” claim, like a paper in a journal or something.
I would appreciate if in this particular branch we avoid smart quippy answers that amount to pointing out that positions that directly require a car to carry out the job in question (such as automotive courier for a delivery service) require car skills or even ownership.
The Exorcist just screened in a local theater. Look around and see if any theaters are screening it for the halloween season. It’s a truly brilliant film which actually distills some of what scott talks about on his blog hear. Go and rewatch it and watch how Chris McNeill’s desire for sensible narrative in terms of manifest intentionality brings forth rage as it grinds against the gears of naturalistic psychiatries explanations in terms of meaningless processes. My mother drives a bus for children with special needs and to this day people still often recommend that she keep a bible with her on the bus. So we dont require novel scientific findings or special interpretations of neuronal processes here.
@ Callan
I interpret nonfunctional as an “absolute” claim (as in, a burned down car is nonfunctional), not a claim about obsolescence. I have little doubt that modern “classic human” with likely face both cognitive and physiological obsolescence, which may come about through extensive modification (which is something we’ve been already doing to ourselves for a lot of time, me-current is very much a weird cyborg compared to some agrarian tribe I can’t even relate to), outright ground-up engineering of novel “intelligences”, or some combination thereof.
However, we don’t deem Amish or some silly tribe in the Amazon to be “nonfunctional” now, at least not in some fundamental, absolute sense (a well cared-for Ford T is still a functional car, even if obsolete)
If nonfunctional, in this context, is “no longer socially and historically relevant”, then I have no objections here.
functional but it will *grind gears* if deployed in the present problem space of motor transportation.
Well, modern society manages to tolerate barely street-legal cars, as well as weirdo communities alike Amish.
Yes, they kinda grind gears.
But that’s only their own problem, and not a fatal one at that – the Amish (and owners of oddball cars) live on as long as they don’t try to get in the way too much.
I see no particular reason for posthumans not to tolerate baselines the way we now tolerate Amish and weird cat ladies (yes, a posthuman mind that will see baselines as an unacceptable waste of perfectly fine atoms is possible, but there’s no compelling reason to think it’s more likely than any other conceivable design)
I think the Ford T example would fit if it were used in the context of a world without petrol.
That might be adequate if posthuman constructs simultaneously 1) will prefer environments radically incompatible with baseline functioning and 2) will “choose” to re-arrange Earth in accordance with said preference and not, say, colonize asteroids / gas giants / Europa ocean / whatever
Whatever it is, i don’t think it’s “hawking my wares.” !!! Wish the tweets were different. Hey Scott! Do the most nihilistic thing ever: post a selfie.
I’ve only just started the book, but is the valid analogy post-human is to baseline human as technophile is to Amish or is it post-human is to baseline human as baseline human is to orangutan (or snow leopard or mountain gorilla or any of the other species we are incidentally driving to extinction as we go about our daily lives?) We’ll just have to wait and see. Also, has anyone reread Hellstrom’s Hive lately? It’s as plausible a post-humanism as any other.
I’d just like to note that humanity is not driving the entire spectrum of biological life. Cockroaches, pigeons and rats are flourishing
It is entirely plausible that modern transhumans-in-denial (and, let’s face it, we’ve come so far away from our savanna-dwelling genetic brethren that we’re essentially transhuman) will be able to prosper in posthuman spaces with very little requisite re-adaptation.
Anything that eats garbage and breeds rapidly should do well.
Also note that humanity is willing to expend considerable (if not always sufficient) effort to preserve species that are endangered by humanity’s proclivities.
We are maintaining a population of giant amazonian leeches for no other purpose than to preserve giant amazonian leeches.
There is nothing inherently implausible about posthumanity having similar preservational proclivities (I by no means insist they will, but for some reason it seems to be quite typical to assume that the only trait posthumans and humans will share is the desire for expansion)
Humans according to estimates appropriate ~25% of ecological net primary productivity.. Rats may flourish but they aren’t directing ever widening swatch of the production of bio matter of the whole earth
Strange days. A cracked moon apparently recently posted this.
And with it, Scott, you are now being compared with cracked moon! Now you’re two peas in a pod! How ’bouts that!?
Which wouldn’t be all that interesting if the observer didn’t like to throw around semi oblique ad homenims themselves.
That particular individual is borderline Bakker-stalker, though, and by this point one expects any sort of negative correlation to be pigeonholed.
RE: Callan, on acrackedthing
I’d say this link tells a far more interesting story:
http://azarias.livejournal.com/385833.html
Fascinating. Especially the part where she stalked a rape victim, because feminism-or-something. Indeed, “people disagreed with her methods”, no shit.
Wow. Thanks for the link, 03!
Of course the real issue isn’t even her – she’s just a trigger. It’s a question of whether all the people who are primed to be triggered by her have learnt anything about that, or if they go silent and simply look for their next trigger to adopt.
I hope some of them did. Our kind host should definitely learn better troll management.
But with regards to Chelsea Gaither, I think that stalking, even as pathetic as e-stalking by a physically impotent creep like acrackedmoon, did not do her any favors.
I am not particularly outraged by “get raped by dogs” shit, as well many her other “lesser” antics, but there’s some line to be drawn, and I tend to draw it approximately where victims of actual rape are targeted and traumatized for kicks or rhetorical points. And that other incident with trying to get some woman to commit suicide is way beyond even that line.
I think that the very specific act of traumatizing a rape victim over a pathetic, pedantic and irrelevant argument, as well as the very specific act of bringing a person on the brink of suicide, should follow Benjanun Sriduangkaew wherever she goes next.
Good thing Google rarely forgets.
Currently on three seas people are trying to argue others out of ‘depiction doesn’t equal endorsement’ in regards to her own books (containing genocidal characters).
It seems really weird to me that when she shat on such an artistic defence for others, posters at three seas rush up to give that defence for her. It’s like if someone punches a bunch of other people in the face then gets punched, that they get to be at the front of the que for medical attention. I’m kind of suspecting enablers at this point.
Well, I am not very knowledgeable about who held which positions in the past and who is holding which positions now at three seas, so I’m not ready to comment, but I’m interested in what you mean by “enablers” in this case (acrack definitely has some people who consider her to be “part of in-group” despite her borderline criminal behavior*, but I’m not sure the term “enablers” applies)
=======
* depends on her country though. Dunno if Thailand criminalizes driving people to suicide and/or aggravated harassment
I probably count oblique things as enabling – like say in RL someone threatens you after you defended yourself against their uncontrolled, snarling dog that kept getting closer to you. You call the police after and the police guy just says ‘I’m not touching that’ because no witnesses.
So threatening people with your dog and then threatening them personally is enabled (as long as there are no witnesses). Further to the point if you were to apply a weapon to this threatening person, no doubt witnesses or no, the police would come then because they hold the right to violence, not you. So the threatening person is enabled to be that, because they wont stop him, but they’ll stop you doing something about it.
Here people who did nothing to defend acrack’s victims now rush to her defence, to stop anyone attacking her. I’m not advocating for attacks on her – only for the culture of attacks she encouraged to apply to her, if it is going to do so (made her bed, now she can lie in it)
In a way I think the police are protecting their own kind. And similar here with acrack. It makes sense – victim makers would do well to protect other victim makers.
agreed, there’s plenty of enabling going on along those line with regards to acrackedmoon.
But it seems to me that for at least some of the folks now jumping to crack’s defense, there is a kind of ingroup-outgroup dynamic going (with Sriduangkaew-acrackedmoon being part, if not outright core, of the ingroup)
The angry clown (is “clownette” a word in English? It should be!) has more than just circumstantial enablers.
The angry clownette has a posse.
And given the affinity both acrack and her posse have for feminist discourse, I can’t help but think that apparent disconnect between how they want to present themselves (a group of folks fighting for women and minorities!) and what acrack did (harassing women, in at least one case to the point of suicide attempt!) might be used to partially neutralize and disperse this particular unpleasant crowd.
I don’t think that I encountered her core group on the ASOIAF forum. Just people who feel that while they didn’t defend X from her, they have earned the right to defend her from X.
But as someone here sort of pitched to me, morality is (at default) there for the sake of tribalism, tribalism isn’t there for morality. Feminism is a morality – but it doesn’t matter if they fuck up feminism when it comes to who is in the tribe and who isn’t, because feminism is just a means to the end of the ingroup/outgroup tribe and so is disposable. Their hypocracy in regards to feminism wont break up their tribe.
The trick they play is to act as if who is ingroup/outgroup is based on feminism. But the morality of feminism doesn’t determine that at all. It never gets in the way of who’s ingroup/outgroup for them.
Maybe that’s why I’m kind of subscribed to ‘were all humans in it together’. Because when it comes down to smaller tribes, tribes seem to become a bunch of shits real fast.
For some out-of-whack post-human weirdness I recommend Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief.
Good luck wading through the thickness, though.
I can’t figure the reply buttons on wordpress, so:
03,
But for someone who doesn’t find the whole affair uncanny and inherently unpleasant, surrogacy would probably not that much unlike donating a chunk of your liver (liver does grow back, if I recall correctly, so it’s a relatively friendly procedure)
The thing that comes to my mind is where we run a relatively simply (yet expensive) science experiment, where one group of these women are provided the income of surrogacy for, if they choose to, doing absolutely nothing, and the other group gets paid only if they do surrogacy (control group).
I think it’s pretty clear the first group would do very, very little surrogacy. Possibly none, unless they actually personally liked the to-be parents involved.
How much is that the person is not finding it uncanny or unpleasant but instead really it’s just a matter of monetary pressure?
How much it is a matter of the person not finding it uncanny or unpleasant but instead it’s effaciously convenient from where the observer stands? Like the desert looking beutiful when you have plenty of water.
If we were to apply this experiment consistently, you would find similar results for pretty much any profession, from janitor to senator.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be doing compintel work if I could get those money for doing precisely nothing.
You appear to imply that there’s something inherently transgressive about offering additional benefits to convince people to do something they wouldn’t have otherwise done, as a part of transaction. Is that correct ?
I think that monetary pleasure is overrated.
I am creeped out by pregnancy, but I could very well imagine myself doing surrogacy…
That is, if someone offered me a hundred million euros (25 million upfront, immediately prior to signing, delivered in the form of 500 eur bills packed into a rugged, easy, to handle bag), then why not… Assuming that I can choose elective cesarean as delivery method (I would charge at least 150 million more if the client insists on “natural” delivery)
But it is a little, tiny bit mind-boggling to claim that the imaginary mad
manperson willing to pay me 100 mil. eur. (with 25 mil. given upfront and in cash) for surrogacy service would be “pressuring” me.There is a fundamental difference between the stick and the carrot.
P.S.:
Your argument reminds me of the Marxist “labour-value” / “false consciousness” shenanigans, but Marxists were more… coherent and transparent.
Marx explicitly sacralized “labour”, considering it to be of transcendental importance, and thus considering the act of “alienating”, “renting” or otherwise “giving up” one’s labor as part of a calculated transaction to be a transcendentally profane transgression.
Do you happen to think that a woman’s uterus is sacred and not to be rented as part of a calculated transaction? Because that only sounds like a “nice” view to hold.
If we were to apply this experiment consistently, you would find similar results for pretty much any profession, from janitor
Yup!
to senator.
Whoa, I don’t think so! That’s like saying from janitor to dope smoker – because power is the dope!
But maybe if we ran the experiment it would go your way. I’m good with holding an estimate how things work, but accepting an actual experiment might show me wrong.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be doing compintel work if I could get those money for doing precisely nothing.
Here’s the almost philosophical question – what would you be doing then?
Say you were as rich as hell – what would you be doing with your life?
It’s crazy isn’t it, that we never think about what we actually want to do. Just thinking about what were required to do? Or what we can get away with?
Almost like were conditioned?
You appear to imply that there’s something inherently transgressive about offering additional benefits to convince people to do something they wouldn’t have otherwise done, as a part of transaction. Is that correct ?
Additional benefits? I like that name! Sweat shop workers? Heck, it’s just giving them ‘additional benefits!’. I like that rebranding!
What I like is how capitalism somehow gets people to defend it for free.
You’re already pitching that the person isn’t in dire need of cash/food/shelter/that crazy idea ‘dignity’ – this is just a whimsical, unnecessary ‘extra benefits’ to them. Just ‘extra’ – not like ‘necessary’ or anything.
What could possibly be bad about offering someone money, eh?
But then, if they got the money either way, why wont they do the task?
This is where we’ll run into a primordial urge to insist PVE, Person Vs Environment, ie fighting against flood and famine, is sacred. And actually I kinda agree with that.
But then you’re gunna start treating work which is PVP, Person Vs Person, as being sacred too.
And the difficulty of discussion will be teasing them apart.
So, if they get the money either way, why wont they do the task? Why is the task ‘good’ if they don’t get the money if they don’t do it, but clearly rejected if they get the money either way??
But it is a little, tiny bit mind-boggling to claim that the imaginary madmanperson willing to pay me 100 mil. eur. (with 25 mil. given upfront and in cash) for surrogacy service would be “pressuring” me.
There is a fundamental difference between the stick and the carrot.
I agree. So why do you focus just on the carrot? I’m guessing you have a fairly well paid job IRL – and you are both including that in the scenario, as in imagining yourself in that job when made the offer (rather than living in a cardboard box), but also not including it as a caveat ‘they’d hardly be pressuring me by adding to me already quite good income’.
It’s okay if you have a price for surrogacy – but if you were living in a cardboard box, why would I bother even meeting your price? I’d pay a fraction of it and you’d leap at it to get the fuck out of there. Even as you do something you’d hate (unless it was the right price – which it isn’t). Never mind if you didn’t want to ever do surrogacy, but hey, you need the money.
Your argument reminds me of the Marxist
I wagged most of highschool and am incredibly ignorant on all the ism’s. Though I don’t think they taught them anyway.
Besides, who wants to be coherant if they happen to be wrong? Me? You?
Do you happen to think that a woman’s uterus is sacred and not to be rented as part of a calculated transaction? Because that only sounds like a “nice” view to hold.
You’re pitching that as if it’s between you and me to decide that for people other than ourselves.
Why not ask them?
In fact, remove the biases and ask them. They get the money either way – do they want to do surrogacy then? I’m actually betting a tiny amount will, for a couple they like (which I find to be quite heart warming, myself).
I think sans enviromental pressures (either genuine PVE pressures, like famine and no supply of food from the rest of the world) or PVP (a structure making sure there are poor people) to bias her, each woman has her own idea of what is sacred or not. To a fair degree I just follow her own decision on the matter.
I just think it’s bullshit hypocrisy when people ignore the sticks (especially PVP sticks) but say the person got to make their own choice.
It just sounds like the sort of thing someone who has had a middle (or upper) income stick beating would say, so they can wear their own particular lacks of choice as a badge rather than a black mark for the rest of their lives. Because we all strive to be beutiful peacocks. And who wants a black feather, eh?
But as you say, you wouldn’t do the compintel work if you could get that money for doing nothing. And I can literally feel the distaste that went into the italics of ‘precisely nothing’. Worse than if I was talking about drowning a puppy.
So like you pitched the idea that I thought the womans womb sacred, do you find work sacred? Sacred enough that doing ‘precisely nothing’ is…blasphemous, 03?
Re: Callan
In my experience, for every “power trippin'” politician there are no less than two who are just in it for the money and such.
Same things I do now except for working (let’s not do a full laundry list 😉 )
Which means that on balance, society (the one I am currently the citizen of) would probably stand to loose a little bit (but not very much, since a) at macroeconomic scale, I’m inconsequential and b) my consumption patterns contribute to the economic well being of other agents), and I would stand to have much additional fun.
And I would be having the additional fun at the expense of… whatever hypothetical thing is supplying me money.
I am quite hedonistic and do not care for “bigger goals of life, universe and everything”, so I would not start creating magnificent works of art or something.
Why, I do, but that didn’t lead to particularly philosophically sophisticated goals.
There are no sweatshops in my current country of citizenship, and matters of other countries do not concern me much.
It worked out pretty nice for me.
Why shouldn’t I prefer a system that works good for me over one that would definitely work better for someone else (even if not at my expense, which is not a given, though) ?
That’s what social security is for (well, there is such a thing as social security in most modern civilized world, except USA which is ridiculously uber-capitalist even for my tastes).
Except maybe for certain particularly conspicuous versions of “dignity” (the things some people consider “undignified” might be very… surprising)
1) I don’t consider either “sacred”
2) As far as I am concerned, a lot of my interactions with fellow humans are PvE. They are the environment. And I’m reasonably confident that I am just “environment” to them
You seem to imply a kind of “spiritual kinship” that is shared across the humankind.
Something like “we’re all players in this game together, so we shouldn’t do horrible shit to each other and should fight famines together!”
Unfortunately for humankind, humankind doesn’t appear to have a shared “spiritual kinship”.
There are degrees of discomfort to any task.
For instance, I would rather have sex, read fun books or play computer games than help out a bunch of other people with their problems. Other people’s problems rate somewhere below “have a philosophical argument with a dude in comments of a blog” or “play CoD”
Thus if those people (like, a company in need of reliable info about competitor’s “underbelly”, but if those are unsympathetic, you can imagine some other people trying to get me help them with some other problem) really need my input to get their problem sorted out, the only option they have is rent the time of my life which I could have otherwise spent on some more fun endeavors so I would help them get their shit done.
Even if the task is “easy” and “riskless”, unless there’s some tangible benefit for me, I just won’t do it.
I’d rather sit on a blog and argue philosophy for free than go out “into the world” and help people for free.
And that’s where pretty much anyone who isn’t an omnicompetent demigod and is nonetheless trying to do something complex start running into trouble.
Because people like me are (apparently) common (if not usually as blunt about their tastes in life), and people who will help “for free” (especially in a complicated, time consuming, physically straining, dangerous, uncomfortable or otherwise taxing affair) are rare, one has very low chances of finding the latter.
So you need money (or some other goodies) to gain cooperation out of the former, or have to become an omnicompetent demigod (or at least best approximation you can muster) and do everything yourself (or die trying).
As you see, society without money starts breaking as long as there are a lot of people like me and a few people like… whomever would do complex (or physically straining, or risky, you get the picture 🙂 ) tasks for “free” due to some innate willingness to just go and help a dude out.
First, where I live now, one would have to intentionally circumvent active state efforts to stay out of a warmed, hygienically sound shelter
Second, I spent like a about half a year homeless back at my so-called “mother”land in my teenage years, and while I would have considered a less lucrative offer of surrogacy then, it would still have to be pretty exuberant (enough to buy a house), since there were other options to obtain both money and shelter (and not all of them were illegal, surprisingly!)
More generally and less personally, the ” Never mind if X didn’t want to ever do Y, but hey, X needed the money” argument, as said above, doesn’t apply to surrogacy only, it applies to any non-recreational activity (even safe and non-demanding activity).
Again, per your logic even people not faced by some dire poverty situation (perhaps because they have other job opportunities, or live in a country that isn’t batshit) are somehow “biased” when you give them an offer of money (in addition to what they have).
By that kind of logic, if I were to offer you an employment that pays 100x your current employer’s rate (whatever it is) I would be pressuring you.
It’s highly unconventional.
And very Marxist. Marxist-Lenninist, even (not an insult 🙂 )
I am firmly convinced that everything above basic personal biological necessities is definitely a “carrot” (so a shelter with a free wifi is a “free carrot”, which I fully support, by the way. I’m all for giving poor people wifi).
And to extend (and break 🙂 ) the metaphor, all peacock feathers are secretly black (unusual coloration of peacock feathers arises due to a very black pigment which absorbs most of the incident light, thus allowing interference colors to become observable by the naked eye. This is peacock science fact 🙂 )
I tend to be pretty blunt online, Callan.
If I wanted to say that something is blasphemous, I wouldn’t dick around and would straight say “X is blasphemous”.
The italics were intended to merely convey that I mean precisely “nothing”, and not some possible tricky definition-bending mumbo-jumbo.
To answer your question, no, I do not find “work” sacred (I also do not find maintaining society “sacred”) and would very much enjoy getting money (or, for that matter, sufficiently moneylike stuff, like gold!) for nothing.
P.S.:
I can not believe that you haven’t read Marx or at least some summaries of his work.
You must be trolling.
With positions like yours, it’s almost unbelievable that you didn’t get exposed to that dude…
… anyway, if you didn’t, you should at least get some summaries (because stuff’s long and tedious to read in its original form, but that’s true of so many philosophers).
Also get at least some exposure to Lenin (again, I would suggest summaries over full texts because even in translation, his way of presenting his ideas is… questionable and not very pleasant to read, to put it nicely)
And don’t you worry about them being “wrong”, because
1) I think you’ll find those dudes way “less wrong” than I find them and
2) even obviously wrong ideas can be very inspiring – sometimes through their very wrongness (I might say that the brightest idea me and 01 had in our lives was inspired by discussing a rather annoyingly crappy Lenin quote)
In my experience, for every “power trippin’” politician there are no less than two who are just in it for the money and such.
Atleast in Australia I see them stepping down from CEO type positions which are better paid, to political positions. Consider Australia as an experiment in regard to this! 😛
And I would be having the additional fun at the expense of… whatever hypothetical thing is supplying me money.
Oh boo hoo for it! Wont nobody think of the it?
I think you’d want to argue that someone will have to do work to keep the mechanisms working (take washing machines vs hand washing – washing machines eventually wear down). That’s a fair argument, though it’s a question of would that even need to be 10% of how much we work now?
But arguing it’ll be at the expense of the washing machine, so to speak? What, are you there for the washing machines sake?
I am quite hedonistic and do not care for “bigger goals of life, universe and everything”, so I would not start creating magnificent works of art or something.
So?
Oh sure I’d whinge at you to make art, but for the purposes of this idea, so what if you never did?
Why, I do, but that didn’t lead to particularly philosophically sophisticated goals.
I’d like to think Scott’s books show were tight little gordian knots of philosophical problems even if we don’t work.
But even ignoring that, okay, not leading to sophisticated philosophical goals: Welcome to being human!
It worked out pretty nice for me.
Why shouldn’t I prefer a system that works good for me over one that would definitely work better for someone else (even if not at my expense, which is not a given, though) ?
A confusion of PVP as being static PVE.
Sorry, has capitalism gone and deliberately ignored any other interests it has to set aside a niche for you?
To me you were simply left to the wild, happen to land in a niche by luck but now you’re praising capitalism as if it set aside that niche for you?
Okay, you’re in a nice niche. But there was no plan for you, no intelligent entity seeking to look after you. But you praise capitalism as if there was a plan for you? Why? Do you need it to be true? Will questioning it maybe suddenly make your chance winnings all go away?
That’s what social security is for (well, there is such a thing as social security in most modern civilized world, except USA which is ridiculously uber-capitalist even for my tastes).
Have you lived on social security? Danced through the ‘have you applied for X jobs/been rejected from X jobs’ hoops? Treated like scraps are some sort of great gratuity?
Society, currently, resents anyone being on social security.
Have you been resented, for weeks, months, years?
Except for sociopaths who care not about such resentment, I wouldn’t say this is a societal structure that supports people.
1) I don’t consider either “sacred”
Yet here you are, defending capitalism.
You’re not going through a series of practical life support services and asking how they would be forfilled by any other system. You just defend capitalism.
What do you think treating something as sacred involves? More than that?
Unfortunately for humankind, humankind doesn’t appear to have a shared “spiritual kinship”.
Zuckerberg didn’t always have a million bucks, either. Would observing him when he didn’t mean he never would?
Thus if those people (like, a company in need of reliable info about competitor’s “underbelly”, but if those are unsympathetic, you can imagine some other people trying to get me help them with some other problem) really need my input to get their problem sorted out, the only option they have is rent the time of my life which I could have otherwise spent on some more fun endeavors so I would help them get their shit done.
Sounds like an employees job market, not an employers job market.
If there was a mechanism that ensured it stayed an employees job market, I’d go a long way towards me agreeing with your example.
However, I don’t think there is and I think your example involves some rose coloured/just world glasses.
As you see, society without money starts breaking as long as there are a lot of people like me and a few people like… whomever would do complex (or physically straining, or risky, you get the picture 🙂 ) tasks for “free” due to some innate willingness to just go and help a dude out.
This is me being off topic, but I like how Scott’s very next post talks about what guesses one would risk ones life for…
First, where I live now, one would have to intentionally circumvent active state efforts to stay out of a warmed, hygienically sound shelter
I don’t know. I know a young couple died in their car during the last winter here (and that’s just the most obvious example of it and just in my local area). Side note: They used a butane heater in the car to keep warm – but of course it eats all the air, making them fall asleep, then suffocating them. Because those things are fucking dangerous (I’ve heard of people dying in their own homes, trying to use them, too)
I don’t think they were avoiding active state efforts.
Second, I spent like a about half a year homeless back at my so-called “mother”land in my teenage years, and while I would have considered a less lucrative offer of surrogacy then, it would still have to be pretty exuberant (enough to buy a house), since there were other options to obtain both money and shelter (and not all of them were illegal, surprisingly!)
I’m not sure if you’re refering to repeated couch crashing at various friends places.
But really, if there were other legal options for money and shelter, then why were you homeless at that point?
More generally and less personally, the ” Never mind if X didn’t want to ever do Y, but hey, X needed the money” argument, as said above, doesn’t apply to surrogacy only, it applies to any non-recreational activity (even safe and non-demanding activity).
Yep. It happening on new ground will just make it suck all the worse on all the other ‘I didn’t want to do Y but I needed the money’ activities, by legitimising the whole thing even more.
Again, per your logic even people not faced by some dire poverty situation (perhaps because they have other job opportunities, or live in a country that isn’t batshit) are somehow “biased” when you give them an offer of money (in addition to what they have).
Actually the problem is yours – what do you hope to do by offering money but to bias them? What other leverage do you have?
You just said you wouldn’t do their work if you were disgustingly rich. What on earth do you think it is that you do work for them now? Your personal empowerment?
No, tell me what it is when you offer money (to someone who isn’t saturated with money already)? What other thing is it?
In PVE getting a net full of fish can be seen as empowerment. That’s why people confuse PVP and PVE when someone waves dollars in front of them – it looks like a big catch of fish.
By that kind of logic, if I were to offer you an employment that pays 100x your current employer’s rate (whatever it is) I would be pressuring you.
You’d clearly be hoping to pressure me. But if I was disgustingly rich it’d be little in the way of pressure.
Again, how do you think money works? By hugs?
Side note: Actually I think capitalism does like to present itself as working by hugs, by pretending to be like the relationship one starts out with between oneself and ones parents (assuming a fairly huggy relationship)
And to extend (and break 🙂 ) the metaphor, all peacock feathers are secretly black (unusual coloration of peacock feathers arises due to a very black pigment which absorbs most of the incident light, thus allowing interference colors to become observable by the naked eye. This is peacock science fact 🙂 )
Actually I think that’s a reasonable extension and doesn’t break it.
Once we look past the colour and movement…we see…
The italics were intended to merely convey that I mean precisely “nothing”
Yeah, but it wouldn’t be precisely nothing – as you’d have to be dead to do that.
No, you’d be alive.
Oh yeah, that doesn’t count as doing anything. I forgot the system were dealing with.
I’ll be an ass and say I think that when you consider being alive as being nothing compared to working, you hold working in some kind of esteem.
I KNOW that’s not what you mean/what you meant to say. I’m saying it’s how you feel without you realising the full extent of it. Peoples words show their loyalties – even loyalties they aren’t aware of. Yup, I went into ass mode for sure!
I can not believe that you haven’t read Marx or at least some summaries of his work.
You must be trolling.
No, I’m just that ignorant.
I think I’ve tried to here and there in wikipedia, but it’d right off the bat go into propaganda mode – and not even self aware properganda mode, but god damn utterly certain mode – but worse, without any hint of when they were going to get to the numbers and practical elements of human life support (like, the shit that actually matters rather than the dogma!). Why would I read through that on the thin hope of eventually getting to the practical, unless I just wanted to indoctrinate myself? It’s like those internet scam pages that have tons and tons of text scrolling down the screen, acting as if they are about to give away whatever cash secret they have, but they are banking on you sticking with it via sunk cost fallacy.
Wait, doesn’t this blog often have really long text posts?? 😉
Re: reply buttons on wordpress
You can use “open in a new window” thing from the right-button menu on a reply button in your notification screen.
This way you’ll open a form that posts an answer to the specific comment the button “belonged to”.
I think you might have hit reply to someone else, then made a post to me. I couldn’t find a button for the post you made that I wanted to reply to. Unless it’s another right-button menu you’re mentioning – the top right one? Hell, I don’t even know how to get to my following list (without multiple clicks)