Post edited 2:25 am – September 9, 2009 by Nathan Wilson

I would be careful not to reappropriate and mistake terms such as ‘homosexual’ ‘american’ ‘white’ &c .

Increasing you find two camps within the social sciences that study social inequalities. The first uses what they call an ‘Intersectional’ approach. That is to say past theorists (eg Marx) reduced all social phenomena, inequality and categories to a single causal factor (class). Now, it’s fashionable to look at how various social categories (they’re unironically called CAGES: Class, Age, Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality) intersect to provide a different and complimentary understandings of oppression and inequality.

The second camp, that is what you might call the postmodern and/or (neither/nor) poststructural. They consider categories like sexuality, at best, misguided and backward ideas that ideologically represent the real; and at worst, violently oppressive and damaging tactic taken by hegemonic interests to reproduce the structural inequality that privileges their positions.

What troubles me about science, scientists and SF, is that they are all unaware of their ideological commitments:  those of hegemonic patriarchal liberal technocratic modernity. And that, somehow, their science is the truth and the truth (ergo the real) just so happens to be western, white, male &c.

I digress: what I’m asking for you guys to do is to be critical of you assumptions. To say that sexuality has a primarily biological cause and can be easily changed is a very broad claim, which lies on shaky and dangerous epistemological grounds. I would be careful to reduce bio-cultural traits to a philosophical movement that has existed for a brief time and at the moment seems to be encountering a certain crisis. And really to be attentive to your blind spots in perspective that are engendered by your cultural and historical positions. Moreover, that these terms, like homosexuality, are very new, very fragile and like all language, tend to be ambiguous and ever-changing.

As for the aboutness, I think you guys already have it.

PS Love the shows guys and I can send you relevent articles and/or readings,

Nathan

Well, that's totally fucking rad then.

Post edited 3:58 pm – September 9, 2009 by doc
Post edited 4:00 pm – September 9, 2009 by doc
Post edited 4:02 pm – September 9, 2009 by doc

Quick comment followed by listener homework.

Comment

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that you could change your ethnicity through science, at least without a total loss of identity.

I get that you could change the way you look to approximate the visual markers for a different ethnicity (e.g. from “I look Irish” to “I look Egyptian”). But your actual ethnicity is made up of so many memories, learned behaviors, etc. It just seems too far-fetched to me that you could separate it out. The only way I could see it would be to do a mind wipe and implant an entirely different personality. Or maybe science could simulate the currently slow process of change (if I went to live in Tahiti for a couple of decades, I might gradually exchange a fair percentage of my ethnic assumptions/preferences/etc.) This isn't a change of ethnicity as much as it is an overlay. All the old stuff is still there, it's jut obsolete 99% of the time.

Anywho.

Homework

Just finished reading Starfish by Peter Watts. It's a fantastic little book that was released under a Creative Commons license (like Cory Doctorow's stuff). I gave a sort of reader's review at http://resqueezed.blogspot.com…..rfish.html. But here is my summary for your purposes.

SPOILER ALERT

The particular focus of this novel is a group of humans altered for deep-sea work. A corporate psychologist conjectures and proves that the best individuals to weather this stressful environment are borderline psychotics (particularly sexual predators, beaters, and their victims). Once the group goes deep, several things happen to them.

1. Some of them go native/feral.

2. They modify themselves further.

3. They question their humanity.

4. They undergo personality changes.

5. They develop a pack mentality that generates clear insider-outsider borders. These borders are marked by their passive and active alterations. (”Active” meaning some alterations they can turn on/off, but they choose to walk around in the “on” state.) This gives rise to correlary feelings of alienation. They increasingly belong together and trust each other, so they increasingly distrust others/outsiders.

6. Their distrust of outsiders (see 4) is particularly focused on their creators, the corporation that modified them and influences their fate. So this is the old Dr. Frankenstein vs. Frankenstein' Monster, Creator vs. Adam kind of theme.

Is this the kind of thing you wanted?

"So, what ethnic group do the characters in Starfish belong to by the end?"

Ha! Good one. I started to try and answer this question and then I realized you were being all Zen and stuff. I'm going to kind of answer the question anyway by going through the thought process you triggered. So, this is me talking to myself.

Ummm … Huh? What group did they belong to?

Well, it's not like the author gave them any kind of strong ethnicity at the outset. The characters seemed pretty remote or private.

Let's see … they started out as a disintegrated group of psychotics. They ended up as an integrated group of "others." If I were going to give them an ethnic tag it would be "neo-merfolk" or something like that.

Hmmm. Okay. No matter what their ethnicity might have been at the beginning, it sure as hell wasn't neo-merfolk, so I guess their ethnicity changed and I found it believable.

Damn you Joshua!! I guess I do believe that human beings are incredibly "flexible," as you put it in the podcast.

Doc,

Keep in mind that we're talking about technologies here at sufficiently higher levels that could find every part of you that might theoretically make you American and change the neuronal potentialities that contain the ideas of Americanness, and edit them so that when you remember things you remember them as a Laotian.

The earlier, cruder forms would be things like planting a brain on top of your brain (Dollhouse) but the reallly far end could be quite powerful.

Yeah, I agree. Figuring out how to retain verisimilitude will be a challenge. I think we might start with some seed transformative technologies of maximum plausibility and let the players run from there.

Good point. It jives well with the other stuff we're discussing, too.

Let me take a stab at explaining Libertarianisim

While people immediately leap onto capitalism and libertarianism, that is not exactly the point of the philosophy. The primary point of Libertarianism is “You can do what you want if you don't make me do what you want.” Or more bluntly “Don't be a dick.”

Libertarians believe in a minimal set of regional law, mostly concerned with ensuring freedoms and variable sets of local laws. This lack of law means that problems must be solved by natural circumstances, like the capitalist market place. If you want something, you will pay for it, so someone will make it.

So that is libertarianisim. As applied to transhumanisim this structure is very interesting because to is the economy of the technologist. This system pushes the advancement of science and technology. Basically the only way to get ahead is to be effective and the law protects you so that being effective is enough. It is the economy and social structure that drives the fastest to the singularity. Democracy and rights are prerequisite.

There are two similar systems:

Anarchy – this is libertarianism with no legal protection. Might makes right and anyone can do anything they want. The wild west. Not an ideal government, just a likely one. In some ways this is extremely democratic, but not really. And in some ways you have all kinds of rights, but again not really.

Mega Corp – Similar to Libertarianisim but favoring corporations to the detriment of individuals. Not ideal, just likely. This is effectively the same as a noble, aristocracy or any other government where some group is in charge. Democracy may exist in some weakened form. Either as a sham or only the elite can vote. Rights are weak or non existant.

The other primary transhuman government is socialism

Socialism – as applied to transhumanisim, in this society all of the basics are provided to you free of charge (it is the abolitionist ideal). This system, while technologically more stagnant provides the best implementation of the technology of the transhuman world while still giving people their basic freedoms. In this system democracy would be possible/and people would have full rights.

Similar to socialisim:

Communism – A more extreme version of socialism(in this case). Communism means you are not free to make your own choices, but your needs are provided for. The state owns everything but in a transhumanist setting you may not need to work. The problem in the execution of this government is that someone or something needs to be in charge. A problem that might be overcome by AI's or somesuch. This style of government is ironically unlikely. NA there would be no democracy, but people might have some amount of rights.

Command Economy – this is where the state owns and distributes everything but is not beholden to provide for the people. This is another name for fascism. This is the best government for building or making things. This is actually not very likely unless there is some external enemy. No democracy no rights.

I presume Simon is talking about the "what you care about" stuff. One of the things is "human suffering."

I want a game where you're all like “I love you, but my job's making me upload my brain into an Aardvark” or “My family's counting on me, but I've always wanted to go into space.”

Yeah! That's good stuff for sure. It's amazing how much your desire to change (or be free to change) can be hampered by others' desire/need for you to not change, at least too much or too rapidly. Human relations are amazing and empowering. At the same time they are a million little threads (or sometimes massive cables) that tie us down. Many couples fail to love each other "forever" because they fall in love with the person as they are at one point in time and fail to consider that commitment means also falling in love with all the things that the other person may potentially become. You have to fall in love with a person's essence/nature, not their particulars, because the latter changes regardless of intent.