Whether or not [techno-utopians] are serious isn't the point. You yourself frequently throw around the word "impossible" in your criticism, but you don't base that statement on anything but metaphor and narrative tropes. I[n] reality, the world cares as little for your narrative as it does for theirs. So while I will certainly concede that your so-called Robot Cultists have serious problems in their personal philosophy, and that you've done a fair job of criticizing their social arguments, I don't think that is a sufficient rebuttal for their technological arguments.
The Robot Cultists are not making "technological" arguments, if by this term you mean arguments drained of social, narrative, metaphorical content.
There is no way past the conceptual impasse of a would-be "immortalization" of "life," when life as it is lived is ineradicably vulnerable, metabolic, finite. There is no way past the conceptual impasse of a would-be "digitization" and/or "superintelligification" of "consciousness," when intelligence in the world is ineradicably embodied, social, discursive. There is no way past the conceptual impasse of a would-be supercession via superabundance (whether the techno-utopian figuration is via plastic, virtuality, or drextech nanotechnology) of history, when all history is ineradicably the ongoing social struggle of the diversity of peers with whom share the world.
Robot Cultists don't know what they are talking about, and I mean this quite literally, and at a level that is actually catastrophic to the sense and force of their aspirations and descriptions in my view.
And as such Robot Cultists are no more arbiters of technical or technodevelopmental facts at issue than are theologians who would peddle their own palpable incoherencies through the conjuration of an old bearded man in a stone chair, only, you know, uh, bigger, and waaaay older and, like, totally super-powerful, all the better to distract or derange those who happen to notice that none of the words they are using to "argue" for their beliefs -- words like "exist" "beginning" "power" "benevolence" -- actually remotely apply to the object presumably under discussion, even on their own terms. Neither do Robot Cultists get to set the terms of the discussion of their views, since theirs are not only the actually extraordinary claims at hand, but theirs are the formulations that exhibit distinction entirely at the level of metaphor, narrative, culture.
Now, there are plenty of qualified scientists around (I'm a rhetorician and sociocultural critic by training and temperament, for cryin out loud) who can tell you much more about the problems that bedevil facile biocentric fantasies of effective room temperature presumably replicative and programmable nanoscale manufacturing, or disembodied models of machine intelligence, or dreams of immortality therapies indifferent to the holistic, emergent, combinatorial complexities of actual senescence, you know, all the sloppy real-world complexities that poor muzzy aesthetical humanists like me can't even fathom as compared to the hard-nosed he-men of scientistic (note the st, not f) reductionism who interminably get things wrong while the rest of the world has to clean up after them over and over again.
Look, to be as clear as I can here, in my view superlativity has nothing to distinguish it but its narrative, figurative, rhetorical, and ethnographic content. That stuff is its actual substance in my account. My training in rhetoric suits me rather well as it happens to criticize superlativity to the extent that it really is more an ideology than a coherent scientific research program.
To deny the substance and pretend instead that Robot Cultists are proposing serious science is completely to miss the point as far as I'm concerned (although it isn't exactly difficult to see why the techno-utopian True Believers would much prefer that conversational gambit, I'll grant you that).
I certainly have no quarrel with technical scientists who enjoy exposing the particular misconceptions and aporiae that bedevil the Robot Cultists -- I truly enjoy such exposes, hell, I can usually even follow them well enough -- but these are hardly the only critiques of superlativity that are in point, and indeed I disagree that they are directed at the heart of the matter, contenting themselves instead with perfectly edifying but finally inessential nibbling around the edges of superlativity in my view.
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But Dale, isn't this the opposite of the way you respond to me? You insist there's nothing to discuss because the serious science is all that matters, and refuse to discuss same-sex conception more generally, more substantially. You pretend that a thread about the infeasibility of human parthenogenesis dismisses my concerns, while my concern is with the (superlative) notion that people should have the right to conceive with someone of either sex, and I don't care a whit about specific experiments. Do you agree that the notion that everyone someday will be able to conceive with someone of either sex is a superlative notion?
You... refuse to discuss same-sex conception more generally, more substantially.
I refuse to collaborate in your obsession with non-existing medical techniques (imaginary samesex reproduction) in a discourse that cashes out in homophobic propositions that do injustice to actually existing people in the world (real samesex marriages).
You pretend that a thread about the infeasibility of human parthenogenesis dismisses my concerns
Quite to the contrary, I have little expectation that anything anybody could say could address your pathological obsession with protecting the dignity of heterosexual reproduction you imagine to be under threat by who knows what real or imagined forces, from gay marriage to samesex reproduction. I would never pretend otherwise.
As it happens, I have never suggested that I believe samesex reproduction to be infeasible in any strong sense, as neither do I consider reproductive cloning nor parthenogenetic reproduction logically infeasible. I simply don't agree that anything like functional or safe variations on such techniques are available to humans and so I consider it right that they be banned for now until such time as a consensus of scientists and of actually accountable regulators determine human trials may be warranted, but I do not believe that humans can consent to them in an informed or nonduressed way any time soon. By the way, neither do I consider there to be any absolute inevitability that such techniques will be developed -- it may be that practical or ethical or economic barriers will emerge to stymie them. I happen not to expect this, but that is neither here nor there. I like to be surprised by evidence.
What matters to me is consensual prosthetic self-determination and a celebration of the diversity of lifeways that self-determination will bring about, rather than policing that diversity in the image of any personal or moralistic identification in either the preservation, denial, or facilitation of any particular outcomes over others (except insofar as issues of consensual legibility, threatened violence, or the externalization of social costs enter into the picture).
Do you agree that the notion that everyone someday will be able to conceive with someone of either sex is a superlative notion?
Certainly not, not in the sense I use the term at any rate. Superlativity freights projected or imaginary technodevelopmental outcomes with analogues to theological omni-predication (as I describe at length in my piece, "A Superlative Schema," omniscience is refigured as superintelligence, omnipotence is refigured as superlongevity, omnibenevolence is refigured as a supercession of history via superabundance) and then solicits identification with these outcomes in those who imagine them.
That's how I use the term, at least. You can use the term to mean anything you want it to mean, of course, you just won't be talking about what I'm talking about if you stray too far from this. To be more specific still, in my view it would be quite false to claim that the technique exists through which anybody of any sex can reproduce with any other, it would be misleadingly hyperbolic to claim to know either that this outcomes is inevitable or impossible, it would be pointlessly hysterical to expect either exhaustively utopian or dystopian consequences to eventuate from such an outcome should it arrive, and foolish indeed to let a preoccupation with any of this derange sensible deliberation about actually ongoing or emerging concerns connected with medical techniques in the world and the proper distribution of their risks, costs, and benefits to all the stakeholders to these practices by their own lights.
Contrary to your accusation, by the way, I think my responses to you as a bioconservative and to my more superlative interlocutors are pretty consistent. Needless to say, that's not how it looks to every reader however.
I think there is theological omni-predication going on with God's power of creation being refigured as human superfertility. Not only do Transhumanists want people to have the power to control what genes they pass on to their children, they also want the power to conceive with anyone they want, of any sex or species. Heterosexual reproduction is too uncontrolled and random and limited by our random pool of possible mates - Transhumanists want to be like God who created perfect humans and animals out of nothing, and limited by nothing.
It's you with an obsession for superfertility, you who prioritizes the right to try it above equal protections for same-sex couples in other areas. You cling to it as an essential goal for humanity, or at least a possible future that must not be banned, just like your Cultists cling to superintelligence, superlongevity, etc. I don't get what your criticism of them is anymore, since they are only proposing that people should be able to choose those things they want for themselves and their children. (btw, choosing those things just for yourself, ie, not insisting on being allowed to choose them for your descendants, is NOT transhumanism, it is standard self-interest or attainment of potential like people have been doing forever. It only becomes Transhumanism when it includes ways to create better people using Superlative fertility methods. I'll let the OED know, as they think that wearing glasses is Transhumanism).
I wish you wouldn't cut me off as homophobic because I oppose same-sex conception and therefore same-sex marriage. My proposal would help (and do justice to) all those existing same-sex couples. The ones in marriages would be turned into Civil Unions, but they'd also for the first time be recognized by their country, which they currently lack. And those in other states would finally get equal protections. Why insist on a right to do non-existent and probably forever infeasible and certainly currently unsafe superfertility experiments? It seems to me to be insulting to imply that a gay person's dignity depends on a right to do same-sex conception. You say you "consider it right that they be banned for now", but I'm telling you, they aren't banned for now, they are legal, and if they were banned "for now", well, no one wants to do them now, what matters is that they are banned when someone wants to try it. And as long as you are willing to consider a ban "for now", why not GET SOMETHING FOR THAT MAJOR CONCESSION, such as federal recognition for CU's, in exchange for accepting that marriage's have a right to attempt to conceive together?
Look, mate-selection under patriarchy already amounts to a eugenic program of control as far as I can see. What you are calling "random" derives from your insensitivity to social violence, what you are calling "natural" are the customs you're comfortable with.
You may be right that Transhumanists pine to be limited by nothing, but we can surely agree that they are stupid to want this, that this infantile flailing about after omnipotence is unintelligible.
Where the rubber hits the road for democratically minded people needs to be protecting people from inequity, violence, exploitation -- in medical practices or any other. That's why I advocate the substantiation of the scene of informed nonduressed consent by engaging in fairly conventional progressive politics nudging society ever closer in the direction of basic income guarantees, universal healthcare, lifelong edication and access to reliable information, and accountable equity before the law.
You have apparently lodged your own intervention in the service of "protecting" heterosexual reproduction (which you seem to deem foundation to civilization in some way that looks bonkers to me) from threats that I don't agree with you are threats in any case (imaginary samesex reproduction techniques and real but perfectly harmless campaigns for samesex marriage). Not to put too fine a point on it, I think these concerns of yours are pretty wrongheaded.
It's you with an obsession for superfertility,
Huh? I don't give two shits about reproduction. If anything, I think it's irresponsible for anybody to have kids at all given the planet's current envrionmental distress and resource descent.
you who prioritizes the right to try it above equal protections for same-sex couples in other areas.
The tradeoff between equal legal protection and renunciation of reproduction is entirely invented by you, it isn't something anybody talks about but you, it is literally crazy talk. Stop being crazy.
You cling to it as an essential goal for humanity,
Yes, I "cling" to something I scarcely "care" about.
or at least a possible future that must not be banned,
Not declaring permanent pre-emptive bans on non-existing procedures I don't give a damn about is the same thing as "clinging" to them as "essential to humanity"? Entertaining the logical possibility of a presently unworkable therapeutic intervention becoming more workable in the future is the same thing as "clinging" to this as "essential to humanity." Come on, John, get a grip. This is embarrassing.
just like your Cultists cling to superintelligence, superlongevity, etc.
Read the actual words that I actually wrote. Super-predicated correlates pretty strictly to theological omni-predicates in my account, it isn't just a matter of people hoping for more effective therapies in matters that you happen to find threatening for whatever reasons, only your therapist knows for sure.
I don't get what your criticism of them is
That has been clear to me for some time. I approve of consensual self-determination, I disapprove of misinformation and duress. Superlativity is a hyperbolic technoscientific discourse arising out of irrationality (hyperbolic fears and fantasies of impotence and omnipotence) and exacerbating it (deranging sensible deliberation about the fair distribution of costs, risks, and benefits of technoscientific to all the stakeholders to that change), in my view, which I why I disapprove it. I never say otherwise, and I don't think it is that difficult to grasp.
I wish you wouldn't cut me off as homophobic because I oppose same-sex conception and therefore same-sex marriage.
I wish you wouldn't say homophobic things like that very sentence.
My proposal would help (and do justice to) all those existing same-sex couples.
Separate isn't equal, your "justice" sucks. And nobody else on the planet gives a crap about your freaky fears of future samesex reproduction medicine, so shut up about it, nobody wants your weird "help," we're winning this battle without you (which is clearly what really has you pissing your pants anyway). Fuck off.
Wow John!...
You're like Sam-I-Am; only you're holding up an empty plate and actually offering nothing, which in the end renders your persistance as a PATHETICICAL asinine annoyance. Get over it already...nobody is going to eat your empty plate and then come to some magical realization about superfertility and CU's.
oh, and whether you like it or not...you come off as a homophobe all on your own, Dale doesn't have to "cut" you off. But maybe you should do all of us a favor and cut yourself off already, literally.
Dale, my head hurts. I don't know how you put up with this guy.
Super-predicated correlates pretty strictly to theological omni-predicates in my account, it isn't just a matter of people hoping for more effective therapies in matters that you happen to find threatening
Right, I'm saying superfertility, the ability to create children that would be impossible to create with your healthy body, the desire to leave physical biological limits behind and conceive children with any person and with any person's genes, is a theological omni-predicate (if I am using that word right). I mean, wanting to have children with another man, or with better genes, and claiming it might be possible someday and would be Cool, is aspiring to God-status as sure as the Robot Cultists are when they make their ridiculous claims.
Same-sex conception is NOT "more effective therapies", any more than immortality is a therapy or super intelligence is a therapy, because therapies are treatments of health problems, they are not augmentations of health, which are "Beyond Therapy" as Leon Kass put it. I'm all for more effective therapies, but superfertility is not therapy because not being able to conceive with someone of your same sex is not a health problem, nor is passing on your own genes to your child.
Your justice sucks, because it prioritizes conception rights over useful protections that are actually needed right now. You should read some of your own papers, they're up there in the left corner. You seem to have a blind spot about superfertility that you treat very differently than the rest of the Superlative collection.
Look, mate-selection under patriarchy already amounts to a eugenic program of control as far as I can see.
Having children consensually with who you want is eugenic? Everything is eugenic, is that it? This sounds like a very typical liberal- crypto-eugenic opening argument. But as far as forms of control go, I prefer ones that have zero emissions and don't require huge government regulatory agencies and coercive interventions in people's biological freedoms.
superfertility... the desire to leave physical biological limits behind and conceive children with any person and with any person's genes, is a theological omni-predicate
I guess if you're veering into Greek theology maybe, I guess Zeus was kinda sorta omni-fertile, after all, but I always have the more monotheistic judeochrislamic faiths of the Book in mind when I speak of the trranscendentalization of technoscience one finds in the techno-utopians. But when all is said and done, I have to say I'm not much interestested in your personal obsession with "super-fertility," or especially your fear that queers might have babies together one day. I'm trying to be affable about it, but I really think you need to move on.
Same-sex conception is NOT "more effective therapies", any more than immortality is a therapy or super intelligence is a therapy, because therapies are treatments of health problems, they are not augmentations of health, which are "Beyond Therapy" as Leon Kass put it.
Well, for me the more important reason none of these count as therapies is because they DON'T EXIST.
One has mostly shifted from science proper into hyperbolizations of science in the service of expressions of dread, panic, greed, envy about the present when one's talk turns superlative (like it or not).
Bringing this back to planet earth and real people proposing real arguments that frame policy-making impacting actual healthcare provision for actual suffering, decision-making human beings -- I must say I strongly disapprove of bioconservatives like Leon Kass quite as much as I disapprove of transhumanists and techno-immortalists.
As I have often said, we seem to be located at a developmental inflection point, a point in which at least some healthcare is becoming non-normativizing in ways that trouble conventional universalizing progressive healthcare language (which, by the way, never delivered what was asked of it when all is said and done and had real costs of a kind Foucault, for example, analyzed enormously well).
In my view, questions of informed nonduressed consent come to the fore under such circumstances (the at least partial non-normativizaton of therapy) for democratically-minded progressive people.
Terry Schiavo isn't science fiction. Deaf parents wanting deaf kids isn't science fiction. Administering non-psychotic drugs to get Death Row prisoners sane long enough to execute them isn't science fiction. Misleading drug claims on commercial television designed to undermine legitimate doctor-patient relationships isn't science fiction. Giving people fertility drugs that cause multiple births with enormous numbers of health problems few people are informed about, all because this is cheaper than safer alternatives isn't science fiction. Pathologizing discussions of flourishing neuro-atypical persons isn't science fiction. Refugees from over-exploited regions of the world struggling to survive as illegals or otherwise precariously legal visitors in "the developed world" through the relinquishment of their own vital organs isn't science fiction.
Progressives need consent to trump ideologies of optimality, whether bioconservative indulgences in naturalizing nostalgia or transhumanist indulgences in enhancing optimality.
Kass's bioconservative definition of therapy as only those interventions that police the diversity of actually-wanted capacities, morphologies, and lifeways into conformity with a parochial ideal he identifies as "the natural human" is no more nor less eugenic than the transhumanists who would encourage the emergence "enhanced post-humans" according to no less parochial ideals.
Of course, the transhumanists will argue that this makes me a secret bioconservative just as bioconservatives like you will argue that this makes me a secret transhumanist, which is pretty much just because you are all barking mad. All of this would be neither here nor there if it weren't for the rather troubling fact that transhumanists and bioconservatives have managed to make just enough noise to render their two deranged and deranging frames disproportionately influential when talk turns to precisely the questions of doing justice in matters of healthcare provision in this fraught moment of transition into non-normitivizing genetic, cognitive, and prosthetic therapy.
Your justice sucks, because it prioritizes conception rights over useful protections that are actually needed right now.
I must say I am quite disappointed to hear you say something this dishonest at this point. I don't even give a damn about the thing you accuse me of prioritizing. Samesex reproductive therapy doesn't even exist. Not agreeing to your own pathological demand for a pre-emptive ban on something that doesn't exist and that almost nobody gives a shit about doesn't actually constitute "prioritizing" it. And the thing you are probably describing as "useful" here is probably the prohibition of that very selfsame non-existing thing that nobody cares about. How is that useful? Do you know what that word even means? Is this a conversation we're having? Is this all some kind of game to you? I keep giving you the benefit of the doubt. Are you really just a completely crazy person or just some bored troll? It's all very disappointing.
Everything is eugenic, is that it?
Uh, no, that's not it.
The thing that would be "useful" would be federally recognized Civil Unions, uniformly defined in all 50 states and other countries, too. Defining them as "marriage without conception rights" would make it possible to get them passed, as it is only the fear that they are a stepping stone to marriage, and "marriage in all but name", that prevents people from supporting CU's now. A distinction is needed, Dale, to make progress and finally get all the useful protections that same-sex couples want with marriage. They don't need conception rights, but a married man and woman certainly need conception rights. I say you are "prioritizing" conception rights because you think it is currently more important to have them than all the other protections that would come by eschewing them.
I don't see how anyone could accuse you of being a secret bioconservative when you advocate for genetic engineering of people to be allowed and support same-sex conception rights. It's merely because you express doubt about some aspects of Transhumanism being possible that they call you a bio-conservative? Sorry, but you have to actually oppose GE'd humans and same-sex conception, and even more, you have to want laws and policemen to enforce that no one does them to be a bioconservative. And since you want to allow them, and will celebrate anyone that tries them (assuming they are fully informed, non-duressed and consenting, etc), then you are a Transhumanist. Claiming a middle ground between Transhumanist and Bioconservative is not possible, either you want GE banned or you don't.
Kass's bioconservative definition ... is no more nor less eugenic than the transhumanists...
If that were so, one should still choose which of those eugenics is better. I think the one that keeps the individual equal and fully in control of their reproductive rights and doesn't require a billion dollar investment in biotech is better.
I'm curious now how your plan avoids being a eugenics.
The thing that would be "useful" would be federally recognized Civil Unions, uniformly defined in all 50 states and other countries, too. Defining them as "marriage without conception rights" would make it possible to get them passed, as it is only the fear that they are a stepping stone to marriage, and "marriage in all but name", that prevents people from supporting CU's now.
Separate isn't equal, and you're just completely obviously idiotically wrong if you really think people oppose samesex marriage because they share your fear of non-existing samesex reproduction. That makes your proposal not about justice and not about utility. Please drop this.
one should still choose which of those eugenics is better
Like most actually democratically-minded progressives I choose option three: fighting all varieties of eugenicism wherever and whenever they show their ugly authoritarian faces.
I'm curious now how your plan avoids being a eugenics.
I'm curious now how your plan avoids sending you to the booby hatch.
Separate isn't equal, and you're just completely obviously idiotically wrong if you really think people oppose samesex marriage because they share your fear of non-existing samesex reproduction.
Of course it's not equal for same-sex couples. I didn't say it was equal. I said it was useful. Equal rights for same-sex couples should be out of the question, at least for now, because society hasn't considered the implications of allowing same-sex couples to try to conceive together.
I don't fear non-existing same-sex conception, I fear existing claims to be allowed to attempt same-sex conception. Because whether or not it ever works, it will divert tons of money from useful and needed health care and waste time achieving equal protections in other areas.
I choose option three: fighting all varieties of eugenicism wherever and whenever they show their ugly authoritarian faces.
Isn't your education a variety of eugenicism? You're going to try to educate everyone to choose the right "therapies", aren't you? And you're going to make sure everyone is non-duressed and consenting, but to what, exactly? To what you have educated them to consent to, that's what. What basis will you tell people how to make their procreative decisions since you have eliminated the Patriarchy? What is your plan?
I'm curious now how your plan avoids sending you to the booby hatch.
It doesn't really, unless it happens soon enough to save me. But it's not about me, think of the thousands of same-sex couples that you are choosing conception rights for, instead of choosing useful federal protections. I don't know why you want to live mired in this status quo, instead of exploring the new terrain that will come from letting go of conception rights for a little while.
Of course it's not equal for same-sex couples. I didn't say it was equal. I said it was useful. Equal rights for same-sex couples should be out of the question, at least for now, because society hasn't considered the implications of allowing same-sex couples to try to conceive together.
John Howard, bioconservative homobigot lunatic, ladies and gentlemen.
Isn't your education a variety of eugenicism?
Isn't that the sound of your descent into total hysterical reactionary insanity?
it's not about me, think of the thousands of same-sex couples that you are choosing conception rights for
Koo-koo, koo-koo!
you're just completely obviously idiotically wrong if you really think people oppose samesex marriage because they share your fear of non-existing samesex reproduction.
I forgot to address this charge. First of all, I never said that anyone else opposed SSM because they share my fear of same-sex conception. I don't think they do, I don't think most people have even heard of the research, most people assume it will be impossible. And, surprisingly (to me), when I tell traditional marriage supporters about my argument, they tend to go into denial mode and don't want to hear about it, because my argument is not bigoted enough, it doesn't judge homosexuals or condemn homosexuality, it doesn't mention God, and it mentions the word Civil Unions, which these people have been taught is a bad word. They tend to agree that same-sex conception is bad, but they also are quick to assume that it can't be banned, that it will happen anyway, and so they'd better fortify their traditional arguments so that they work even if same-sex couples can procreate together. I've even encountered some bigots that have seemed to approve of the concept, because it will avoid the problems of third-party procreation they are used to complaining about.
But I don't think those people are representative of the millions of voters who approved Prop 8. In fact, I think some of them are plants from the other side. There are some fraudulent marriage defenders who are trying to divert the argument away from procreation rights and redefine marriage without procreation rights, I assume because they want to preserve society with as little disruption as possible as the eugenics industry takes over reproduction. I wrote about them on my blog here.
So my compromise isn't aimed at the big-name marriage defenders, or at any people who are afraid of same-sex conception out in the general population. It is aimed at the vast majority of people who want this issue resolved and are sick of hearing about it, who feel that same-sex couples should have civil unions and equal protections, but marriage should be for a man and a woman, and who aren't Transhumanists yet and so would not object to stopping same-sex conception when they learn about how the compromise was reached. They'd just think it was a trivial minor little detail that created a legal distinction that enabled the two sides to each make concessions but also get what they want. They don't understand why it is so hard to achieve this compromise, they don't understand that CU's that are without distinction except in name are not Constitutional and will not survive. Those people will support the compromise, and all we need to do is come up with a distinction that is Constitutional and makes sense, and spread it around to a few blogs and get it in front of Congress on behalf of the thousands of same-sex couples without equal protections. We have to go around all the professional bigots who earn their living from this never-ending argument, who will not support a resolution (I guess they support the FMA but that's because it's such a long process and wouldn't resolve anything anyhow).
There is going to be a DOMA debate in the next four years. If this compromise were to suddenly be on the table in Congress, would you support it then, Dale? Or would you insist that the right to attempt to conceive with another man is too important to trade for all the other protections that couples need? I think we can get this done in the first 100 days, if you helped convince some other bloggers to support it.
Good luck, John, with your effort to whomp up online enthusiasm for your separate is equal when it comes to gay marriage and let's make sure queers can't ever have kids because that would destroy the human race plan. And, uh, no, dear, I won't be supporting your idiotic queerbashing bioconservative lunacy any time soon, thanks.
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