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Thursday, September 01, 2011

More Responses to the Bestial-Imperial Futurological Fantasists of "Animal Uplift" Nonsense

There have been some more sensible and interesting interventions in the futurological foolishness of "Animal Uplift" discourse (the scientifically infeasible and morally indefensible idea that human animals will soon be able to and ethically should rewrite nonhuman animals into greater humanlikeness "for their own good"). I first addressed this topic in an extensive way a couple years back. Like most discussions of futurological "issues," it is of course a non-issue better treated as a symptom of skewed underlying values and assumptions than as a topic interesting on its futurologically "given" terms. A few weeks ago, I returned to the topic when a bunch of futurologists confused the hype for a Hollywood action flick for a serious philosophical or proximate policy discussion (they make mistakes like that rather often, you know). Over at Forbes.com of all places Alex Knapp questions the working assumptions of the animal uplifters on technical grounds (grounds futurologists relish discussing even when they lose, and which they rarely deserve to be engaged on, certainly not in nonsense like this), but he makes many good and salient points. Longtime Friend of Blog Athena Andreadis also provides a rich reading of the film which refuses to bite any foolish futurological hooks, reading the substantial work of "uplift" in speculative discourses like science fiction or futurological scenario-peddling as essentially figurative and symptomatic and circumventional grapplings with anxieties about the foreigners we unjustly exploit for superficial comforts and the rising generation of youth who know quite as well as we do who is responsible for spoiling their world and for how little we have done so.

1 comment:

Athena Andreadis said...

Thank you for the signal boost, Dale!

I discussed uplift relatively briefly, in part because I've addressed several aspects of it in articles discussing human brain enhancement -- including my scholarly contribution to the round table about the "Genetic Virtue" (!) project.