I do not happen to think that cryonics should be **illegal**. I think people should be free to spend their money, and dispose of their corpses, as they see fit (in the latter case, as long as it doesn't create a public health hazard, of course).Yeah, that's how I feel about it, too. Certainly the official verbiage of the organizations shouldn't be allowed to create the false and fraudulent impression that the current state of scientific knowledge provides any grounds for actual confidence that severed hamburgerized heads will be nanobotically or digirifically resurrected or whatever -- but it seems to me that contra the handwaving of True Believers in faithly settings the organizational discourse covers its ass more or less. Beyond that, so long as you say as there is no hazard to public health, it doesn't seem to me on the face of it that cryonics should be any more illegal than embalming is, or cremation, or shooting corpses into the Sun or what have you.
Myself, I always rather liked the fictional depiction of the Bene Gesserits on Chapterhouse dropping bodies in orchards with a freshly planted tree on top of each departed member of the community. I rather like the idea of a white-petalled dogwood flowering on a hillock where I used to be. I remember driving past woods in Indiana as a kid when dogwoods were blooming among the trees thinking the forest, like the monolith in 2001, was full of stars.
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20 comments:
> . . .white-pedaled dogwood. . .
More likely you'd be able to get a white-petalled dogwood, but a dogwood with pedals would certainly be a sight to behold! ;->
> I remember driving past woods in Indiana as a kid when
> dogwoods were blooming among the trees thinking the forest,
> like the monolith in 2001, was full of stars.
'Edoras those courts are called,' said Gandalf,
'and Meduseld is that golden hall. . .'
At the foot of the walled hill the way ran under
the shadow of many mounds, high and green. Upon their
western side the grass was white as with drifted snow:
small flowers sprang there like countless stars amid the turf.
'Look!' said Gandalf. 'How fair are the bright eyes in
the grass! Evermind they are called, simbelmynë in this
land of Men, for they blossom in all the seasons of
the year, and grow where dead men rest. Behold! we
are come to the great barrows where the sires of
Théoden sleep.'
a dogwood with pedals would certainly be a sight to behold!
No doubt the transhumanoids are on it. (Also, fixed.)
>No doubt the transhumanoids are on it. (Also, fixed.)
Genetically-engineering plants to be powered by white pedals instead of photosynthesis is just one step away from genetically-engineered super-furries, so, yes.
So, no.
Re-animation of a dead person should be illegal. It is better public policy to make it illegal than to leave it legal. Not because someone is about to try it, but to stop all the hucksterism about cryonics.
It seems to me a bit redundant to make re-animation of the dead illegal since it is already impossible.
I would proceed on the assumption that it was a rhetorical question with anybody else were I now to ask you should anti-gravity boots be illegal? should faster-than-light starships be illegal? But of course since I already know you to be a person obsessed with making non-existing things illegal as well I can't really make such assumptions with you, now can I? (I refer to your obsessive crusade, endlessly reiterated in comments sections wherever I publish anything online, to ban techno-facilitated butt-babies arising from homosex because you are a homophobic freak, needless to say).
I sympathize with the thrust of your second point a bit more, that is to say, with the concern that consumers should be protected from misinformation and fraud. But I think unintended consequences recommend liberality coupled with vigilance here.
While it is true that credulous and panic-stricken death denialists are easy marks of those who want to pretend cryonics is not just a needlessly complicated corpse-disposal method but a rocketship to immortal sooper-sexy sooper-powered robot bodies in tech-heaven, I fear that on such grounds literally every available form of corpse disposal would need to be made illegal as well because of all the faith-based hucksters (priests, preachers, swamis, gurus, crystal-mystics, and so on) who freight ceremonies connected to burial, cremation, mummification with comparable fraudulent promises of resurrection, transcension, and the rest. And then where would we be?
I don't think there is anything inherently unethical about anti-gravity boots, and I don't know what impact it has that they are legal. I do think we should make recreational space travel illegal, it is a waste of energy and dangerous, and there is no need for it, and I think it has a negative impact on the nation's mood that rich assholes are talking about recreational space vacations. It's bad enough that they go skiing in Aspen, but a lot less so, and lots of people would be upset if we banned skiing. Skydiving is somewhere in the middle.
But there is something inherently unethical about bringing dead people back to life, and about creating people that are not the union of a man and woman. Those things would so screw up what it means to be human and alive or dead, they should be ruled out, so that when people die, they are dead for good. And there is a negative impact that they are legal, it affects people's lives and the whole planet. Can you name any positive effects of keeping those things legal?
If you are worried about rich assholes may I suggest you prioritize progressive taxation and consumer protections over the menace of interstellar space vacations? As for the "ethics" of non-existing and therefore not-characterizable gravity boots and the "negative impact" on all peoples' lives and the whole planet (wow) of the fact that there are just too darned few laws banning the resurrection of the dead, well, John Howard, what can I say? You are one serious wack a doodle dandy.
Do you think all we need to get better progressive taxation and better consumer protection is my voice? That's flattering, but insane. Besides, if I didn't have to vote Republican to support marriage I'd vote for Democrats. I'm sure I'm not the only one either. So by not endorsing my compromise, you not only choose procreation rights for same-sex couples over the federal recognition and security and protections of Civil Unions, you also cause people to vote for Republicans. (And you could be pretty influential, as a gay blogger with some readership and renown, if you said equal procreation rights was a bad priority and we should stick with natural reproduction rather than trying for sooper omni-fertility.)
You need to get back to the real world and stop just rhetorizing. This isn't just theory, making a few things that can't even be done illegal would have a big impact and improve people's lives and get the nation moving forward on things that really matter. Or you could insist on same-sex procreation rights and the right to re-animate dead people.
John Howard, ladies and gentleman: bigot, asshole, clown.
Nothing like being told to get real by somebody exercised about banning the re-animation of the dead.
>Those things would so screw up what it means to be human and alive or dead, they should be ruled out, so that when people die, they are dead for good.
What is it with you people and the human condition? It's like you see it as some precious, fragile thing that must constantly be balanced on a thin wire lest it tilt one way or another and make some old people uncomfortable.
“The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development.” -- Oscar Wilde
John, must everything you dislike be prohibited by the guns of the state? I loathe this mentality, though I do find the idea of laws against currently impossible things rather amusing.
Are you just against laws in general? You seem to think that enacting a law is a bad thing in principle, and should never be done unless absolutely necessary. And mocked and ridiculed rather than considered and debated. Or is it just these laws? I don't think the law banning re-animation of dead people is nearly as important and useful as an egg and sperm law about animation of people, but you can see they are pretty much both the same law, about bringing life into the world by any means other than a man and a woman having children together with their natural unmodified genes, ie, through sex. And when the life leaves the world and someone is declared to be deceased, that life should never be brought back into the world, either by being cloned, or regrown like in The Sixth Day, or unfrozen like in Austin Powers, or whatever. If a person is found frozen in the river, then OK, try to revive them for a while.
I can't think of why we should not enact those laws, other than it would mean giving up on same-sex marriage, but if handled right it doesn't have to be bad news. Only the transhumanists would be upset.
Disagreeing with your crazytown laws isn't the same thing as being an anarchist. For my views on anarchism -- see the essays archived at the sidebar under the heading "Against Anarchy."
I don't think the law banning re-animation of dead people is nearly as important and useful as an egg and sperm law about animation of people, but you can see they are pretty much both the same law
Yes, we all can see that. There, there, dear. Your laws about the magic bad people are all very nice, very nice laws, indeed.
Now, as for the gay marriage question, "transhumanists" are far from the only or even remotely characteristic constituencies defending the extension of that civil right -- it is quickly becoming a firm majority position in the US -- that horse is out of the barn, so you just need to give up on that one, hon. Eric and I aren't actually fans of gay marriage ourselves, as it happens, seeing it as a vestige of human trafficking and heteronormativity and hallmark you complete me sentimentality, but we certainly think it should be available to all those citizens who want to make recourse to it, and we appreciate being able to argue against marriage from the stronger position of people welcome to it than people excluded from it. But clearly, you're just a homogay bigot and Amor Mundi doesn't exist to give you a soapbox from which to spew your brand of hate.
Beyond all that, we're clearly reaching diminishing returns and I'm actually starting to feel bad for you, having this rather public nervous breakdown or whatever it is, so no more posting for you today, John, okay?
>a man and a woman having children together with their natural unmodified genes, ie, through sex
The whole point of sexual reproduction is to modify genes. It's a more efficient way to do so than waiting for a cosmic ray to flip a few aminoacids. Whether the modification of the genome is pre or post, who cares? And why should they care?
Also, do you object to a man and a woman "having children together with their natural unmodified genes" through extraction of the gametes, insemination, and injection into the same woman?
>And when the life leaves the world and someone is declared to be deceased
I would argue the same thing about 'deceased' being dependent on technical reversibility at the time (Unless a thermodynamically irreversible change has occurred, of course, because regardless of what Prisco thinks there *is* a line), but I think that point has been made to death.
>If a person is found frozen in the river, then OK, try to revive them for a while.
Where does a depressed enough metabolism become death?
> Where does a depressed enough metabolism become death?
When somebody has the effrontery to say out loud,
"I don't believe in fairies!"?
>When somebody has the effrontery to say out loud,
>"I don't believe in fairies!"?
So, a little below the glass transition point?
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