promethea.incorporated

socialjusticemunchkin:

davidsevera:

collapsedsquid:

argumate:

collapsedsquid:

argumate:

@socialjusticemunchkin, you were recently talking about a libertarian approach to human genetic engineering, perhaps you would be interested in the dialogue conducted by @davidsevera under way at veracities.online on this very subject.

Given the number of libertarians and libertarian-leaning folk in these parts I am curious how the precautionary side of the debate will be received and whether anyone is willing to jump in and play devil’s advocate!

I sorta would want to argue about this, but my issues are about possible negative consequences rather than certainties.

In truth, I don’t think it should be categorically forbidden, but think some caution is in order.  One big issue is that the argument here is over a hypothetical we’re still a not at with consequences that won’t become apparent for a while. Honestly, the thing I would most want is for people not to oversell it.

Precautiones is all about the precautionary principle, after all! :)

There are some possible tragedy of the commons effects, as with existing issues like sex-selective abortion, which is just an extreme case of parents exercising choice over the genetics of their children.

(Also accidentally causing human extinction when parents universally choose mutations which boost IQ by ten points but also turn out to cause sterility, oops).

Yeah, one the big ones is: “We still don’t really understand the genome or the mind very well, please don’t accidentally make an entire generation of psychopaths“

It’s definitely too soon to know anything for certain. I think it’s interesting if not necessarily too useful at the moment to think through the potential pitfalls and probable dynamics as sort of a roadmap.

I’d imagine that, at least at first (and possibly for quite a long time?), any alterations to the genome would be made by selecting from within preexisting natural variation. Most personality traits are influenced by countless genes, so it’s not likely that we’d hit upon some weird combination of alleles that led to psychopathy, but there’s no guarantee of what might happen if we push the distribution of a given trait dramatically in one direction. Certainly I’d hope we have an understanding of how various pathologies arise well before making any major changes on a large scale, and I’d hope the research moves fairly slowly.

Libertes all the way.

My anarcho-utopian side says that letting children pursue grievances against their parents (instead of treating them as almost property like now) would be a far better solution than having men with guns kidnap or ransom people who try to do different things than what the mob wants them to do.

My cynical pragmatist side says: “Hello, convicted fucking criminal speaking; if the PoliceMob ransomed me for estradiol, how in hell would I trust them not to fuck up regulating genetic engineering just as horribly?” They can pry CRISPR from my cold, metallic upload hands once I can just sudo straight to my root account, but until then I will not surrender one inch of bodily autonomy.

Yes, there will be terrible consequences if we let parents CRISPR their kids freely, but the only way to reduce the obvious consequences would be to sweep them under the rug and turn them into even more terrible but just less-visible consequences with an FDA of genetic engineering. Sure, kids won’t have two heads, but neither will they have very useful augmentations. I’m not expecting anyone to start shooting bees or lightning from their fingertips so this is kind of a no-brainer.

Seriously, the things the system does to trans people or drug users are very illuminating of how it “wants” to treat all unpopular self-modifications and exercisings of bodily autonomy: with brutal repression and giving in only as little as it can. I won’t make its job one bit easier by consenting to such things instead of resisting all the way. I trust a free society to do better than the state, because the bar is set so low I’d need the help of an oil company to reach it (snark intended).

Or alternatively I could bring in an ultra-cynical third view: “obstructiones” (or something like that).

It would aim to stall the government and legitimate insurers’ involvement in genetic engineering as much as possible so that the statist-controlled parts of society don’t fuck everyone over with it, while not allowing the tech to be banned entirely but just shifted underground and limited to people who have an interest and an opportunity in using it.

For example, right now people who want to obtain modafinil can buy it from India for relatively non-obscene prices, or get a prescription from some cooperative doctor, but the system doesn’t make people use modafinil routinely or try to eradicate it altogether.

The obvious downside would be the increase in inequality when only tech-savvy early adopters can CRISPR their kids, but if one has optimistic agorist tendencies or a very bleak view of humanity as a whole it is at least one possible option.

In fact, I’d expect that this is basically what precautiones would degenerate into in reality unless the enforcers want to get really super-oppressive (which I do think is a possibility though, because the mob gets really riled over this); biohackers currently implant magnets etc. without “proper” medical supervision and it hasn’t exactly stopped us (okay, not having easy access to anaesthetics stopped me from getting a finger magnet because I’m a wimp, but the person I live with does have one) from doing such things, and when technology becomes cheaper and more easily available, the underground would survive if it isn’t treated in an outright eradicatory way.

(via socialjusticemunchkin)

2 months ago · 23 notes · source: argumate · .permalink

davidsevera:

collapsedsquid:

argumate:

collapsedsquid:

argumate:

@socialjusticemunchkin, you were recently talking about a libertarian approach to human genetic engineering, perhaps you would be interested in the dialogue conducted by @davidsevera under way at veracities.online on this very subject.

Given the number of libertarians and libertarian-leaning folk in these parts I am curious how the precautionary side of the debate will be received and whether anyone is willing to jump in and play devil’s advocate!

I sorta would want to argue about this, but my issues are about possible negative consequences rather than certainties.

In truth, I don’t think it should be categorically forbidden, but think some caution is in order.  One big issue is that the argument here is over a hypothetical we’re still a not at with consequences that won’t become apparent for a while. Honestly, the thing I would most want is for people not to oversell it.

Precautiones is all about the precautionary principle, after all! :)

There are some possible tragedy of the commons effects, as with existing issues like sex-selective abortion, which is just an extreme case of parents exercising choice over the genetics of their children.

(Also accidentally causing human extinction when parents universally choose mutations which boost IQ by ten points but also turn out to cause sterility, oops).

Yeah, one the big ones is: “We still don’t really understand the genome or the mind very well, please don’t accidentally make an entire generation of psychopaths“

It’s definitely too soon to know anything for certain. I think it’s interesting if not necessarily too useful at the moment to think through the potential pitfalls and probable dynamics as sort of a roadmap.

I’d imagine that, at least at first (and possibly for quite a long time?), any alterations to the genome would be made by selecting from within preexisting natural variation. Most personality traits are influenced by countless genes, so it’s not likely that we’d hit upon some weird combination of alleles that led to psychopathy, but there’s no guarantee of what might happen if we push the distribution of a given trait dramatically in one direction. Certainly I’d hope we have an understanding of how various pathologies arise well before making any major changes on a large scale, and I’d hope the research moves fairly slowly.

Libertes all the way.

My anarcho-utopian side says that letting children pursue grievances against their parents (instead of treating them as almost property like now) would be a far better solution than having men with guns kidnap or ransom people who try to do different things than what the mob wants them to do.

My cynical pragmatist side says: “Hello, convicted fucking criminal speaking; if the PoliceMob ransomed me for estradiol, how in hell would I trust them not to fuck up regulating genetic engineering just as horribly?” They can pry CRISPR from my cold, metallic upload hands once I can just sudo straight to my root account, but until then I will not surrender one inch of bodily autonomy.

Yes, there will be terrible consequences if we let parents CRISPR their kids freely, but the only way to reduce the obvious consequences would be to sweep them under the rug and turn them into even more terrible but just less-visible consequences with an FDA of genetic engineering. Sure, kids won’t have two heads, but neither will they have very useful augmentations. I’m not expecting anyone to start shooting bees or lightning from their fingertips so this is kind of a no-brainer.

Seriously, the things the system does to trans people or drug users are very illuminating of how it “wants” to treat all unpopular self-modifications and exercisings of bodily autonomy: with brutal repression and giving in only as little as it can. I won’t make its job one bit easier by consenting to such things instead of resisting all the way. I trust a free society to do better than the state, because the bar is set so low I’d need the help of an oil company to reach it (snark intended).

2 months ago · tagged #the best heuristic for oppressed people since sharp stick time · 23 notes · source: argumate · .permalink

shlevy:

People in the comments of the latest SSC are already pointing out that he seems to be understating the possible dangers of coordinated “meanness”*, but more worrisome to me is the flip side: if coordination is the minimum bar, then you should never be assertive or contrary unless you can convince a big enough** group that you’re in the right. Sure, argue all you want*** for your beliefs, but until you’ve won don’t you dare act on it, that would be unsafe and unstable!

A slave who escapes to freedom, a gay couple holding hands in an intensely homophobic community, a doctor in, say, Massachusetts refusing to perform an abortion, a vegetarian declining meat served to them, etc. can all be in violation of this coordination rule. How do we decide which are OK to do? At some point, you have to get below the meta level and actually evaluate the moral object level situation at hand. It’s true that people have made horrible choices based on their object level moral beliefs****, but hiding behind abstraction and symmetry isn’t actually a viable option much of the time.

* Accepting the mean/nice dichotomy as somehow important in morality is another issue here

** And who decides what “big enough” is here?

*** If you’re lucky enough to live in a society with free speech norms… otherwise, I guess you’re limited to private agitation among people who you’re confident won’t be hurt by your arguments?

**** It’s also true that people have made horrible choices based on their meta level moral beliefs, so.

If only we had a very easy heuristic for deciding when something is an actual violation of important rules and when something is just people wanting to be assholes to unpopular people… something like “auto-determination” or “bodily self-nomy” or something like that…

2 months ago · tagged #the best heuristic for oppressed people since sharp stick time · 19 notes · source: shlevy · .permalink

nniihilsupernum:

cryopearl:

shunthewitch:

cryopearl:

Everybody that reblogs this by May 10th will get a traditionally drawn character based on what I think you look like after scrolling through your blog

I think he will have stopped because of how many fucking people xD

nope, im doing everybody that reblogs this! the only thing its doing is making it take a bit longer. i could easily put out 20 or 30 of them in a day, maybe even more if im feeling productive (i draw a lot in my spare time), so really, its just giving me more practice, which is good. im not stopping because of the numbers!

i doubt the person posting this will be able to get to 36k people bc that’s like a multi-year project but ill draw a character based on anyone who reblogs this from me

I am quite interested in how I appear in the headcanon of someone with such peculiarly different sensibilities.

(via nniihilsupernum)

2 months ago · 84,610 notes · source: cryopearl · .permalink

police state/planned/knowledge/eudaimonia

oligopsony:

share if u agree

No no no no no

Data Angels/democracy/free market/knowledge/eudaimonic

• +4 economy: yay 3d-printers for everyone!
• +3 efficiency: blockchains not bureaucrats
• -2 support: we are not going to have such unicivilized things as soldiers…
• -2 morale: …because people would be just like “fuck that shit I’m outta here”
• -6 police: we seriously are not going to be even theoretically able to have oppressive policing, this is full post-scarcity cryptoanarchy
• +4 growth: we’re going to be way past the demographic transition so I’m assuming this is mostly immigrants and nobody dying of old age
• -3 planet: yeah, wipe out the mosquitoes and good riddance I say
• +2 industry: 3d-printers for everyone, even big ones
• +2 research: and science too because science is cool and important

Also, the game is just silly in not allowing me to combine cybernetic and eudaimonic for a proper post-scarcity society

(via oligopsony-deactivated20160508)

2 months ago · tagged #yeah the last one was really tough #utter agony in fact #and the -9 police from cyber would have been so hilarious #even more ACAB for proper anarchy #the rest was pretty obvious no-brainers #shitposting · 12 notes · .permalink

slatestarscratchpad:

I usually try not to be the kind of rationalist who is like “my superior powers of deduction have determined after five minutes of study that all world experts are wrong about this issue”.

But my superior powers of deduction have determined after five minutes of study that all the media sources and Bitcoin experts reporting that Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto are wrong, and I’m willing to put like 90% probability on that.

Isn’t this the exact same guy who was almost-proven to be a fraud like in December or something? The one who wanted to make up some money to evade tax authorities, who used algorithms not invented in 2009 for something supposedly from 2009 etc.?

2 months ago · 41 notes · source: slatestarscratchpad · .permalink

kjack89:

Ugh I just…as much as I loved the video of Lin-Manuel and Emma Watson sorting Hamilton characters into Hogwarts Houses, I was hoping that we had maybe gotten to the point where we can stop automatically casting the protagonist in Gryffindor without any further discussion because seriously. Hamilton is a Slytherin.

Hamilton’s defining characteristic is his ambition, his burning desire to make a name for himself and to leave a legacy. It’s what motivates just about every decision he makes. That’s not a Gryffindor quality (I mean, I’m not saying that Gryffindors can’t be ambitious, any more than Slytherins can’t be brave – it’s just a much more defining characteristic of Slytherins [”And power-hungry Slytherin loved those of great ambition”]). From the beginning, Hamilton is obsessed with making a name for himself and while that allows him to make some choices that seem brave or noble on their surface, they’re all with the goal of rising above his station (consider: anything in the Revolutionary War; the Reynolds Pamphlet; even his death).

In many ways, Burr, who I also consider a Slytherin, and Hamilton represent both ends of Slytherin spectrum – both would use any means to achieve their ends, though their means are quite opposite. And for both of them, ambition and pride is their downfall, though again, in different and contrasting ways.

And in the Harry Potter universe, it becomes clearer that Hamilton would be a Slytherin. Imagine little eleven-year-old bastard orphan (son of a whore and a Scotsman…) Hamilton rolling up to Hogwarts with no name, just the burning need to make a name for himself. And when he puts the Sorting Hat on his head and tells him, “A nice thirst to prove yourself…You could be great, and Slytherin will help you on your way to greatness”, how could Hamilton say anything but yes?

(And of course, imagine little Hamilton running up to the Slytherin prefect Aaron Burr, when first-years aren’t supposed to just talk to prefects, to ask him in that piping voice, “Pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir?”)

(And then also imagine Burr and Hamilton many years later, facing each other, wands raised, both prepared to do whatever it took – Hamilton aiming his wand at the sky, Burr firing the curse that would kill Hamilton and break him, in the end.)

I’d go on, including more from Hamilton’s actual life instead of just the show, but instead I’ll stop here and say TLDR - #yourfavoritesareslytherin2k16

(via youarenotthewalrus)

2 months ago · tagged #slytherin positivity #slytherin role models · 1,586 notes · source: kjack89 · .permalink