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"Surrogacy" is a classic bioethics problem for a reason.
The question of the 21st century, and (hopefully!) beyond, is what role humans will play in the future. We are accustomed to using the word "dehumanizing" as a pejorative, as we treat pretty much everything else in the world worse than we treat one another (which is often saying something...)--so to be not human is by definition to be less than human. But "dehumanize" can be a purely descriptive term.
(This is also a big part of AI anxiety, I think--if there's something higher than us on the intellectual food chain, doesn't that make us food? See e.g. The Matrix as an early example of taking this somewhat literally...)
For hundreds of thousands of years at least, maternal affection has been a matter of life and death for our species. There is basically nothing more fundamentally human, except perhaps the act of heterosexual coupling that creates infants in the first place. And (perhaps contra some other commenters) I think there are fully human roads to practices like adoption (women have often shared the task of breastfeeding with other women, e.g.).
But artificial reproductive technologies--even as basic as your IUI "turkey baster" techniques"--head down a slippery slope. By applying technological progress to ourselves, we objectify humanity itself. We step outside our species, however slightly, and subject ourselves to egregorian evolution (usually, Moloch).
So my own perspective on this is that the problem isn't the womb rental (so to speak) per se. It's the fact that we don't approach it with a clear and widespread understanding that it is in fact transhumanist to do. That the resulting relationships are transhuman relationships. That the mother of this child has been used, for a time, as (spoilers for Dune):an axlotl tank (e.g.--mildly NSFW)
Is it wrong, to "rent out" the human body? Is it wrong, to deprive a human child of a mother? I'm open to the possibility, and doing such things has historically been closely associated with monumental evil, in the details even if not in the act itself. But I think the problem in the case of surrogacy for same-sex couples is precisely that we insist on pretending that there's "nothing to it," rather than observing that this is transhumanism in action, the activity of reducing our bodies to the level of chattel--to the level of moveable property, of mere technology. Philosophers have long observed that the body is mechanical in nature!
I consider myself fairly pro-transhumanism. I would like us to be more than we are, and I would like us to approach that in a careful and thoughtful way. But we don't actually have the technology to make that happen, yet, and if we ever do I think it will be an extinction-class event for our species. People who do transhumanesque things now--employ surrogacy for same sex "reproduction," have their sex organs removed to fulfill a personal aesthetic, etc.--are like small children "playing house" in alarmingly sexual ways, doing grown-up things without adult supervision or a mature understanding of what they do. It is a form of arrested development; unable or unwilling to accept the reality of the world they live in, gay men buy children so they can play house. But matters are not so simple, and the resulting child will be raised without some historically central human experiences. It is not nice to say that makes them "less than human," but in the fully transhuman sense, it clearly makes them less human. I hasten to add--there are many experiences we may all have, in this sense, that make us "less human!" But even so, it seems like a terrible thing to deliberately inflict such things on biological humans who have not chosen transhumanism for themselves.
I still think parents in some form or another are necessary for psychiatric health. It seems like just observationally a lot of social pathologies and mental health issues went through the roof after the widespread use of institutional daycares and preschool. We’ve essentially been kenneling our kids for much of their waking lives, and im becoming much more convinced that, especially if it starts young, it has a lot of negative impacts on the mental health of the child as they can’t form the strong family bonds that existed for most of human history. It’s actually a pretty odd social experiment that we did to ourselves without thinking about it.
If you think about a child in daycare maybe a good one will have 2 adults and 8-10 kids. That child is a number. Not the caregiver’s fault, but she’s not the kid’s parent and she can’t care as much as a parent could. And even if she did, she has other children to worry about. Now this starts in the USA especially in infancy maybe 8 weeks or so, depending on the leave offered to the mother (fathers rarely get leave). And because it covers the working hours of parents, including commute, you might have a child in daycare from 8am to 6pm and be putting the baby to bed soon after. The child gets weekends with mom and dad, and spends most of the time in institutional care.
Going further to deprive future children of any parental bonding at all would likely make that situation much worse. I suspect that it would create sociopathic behaviors in most children in that situation. How does a child learn to care about others if they never received the same care themselves? Could they feel the pain and suffering they cause another human being? If they could, would they care?
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"It's the fact that we don't approach it with a clear and widespread understanding that it is in fact transhumanist to do."
Who's this "we" here? I assume you're talking about the United States, a country of crypto grifters, tradthot inflooencers, transgender mixed martial artists, strip club owners, obese Alex Jones fans, feminists horrified by male sexuality, white nationalists with Asian wives, bible thumpers predicting the return of Jesus that never happens and elderly Jews still mad they got blackballed from the country club in 1972. Are "we" supposed to come together and have some reasonable, rational "conversation?"
If you don't think kids should be raised by two male homosexuals, you don't need "bioethics" for that. You could have gotten that from an illiterate peasant in Guatemala. "Bioethics" has not done a single good thing since it was thought up and belongs on the railroad tracks.
And what about the other 90% of the population? The existence of fringes doesn't undo the centre. Also this is a great argument against all democratic/discussion everywhere, including on this forum.
Bioethics is generally done badly but it's not inherently a bad idea. We could have bioethics where good, decent research is permitted and 'let me make some lethal bioweapons for no reason' research is restricted. Who wants complete laissez faire in this area? I am confident that you have a bioethics stance, just that it is in conflict with the bioethics community. You, I and many here are likely heretical bioethicists.
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I am very amused by this collection of Transmetropolitan-influenced caricatures.
Please, do go on.
Wow that was my thought exactly. Is that a well-known comic book in the US?
Sort of? Back in the late 00's I went on a torrenting binge of some of the big series: Transmet, Preacher, and Cerebus. Already read Sandman in the early 00s, and wanted more DC/Vertigo-themed stuff. They were some of the big ones talked about back then.
Are they still recommended? No idea, not my scene any more.
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In the comics scene for sure, but in a "here's the 6 classic graphic novels you have to read" sense where most people have maybe read the first issue for the cred then nothing else. Although Ellis got cancelled a few years back, so he has been downplayed in normie spaces.
I read all of it, but I always thought it was a niche (not a comic book guy, it was recommended to me by one). Also I missed his cancellation, what did he do?
The short version is that he is/was attracted to a certain sort of woman highly represented by his fan base, is famous enough to take advantage of it, and managed this lifestyle poorly. His status in the comics/nerdy interest world was sufficient to allow him to form a sort of rolling soft harem of young (younger than him anyway) women around the English-speaking world. His particular approach (game?) seems to have been to make these women feel special and unique, and that they had a special and unique relationship with him.
Based on the hit-site (https://somanyofus.com/) that his "victims" made, he seems to have made at least 60 or so young women feel that they had a special, unique relationship with him, many simultaneously. The Pick Up people call this “spinning plates”, keeping multiple, limited commitment, relationships all going at once. His particular approach seems to have really made these damaged women think that there was more of a future to the relationship than there really was, and he seemed prone to ‘ghosting’ them without warning. Some famous men are able to manage something not unlike this, but they usually do so through honesty about the limited future of the relationship, where these women seem to genuinely feel to have been strung along then unceremoniously dropped without notice.
Reading some of the statements in the above website, it also gives a bit of a soft cult leader vibe too. He had a rather large online presence in the 00s and interacted with his fan groups a lot, more than I’ve seen with a lot of popular artists who tend to keep a more distant approach through an agent or assistant etc. He seemed to be personally running the Warren Ellis fan forums and appointing admins/mods etc. I was very active online then, but was never much of a comics reader, though many of my friends were. I don’t remember any other artists/authors being this directly involved in their own fandoms. He paid a lot of attention to his forums, fan groups, and the events they held, always keeping an eye out for one of his "type" of woman, who he would then begin to directly message.
The hit-site is worth reading, I think, at least for young (and maybe not so young) men. Particularly the “Testimonials” (https://somanyofus.com/testimonials)
It’s an incredible collection of the wide variety of red flags they may encounter interacting with modern, western women, and object lessons on the dangers of mishandling your interactions with the same.
Thanks for the exhaustive reply. What's the type of woman you're referring to, though? Should I be able to infer that from context? (Aside from "young, attractive") Sorry if that's on the website you linked, I haven't read it yet
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How many others just saw this post in the comments feed and went "Wait, why would Neil Gaiman be moderating Warren Ellis fan forums?" before clicking it?
You got me, it appears Neil used Ellis's playbook too.
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It appeared to me to be the typical 'guy who likes kinky things who got consent before engaging but isn't handsome enough to retain consent in the face of metoo' thing, but he apologised for it and who, aside from The Shadow, knows what lurks in the hearts of men?
What did you think of transmetropolitan? I might be disappointed in him, but that doesn't affect his work and Ellis is one of my favourite modern authors. Transmetropolitan was the last work of his I read though (it was basically impossible to get here for a long time) and I found it a bit of a slog. His later works are a lot more editor friendly.
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Wrote a whole post on it:
https://alexanderturok.substack.com/p/somewhere-in-america-2
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Agreed that we don't need bioethics to answer generally applicable questions like 'Should a pair of sodomites buy a child from a desperate woman to raise themselves?'. But in specific cases like priority for organ transplants it still has a use.
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But what if I don’t pull the lever?
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Why is it egregorian and not just normal evolution? Of course, some have considered even the normal kind to be Moloch, but I dont think thats why youre saying.
It is human nature to have no home in this sense.
The lesson of many x-risk discussions is that actual extinction is on the table much more rarely than it seems. It certainly will be very euessentialistic though. I agree that in the rationalsphere, the people who like transhumanism and the ones who should dont overlap all that much.
Biological evolution gives us individuals. Egregores are (roughly) patterns of collective action. The latter is emergent from the former; this is not metaphysically uncontroversial, but I don't think reductionism is useful in this particular context. YMMV!
Yes, but humans are also biologically selected for certain patterns of collective action - thats part of normal evolution for a social species.
The most interesting questions arise from the idea of the memetic immune system. What pressures does natural selection exert on the memetic immune system?
An egregore is in competition for minds with other egregores, much as a fox is in competition for rabbits with other foxes, but with a twist. Human minds are not its food, but its substrate. Call an egregore fertile if it encourages the women it occupies (cordyceps?) to have many children. Call an egregore barren if it discourages this. Natural selection works on egregores to improve their own reproduction, we might call this their infectivity, but also to be fertile rather than barren so that they have more substrate to infect. Meanwhile natural selection works on the human genome, hoping to generate subtle memetic immune systems that are vulnerable to fertile egregores, but resistant to barren egregores.
You could go all in on reductionism and say it is just natural selection, but this will be an obstacle to understanding the tangled mess when people and egregores are evolving a subtle mutualism.
Another more subtle selective pressure in this scenario is for egregores to encourage other woman to pass around barren egregores, and to discourage other woman to pass around fertile egregores.
One might suppose that this also results in selective pressures on the human genome to be asymptomatic carriers of barren egregores (i.e. pass them on to other woman, but to not be actually affected by it themselves). And the opposite for fertile egregores - i.e. to be heavily affected by them but not pass them on to others.
Again, all of these are more subtle effects in the presence of limited total resources.
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...did you even look at the link, maybe? Or read what I wrote about reductionism not being useful in the context of this conversation? You're not saying anything I don't know, but perhaps more importantly, you're not saying anything you shouldn't anticipate me knowing. In the end, we're presumably all just subatomic particles doing what subatomic particles do! Your question was "why is it egregorian and not just normal evolution" and my answer was "because evolution describes biological patterns and arrangements, while egregores describe social patterns and arrangments." Your response appears to be "nah those aren't different things" but they are at least as different as diamond and graphite, for which we have different words despite their consisting of the same atomic substrate.
Maybe it would just be simpler to point out that British-descended humans in Britain, America, and Australia clearly share "normal evolution" in common--but not egregorian memespace?
Or maybe I just don't understand your question at all.
You said that transhumanism is "subjecting ourselves to egregorian evolution". Im saying that biological evolution already has egregorian emerging things. My point is not whether the egregorians reduce or anything, its whether "Now with transhumanism, we are under the influence of egregorian evolution, whereas previous evolution didnt have that".
I did not understand your question at all!
I think the answer will depend on where one draws a number of lines within important continua. Not everyone agrees (as far as I know) on the extent to which human civilization (and related egregore(s)) has or has not guided human biological evolution, so I didn't want to hinge my argument on prior agreement on that particular point. But I'm sure there is more than one way to usefully conceptualize the problem; if you prefer, for example, it wouldn't be incompatible with the substance of my post to suggest instead that competing egregores are at issue.
Right, because the part thats old enough that were sure it has is not called "civilisation". We certainly have some adaptations to language use for example, and its development was an emergent social thing.
You mean like this?
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Please explain.
Well its not eugenic in a strict sense, because uploads or whatever dont have genes, and even if genes do stick around, rewriting means that they live according to the mind now. And yet, there will in many ways be persistent tendencies that are selected upon - the principles of evolution dont need any specific theory of inheritance.
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This made me think a lot and I broadly agree. I think by applying technology to ourselves in unthinking ways we make ourselves lesser, somehow.
Personally I think we need to incorporate technology into sacred ritual, especially when it treads on things so fundamental.
Praise the Omnissiah.
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I really don't see this as a compelling concern.
The 'Human Experience' is incredibly diverse, to say the least. Is an orphan, someone raised in an institution and lacking any parents, less human because of it?
I find that impossible to entertain.
Orphans do poorly mostly because of selection effects, especially if we consider extend our consideration to those who were abandoned by less than scrupulous birth parents but had the misfortune of still inheriting their genes (the only thing they got out of that bum deal).
Another illustrative case is that comparative studies show that most of the harms of not being raised with a father in the household arise from deadbeat dads, those who lost their fathers to sickness or accidents come out as normal as anyone else.
I have great contempt for most so-called ethicists, and as far as I'm concerned, mutually positive sum transactions between consenting individuals should be accepted, if not celebrated. Humans are finicky things, and the idea of surrogacy doesn't mean that the woman who bore the child escapes the hormonal and emotional consequences despite knowing on an intellectual level that the baby growing in their wombs isn't genetically related to them. But if they signed a contract accepting this, then that's that. I understand surrendering the baby might be immensely painful, and is an entirely legitimate feeling. After all, nobody is particularly surprised by adoptive parents being fond of their adopted children.
If this woman agreed to birth the child, even if it was her eggs that were used in the process, then I do not see any room for her to complain about handing the baby to Altman and his husband. Not that there's any evidence of this, I'm not aware of someone weeping and wailing on television, bemoaning that a cruel near-billionaire has snatched a waif away from her breast. She might not even want any publicity.
I fail to see much reason to care if future humans are gestated in the 'ol biological 3D printer, or in an external replica of such. At the very least, it's a technology with massive positive potential in a world with declining birth rates, and anything that makes the process of reproduction less of a hassle has its merits. I don't see the downsides as being worth much airtime in this case.
Would you say the same about the sale of heroin between a dealer and a buyer?
If your answer is anything but yes, doesn't that suggest there are at least some cases where making the option of something available is a net negative to at least one of the individuals in question, even when they are able to consent?
Yes. I'd legalize the sale of heroin from a buyer to the seller. I'd be okay with heavy taxes on it, and would absolutely be for imposing strict penalties on all the negative externalities it would cause.
If someone buys heroin and does it in their home without hassling anyone else, that's their business. If they become addicted and commit crime, then they should face punishment. If they lose their jobs and need to be bailed out, that should be conditional on a good faith attempt at seeking medical treatment and adhering to the treatment regime prescribed.
You won't catch me going on the street protesting for it to be legalized, because I have better things to do, but I wouldn't stand in the way.
After all, I am in the business of occasionally needing to prescribe fentanyl and morphine, and given that the patient pays for it directly, or indirectly through taxes or insurance, that counts as selling it. Doctors are, among other things, fent dealers. If that can be done without causing society to collapse in flames, other alternative arrangements might well work.
Both doctors and society in general has a duty of care that extends in not providing people heroin. Now there is a balance to this that means that fredom tm and other considerations might matter with certain less harmful substances enough, but there is a line.
I think we had a discussion about this before, but that you don't care about the line doesn't mean that you aren't breaking clear good ethical norms here that a doctor especially shouldn't break. Doctors are especially the kind of people who ought to think about what is their patient's best interest and not what their patient might be requesting at the moment.
It is in fact immoral and parasitic to profit from selling what is harmful to others. There can be a debate about some more grey areas, but there is a line above which it becomes pretty clear that you have activity that is just harming people.
But aren't addicts morally culpable on a significant level? Of course. Although there might be some more sympathetic stories. But so are people selling heroin and to a lesser extend those allowing them to do so. You discourage and condemn all three to get a society without the malaise of significant drug addiction and death due to it. While you allow, encourage, and side with all three to get the society with these problems. It is a choice that will end with the different outcomes with a clear right and wrong side.
I'd like to point that there's a distinction between a random person selling someone else heroin, and me doing the same thing. I would, of course, hold myself to a higher standard and not disburse it if it wasn't a necessity. That's what I would do if ever had to prescribe diamorphine, the term used not to scare the hoes.
Even in a setting where the usual legal and ethical constraints I'm obliged to follow (if I wish to keep my license) were waived, if someone came up to asking heroin, and it wasn't in the context of overwhelming pain in a hospital, I'd politely tell them I'm not comfortable doing that, and that they should look elsewhere.
I am okay with letting other people do things that might harm them, especially if they know what they're getting into, that doesn't mean I want to make things worse myself.
Sure. I'm happy to concede that. I don't think that changes my overall stance that blanket illegality shouldn't be the means of regulating this.
If I'm allowed to daydream, everyone old enough to vote takes a Rational Adult exam, potentially one that's subdivided into multiple ascending tiers of difficulty. The more you pass, the more you are allowed to do, because the presumption is that you've proven yourself intelligent enough to be responsible for yourself. For an existence proof, look at driving tests.
Maybe have people pay for bonds. Maybe allow insurance companies to charge them more for risky behavior. Tax negative external ties and strongly punish anything that spills out of personal bounds.
I don't really care about moral culpability, at best I consider it an occasionally useful fiction. You get a pass if you've got a brain tumor or something, that's the way people look at things.
I don't condone giving heroin away to school children. I am willing to look away when an adult buys it off another adult with no coercion involved. If it's a situation where coercion is the default assumption, have them sign a legal contract first. I see liberty that extends only to doing things that society deems are Good For You a pale imitation of the real deal, and I accept the consequences.
So, you don't like "blanket illegality" for heroin, but you are totally ok with a kind of authoritarian state evaluation (with follow on coerced financial behavior) of your intelligence, psychology, and ability for self-determination.
Yes?
Have you ever had to take a driving test? Do you want to legally prescribe heroin? You'd have to sit for a medical licensing exam after med school. This isn't a massive deviation from normality.
Nowhere does it say that these have to be particularly onerous exams, except potentially at the most extreme end. Basic franchises should be accessible by someone who doesn't have a learning disability, a reversal of the situation where we extend blanket permission for non-illegal acts, and only then restrict freedom for those, such as the mentally retarded or grannies with dementia, who can't be expected to take responsibility for their own safety and well-being.
Who would approve the questions and composition of your "Rational Adult" exam? State legislatures? The Federal government?
I'd like to request a straightforward answers. Are you saying that bureaucrats and/or elected politicians will be granted authority to prepare an exam that deems be sufficiently "rational"?
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Surely the same duty that applies to you, applies to others. Doctors are probably going to be a source of the drugs.
It isn't just something that you simply aren't comfortable of doing but a moral obligation that extends to other doctors and people in general. It is a duty not to do it and such an important duty that they ought to be restricted from selling what is essentially addictive poison.
It is not a fiction however but central to morality. Someone who is selling heroin to others is a terrible person who engages in what is correctly treated as a criminal activity.
In this case, it isn't about what society deems to be good for you but what is genuinely good for you.
Which heroin definitely is not. The freedom to take and sell heroin is not a worthy one. It also hardly the case that liberty is enshrined here when the end result is someone who becomes an addict. There is a higher liberty that is satisfied by not selling and not buying heroin, morally condemning the practice, and restricting it as well.
It is also about what kind of society you want and will get. Your hiding a refusal to do the pro social duty behind liberty.
Another analogous case would be making it illegal to put poison in food even if there is a willing buyer who is unaware.
Allowing selling your self or one's dependents to slavery, or selling your eyes, would also be the kind of thing that reduces liberty, and doesn't enshrine it. I don't see liberty but slavery when looking at drug addicts.
I would agree however that any moral obligation and any paternalism towards addicts and others who make poor decisions should be limited or else it becomes pathological altruism and parasitical at expense of more productive citizens.
Noblese oblige and paternalism only so far but it does include having a society that tries not to take advantage of these kind of people.
What you are proposing would be a betrayal to the principle of no regulation = liberty.
Plus smart people even though less than others, do stupid self destructive things too. Having a country that restricts heroin and has policies that lead to less drug abuse would result in a country that some of the people who were to become addicts would have lead successful lives. Avoiding having places that are notoriously filled with "zombies".
Maybe this makes sense for something like crypto but makes less sense for heroin. Your proposal would surely lead to more restrictions than just banning the worst things.
It does make sense for some industries to limit them in some capacity when it comes to gambling, porn ,etc. Still, the fact that you are willing to support something much more restrictive does undermine the claim that liberty to sell and buy heroin is an important principle. It is not. The duty of caring about the end result of heroin being sold and bought is a much more important consideration.
Why? If we're restricting ourselves to what seems to be a rather minarchist AnCap Utopia, why is it that only doctors would be licensed to sell it?
Once again, my own views, and not representative of current reality:
Anyone can get a license to prescribe anything. They go to a government body that makes them pay a recurring sum that is a fair estimate of expected negative externalities, or what would have come out of the public purse. For highly addictive drugs, this would certainly be an enormous sum. It might even be legally required to buy insurance on the free market. Think of this as a more generalized form of malpractice insurance as paid by doctors, if you don't show proof of funds then too bad for you.
It might be framed as a bond, due to be returned with interest after X years, but any violations would be deducted from it. If they sold to someone with an Adult Card, then they'd be cleared of much of the liability.
Good luck on getting people to come to a true consensus on what is "good for you". A stable equilibrium is allowing people to choose for themselves, as long as they don't abuse the privilege by hurting others.
As far as I'm concerned, the State should not be in the business of being a nanny, and if it insists, then people should be allowed to opt out or form enclaves of like-minded people.
I re-iterate that I'm not a monomaniacal zealot. This counts as a concession, a mild step back from Absolute Freedom (or outright anarchy). I think your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.
I am willing to trade away a non-zero amount of freedom for other terminal values I have. I just value freedom more than most.
I disagree. We currently do something maybe sorta kinda like what I propose, but in a half-baked manner without underlying guiding thought more than the whims of the Current Year.
That is your opinion. I express my love and sense of duty towards my "fellow man" by hoping I can treat them like intelligent adults who can decide for themselves, and ask the same in turn.
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Would do you think of the ability to bring back to life basically people who overdose? I forget the name of the drug but it starts with an N if memory serves. Maybe Narcan or something like that.
You're correct, though Narcan is a brand name.
What about it? I mean, I feel like most people have no objection to its existence, and consider it a very good thing to have around. You might have a few junkies start whaling on you because you ruined a perfectly good high as far they were concerned (they don't care about the fact that they stopped breathing).
You talked about making junkies internalize their costs whilst narcan seems to be the opposite.
I'm not a zealot, you won't see me holding a copy of Atlas Shrugged while putting a padlock on a public park.
In the UK, I've never seen Narcan dispensers in public. I presume only paramedics would carry them.
In the US? I've heard of them being in half the stores, people carrying them just in case, and so on.
If someone feels morally obliged to whip it out when they see an addict ODing, why on earth would I condemn the kindness of strangers? If they weren't carrying anything, and didn't do more than call 911 and walk away, I won't condemn them either.
Don't get me wrong. I think the opioid epidemic in the US needs addressing. I'm all for rounding up junkies and making them take their meds and go through a rehab program, but because they're criminals, a public nuisance and causing social chaos, not because they're drug-users.
I also think that in countries with publicly funded healthcare, states should have the right to deny coverage to those who refuse to address behaviors that impose exorbitant costs. You might be saved and treated free of charge the first time, but if you don't comply with further advice, then I don't object to the public washing their hands of you as a lost cause.
Some diseases are unavoidable, it's not like anyone asks to develop Type 1 diabetes or schizophrenia. I'm far more sympathetic to such cases, but not sane people who know the risks of addiction and show no signs of stopping, while expecting the rest of us to pick up after them.
Because their kindness results in more unkindness directed at others by the addicts they save.
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I think so, yes, but I think you have already used the phrase "less human" in a way that I was trying, however perhaps poorly, to move away from. I mean it in the same way that is meant when someone, after a long day of grimy work, emerges from a shower and says, "Ah! I feel human again."
Consider it this way: is it a tragedy, to be orphaned? Like--if there was a shortage of orphans, would it be okay to deliberately make some?
Because yes--yes, of course!--it is better for a child to be raised by loving and involved adopted parents (of whatever kind) than to be institutionalized, "raised" in the absence of intimate family relationships. Adoption is a little bit (if you're willing to limit the metaphor) like chemotherapy, or post-trauma limb amputation. You do it to save people from greater harm, but it's not the sort of thing you would do absent the initial tragedy. You don't adopt children because adoption is totally cool and we should make more orphans so more people can do it, you adopt children because something tragic has occurred that can't be perfectly fixed but maybe we can mitigate the harm.
Well, sure, probably she can't complain, at the personal level: she agreed to be used. She rented out her womb. But whether it's good public policy to let people rent out their wombs is not just a question of personal liberty. If we let people sell their organs, or become prostitutes, or replace their brains with digital machinery, that doesn't just change the lives of those who have consented to the change. It changes the cultural landscape. (If we allow people to sell themselves into slavery, this would be bad for society even if each individual involved was fully consenting.) Hence my reference to egregores like Moloch--everyone can individually be doing what is actually best for themselves, given the circumstances, and this can give rise to horrifying circumstances that no individual within the system can, or would even choose, to change.
I would like transhumanism to be deliberate, in other words, rather than allowing it to emerge accidentally.
I'm not saying you should be mad if future humans are bio-printed. I'm saying bio-printed people won't be humans, so it's a better future where our decision to bio-print transhumans fully accounts for the differences that will emerge between evolved beings, and designed ones. Especially if (when) the designed ones become noticeably superior in every way, given our own tendency to use as commodities those beings we regard as beneath us. If transhumans share this tendency, such future humans as may remain will be in some trouble.
Obviously not if the only way to manufacture orphans required their parents to be put to the sword.
But even today, that's not the case. Let's consider the entirely plausible hypothetical where someone's preserved eggs and semen outlasted them. There are couples who are entirely infertile, and unable to have biologically related children. Would I object if they wanted to create a child by going to a gene bank and getting a surrogate to birth a child whose biological parents were no longer alive?
Not at all. I see nothing wrong with that, everyone wins. Even the kid, because as far as I'm concerned, it's far better to be alive than not, and that's while grappling with severe clinical depression. Life is good! More lives are good!
Would anything change if instead of a surrogate, the couple seeking to adopt used an artificial womb? Not as far as I'm concerned, assuming mature technology with no deleterious effects on the child.
I hope that it illustrates that its possible, and good to at least sometimes create orphans when demand exceeds supply.
And I'm entirely fine with this change in the social landscape, or at the very least, I won't seek to oppose when it conflicts with my desire to maximize human liberty. I understand why people might disagree, I just consider it none of their business what I or other sane adults get up to in our spare time, of our own volition.
If someone tries to stop me from enhancing myself, with my own funds and my own body and mind at stake, then I'm not a man easily moved to violence, but I'd be looking for a gun.
The alternative to radical transhumanism is growing old and infirm, my brain rotting away and becoming riddled with holes like cheese gnawed by microscopic rodents. If the alternative is the same death that murdered the 97 billion anatomically modern humans before us, I am willing to fight to live. There is no way that is feasible without transhumanism.
Fortunately, as far as I'm concerned, this unlikely to come to pass, and the bio-chauvinists and luddites are unlikely to stop all progress.
I acknowledge Moloch as the Great Enemy. I do not think surrogacy or artificial wombs feeds it, and certainly doesn't strengthen it more than it strengthens us.
This is sadly a lost cause. But even I want transhumanism to be optional, and I have no issue with people who don't seek to embrace it. If people want to cling to the baseline human form, let them. I'm for being generous to them, giving them food and shelter, outright UBI. All I ask is that they don't get in the way of those with higher ambitions. And if their excuse is that they can't let me do as I wish, when it doesn't directly harm them, then the only option is war. I don't want that, but I'll do it if necessary. The tree of liberty might need regular watering.
I disagree that such people aren't human. I do, however, think that they are a better class of human than we are. Smarter, stronger, likely more moral and less prone to our failings. I seek to become them, and if that's not an option, ennoble my descendants.
Are baseline humans quite rightly concerned by the possibility of such a superior clade? Hell yes.
If they're not slightly anxious about potential replacement by beings smarter and more powerful than you, then they're a moron. You will inevitably find yourself at their mercy.
I, however, think it is possible to carefully engineer such posthumans, being they biological or otherwise, to still have empathy for their precursors. To actually extend us mercy, when we're at theirs. Any who can join them, should. We should also coordinate to prevent a Molochian tragedy where the universe is colonized by ever spreading swarms of minimally sentient Von Neumanns. But this doesn't stop me from being ready to fight to be better, and more free.
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