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Interesting point! I hope self_made_human has joined the site migration, would love to hear their thoughts on this.
How do you feel about body modification in ways that are distinctly non-human? Not necessarily talking about furry-type animal transmogrification, but more steampunk/cyborg style turning yourself into a car or something equally outlandish.
Not self_made but I'm in favour of non-human body modification, although only with seriously advanced technology. My idea of a good future is mass uploading people into star-faring battleships with an agreed upon distribution of the Solar system's resources and sunlight. Someone might get 1/200000 of Titan, others would get asteroids to mine and do what they want with them. There would be a relatively equal distribution of wealth and power between the richest and the poorest so people would have a chance to gang up against anyone seeking to conquer the worlds. Posthumanist libertarian confederation of citizens, basically what the US Founding Fathers desired but with more technology.
If you can turn someone into a car, then you can turn someone into a spaceship. The prerequisite, taking the brain out of the body, means you're about 90% of the way to the latter IMO.
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I don't really forsee this as becoming a thing any time soon. Sure, there will always been outlandish people that end up in vice news articles, but the human body remains the most versitile form in terms of ergonomics and utility.
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Most of my thoughts on this are driven by the practicalities of things we can do right now; I see no reason, assuming all technological restraints were lifted, that anyone shouldn't be able to do anything they want with their bodies.
Similarly, I feel like the only strong arguments against transitioning genders stem from the fact that our bio-engineering isn't up to snuff.
Although if we get to a decent level of bio-engineering, there'll still be debate over whether it is better to engineer your body to match up with how your brain works, or to engineer your brain to be comfortable with the body.
Maybe it won't matter so much then.
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It's not just that the engineering is up to snuff, it's that people think that it is, and want to force everyone else to act like it is.
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I honestly think outside of a small (mostly religious) minority, most people feel that way. The issue is mostly about societal acceptance of trans people and about what others think of them.
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Wheelers for instance. ...We have enough trouble maintaining a belief in shared humanity. I'm not sure widespread optimization for literal inhumanity of form would lead to anything good. We've chased that stuff in media because we enjoy novelty, but we enjoy novelty in controlled and carefully curated contexts.
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