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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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Surgery bad

I agree! Sorry on mobile and can’t copy/paste here for some reason.

I have been pushed by doctors to opt into expensive and unnecessary surgeries for issues like TMJ and carpal tunnel syndrome. I luckily decided not to, and after many years of stress management/exercise my issues have largely subsided. That experience also drastically shifted my perspective on modern medicine!

To elucidate my position a bit more, I am not a die hard transhumanist planning to have Elon Musk plant chips in my brain to give me telepathy. I think @DaseindustriesLtd and I are mostly aligned in that I want to defeat the Great Enemy: death itself. My ideal scenario is something like cryonics and/or life extension eliminating death of natural causes. I don’t care too much whether we achieve superhuman powers, as long as like @aqouta has mentioned, we have more time to spend on our loved ones and enjoyable activities.

We already prevent death with pretty much all medicine. I agree the line to artificially bringing us above the “baseline” level of human so to speak is more fraught, but I think the comparison to medicine works perfectly when you talk about preventing death.