Posts
Comments
@TGGP
Oh no. Males aren't "demonic;" men are great. Yay, men. I find that whole thing quite overstated, frankly.
Sir Isaiah Berlin is so eloquent when he discusses the space of human action in his essay on Historical Inevitability. The space for human action may be more limited than we at first think; but it is not entirely removed. Value pluralism exists, but that doesn't mean we can't move forward once we have acknowledged and analyzed that, as Charles Blattberg argues.
Because we share the common ancestor and are probably stuck with monkey brains doesn't mean we cannot be better people. It just means that we have to devote ourselves to working harder to end self-deception, to devise institutions that work with what inherent structural incentives we may have, to reconcile and communicate. You know, overcome bias.
@James Andrix
"If uploading is consensual, only people willing to be uploaded will be uploaded"
How funny you should mention this. I listened to a debate on this just on Sunday afternoon. It seemed agreed that the real issue revolved around the meaning of informed consent, and how that changes when uploading becomes possible.
The most common reasons people choose to die - depression, Alzheimer's, cancer - might be made moot by that advance alone, eliminating any "rational" reason to die, one side thought. One woman argued uploading would an easy extension of EU human rights; to deny people uploading would be as barbarous as the death penalty.
I think she was trying to make an explicitly anti-Hansonian claim - she argued that uploading would actually increase the value and meaning of life, not lessen it. This may be a distinctive European form of social thought, I don't know.