Comment on Failed Utopia #4-2

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 03:08:06 GMT

Hey, Z. M., you know the things people in your native subculture have been saying about most of human speech being about signaling and politics rather than conveying information? You probably won't understand what I'm talking about for another four years, one month, and perhaps you'd be wise not to listen to this sort of thing coming from anyone but me, but ... the parent is actually a nice case study.

I certainly agree that the world of "Failed Utopia 4-2" is not an optimal future, but as other commenters have pointed out, well ... it is better than what we have now. Eternal happiness in exchange for splitting up the species, never seeing your other-sex friends and family again? Certainly not a Pareto improvement amongst humane values, but a hell of a Kaldor-Hicks improvement. So why didn't you notice? Why am I speaking of this in such a detached manner, whereas you make a (not very plausible, by the way---you might want to work on that) effort to appear as horrified as possible?

Because politics. You and I, we're androgyny fans: we want to see a world without strict gender roles and with less male/female conflict, and we think it's sad that so much of humanoid mindspace goes unexplored because of the whole sexual dimorphism thing, and all of this seems like something worth protecting, so whenever you read something that your brain construes as "sexist," your brain makes sure to get offended and outraged. Why does that happen? I don't know: high IQ, high Openness boy somehow picks up a paraphilia, falls hard for the late-twentieth-century propaganda about human equality and nondiscrimination, learns about transhumanism, feminism, evolutionary psychology, and rationality in that order? But look. However it happened, there are probably better strategies for protecting whatever-it-is we should protect than feigning shock. Especially in this venue, where people should know better.

Discuss