I partially agree with Axel. Abortion is a critical issue that is not a black or white situation (there are cases that are fully black, and cases that are fully white, but most cases are very very grey). While I'm pro-choice, I sympathise with the pro-life side, and I agree with some of their arguments (especially in case where someone would use abortion as birth control). Adept42, you need to tread lightly on this topic so you don't ignite a flame war. Abortion aside, your point about no evolution of ideas is a very real threat. Many people think that they can change people's opinions, but it never occurs (you only have to talk to your grandparents to see that). If people are immortal then their opinions will live on forever. In this situation, the Jovian Republic would be the best place for Social Evolution in the solar system.

TBRMInsanity wrote:

Many people think that they can change people's opinions, but it never occurs (you only have to talk to your grandparents to see that).

Do you think the evolution of opinions have slackened over the span of the 20th century? Because lifespans have roughly doubled, so if people never really changed their minds we should expect at least a halving of idea change.

I would actually be rather depressed if we AREN'T arguing Roe v Wade. Yes, I understand your post is about how good pro-choice is, and how stoopid pro-life is, but one of the major points of EP is permitting a wide range of widely-divergent philosophies, and seeing which of those can co-exist and which cannot. Right now the Jovians, who are most likely to be pro-life, have as their closest neighbors the Extropians and the Anarchists, both pretty clearly pro-choice. Yet they seem to be getting along a lot better than they are with the Consortium. The fact that we have groups debating whether or not we should retake earth, whether we should cling to our humanity or abandon it, whether we should use money and capitalism or something else, whether AIs deserve the rights of transhumans or not and so on is DESIRABLE. It maintains intellectual honesty and pushes us towards actual understanding, rather than shallow memes. The abortion topic specifically is probably not a huge deal any more. If you don't want to get pregnant, don't get pregnant. Unless you're in the Junta, you almost certainly can't get pregnant on purpose, muchless accidentally. However, for most of transhumanity, the focus has shifted to that of the ego, not the morph, so the idea of destroying a gestating morph without any neural structure (i.e., the first trimester, maybe the second), is likely a lot more palatable. On the flip side, the idea of destroying an ego would be considered murder, and I assume they consider a born baby to have an ego, so killing a third-trimester morph would be considered murder (if not, why not kill babies as well? Whether the morph is gestating in the womb, the exowomb, or the craddle, it makes no difference. A fetus is 'viable' the moment of conception due to the technology, so where it is stored is irrelevant.)

Extrasolar Angel wrote:

The above thought caused an outrage on a catholic forum where I posted it, for some reason

Fear of interfering in "God's design", perhaps? Not a sentiment I understand or share, myself.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

Right now the Jovians, who are most likely to be pro-life, have as their closest neighbors the Extropians and the Anarchists, both pretty clearly pro-choice.

While I love your passionate statement for a diversity of ideas, I had to single this out as a point of disagreement. Trivial, I know, but I just have to say it. For the Jovians, I can see it going either way, to be honest. On the one hand, they might make it illegal for the sake of preserving their population numbers, but, on the other, they might practice eugenics and, therefore, make it mandatory for some people. Meanwhile, Anarchists are the most diverse bunch out there, so they're unlikely to have a united view. While I imagine a large chunk of them, certainly the majority, are pro-choice, I can imagine a very vocal number are pro-life, and do their best to sink the rep of anyone they find out has performed such a procedure or otherwise been party to one. And then there's the Extropians... Basically, the same as Anarchists, really.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

A fetus is 'viable' the moment of conception due to the technology, so where it is stored is irrelevant.)

Now that is a VERY curious thought, isn't it? Given that this technology is rapidly approaching reality, you have to wonder what it will do to the abortion debate where a mother can literally put a fetus up for adoption by the time she realizes she's even pregnant. Frankly, in Eclipse Phase, barring some IMMENSELY malfunctioning tech, it probably would be impossible, so performing an abortion would be an entirely voluntary act. It makes it, in some ways, both more and less black and white than it is already today.

That's a good point, actually; there might be a movement of people who refuse to sleeve into a vat-grown morph. There are potentially exceptions (such as those who only resleeve into a body that's already been sleeved into, since, at that point, the damage is done), but I imagine they'd get as favourable a welcome amongst their fellows as people who, today, oppose abortion but believe the aborted child's remains can still be used for stem cell research. That said, given the moral quandries involved, I think there's probably something along the lines of an inhibitor coded into the morph's genome that prevents the natural formation of neuron connections, effectively meaning the morph is born brain-dead and can only be given an ego by removing this code and constructing the connections via an ego bridge.

Growing morphs without minds may be an interesting problem on its own. Making anencephalic morphs is easy, but they will not develop their head properly and you want a brain to download egos to. Growing an *empty* but functional brain is a real challenge: you want an adult brain structure, yet this normally comes by through development of a child brain subjected to experience (e.g. the visual system needs visual input to format itself properly). My guess is that the solution is a heavily nano-controlled process where the brain development is less normal maturation and more like nanosystems shunting every neuron and synapse in the right place. This is likely the most expensive and proprietary part of morph manufacture. Expect Cognite to own patents on much of this. Of course, cheap knockoff morphs bought on Legba might have less 'industrial' brains which are matured fairly normally and then erased. Another reason not to buy a morph sold as 'organic'.

All the more reason to just say "Sod it" and go synth or infomorph. Now I can't stop thinking of the idea of running a program to raise a child on a computer. It'd be fairly intensive, but, all things considered, I don't see why you couldn't. Why even bother with biology? Though now I have to wonder what would happen in terms of identity issues if those kids weren't limited in their ability to reshape themselves. They might even get insular, not want to bother going to a world where they need to eat, or breathe, or can't create new toys just by thinking about them. Could lead to the same sort of insular downfall that befell one of the worlds in Gatecrashing...

TBRMInsanity wrote:

I'm not sure that the Jovian Republic would be fully Pro-Life, as I think that planned parenthood (and the assurance that any future citizen would be able to live till they are an adult) would be vital to Jovian survival.

Is there an increasing tendency to whitewash the Jovian mindset lately? Rational family planning may certainly be the sane and desirable policy, but nothing in the provenance of Jovian society (not to mention the unprecedented exigencies brought about by the Fall) hints that they would opt for it. It's a society descended explicitly from right wing American cultures, and one thing right wing ideologies from Argentina to Alaska all share is the rejection of a woman's right to control her own body. Assuming there would be any shift toward the political centreground on this issue, when the Jovians remain steadfastly retrogressive on so many other issues (up to and including the full objectification of sentient beings) is only wishful thinking IMO.

TBRMInsanity wrote:

EP technology offers the chance though to capture this proto-ego for development in a cyberwomb (prior to the abortion of the fetas) and maybe that would appease some pro-life groups (out side bioconservative factions).

I think, as I said earlier, it's probably significantly easier to just transplant the fetus to a cyberwomb than bother with that.

The Green Slime wrote:

Is there an increasing tendency to whitewash the Jovian mindset lately?

I think the idea is to play them less like the cartoonish villains they were written as. As someone put it nicely, the naming of a habitat after Pinochet is a bit like having an Adolf Hitler School of Fine Art. The Jovians are neo-luddites, something that makes their way of life harsh and their means of governing in such conditions equally painful for the governed, but that doesn't mean they're insane. Their stance on resleeving, AGIs, and similar entities come from very real questions that people cannot really answer, and so much of transhumanity has chosen to ignore them for convenience's sake. They view AGIs with fear because, a scant decade ago, several billion people were wiped out by digital entities. This isn't whitewashing; this is just treating the Jovians like people, not strawmen.

The Green Slime wrote:

Rational family planning may certainly be the sane and desirable policy, but nothing in the provenance of Jovian society (not to mention the unprecedented exigencies brought about by the Fall) hints that they would opt for it.

I think you'll find that what was being described is hardly anything less than strict government regulation on population control; abortions being allowed for reasonable concerns doesn't make it any less than a bit of a police state. I see the Jovies wanting to keep their population high, and growing, meaning they likely encourage child-production and, if they restrict abortion, it's for those reasons, not ideological ones.

The Green Slime wrote:

[O]ne thing right wing ideologies from Argentina to Alaska all share is the rejection of a woman's right to control her own body.

I object to this statement. Abortion arguments aren't about the right of a woman to control her body, they're about the status of a fetus as a person or non-person. That line, that those opposed to abortion are just looking to control women, is flat out wrong.

The Green Slime wrote:

Assuming there would be any shift toward the political centreground on this issue, when the Jovians remain steadfastly retrogressive on so many other issues (up to and including the full objectification of sentient beings) is only wishful thinking IMO.

As I said to the person who started this thread, I'll thank you not to insult me and others like me as "retrogressive" just because we disagree with you.

As with all controversial issues, I think a lack of empathy for the opposing point of view is clouding any progress that could come from open debate. Pro-life wants to give rights to unborn children. Pro-choice wants to give rights to mothers. Because both groups are approaching the problem from completely different angles, there is no middle ground in the argument and no solution can be achieved. As I pointed out earlier, I think we should drop the topic of abortion, and focus more on the topic of social stagnation of ideas due to immortality. Can we agree to this as a community?

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

Excuse me, adept42, but I have to take a little bit of an issue with you here. You're speaking of abortion as if it's an open-and-shut case; like those who disagree with you are backwards yokels; in your words, people who display "ignorance, hatred, and prejudice". As someone who believes it's immoral to abort a child unless the mother's life is in danger, I feel a little annoyed that you're essentially saying "I want to live forever, but do I really have to live with people who disagree with me?" I think you can see how someone might feel that's offensive.

The problem isn't in the disagreeing. Not that the abortion thing is relevant, but to use it as an example, if the pro-life side would think of it as their personal opinion that they used to guide their own life choices, there wouldn't be a problem. The problem is that the pro-life side in general wants to force everyone else to make the same choices as they would. In general, about half the population (in any age group, I'm not talking about the oldest 50%) show strong resistance to new ideas they didn't grow up with, and not just a personal decision to not want to try it, but also a strong drive to keep everyone else from going along with it. In the past, these people were against lots of things that are readily accepted today, like organ transplants. These days, lots of people are opposed to GMOs and stem cell treatment, the prospect of human genetic engineering, smart drugs, and what not. If people stop dying, unless we drastically increase our reproduction rate, then these people who are not only personally against new technology (which to them might mean stuff that's a century old) but actively oppose their use by anyone else also, they will be in the majority. As the demographic development keeps them in play both democratically and in terms of social dynamics, and this effectively allows them to keep progress at bay, they will no longer be forced to adapt and accept change. This is the real problem, that the people who want to limit others will become an ever increasing part of the population and so eventually stiffle progress to a much larger degree than they are able to today.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:

The problem is that the pro-life side in general wants to force everyone else to make the same choices as they would.

I think we should specify, given the remainder of the post, that the 'problem' isn't specific to the pro-life side trying to enforce their believes on everyone (whether justified or not), but that it is an example of a cultural tendancy which may have significant, clearly negative impacts on other areas to which the pro-life argument does not apply.

I'm not sure you describe what I meant, but maybe I'm reading your post wrong. The problem isn't what people think, or that we try to convince each other in moral discussions - both sides in any discussion will mostly do that. The problem comes when some people want to punish other people for taking actions they believe are morally or ethically wrong. On the abortion issue, this is specific to the pro-life side (at least I never heard anyone demanding jail for someone who advices against abortion, or for women who wants an abortion but doesn't get one), so I can't agree when you say it isn't specific to them. But of course we agree that abortion is just a single issue, the same tendency apply to a whole host of other areas, where you also find the tendency to restrict access to typically bio- and medical technology and criminalize its usage, but it is sometimes seen in other areas too, for example in Germany you can't sell video games that depict blood.

It wasn't an argument for or against abortion, there was nothing of the sort in what I wrote. What I was commenting on was the concept of punishing other people for not acting in accordance with your personal moral opinions, and how changing demographics would increase the influence from people like that, as an ever increasing fraction of them will also not be comfortable with contemporay technological and cultural developments.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

I think you'll find that economics forces people to become alright with social/technological trends. Aesthetics naturally might tend to be a little stagnant at times, but rejecting technological changes here means either ensuring your eventual demise or costing you wealth. People tend to not do the latter, so they will either adapt or die.

That is only true if other parts of society begin to use these technologies, which is the social dynamich I referred to. If emerging technologies are succesfully banned, no such effect will occur though, which is why I don't believe resistance to new ideas is the problem - the issue is the desire to punish other people for using them.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

Abortion isn't really a good issue to compare in these cases, though. Remember, the big issue for the pro-life camp is the idea that the fetus is a person and, if you put yourself in their shoes for a moment, you realize that this makes abortion murder.

Let us not exagerate - that's just not a true representation of anyone but the smallest minority of pro-lifers. It is a religious restriction, and breaking it is not equivalent to murder. There is no push for the punishment for having or performing an abortion to be equal to homicide. Countries that ban abortion typically have much, much lower punishments, and freely allow their citizens to travel to other countries and have abortions performed there (obviously these countries wouldn't allow you to take your born children abroad and have them killed). You can probably find some extremists who actually equate abortions with murder, but for the vast majority of pro-lifers, "abortion is murder" is nothing but a slogan. Another way you can tell that this is a religious idea is in the resistance to using fetal tissue for stem cell research, which typically goes hand in hand, while they are fine with organ transplants though. If a fetus dies from a spontaneous abortion and can't have its tissue used to help people, but a grown-up is brain dead and can, there's obviously some sort of (not necessarily religious) taboo at play. More on that at the end of the post.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

A better example, however, might be the sects of Christianity who don't believe in blood transfusions; they don't try and force others to make the same choice as them (not that they'd ever win, being a minority). As long as you're not involving other people, you'll find the live-and-let-live attitude tends to prevail.

I don't know if you have different laws where you are, but here in Denmark Yehowa's Witness minors most often die when they need blood transfusions because their parents refuse the treatment, so calling that live-and-let-live is stretching it. But other than that, I agree that it is a good thing that they don't try to force their ideas on others. That's typical of sects, they mostly just want the freedom to live their lives their way, unlike institutionalized religions which tend to have a much stronger desire to punish outsiders' behavior. But I think the religious influence is sidetracking the discussion. While it may strongly influence some issues, in many cases it is merely a conduit - a deeper psychological resistance can manifest itself as religious opposition because for many that is the framework with which they're used to deal with taboos, and it is also an effective tool for rallying support. I personally don't think that the whole bioethics movement that opposes the further use of biotechnology has much to do with religion at all. It has much support from many right wing religious movements, but the religion isn't the issue. Just look at the other big player behind bioethics, the radical political left. There is just a deep resistance in many to messing with nature and the basics of who and what we are. Some call it the wisdom of repugnance, others the yuck factor. The idea of inducing mutations in living beings revolts us, even if the mutations are beneficial. The idea that others can take smartdrugs and change - messing with our minds is an alien idea. That people are hesistant to jump on the bandwagon is fine, and that some people are very hesistant is probably healthy for society, to put some brakes on the reckless ones. The problem is both the religious right and the radical left combine this with a strong desire to regulate everyone else. I think that is why they're driving the bioethics movement. There are already smartdrugs of at least some effifacy out there, which are largely unavailable for no good reason. More importantly, stem cell research and genetic therapy has been delayed extremely by public resistance, almost certainly resulting in millions not being cured of terminal or debilitating diseases in time. While GMOs are accepted in the US (where thankfully the environmentalism movement never really caught on), in Europe the resistance is so strong that even Africa and Asia largely refrain from using them because it would hurt their agricultural exports, and they really need them there - Golden Rice GMOs alone could have saved millions from deaths and blindness if it was allowed. Longer term, there's an even greater risk - that authoritarian regimes, who do not impose restrictions on biotechnology, and even worse if western nations ban AIs to protect jobs or some other silliness, end up attracting most research and win the technology race. We don't really want China to be the unchallenged masters of strong AI and nanotech, do we?

I certainly agree. You say a very central thing: anyone over the age of 40 tto use technology when it is forced on them by society. How does this play out in an anarchist society? Those who want to embrace new technologies, if they give them an advantage its use will quickly spread throughout society as others pick it up, and soon society forces it on even the slow. In a conservative society, many new technologies won't be introduced at all until the conservatives are comfortable with it. And given that they need society to force it on them before they'll accept its use, it'll never get allowed. So they're stuck. They'll need revolutions or external pressure to escape the stagnation.

I could name several revolutions that hurt a lot of people. And living in a free society seems to be much preferred over living in an oppressive one that needs revolutions to keep up with development. But sure, given oppressive society, and revolutionaries that actually want progress (the 20th century communist and socialist revolutions were clearly a turn for the worse for example), who wouldn't support them?

Smokeskin wrote:

I could name several revolutions that hurt a lot of people. And living in a free society seems to be much preferred over living in an oppressive one that needs revolutions to keep up with development. But sure, given oppressive society, and revolutionaries that actually want progress (the 20th century communist and socialist revolutions were clearly a turn for the worse for example), who wouldn't support them?

I find the biggest risk to society is extremism in any form. The more extreme and fundamentalist a current regime is, the more extreme and fundamentalist it's opposition is. And if the opposition comes into power, you are still stuck with that extremism (ie your back to where you began). I see that in Canadian Politics right now, our current government (as of the morning of 2 May) is a far right wing party. Because of their extreme attitudes, the far left party (NDP) have just seen a huge surge in popularity (as people see them as the only true counter balance in society). We will see by the end of today what happens because of this.

Smokeskin wrote:

Sorry for taking it so literally. Maybe it is because English isn't my native tongue. Maybe I feared you were a revolution romantic in a Che t-shirt ;) i am glad you are not

No apologies necessary. Though I must say, I've been called a romantic before, but a revolution romantic? If not for the connotations, I'd be inclined to say I like the sound of such a title... @TBRMInsanity: I agree with your comment about the cycle of extremism, though I suppose if I had to choose I would rather take the cycle with the [i]hope[/i] of eventual change than be confined to a single fascist regime that will never change at all, God and guns willing.

Lilith wrote:

"What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right." -Albert Einstein

Very true. Well we now have a far right wing majority party controlling our country, with a far left wing party as the official opposition. Any party that ran on the campaign of status quo is now without a leader and someone has opened the door. It looks like we will be soon following the American two party model over the next 4 years. The moderate view has been soundly defeated in Canada. The extreme views are defiantly popular at the moment, but we will see if they are right.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

I'm of the opinion that Canada works best when no one view holds the control over the others. I'd have been curious to see an NDP opposition to another Conservative minority, though... Frankly, the Liberals could've really avoided a whole lot of this if they'd just thrown Ignatieff to the wolves. Just my two cents.

The voters did that for them. The problem with the Liberals and Bloc in the last election is they said they would maintain the status quo. Canadians wanted change (too much change to the far left and right for my liking but change non the less). Harper is at the helm for the next 4 years, he better not screw it up or we will crucify him.

Very true Axel. I wonder if Canadian politics can be used as a guideline for politics in EP? I would like to know what the voting trends of an average citizens (plus their personal views) over the last 40-50 years (ie the Baby Boomer Age). Seniors tend to vote the same as they have for years, but I wonder how the Baby Boomer vote has transformed over the last 40-50 years. Maybe social change can occur in an immortal society, through the political process (assuming there is enough representation amongst all groups in said society).