I see both the Maturity Test and the Psychosurgical Kerning being approaches more acceptable in some of the more dynamist factions of EP. The Psychosurgical Kerning is probably more likely in an experimental habitat (remember one of the more universal values in EP is the right to one's own Self / Ego), as the level of absolute control would be likely frowned upon. The Maturity Test, or something similar, strikes me as very much something you'd see in an Ultimate community. The Ego has to prove itself worthy of being an Ultimate, and then it will be given an Ultimate body. Very Spartan. As an interesting sociological note, outside the Jovian Republic, most poor people can't have children in Eclipse Phase. You cannot, after all, reproduce in a wholy artificial (i.e. synthmorph) body. The Clanking Masses are actually incapable of propagation through children. This means that in most of the inner system, children would be a status symbol, as it is honestly a choice only for those with fully living morphs. Personally, I would suspect that most Uplifts are sterile. I believe it was discussed in an other thread somewhere, but maybe a genetically altered animal viable opens up an entire mess of problems. It is much easier to make it simply incapable of successfully producing a viable zygote than to make sure that it produces only /good/ zygotes. However, I can also see some mercurials taking the effort to fix this through gene therapy, and looking to propagate themselves much the same as humans would. Uplifted simians and cetaceans would probably have the closest to human motivations for children (as we are all mammals), but I would suspect that the urge to have children to be significantly different in neo-avians and uplifted cephalopods. And that's not even going into how octopi breed. All interesting food for thought.

Children are amazingly good at triggering human emotion, and one of the surest ways of getting people to want to stop some group is that they are mistreating their children. Given some of the previous ideas in this thread, we might be seeing a lot of vigilantes trying to save children from horrible fates (just imagine, being forced to live without genetic upgrades? or parents who do not give nootropics to their infants just as their brains are developing?!)

Extrasolar Angel wrote:

This reminds me of The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin & Eytan Kollin-didn't read it, but the review I read wrote about the idea that every child from the moment it was born had a stock value, which later increased and fell depending on his future prospects and personal development. People and parents could purchase shares of children-investing in those who seem to have bright future and selling those who fail at exams and so on. A horrific thought-but one that I can easily see as something that Corpo-Drones and Execs would present as something progressive. I can see it happening in Planetary Consortium.

It happens among the autonomists and our current society too, but we usually do not admit it. Consider what rep and social contact actually is: partially a way of investing in other people. We like hanging out with people with good prospects who might become really valuable contacts.And we tend to drop contacts who are drains on our resources. Of course, this is not just about economic worth (which is why the novel is dystopian) but emotional, entertainment, moral and many other kinds of value. Consider an autonomist child. He got a very low rep, so how is he ever going to get the education he needs? What happens is that some adults educate him, which gives them good rep, and if he happens to become a really great guy his educators will share somewhat in this glory. A less bright child might find it harder to find good teachers, although if he happens to have high-rep parents they can of course convince them.

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Interestingly-in a long term perspective the policies of creating a template, productive citizens according to similiar patterns embraced by PC would mean eventual creation of hive-like society with similiar ideas, attitudes, desires and actions made by its members.

Maybe, but hyperliberalism also recognizes the value of diversity and initiative. Hypercorps seem to have a tendency towards uniformity, but the hypercapitalist system rewards those who innovate and show entrepreneurial spirit. You don't want a too uniform society, both because it is vulnerable (being a memetic monoculture) and because it is unlikely to be as productive as a more diverse society (productivity is often power-law distributed, with a few unique individuals and innovations providing a sizeable fraction of the new stuff). So there is an internally recognized tension here. The extropians of course go full tilt for diversity even if it means higher risk, while some parts of the PC seem quite happy to aim for safe mediocrity.

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But this doesn't take into account his family or assumes his parents are of low reputation as well. He might have parents with big rep score, and despite being of lesser skill than others, his parents rep might allow him to pursue better education. Even assuming your model-once he develops and gains big rep-he can than use his rep to provide better education/genes to his children.

it already happened in real life, and said child became president. I won't say which country, though, because it happened in more than one. I think nepotism is an unavoidable construction block of our societies, it's built in our very genes by evolution Monarchy is built upon nepotism it doesn't necessarly have to be bad, if the offspring has some talents and skills and was brougt up fine.

Extrasolar Angel wrote:

Which brings up another interesting idea-they are people who simply don't want children. In EP they can engineer themselves into not having any instinctive reactions to children. What happens to a group that abandons as a principle the common human attachment to children and desire to have them. Would they be viewed as exhumans(compare to already existing resentment towards people who openly declare themselves childfree)? Without the desire and need for children new opportunities for personal development arise while many of the old roles and behaviours from the past society will be abandoned. I can see the Inner System powers, especially PC, Reclaimers, Jovians stigmatizing such groups as moral deviants.

Nah. There are bigger things to be outraged about. Not wanting children at most implies that they are "not doing their part" for keeping transhumanity alive, but since there are plenty of radical other options it seems a pretty minor thing. Rather, it is the deliberate removal of a core human social emotion that is creepy. It is just as worrisome as somebody removing their empathy or capacity for friendship, and roughly for the same reasons.

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Consider an autonomist child. He got a very low rep, so how is he ever going to get the education he needs? What happens is that some adults educate him, which gives them good rep, and if he happens to become a really great guy his educators will share somewhat in this glory. A less bright child might find it harder to find good teachers, although if he happens to have high-rep parents they can of course convince them.

Here is the part of your post that interested me the most-because it shows the future patterns, and how the rep system is part of dystopia tone of EP(while it might seem as better system at first glance). First of all you assume a certain model-a autonomist child with low rep.

No, I assume that all children start out with low rep. Child rep is of course built up during normal social interactions, but beyond the playground simspaces it is pretty low. People are certainly kind to children, but they do not have the rep that is actually worth serious services. That is another part of the dystopian quality of the rep economy: it matters who you are. In a capitalistic system people trade for money, but money doesn't care who you are - you can easily trade with people you fundamentally dislike because their money is still good. In a rep system you will be much less inclined to trade with nasty people or people you disagree with, since their rep is actually tied to who they are. If you do services for the ultimates or one of the voluntary slavery societies others will notice, and your own reputation gets affected. In principle rep systems should ignore this just as you can decline business in capitalism, but in practice this is hard. As Extrasolar Angel points out, cronyism and nepotism are rife within rep economies. Ayn Rand called it the "economy of pull" - your success is less about what you can do or produce, but who you know who can do you a favour. Of course, many autonomists are aware of this, are aware of how past mutualist societies have failed or crashed, and are trying to fix it. But like any other attempt at "fixing" the economy is extremely hard. At least nanofacturing prevents people from starving to death - a post scarcity economy can be inefficient and unjust without killing people directly (still, who do you want to run the life support system on the barge, chairwoman Lonsberg's nephew Unity, or that annoying engineer guy who refuses to sit in at all the essential communal meetings?)

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This also means that all those poor, impoverished masses probably see the need for regulation of society, and proper distribution of resources based on needs rather than social clubs and contacts-thus the ideas of state, government and institutionalised intervention are probably quite attractive.

Which is of course why the kind of people who are good at playing social games end up being appointed running the institutions. Chairwoman Lonsberg was appointed by everybody to fix things and make sure the CMs worked... so who are we to complain that now she and her cronies always have prime access to them and that people who disagree gets declared unmutual? If you want to change things you can always join the local soviet, it is open for all. But you will not get any rep there unless you do the regulatory gruntwork, like enforcing her decisions... Of course, there are plenty of nice people around who go that extra mile for others anyway. Many probably feel that the direct emotional and social effects of family and basic mammalian sociality are much more rewarding than trying to get any formal system working. In many ways attempts at building mutualist societies are trying to extend the feelings of solidarity we feel with our family and close kin. Past attempts have usually failed because you cannot easily stretch these feelings beyond the close social circle, and they do not scale. But with current tech we might do better. Maybe it isn't a bad idea to have the weekly ecstasy lovefest and the oxytocin dispensers? And maybe the guys over at Conquest of Bread are right in their experiment at creating an anarchist gay clone society where everybody is related to everybody? At least they are not as boringly earnest as all those Earth Mother brinker habitats trying to live in neoprimitive tribal societies.