Well, for starters, let's climb down off that high horse because, y'know, people eat things like Whale, Octopus and, oh yeah [i]pork[/i]. I know you drift the setting a little, but I assume uplifts are still a thing - so l think maybe we can not be anthrocentric on the "eating species who may or may not be sapient" track. Also people eat placenta. Secondly, while sophontophagy is probably not okay for reasons that you had to cause significant physical and mental harm to another person to get it - morally, ethically or culturally, what is the problem with the consumption of human meat? Obviously, to get a good meal you currently either need to kill or otherwise obtain from a person who is dead the meat. But in Eclipse Phase you can using cloning and printing technology to produce cultures of "human" meat without actually attaching much of a person to it. So, there's no real ethical issue there, completely sidestepping the usual "two consenting adults" caveat, which, y'know underlies several major social models in this setting, like Extropia. On the other hand, it is to my understanding that eating human meat is [i]really[/i] not healthy for humans. This is probably why most people have an evolutionary gut-check at the prospect. Now, again, with the tech available in the setting, you could probably avoid some of those problems with good clean vats and clone sources and some gastronomic mods, but unless you are a Predator Exhuman, I will agree that a transhuman fine-tuning their body to be able to eat human meat is probably a little gauche - and more likely you would see it in refined restaurants with highly refined preparation, and everybody makes sure to take a healthy swig of medichines after.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

Fixe Prix already has descriptions of what nanotech can pull off for foodstuffs. It's quite impressive. Remember, exhumanism is an ideology, not a tech base.

Perhaps, but the molecular assembly implied by Prix Fixe (at least from what I gather in the excerpts you've quoted) would require femtotech. Exhumans and TITANs can probably femtofab a steak no problem.

Noble Pigeon wrote:

What an amazing future it must be, when eating human meat is somehow socially acceptable. Do you really need to be a biocon to find that revolting?

We're just using human growth/healing rates as a baseline for discussing the tech, because they're well-attested in the core book. The resulting meat doesn't necessarily have to be human.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

No, I don't mean the two-three years it takes to force-grow a biomorph [i]with a working brain[/i], I mean the time it takes to assemble an essentially new body if you lug a decapitated head up and toss 'em into the tank. It takes less than a week, [i]and[/i] that body has to be [i]alive[/i]. By comparison, nanofabricating a hot, juicy steak is reasonably simple.

I would agree with MAD Crab that healing vats force-grow rather than nanoassembling. If you have an entire healing vat to yourself for a few hours, a kitchen, and a chef, force-growing and cooking a steak is conceptually simple[sup]*[/sup]. But it's not easy or cheap. __________________________________ [sup]*[/sup] In fact, this is possibly what fancy restaurants do, except they'd probably grow whole slabs of meat at a time.

To clarify, I wouldn't expect most octopi to eat octopus, or pigs to chow down on pork. Like, if an uplifted raven wanted to try human bacon then I wouldn't give a shit, as long as it wasn't harvested from some kind of "edible morph". There's really nothing in the books that indicates that utilitarianism is that rampant when it comes to not eating certain things. I would also think that stories of exhumans hunting down and devouring transhumans or exsurgents from all species eating each other would not exactly make it commonplace, no? Even if it's vat-grown stuff.

Noble Pigeon wrote:

To clarify, I wouldn't expect most octopi to eat octopus, or pigs to chow down on pork. Like, if an uplifted raven wanted to try human bacon then I wouldn't give a shit, as long as it wasn't harvested from some kind of "edible morph". There's really nothing in the books that indicates that utilitarianism is that rampant when it comes to not eating certain things. I would also think that stories of exhumans hunting down and devouring transhumans or exsurgents from all species eating each other would not exactly make it commonplace, no? Even if it's vat-grown stuff.

I mean, there IS that one mental disorder for neo-octopi where they eat their own limbs as a nervous habit, and I know at least in extropia human-pops are specifically mentioned. Most species of octopi are explicitly cannibalistic/opportunistic, and pigs/boars won't turn down a meal that happens to be another pig. As for their uplift counterparts, that depends on how "human" the uplifting process left that specific uplift (thus the Feral Uplift background, etc.) and personal choice, but a huge part o the mercurial movement's whole ethos is that you can't hold nonhumans to the same expectations in behavior as humans; doing so is anthropocentric at best and good justification for prejudice at worst. And it's not like anthropophagy is universally condemned. Hell, in some cultures, it's seen as a way to honor the dead (or humiliate them. Cultural dichotomies are fun.) As far as eating other similar species, we -- maybe not anyone in this board, but modern humans -- eat our closest relatives evolutionarily. Though I think it comes down to less being utilitarian and more "Hey, why not?" When its vat-grown, anyway. Ignoring the lovely host of problems cannibalism can bring medically, the biggest taboo about it is "this is someone I'm eating." Same reason at heart for why you have the idea that you shouldn't name a cow destined for slaughter, emotional attachment makes eating things uncomfortable. However, I've just had a thought. This could easily be a demonized sign of decadence what with body shortages still so common. And yes I realize it's apples and oranges on a technical standpoint -- one comes from a maker, the other an exowomb or nanovat -- but not like that's ever stopped people from making something like this political. As far as exhumans, eh. I could see that dissuading some people, but it could also become a postmodern Godwin's law pretty quick, since exhumans are gonna do a lot of things transhumans do too, just take it too far. Is my take, anyway.

So it's a delicious teratoma. That's...well..something. I'll pass on the sauce from the same source, thank you.

the WENDIGO will punish you!

And low and behold, the phenomenon of "beer makeouts" spreads throughout the scum fleet. Half the morphs genehack in on-command regurgitation reflexes with pleasure responses and I'm just going to sink into this glass of rum and stop now.