Ant

Ant wrote

good answers to questions about "the nature of humanity"

What are the answers?

appeal to nature fallacy

most decent anarchists I know have unmade the nature-human false dichotomy and so doing aren't even able to make this move
none of them think that something is good just because it is 'natural'

either it works and we do not need to care about anything anymore forever. Either it doesn't and we get wiped, and don't need to care about anything anymore forever.

what kind of a world are you looking for where you have nothing of value? there is nothing anarchist about this

assymmetrical conflicts: the revolutionnary individual has much more power and impact.

how?

transhumanism deals with very complicated systems, and the bigger the system, the bigger the potential (for best or worse)

For worse. Have you dealt with any of the critiques of mass society?

very often @h+s are idealists who imagine Utopias

why is this a con

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Ant wrote

"Don't make alcohol and drugs because xxx'ers feel left out when the others party" lol

This not about left out, this is about an inherent power imbalance. You either are not understanding, or are intentionally being obtuse

Differences in power between two people will exist in every society.

Yes, but the difference between people with advanced technology and no technology are at a completely difference scale, and that is also something that should be obvious.

As an anarchist, I believe that it isn't inherently in powerful people's nature to try to overpower and control less powerful people.

This is not an anarchist belief. Anarchists recognise how power tends to corrupt, and try to decentralise it as much as possible

TBH I can't really answer this one because I'm too young to have lived before technology, so ican't compare. but imo as anarchists we would feel Left out and alienated by any society we live in.

All of us are too young to have lived before technology. This is not what is relevant to the points I made

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Ant wrote (edited )

Someone born, say, without legs is objectively disadvantaged in some instances where having legs is useful, and if there is a technological solution to this, it ought to be made available to them should they wish it

you seem to be taking some kind of 'common sense' approach without understanding that common sense is just a product of socialisation

and you don't seem to have engaged with the ways that norms are socialised and have inbuilt policing functions

And you haven't touched on the more clearly less common sense implications of your view
(to the point that you seem deeply insincere - because transhumanists don't generally want to merely become 'normal', they want to go well beyond that)

Infinite things may be useful with technology, this does not mean that they ought to be made available (in a society that strives for noncoercive relationships)
It might be useful for me to have a personal rocket ship or some even more extravagant thing built into my body to get around, but there is nothing sustainable about this, nor is it something that can be made available to all

There are infinite things that can be useful to us on the basis of our desires, and even trying to fulfil that infinite set of requirements would require infinite resources and an inherently consumptive (and therefore unsustainable) relation to the world

Sure, someone who is willing to use some technologies will have advantages over those who choose not to (say, someone being willing to communicate remotely via cellular versus someone who only chooses to interact in person will have advantages in logistics, perhaps) - however we need to respect people's rights to make those choices and not exclude them from aspects of society

(genuine question) How is this different from the kind of reasoning liberals use when defending property rights when people say the propertied classes will tend to oppress the nonpropertied classes?

This is more down to how the technology is used than what it is.

I think you'd benefit from reading more critiques of technology. Usually technology critics distinguish between tools and technology in meaningful ways. Also you don't seem to be addressing my points on mediation and alienation at all, I suspect because nobody has ever given you the rundown of these arguments

the colonial nature of resource extraction

On a related note, are you aware that even renewable energy requires substantial mineral extraction?

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Ant wrote (edited )

There's a lot to talk about here, but basically I don't understand how this can work


I think this is a weird kind of assimilationism

You say that people are "born physically, socially, or mentally disadvantaged in our current society" - but it seems like you think that this is an factor of their being rather than a result of the society marking them as deficient

What anarchists want, in my understanding, is to create a society in which people as they are are not seen as deficient, instead of accepting the externally-imposed sense of deficiency and seeking to assimilate to the standards of that norm

Which is to say, insofar as this is the view of transhumanists, it is ableist

Transhumanism is all about striving to make it so that everyone who wants to, can have any advantage available to others.

This view seems not to have any consideration for how our desires are socialised


Have you addressed the ways that some having advanced technology generally forces others to adopt that technology?

This is clear in the capitalist world with the example of cars and cellphones, how much it is hard for people to participate in the world without using that technology, even when people find it detrimental to their wellbeing

but even in an anarchistic world, the grand power held by those who adopt technology would doubtlessly require others to adopt technology, or be at the mercy of the technocrats


Have you engaged with the various ways that technology mediates and so doing alienates us from the world? How that alienation produces people who care less about the things they are alienated from?


Have you engaged with the colonial nature of resource extraction and how the resources you need for your technology is going to often be under the homelands of people who don't want to live like you do or to leave their homes?

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