windtree

Comment Threads

• paws4thot commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Fairly certain you're talking nonsense. "$title is a work of fiction" is not an instruction to ignore it but a statement of context. Also, ancient Egypt and ancient Persia have been primarily desert and mountains back into the Stone Age (basic source Wikipedia; secondary sources lots)....
• waldo commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Presumably there will be no equivalent crime to dumping raw sewage into the ecosystem, since the only actual ecosystem in transhuman-land will be dedicated to maintaining the transhumans....
• Damian commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Still, I think there's something to "Maximise utility!" that does get to the main point of ethical conduct. There are several problems with several ways of formulating that principle into concrete activities, including problems with the concept of using a principle as a rule for defining activities in the first place, but (like Singer himself) I'm not convinced that any of those problems are totally unsolvable....
• Moz commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  Yeah, the stuff Nick linked to is more about the fine print of how EA works, but I get hung up on the fundamentals. Sure, in theory more people each consuming much less would work, but we have the whole capitalist system underlying global politics saying fuck that, more consumption is not just better, it's necessary. So far the "more" side isn't so much winning as pretty convincingly portraying itself as the only possibility. EA says "do that, but also donate" which is classic liberalism, in the sense of "don't change the system, decorate it to look nicer". The question...
• arrbee commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  A convenient side effect of "reintroducing" land predators in Scotland is to provide land owners with a legal justification for denying public access; it could eventually lead to a new round of highland clearances. Not to mention the side effects - bringing back sea eagles is having a serious impact on the golden eagle population....