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Mordaedil posted:What the bloody hell. Brother sweden, why would you do this. Finland still does it! And if you were married during the process, that will also be invalidated and turned in to a civil union! Otherwise you won't be legally considered to be of your new sex. 
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May 21, 2014 13:40
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George posted:I consider China Miéville to be probably the most creative SF/Fantasy author out there, and a few of his books even have incredible plots and worlds in them. Even his "bad" books are full of mind-bendingly creative poo poo, though. Very good point - I'm well caught up on Mieville already, though, so there goes the joy of discovery for me...  Embassytown does kinda fit the bill with whacky, space based SF, I suppose. That's one of his better works, although a soft spot will always remain in my heart for Perdido Street Station, if not its lackluster sequels...I'll definitely check out The Book of the New Sun.
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May 21, 2014 14:35
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idonotlikepeas posted:C.S. Lewis quotes The one positive I'll give him; rather than engaging in dishonest canards of the strength of his footing, he admits that scientific and philosophical enlightenment may imperil Christian thought.
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May 21, 2014 15:22
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Guided breeding to make mankind better seems like a good idea, Until people start doing all this bullshit in the name of eugenics. I see no flaw in eugenics carried out voluntarily. But when its forced on people, and they are told only people of X can be with people of Y, its pretty disgusting. And I really don't see how sterilization comes into it at all, thats just removing DNA from the gene pool. and a horrible thing to do to anyone by force.
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May 21, 2014 17:42
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Magnetic North posted:The one positive I'll give him; rather than engaging in dishonest canards of the strength of his footing, he admits that scientific and philosophical enlightenment may imperil Christian thought. Panboy posted:And I really don't see how sterilization comes into it at all, thats just removing DNA from the gene pool. and a horrible thing to do to anyone by force. That's the thing - you can't separate the "good" from the bad here. The internal logic of deciding "we can make better people through ScienceTM" dictates these plainly inhuman responses. "If we can make better people, then we should make better people. If we can stop the worst from continuing, then we should stop them."
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May 21, 2014 18:36
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Attestant posted:Finland still does it! And if you were married during the process, that will also be invalidated and turned in to a civil union! Otherwise you won't be legally considered to be of your new sex. Scandinavia is basically the Tau Empire.
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May 21, 2014 18:50
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Panboy posted:Guided breeding to make mankind better seems like a good idea, Until people start doing all this bullshit in the name of eugenics. I see no flaw in eugenics carried out voluntarily. But when its forced on people, and they are told only people of X can be with people of Y, its pretty disgusting. The idea is that the subject's genes are in some way rotten and should be culled from the pool in much the same way as wild animals who are sick or old are culled from the herd by predators. As humans no longer have predators, it falls to us to do the culling. This sort of thinking led people to use infectious diseases and behaviors based more on circumstances than pedigree as justification for sterilization. The biggest problem with eugenics is obvious if you just look at the efforts of animal and plant husbandry: enforced breeding habits can emphasize specific traits, but specialization always comes at the cost of adaptability. Dogs who are less wolf-like have friendlier personalities, but they're a lot dumber, and those whose breed varies significantly from the original stock suffer from considerable inbreeding. Modern-day corn used to yield ears closer to the size of wheat or rye grains before Native American tribes cultivated them for centuries, but in the process their husks have grown so thick that they require human intervention for the seeds to have any hope of growing. On top of that, strongly inbred and genetically engineered species of all kinds are more susceptible to epidemics of diseases they aren't resistant to. Tasmanian devils, for instance, are so genetically similar (and so stupidly aggressive) that their population being threatened by a transmissible cancer. Adaptability relies more on a wide genetic pool than any specific sequence of genes, and given the rate at which we are changing our culture and our world, adaptability is a very important trait. I'm not sure if he intended it this way, but Stapledon's Last and First Men actually proves the point: the Second Men, with their weakness to pandemics and their inability to deal with tragedy, are produced by an extended genetic bottleneck which makes Homo sapiens' time stuck in Africa look like a raging river by comparison. Stapledon specifically says that if the Martians had invaded during the First Men era, we would've recovered much faster. Bobbin Threadbare fucked around with this message at 19:02 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 18:59
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AugmentedVision posted:Scandinavia is basically the Tau Empire. I did wonder why Norway was mentioned in a D&D thread as being all about racial purity, but it was an old post so I couldn't ask the poster what he meant without causing severe argument necromancy. I guess now I know.
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May 21, 2014 21:26
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Dogs who are less wolf-like have friendlier personalities, but they're a lot dumber Bobbin Threadbare posted:genetically engineered species of all kinds are more susceptible to epidemics of diseases they aren't resistant to.
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May 22, 2014 03:34
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Yeah...smaller dogs tend to be the more mean ones, honestly.
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May 22, 2014 03:40
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Tiggum posted:I don't believe that either of these statements are true... I'm pretty sure the second one is not only true, but a big issue for certain crops. Genetic engineering leads to less genetic diversity, decreasing the odds of helpful mutations showing up that can survive the disease. Of course, this is off the top of my head and I'm too lazy to look it up, so take it with a grain of salt.
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May 22, 2014 03:49
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Tiggum posted:I don't believe that either of these statements are true... The Irish potato famine is a pretty good example of how lack of genetic diversity is a big, big risk: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/agriculture_02 I'm sure there are other agricultural examples where lack of genetic diversity caused major problems but the potato famine is probably the most well known in American/European culture. The same issue can impact animal species with a grab bag of minor examples on display in the dog breeding world and a really horrifying major example with the previously mentioned Tasmanian Devils.
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May 22, 2014 04:19
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Fabulousity posted:The Irish potato famine is a pretty good example of how lack of genetic diversity is a big, big risk: I wasn't disputing the part about species that lack genetic diversity, but Bobbin said "genetically engineered species of all kinds are more susceptible" which is the part I don't think is true.
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May 22, 2014 04:48
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Yeah, the risks of genetic engineering and so on are less "You shouldn't have tampered in God's Domain!" and more along the lines of "People are capable of incredible genius and also boundless stupidity at the same time…so mucking around with the building blocks of life itself is not something you want to cock up."
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May 22, 2014 05:03
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Tiggum posted:I don't believe that either of these statements are true... It's true enough that intelligence is a multifaceted and hard to determine quality, especially considering how widely dog breeds vary simply within the subspecies. It's true enough, at least, that mutts and crossbreeds lead generally happier and healthier lives than their purebred brethren. The problem with genetically engineered plants, though, is that they necessarily have to begin with a very small sample size which is kept inbred so that the desired genes remain dominant. After all, a seed company would be in big trouble if it offered an herbicide-resistant crop which nevertheless died when sprayed, and genetically modifying a large number of plants is cost-prohibitive. So it's not that the genetic engineering itself brings more risks than regular husbandry, but the process requires a lot of inbreeding and all the problems that that brings with it, and it will continue to be an issue until we develop some sort of retrovirus or plasmid able to transform the genes of every single cell of a mature organism.
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May 22, 2014 05:05
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Then there is always the Windup Girl future where genetics companies are constantly warring with each other via engineered blights and engineered crops. The much hated caloriemen have even more post of course because fossil fuels have become more trouble than they're worth to extract, so raw biological power reigns supreme. It's a bit silly but 99% awesome.
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May 22, 2014 05:22
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Erwin the German posted:On the subject of the literature corner (which you narrated with such adorable enthusiasm Accelerando which was published in 2005 has some pretty wild ideas. It starts out with the discovery of AIs that originated from some literal lobsters uploading their consciousness into the internet and kind of takes off from there.
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May 22, 2014 05:33
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)... Christ, does anyone have such crazy ideas as this anymore? Between Lovecraft's imaginative horror and the boundless optimism of SF in the 1930s, it's kind of a shame that the actual cosmos seems (with a cursory glance, that is) so barren and lifeless, and that related literature has come to match that.
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Attestant posted:Finland still does it! And if you were married during the process, that will also be invalidated and turned in to a civil union! Otherwise you won't be legally considered to be of your new sex. ... One issue with non-German eugenics programs that should have been obvious even at the time, is that in order to have any sort of meaningful effect, you'd have to sterilize not just the individual with obvious symptoms, but their entire extended family as well.
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May 22, 2014 06:43
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Tiggum posted:I wasn't disputing the part about species that lack genetic diversity, but Bobbin said "genetically engineered species of all kinds are more susceptible" which is the part I don't think is true. Without genetic diversity, all it takes is one strain of a disease to wipe out the entire species. With naturally occurring diversity, this is usually less of a problem because there are more likely to be variations which can survive whatever epidemic. So the diversity found in nature tends to be able to out-survive the non-diverse genetically engineered stuff we create. I think that was the point here, not that engineering itself makes things more susceptible, like in the engineering process, but rather that engineered species have less diversity as a whole and so less survival power.
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May 22, 2014 06:46
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Xander77 posted:Link / explanation please? Amnesty has a pretty good report on the current state. Scroll down to the lower part of the page for a PDF report with the whole thing explained pretty well. Page 40. http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/europe-transgender-people-face-discrimination-and-inhuman-and-degrading-treatment-2014-02-04 (edit) The TL:DR of the matter is that your new gender wont be legally recognized unless you "prove" being fully committed to your new one. The marriage thing is because marriage in Finland is still legally between man and woman only, so clearly you can't remain married to your old partner if you are now of the same sex! And the sterilization is apparently to make sure you don't procreate "wrong" for your new sex. It's also worth noting that transsexuality was classified a disease up until 2011 as well. Attestant fucked around with this message at 08:08 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 07:56
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I know one of the more popular banana strains was wiped out years ago since they are sterile clones grown from cuttings off of the original mutation. Current banana strains have the same problem and one good blight could mean less tasty bananas for all.
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May 22, 2014 08:15
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Laughing_Stock posted:Accelerando which was published in 2005 has some pretty wild ideas. It starts out with the discovery of AIs that originated from some literal lobsters uploading their consciousness into the internet and kind of takes off from there. It's free from the author as well! http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html I'm really digging this book chat, I'm always looking for singularity and strange sci-fi to read.
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May 22, 2014 08:23
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Sibling of TB posted:It's free from the author as well! http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html If you want post-singularity sci-fi, I can't recommend the Quantum Thief (soon-to-be) Trilogy enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quantum_Thief As a short description, the book follows a master thief in a world where humanity has spread across our solar system, mastered uploading consciousnesses in to digital form, and evolved far past actual biological bodies. The books are really drat clever, if a bit obtuse to get in to at first. The author doesn't really explain new things and terms, but rather expects for the reader to figure things out themselves.
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May 22, 2014 08:36
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If we're doing sci-fi book recommendations, I've always been a fan of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. The culture are (if I remember correctly) a mix of different species in a galaxy spanning civilization. They have post-singularity AI who exist in society as individuals with all the rights and privileges as the biological citizens. There are also extremely smart AIs called Minds that control the starships that are very entertaining to read about, (for example, there is a theme that they always have entertaining and eccentric self-chosen names). The biological citizens have also genetically modified themselves, as standard, to be able to produce a number of different drugs at will from glands, as well as a number of other cool modifications that escape my memory. Banks' novels were one of my first introductions to the kind of vast scale sci-fi with grand ideas that we're discussing here, and I've been into it ever since. Cannot recommend it highly enough.
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May 22, 2014 14:48
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Pvt.Scott posted:I know one of the more popular banana strains was wiped out years ago since they are sterile clones grown from cuttings off of the original mutation. Current banana strains have the same problem and one good blight could mean less tasty bananas for all. They may be sterile because we selectively bred them to be. Real wild bananas have big rear end, hard seeds in them and relatively little tasty flesh.
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May 22, 2014 15:21
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Rigged Death Trap posted:They may be sterile because we selectively bred them to be. That's the point--bananas as we know them in stores are quite vulnerable to being wiped out due to disease, parasite, etc. It's been put forth that ours could be the last generation that has them, or at least has them commonly available. The wild varieties and less-edible ones will of course likely remain.
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May 22, 2014 15:46
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Rigged Death Trap posted:They may be sterile because we selectively bred them to be. No kidding. I was curious to see what a wild banana looks like and looked it up: Generally a lot more like a typical fruit.  Given that survival in the wild basically favors smoothing of genetic traits for versatility and disease resistance, this kind of makes sense. In the process, I also discovered the insufferable argument that (cultivated) bananas disprove atheism. 
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May 22, 2014 15:47
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Attestant posted:If you want post-singularity sci-fi, I can't recommend the Quantum Thief (soon-to-be) Trilogy enough: This man is correct, and I really need a Matjek Chen Was Right t-shirt.
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May 22, 2014 16:01
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Or is it Sputnik posted:However, forced sterilization in Sweden didn't even end in 1975! The law that gave transsexual people the right to undertake corrective surgery (from 1972) mandated sterilization up until 2013. An estimated 860 people were sterilized in the 40 years the law were active. Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't said corrective surgery inevitably sterilize the individual anyway? Certainly for male to female, but I guess female to male might be able to retain fertility. Though my understanding is that hormone therapy typically sterilizes long before any manner of surgery is undergone. I'm not defending the law by any means, it's just odd that they would feel the need to mandate something that in the vast majority of cases will likely happen as a matter of course anyway. I guess that's a spite-motivated law for ya.
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May 22, 2014 16:29
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OAquinas posted:That's the point--bananas as we know them in stores are quite vulnerable to being wiped out due to disease, parasite, etc. It's been put forth that ours could be the last generation that has them, or at least has them commonly available. The wild varieties and less-edible ones will of course likely remain. Well theoretically you could still start from scratch and start selectively breeding edible bananas from already resistant wild species.
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May 22, 2014 16:40
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GreyjoyBastard posted:This man is correct, and I really need a Matjek Chen Was Right t-shirt. I really, really dig the Sobornost. I would get a shirt like that too.
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May 22, 2014 16:48
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This talk of scifi becoming outdated by scientific progress reminded me of Asimov's incredible 'The Last Question' (http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html), written in 1956. It's a short story about mankind's evolution, as guided by a succession of AI's that, aside from the first AI being built using transistors in 2000-something, manages to be vague enough about the sciency stuff not to feel horribly outdated. It's a very quick read and well worth the time, check it out!
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May 22, 2014 17:16
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Diogenes Bub posted:If we're doing sci-fi book recommendations, I've always been a fan of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. OAquinas posted:It's been put forth that ours could be the last generation that has them, or at least has them commonly available. The wild varieties and less-edible ones will of course likely remain. Cascade Failure posted:This talk of scifi becoming outdated by scientific progress reminded me of Asimov's incredible 'The Last Question' (http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html), written in 1956. It's a short story about mankind's evolution, as guided by a succession of AI's that, aside from the first AI being built using transistors in 2000-something, manages to be vague enough about the sciency stuff not to feel horribly outdated. It's a very quick read and well worth the time, check it out!
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May 22, 2014 17:31
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sentientcarbon posted:Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't said corrective surgery inevitably sterilize the individual anyway? Certainly for male to female, but I guess female to male might be able to retain fertility. Though my understanding is that hormone therapy typically sterilizes long before any manner of surgery is undergone. My understanding is that it was mandatory to get the sterilisation done in order to get your gender legally changed. So someone could be pre-op or non-op, or have been living as their correct gender for years, but unable to get their passport or driver's licence updated because they're unwilling or unable to get sterilised. It's pretty gross, really.
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May 22, 2014 18:08
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Tiggum posted:We made them once, I'm sure we could make them again. Assuming we preserve much in the way of plant diversity. At the rate we're annihilating wild forest to plant monocultures this is not a given.
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May 22, 2014 21:36
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sentientcarbon posted:Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't said corrective surgery inevitably sterilize the individual anyway? Certainly for male to female, but I guess female to male might be able to retain fertility. Though my understanding is that hormone therapy typically sterilizes long before any manner of surgery is undergone. It's because transpeople were considered to be deranged and any further attempts at procreation had to be hindered. That's pretty much all there is to it. It's a lovely 1960's mix of transphobia, dated medical knowledge, and eugenics. "Progressive" Sweden has more restrictions on gender identity than former right-wing dictatorship and Catholic country Argentina. Procreation is still hindered due to a technicality with artificial insemination regulations, which will hopefully be corrected. Switching to the more pleasant topic of dated science fiction, I just think it gives a certain charm to it all when you've got bulky mechanics and such. I mean, the depictions of computers and networks in Neuromancer makes it pretty unique compared to how computers are actually used. Now when we have all of these fantastic electronics and global communications networks it seems it'd be harder to be original and imaginative.
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May 22, 2014 23:05
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sentientcarbon posted:Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't said corrective surgery inevitably sterilize the individual anyway? Certainly for male to female, but I guess female to male might be able to retain fertility. Though my understanding is that hormone therapy typically sterilizes long before any manner of surgery is undergone. neongrey posted:My understanding is that it was mandatory to get the sterilisation done in order to get your gender legally changed. So someone could be pre-op or non-op, or have been living as their correct gender for years, but unable to get their passport or driver's licence updated because they're unwilling or unable to get sterilised. It's pretty gross, really. Years of Debate and Discussion posting has hardened me for Bobbin's discussion corners.
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May 22, 2014 23:29
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The whole sterilization deal is just a final gutpunch, really. Fairly certain you also have to not have any sperm or eggs saved away somewhere as well, which I'd say is the even more important part to change.
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May 22, 2014 23:33
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srb posted:It's because transpeople were considered to be deranged and any further attempts at procreation had to be hindered. Doesn't NASA still use some pretty old and bulky computers on spacecraft for critical systems because they're easier to fix and more reliable/durable, or am I just misremembering something? I like to think that space freighter cockpits would look similar to the ones in the Nostromo (from Alien) but with better display screens. Not that space freighters make much sense for anything other than orbital construction.
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May 22, 2014 23:45
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Pvt.Scott posted:Doesn't NASA still use some pretty old and bulky computers on spacecraft for critical systems because they're easier to fix and more reliable/durable, or am I just misremembering something? Maybe you're thinking of the recent news reports about how the U.S. nuclear arsenal still runs on 8" floppies?
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May 23, 2014 00:09
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