This episode’s topics are:
1. Why the broader disability rights community ought to come out in support of life-extension medicine (short answer: if disability shouldn’t be used as a basis for devaluing someone’s life, neither should age!)
2. Why not devoting resources to longevity medicine is a form of medical discrimination (short answer: if the purpose of medicine is to save lives, medicine shouldn’t limit its sphere of effectiveness only to younger people)
3. Some commentary on the conversation at Responsible Nanotechnology regarding autism, disability, difference, and enhancement that probably spun way beyond anything the author expected! (And I must emphasize here that I did initially misinterpret the argument being made to some extent, though I stand by the validity of my initial response with regard to how it relates to quite a few attitudes I commonly come across, even if those attitudes weren’t abundantly present in that particular conversation.)
I highly recommend reading the discussion in response to “Exploring Nano-Ethics”, by the way...it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with nanotechnology, but it does indirectly since nanotechnology is definitely one of those things which stands to make a person’s identity and ability set even more malleable than it is today. Some people find that prospect to be tremendously scary, others find it to be wondrous. I personally think that nanotechnology in general is probably an inevitable development, and that it does have tremendous potential for good (e.g., ending world hunger in a manner such as that described in Neal Stephenson‘s, The Diamond Age), but that obviously certain safety factors ought to be kept in mind.
The Lifeboat Foundation offers a nice overview of some potential nano-related risks and how they might be mitigated. It’s good to know people are thinking about this sort of thing! This is another aspect of what I see as the importance of transhumanism: it’s not just about getting all starry-eyed over technology, but about acknowledging the relative closeness of particular technologies to develop and doing our best to think about their ramifications before they are upon us rather than trying to just muddle through as we go.
4. Learning (and helping others to learn) how to manage atypical functioning and perceptual style—emphasizing functionality over appearance, and how understanding one’s own brain better can lead to greater comfort in the world and greater opportunities for learning. I describe a few of my own challenges and how I’ve learned to deal with them.
5. Science Fiction Theatre! Well, not really. I wrote a story a few years ago (in 2003), before I had much of an idea that anyone was talking about the kinds of subjects I’d always been interested in. It is not autobiographical, though of course there are some elements I can identify with in the protagonist, but the story itself was written for entertainment and not for the sake of transmitting some kind of commentary on human modification. Keeping that in mind, I rather like it, if only because it’s one of the few stories I’ve actually managed to finish. (I used to have ambitions of becoming a professional sci-fi author and I still might attempt writing like that again someday, but as for now it keeps feeling like the real world is a lot more exciting to write about than the various imaginary ones I might come up with!)
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