From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 15:30:54 MST
On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 04:40:07PM -0500, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Amara Graps wrote:
> >
> >It's a common idea for people not familiar with the naturist ideas
> >to think that it is about how one looks without clothes. That's
> >a mistake, though. It's about being comfortable inside one's body.
> >
> >Consider this: if one can't accept their human body (accepting
> >'what is' comes before choosing to make changes), do you think
> >that they can accept their transhuman body? The answer is No.
>
> Amara, while I'm in general agreement with your sentiments here, the last
> sentence is a pure non sequitur. The pragmatic truth is that plenty of
> people who can't stand their current bodies would be quite happy with a
> Primo 3M. Yes, genuinely happy.
From my readings in the psychology of body dysmorphic disorder, I would
say that quite a few people who are currently unhappy with their bodies
would be just as unhappy if they got a Primo 3M. The problem isn't that
there is anything wrong with the body, but the acceptance of it or the
expectations of what a future body would mean to oneself.
> The moral is that people will learn to accept beautiful bodies as easily
> as ugly ones. Today they have *two* problems, and one of them makes it a
> lot harder to get started on the other one.
Yes. But the problem of not being good at accepting one's body is
nontrivial even if you can switch bodies as easily as clothing. Why does
everybody else seem happier/cooler/more posthuman than me? Being told
that the issue is psychological doesn't truly help, one needs to develop
one's own body philosophy.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Mar 18 2003 - 15:35:59 MST