Playing Against the Trend: Non-Villainous Anti-PSR, Reactionary etc. Characters

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't know if it should be called transhumanist, but I believe in equal rights for all entities capable of self-awareness, language, and volitional action. If we manage uplift, or neogenesis, or AI, I'll be in favor of their having rights.

Bill Stoddard

I rather doubt that most of that stuff is ever going to happen in the real world, although it is conceivable that in the far future new discoveries and inventions will make all sorts of strange things possible.
But human beings can already help to bring into the world new intelligent life. We do the beast with two backs, and nine months later a baby enters the world in all its screaming, bloody glory.

If humans somehow uplifted animals or 'grew' bioroids, we would be morally obligated to treat such creatures as our children. We’d be responsible. It's a rough analogy. Once they were mature, they’d have to find their own place in the world. Human laws and customs might need to be altered to accomdate the newcomers. Maybe we’d find it very difficult to share the Earth with them.

I very much doubt that human beings are ready (if we even can be ready, ever) for the awesome responsibility of creating new species of intelligent life. Given our track record, we'd eff it up bigtime. Considering how absolutely craptastic we have often treated other humans who showed small differences from us, I can only imagine the hell many humans would inflict on uplifts and bioroids. Slavery, torture, all sorts of horrific oppression…

My worldview allows for ‘people’ who aren’t human beings. I just haven’t met any, at least as far as I know.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't know if it should be called transhumanist, but I believe in equal rights for all entities capable of self-awareness, language, and volitional action. If we manage uplift, or neogenesis, or AI, I'll be in favor of their having rights.

Bill Stoddard

Fine enough, but you must define "rights" which comes in several categories some of whom by nature cannot be equal.

There are Natural Rights: life, liberty, and property and so on which apply to all.

There are Civic Rights which are a function of membership in a Polis. I do not have the right to vote in Israel and an Israeli has not the right to vote in the US and neither of us is done injustice.

There are what might be called "functional" or "vocational" rights that come not from the nature of life but from the acknowledgement that these rights are necessary for a particular function to be carried out. A military officer has the right to be obeyed by soldiers in his chain of command. That right ceases when that function ceases. These at least cannot be equal. Though whether "rights" is the proper term for it is arguable.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Fine enough, but you must define "rights" which comes in several categories some of whom by nature cannot be equal.

There are Natural Rights: life, liberty, and property and so on which apply to all.

When I refer to "rights" I mean universally valid rights, or what you are calling Natural Rights. If I meant some class of rights that result from participation in a particular relationship, organization, or community, I would specify, unless the previous discussion had made the specificity clear; and I would not attribute such rights to sapient beings as such, as it is not reasonable to suppose that every sapient being is a citizen of Costa Rica or holds shares in Apple or is married to David Pulver.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

They seem to be the issues that the mostly US based posters on here disagree most strongly with the non US posters.

I don't think I've even noticed that.

My cats are indoor only. Cats live longer that way; they're less likely to get mauled or catch something nasty or get poisoned.

I don't think I've noticed much of an issue with cat excreta; owned cats usually have litterboxes, and feral cats look for concealed places and then bury their wastes. Dog owners who don't bother to clean up after their dogs are a different matter. I rather sympathize with the condo association I read about that was talking of requiring residents to have their dogs' DNA sampled so that dog scat could be matched with the individual dog and the individual owner.

Bill Stoddard

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I don't think all that many people play THS. The group which I'm joining numbers only two posts by the GM, though. And from what I know from his comments and a single session log, the majority of characters aren't baseline humans, to say the least. (No idea how many in total, though.)

I've played in two reasonably long campaigns, in different but overlapping groups. One was set amongst the Vacuum Cleaners, and one was EU consular services on Mars. In the first, the characters were four humans, none radically upgraded, an SAI and a ghost. In the second, we had at various times a fairly vanilla human, an SAI, a bioroid, a ghost, another SAI who used an uplifted dog to carry around his telepresence rig, and a radically upgraded human - a Mars-bear. Plus lots of LAI Allies, of course.

Personally, I see THS as more of a beautiful work of art rather than an inherently fun-to-play setting. I think it is rather demanding on the GM to keep fun, but I'm looking forward to trying it out.

You have to be able to cope with a lot of weirdness appearing out of nowhere. In the second campaign, it became routine to stop for half an hour to discuss weird parts of the setting and try to rationalise them. The amazingly slow Martian Equatorial Railway was a repeating topic.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

I'm not sure what you mean by people who oppose the idea of 'transcending the human condition.'

In fact, I'm not really sure what 'transcending the human condition' is supposed to mean.

WRT to transhumanism, it generally means using technology to overcome human weaknesses and improve human functions until human biological limits are only the current technological limits. In practice, it involves genetic engineering, stem cell research, cloning, mechanical integration, and increasingly radical medical experimentation on humans, which are morally divisive topics not to mention practices.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by johndallman

You have to be able to cope with a lot of weirdness appearing out of nowhere. In the second campaign, it became routine to stop for half an hour to discuss weird parts of the setting and try to rationalise them. The amazingly slow Martian Equatorial Railway was a repeating topic.

That's not what I meant. THS is a 'tidy' setting. Adventure doesn't write itself. You can't just assemble an expedition into the darkest Africa / delve into the dungeon / viking crew / super-team trying to establish itself / whatever and get an instant hook. No, plots have to be assembled very carefully. Adventure hooks should be weighted and measured very carefully: too light and they get solved through a routine application of all the goodies available in the setting; too heavy and the bigger fish will just push the PCs aside (possibly violently). Even Mars has little to no place for the happy-go-lucky drifter with no name, no allegiance, and a deck of cards as his most prized possession.

This isn't bad. Stories set in a highly-structured society where everything is procedural can be fascinating. But it does mean that all this interconnectedness requires more preparation on the GM's part, that nothing that happens goes without a butterfly effect, that every mysterious stranger is only hours away from being an open book.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

WRT to transhumanism, it generally means using technology to overcome human weaknesses and improve human functions until human biological limits are only the current technological limits. In practice, it involves genetic engineering, stem cell research, cloning, mechanical integration, and increasingly radical medical experimentation on humans, which are morally divisive topics not to mention practices.

I believe that human beings do not have the wisdom to handle all of that if it is to be pursued without strong moral and customary constraints. We probably don't have the moral right to do many of the things 'transhumanists' want to do, either.

But understand that I'm not talking about medical treatment for disease or prosthetics for disabled people. That's not transhumanism. That's just medicine.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

I believe that human beings do not have the wisdom to handle all of that if it is to be pursued without strong moral and customary constraints. We probably don't have the moral right to do many of the things 'transhumanists' want to do, either.

But understand that I'm not talking about medical treatment for disease or prosthetics for disabled people. That's not transhumanism. That's just medicine.

As a person whose human condition leaves much to be desired, I don't see that the two are entirely distinguishable.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

As a person whose human condition leaves much to be desired, I don't see that the two are entirely distinguishable.

Fair enough.

I do hope that further advances in medicine will help you.