I think that the underlying issue is that different people often make radically different (and sometimes conflicting) qualities a central part of their personal identity. What’s worse, some such identifications are regarded as improper while others are enshrined as utterly inviolate, all without any widely agreed upon decision-making metric.
In the case of individuals making their own choices things are usually manageable (one might expect as much or more variance in a transhuman society even without identity politics), but when it comes to propagating identity things get messy. As far as I’m aware, no one’s managed to solve that problem to wide satisfaction even for things like religious affiliation that can be changed relatively easily later in life.
I tend to sympathize with Paul Graham here, but I can’t even begin to see a society-level solution to the problem. Even the sort of changes discussed by TheOtherDave are regarded as extremely offensive in some cases.
I think that the underlying issue is that different people often make radically different (and sometimes conflicting) qualities a central part of their personal identity. What’s worse, some such identifications are regarded as improper while others are enshrined as utterly inviolate, all without any widely agreed upon decision-making metric.
In the case of individuals making their own choices things are usually manageable (one might expect as much or more variance in a transhuman society even without identity politics), but when it comes to propagating identity things get messy. As far as I’m aware, no one’s managed to solve that problem to wide satisfaction even for things like religious affiliation that can be changed relatively easily later in life.
I tend to sympathize with Paul Graham here, but I can’t even begin to see a society-level solution to the problem. Even the sort of changes discussed by TheOtherDave are regarded as extremely offensive in some cases.