Hey, everyone. So I sat down to write something about this horrific discussion of domestic violence on The Spearhead – which some of the Man Boobz commentariat have already started discussing here – and, well, I just couldn’t do it.
I need to step back a bit from this blog for a little while to clear my head and maintain my sanity. So I’m going to take a bit of a break – maybe just a few days, maybe a week – and post nothing but interesting videos and other things having nothing whatsoever to do with misogyny or the manosphere. You all, of course, can treat this any any other thread as a totally open thread to discuss whatever you want, including the regular Man Boobz topics of misogyny and general MRA shitlordery.
I’m going to start off with the dance number that first got me hooked on Bollywood music some years ago. This is from the 1998 film Dil Se, a drama about love and terrorism. But in Bollywood, even serious dramas have dance numbers, and Dil Se’s dance numbers are gorgeous and a little surreal.
The music from the film is by A.R. Rahman, a prolific and popular Bollywood music director best known in the US for doing the music for Slumdog Millionaire.
And yes, that is Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan dancing on top of a moving train without any safety harness or stunt double or CGI trickery. (Well, there are a couple of brief bits where a double might have been used.) Enjoy!
The thing that really struck me (yesterday, when I was holding more spoons) was how many people apparently believe that you should never have anything to do with someone who has spent time in jail/prison and that she deserves it for that reason. Do people really think we should just avoid convicts forever? Why do we even let them out of jail/prison? (I mean, I know why, but I also wouldn’t write someone off forever without considering what they’d done and, in most cases, why.) People are such assholes.
Ironically, the photo essay came out of a project on the difficulty ex-cons have reintegrating in society. The photographer thought the guy would be a good subject because he seemed friendly and gentle, which goes to show how charming abusers can be.
Okay, color-changing dance scene from Muthu Maharaja!
That fucking sucks, nat. Virtual hugs if you want them and if it isn’t too weird coming from someone who is only intermittently active in this community.
@BlackBloc, I’m not trying to argue “OMG, the soul is totes real, guyz”–agnostic, remember? Actually, I was trying to say that it’s perfectly reasonable for scientists to reject dualism as a model for understanding the personality, based on the data they have and the way science proceeds. The caveat is that we mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that since brains are ultimately machines, that we can treat human beings as predictable, interchangeable entities. There’s way too much variation and complexity there, and our free will (or the really convincing illusion of it, if you swing toward that interpretation) confounds the ability of science to analyze the mind as reliably as it does most other phenomena.
Nat: I am so sorry. Hugs to you. Vent all you want, this situation is beyond shitty and unfair.
Hugs to Nat if you want them – & a swig of Baileys for that coffee.
Bollywood at the circus, anyone? Only Hrithik could rock bin bag trousers …
@Freemage: Just a point about “brain-down-loading”. I’m not sure exactly what you claim to be impossible here. Obviously the brain is a physical thing and can’t be down-loaded. But one can believe that A PERSON is a set of psychological phenomena (a set of beliefs, desires, memories, and so on) rather than a physical brain. Since you don’t have to believe in an incorporeal soul in order to believe that there are beliefs, desires and memories, you can hold the belief that it’s possible IN PRINCIPLE (although obviously not with our technology) to transfer a person from one body to another, or from a body to, say, a robot body or a computer, without believing in a soul. All you’d have to do is somehow exactly copy the beliefs, desires and memories on to a new medium.
@ Dvärghundspossen
But wouldn’t that be a copy and not a download? (I think I have the original point, but I may have gotten lost in all the pretty men in my memories of The Prestige.)
It depends on how you view things, and that’s the point.
To make a comparison: Suppose I have a DVD with a movie on, and for some reason it’s gonna deteriorate soon. In order to save the movie, I download it into my computer. The DVD is destroyed, but I can still watch the movie.
Now, what is it that I have on my computer? Is it the original movie, that I transferred to the computer hard-drive? Or is it a copy of the old movie, that merely looks exactly the same? I don’t know. I think you could say either. These are just different ways of speaking about what just happened. That’s my view. Likewise with persons.
Suppose you have a human being. You clone a new human body, with a brain, and then configure the brain cells and synapses and so on in the new body so that exactly the same memories, beliefs and desires as in the first body appears, and then the first body is destroyed. Now, have you made a precise copy of the original human’s personality in this new body? Or have you transferred the person from one body to another? Again, I’d say that’s just different ways of speaking.
We can imagine that the first body isn’t destroyed. Then the question will be whether one person “branched” into two persons, or whether you have created a new person which is exactly similar to the first one. Once again, I think that’s just two ways of speaking.
However, lots of philosophers think that there must be a definite answer to the question “did I make a copy of the first person, or was zie transferred to a new body?”. And they give various philosophical arguments for either an “animalistic view” according to which you make a copy, or a “psychological continuity view” according to which you transfer the person. But it is normally assumed by both camps that we don’t have a soul – it’s just that the psychological continuity camp believes that “a person” is a set of beliefs, desires, memories and so on which could in principle be instantiated by different media.
Some Gal Not Bored at All has it right. What you’re calling a ‘download’, Dvarghundspossen, actually isn’t, any more than ‘destructive teleportation’ (ala Star Trek) is actually a transfer through space. Emulating the brain state of a person with a sufficiently advanced computer might theoretically be possible–but it’s definitely a copy, not the original (which is only eliminated from the original brain if you choose to add that to the process).
If you’ve ever seen the Schwarzenegger flick, Sixth Day, the key to understanding the movie is that the actual super-science isn’t the cloning (that’s mostly based on stuff we can do now, or theoretically could develop from that), it’s the not-really-explained-or-commented-on brain-copy-device that works with a simple flash to the retinas.
Most transhumanists tend to avoid this aspect of it–they specifically talk about leaving ‘meatspace’ behind, and act as if the copy and the original are not merely identical, but actually the same entity–that there’s a transfer between the two environments.
Some Gal: And yes, the menfolk in The Prestige are very pretty, though it’s also fun to think of it as a an alt-world battle between Wolverine and Batman in a steampunk setting.
@ Dvärghundspossen
Ah. I see where you are coming from. I am personally of the belief that if it can only be copied, then it wouldn’t meet the criteria of a “soul” and if it can only be transferred, then it is something that might. (I am a Soul-less Atheist, though, so it isn’t as though my definition of the soul holds a ton of weight.)
I believe that it might be possible someday to copy people, but not transfer them. Like, I could copy a DVD and the movie would be indistinguishable, but I couldn’t copy the DVD that I (to make up an example*) inherited from my grandmother. There could only ever be the one of them.
*My grandmother always had one of those little mirrors that attaches to her lipstick and I was lucky enough to get it when she passed away. I could always find an identical one, but it would never be a copy.
Uh, I’m feeling you don’t get what I’m trying to say. In Star Trek teleportation, no MATTER is transferred through space, no ATOMS, just information. However, the beliefs, desires, memories etc were first instantiated in a body on the space-ship and later instantiated in a body on the ground. We can agree on all the physical stuff here, we can agree that one BODY is destroyed and a new one created, but still disagree on whether teleportation COUNTS as transferring the PERSON from space-ship to ground, or whether it COUNTS as destroying the first person and creating a new identical one.
If the first body isn’t destroyed, as were the case with Riker in TNG at one point, then we can agree on the physics: A new body which is exactly like the first one has been created from new atoms, and this new body has the same memories, beliefs and desires as the first one. Whether this COUNTS as one person branching out in two, or as one person getting an identical copy, depends on whether we think a person is a) a brain, or a brain in a body, or b) a set of mental states.
This is NOT a disagreement about what physically happens when you teleport. It’s a disagreement on what counts as a person. I think that’s just a matter of how we choose to talk. We can choose to use “person” to refer to a brain or brain-in-body, or we can use it to refer to a set of psychological states that can be instantiated by different media or in different bodies. These are co-extensive today, but would come apart in a Star Trek scenario. If you were a scientist in the Star Trek world, you would probably choose to use “person” as referring to mental states, and talk of “persons” being transferred from the space-ship to the ground via teleportation, if you were a social scientist, while it might work better for you to use “person” to refer to physical brains if you were a biologist. I don’t think either of these scientists would use “person” in an objectively right way though, because I don’t think there’s an objectively right way. You certainly couldn’t use natural science to determine which one is using a certain word correctly, since that’s not what natural science is about.
@Freemage
And Bowie. He’s still pretty too. (At least to me.)
On the “personality transfer” discussion here: there seems to be a way that duality still sneaks back into the debate – just instead of “soul vs. body”, it becomes “brain vs. rest of body”.
Yes, the vast majority of our consciousness and thus personality clearly arises from the brain. But the rest of our body isn’t just a trivial mechanical brain-transporter. Take my thyroid gland – once my hypothyroid got diagnosed and treated, it didn’t just change my energy levels, my whole outlook on life improved (yay). Certainly the hormones churned out by my ovaries (or someone else’s testes) will feed back on the brain and affect thoughts, feelings, personality. If you transplanted, or magically copied, my brain into a totally different body, that body’s adrenal glands may have a completely different response threshold to stress – suddenly making me much more (or less) likely to stress out in a given situation than I would be in my current body. My body isn’t just an interchangeable appendage to my brain, it’s an integral part of me. So uploading/copying my brain into another body wouldn’t exactly copy me. It would copy a large part of me, but quite possibly create a different person – a person who shared my opinions and memories, but who may have a significantly different temperament, energy level, sex drive, etc. – adding up to a possibly rather different personality.
This is not to dismiss the concerns of those of us who feel quite divorced from our bodies – for example (though not limited to, and not always the case for) many trans* people. If anything, to me, this underlines why something like gender dysphoria can be so painful. If our bodies are part of who we are, then finding yourself with the wrong body can be a major blow to one’s sense of self, and getting to a point where our body feels right can be an important part of finding wholeness. (Probably not for everyone, but certainly for some of us!)
Some Gal: Ooh, I always forget Bowie is there. Okay, so the Goblin King is present, too.
Dvar: I think the distinction comes from which groups we’re discussing. I’m talking about the vast majority of casual transhumanists I’ve come across online–they don’t recognize the distinction involved, and presume a “download” entails an actual transfer of ‘personhood’, with a unique identity.
Let me put it this way: If Star Trek writers really grasped the ‘copy’ aspect of what ‘beaming’ does, why is it that they don’t just make backup data-copies of individuals deemed sufficiently important? (I’d certainly include a starship’s captain and probably their entire officer crew, if not everyone on-board.) After all, the only difference is a perception of time. However, the writers and fans ignore this element of the universe, because they want to believe in the uniqueness of the individual.
Hell, for that matter, why not, in warfare, just spam Worfs (and a few of your other best fighters) onto the enemy ship, instead of sending the one unique copy of everyone that you never make back-ups of? The fifth Worf to land is no less “Worf” than the first four were–they’re either all ‘fakes’ or all ‘real’.
It’s the use of terms like “teleport” and “download” that allow that fiction of dualism (and thus, uniqueness) to remain in place.
Neurite: An excellent point, for the record. When I’m talking about simulating a psyche (to describe the personality that arises from the body in question), I’m definitely including all those hormonal factors that are part of the ‘person’ that exists now. Presumably, those, too, could be emulated in terms of the effects they have on the brain, and thus the psyche.
Okay, I’m going to refrain from the discussion of the physics and metaphysics of the transporter beam. The superscience of it is that there is a continuity of experience throughout the process, and that, coupled with IT’S JUST A TELEVISION SHOW (and some movies) is enough to satisfy me.
@Neurite
Your point is why I actually think uploading into non-meat mechanical forms would at the very least be incredibly traumatic even if, as Freemage said, we reproduced exactly the body/brain interactions and so, say, when asleep you were pretty much you. When awake, everything would be so alien because the body wouldn’t be what it has always been. That alien-ness would have its own impact on who you are. I’ve had fibromyalgia for years now and it isn’t until this year that my pain and limitations are enough coded as “me” that they show up in my dreams, that is, that I always have it as part of my definition of my body*. In addition, the pain substantially changes the way I see the world and so has changed me. And it has been traumatic and taken a long time to get used to even though my body looks the same and many of the same reactions certain things. I think going in the direction from normal human body issues to none would be at least as traumatic.
*technically, fibromyalgia is most likely a brain problem and not a body problem, but since I experience the problem as being in my body, it makes more sense to treat it as that for the analogy.
@Falconer
And they have an empath. Their science is different from mine. 🙂
Ok, bear in mind I spend way too much time thinking of dumb hypothetical scenarios.
I think there is a way to “transfer” a person from a biologic body to a mechanical (synthetic, whatever) one without it being traumatic. The key element here is continuity, basically you “install” redundant parts on a person that take over when the original part fails, that way the transition is gradual.
Of course then you get into Theseus’ paradox territory, but the same could probably be said about the human body as it is.
@karalora – high fives for THIS. So much.
@Myoo
But, you really couldn’t call that an “upload.” I think you may be right, but gradually would have to equal decades not years. I still think it is possible that in a whole is greater than the sum of its parts way, there might be trauma when the whole thing was done, but it would require actually trying it to know. So, we’ll meet back here then. 🙂
(That wasn’t meant to stop the conversation btw.)
The whole copying a person thing just reminds me of a comic I read, where one of the villains cloned himself to have help with his crimes, but it ended up with both of them constantly arguing about who was the original and who was the copy.
Also, I meant to say this, but got distracted:
Take all the time you need David, it astounds me that you can take as much of the manosphere crap as it is.
Falcolner: The main point is that, yeah, it is “just a TV show”, but it’s one that’s informed a lot of the transhumanist discussion without actually thinking it through.
Myoo: Most often, if movies or comics deal with the issue, they do it for comedic effect, yeah. Even if they both accept that neither is more ‘original’ than the other, the supervillain mentality is poorly suited to taking direction, or even working to a common goal.
Poor Inconvenient, pops by for a bit of fun trolling and everyone ignores him. and how dare women chose who to be with?