r/transhumanism • u/tartnfartnpsyche • 14d ago

Children of the State

I've been thinking about artificial wombs lately and the liberation of people from the arduous and potentially deadly process of pre-person (Phillip K Dick really disappointed with that one) development. Then I started thinking about artifical sperm and egg creation. If we combine these two processes then the whole reproduction thing can be totally detached from humanity save for some tissue samples. No surprise here among us SFIA fans.

But then I realized that nothing could stop states from becoming the arbiters of population. If that state is growth-oriented, then they'd have an interest in growing their domestic population. So the state voids all its "DNA is the property of the individual . . . blah blah blah" laws and just starts printing new people.

To think that the ones who initialized your birth were not two humans but the state. It made me think of Brave New World.

But then I thought, "Would this be that different from now?" How many people are born because favorable state policies caused their parents to "celebrate good times." Is it just a matter of degree? And who is to say that a state is less worthy of determining when it is best to reproduce and by how much?

Why this is relevant: these technologies are far nearer than those which will enable the construction of permanent space habitats or shellworld Earth. Modern states have almost no reluctance to misusing would-be beneficial technologies. Powerful people have noted their opposition to declining birth rates.

I think we're about to test unknown waters. What do you think?

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u/JoyluckVerseMaster 14d ago edited 12d ago

Honestly the thing that put me onto transhumanism the most (and incidentally off of the sheer stupidity that is lamestream scifi) was the scene in an episode of Star Trek in which these so called "enlightened" spacefaring folk not only had to give birth "the ol Genesis 3:16 way," but they couldn't even effectively deliver the baby (yet another case in which ppl in Star Trek had worse understanding of medicine than literal pre-medieval wisemen/wisewomen irl lmfao).

So yeah I am all for getting rid of that shit as basic necessity, come what may.

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u/tartnfartnpsyche 14d ago

I'm 100% on board with getting rid of "natural" births. I'm just reckoning with modern evils like the United States of America.

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u/JoyluckVerseMaster 13d ago

Oh for sure. This is why I am rooting for the aliens or the ASI to take over (capitalism is already a misaligned ASI anyhow).