I discuss a lot with friends about women’s rights, and time and again, we return the human rights bootstrapping paradox: those who don’t stand up for themselves are not to blame because their culture keeps uneducated and abused. For example, if one is kept uneducated and ignorant for their entire life, one doesn’t know that they can’t see a better choice. These women are in a catch-22 - they can’t liberate themselves until we give them the idea that they need to be liberated.

The problem is that, I believe, this argument is the same argument of why should a man stop raping a woman as punishment and control because his culture also keeps him uneducated and an abuser. The flip side of the coin: men in the same cultures shouldn’t be blamed because the cultures which says it’s ok. Which everyone in the western civilization and many outside it say, “That’s total bullshit.” Men who do rape women with impunity in Congo can be targeted for war crimes - heinous, but it’s a bizarrely acceptable catch-22.

By becoming the “police of the world,” UN world leaders (America, France, England, Russia, etc.) are taking on more than a role to pacify the world, but to interfere willingly. I’m not too sure that this is a good approach, but the alternative is to let countries like Myanmar to willingly let their people die in large droves, and to let Sierra Leone and Congo to use rape as governmental indoctrination of women - which is a sad case in deed.

My recommendation is that we establish a line of economic and military support and enforce it. We can do special exceptions, but at least on paper, we’ve said, if you want to do business with us, here’s the bar your country much reach.

Freedom and political liberty cannot be given, they must be asserted by the body politic. To attempt interference is to create another Iraq.

IO9 and Anders Sandberg both have thrown in their hats on why posthumans get the short shaft in Hollywood movies. IO9 basically took the bombastic route, and of course, Anders is far more intelligent about the analysis.

I keep saying that posthumanity is going grow from fashion - we’ve seen the adoption of clear indicators of posthumanity: cochlear impants, bluetooth earbuds, extreme body modifications, and the acceptance of handicap access (such as very large people torturing electric gokarts at shopping malls) in our society. The more people overcome their physical form, the more accepting we’re going to be of true cybernetics.

Movies, on the other hand, have had different take for several reasons, but the easiest is Sandberg’s point that transhumans are transgressions against purity/sanctity. But we’ve had some excellent examples of good stories. Leaving comic heroes gone to movies out of this discussion, the quintessential movies all have transformative stories of the big transhumanist bad guys:

Terminator has the malevolent posthuman intelligence (Skynet, not the terminator) but Terminator 2 has the whole “boy and his terminating pet” theme where the advanced intelligence knows better than the boy, proving that destructive T-800 flesh on top of metal exoskeleton have hearts too.

Any version of Blade Runner works for this as well. Rutger Hauer’s delivery of “tears in rain” all points to how superior humans are both a menace and a boon to sentience at large.

Last but not least, Kurt Rusell as Dexter Riley in the Computer Wore Tennis Shoes transforms from an all-American kid to a super intelligent freak of nature… and back to a kid again. Because we all know that super intelligence isn’t a threat to anyone.

But I digress a bit. I refer to Lovecraft’s fear of the unknown quote - once we get over the initial fear, we’ll realize it’s not so bad being better at what we do.

I applaud the Olympic committee’s decision to allow Oscar Pistorius, a 21-year-old South African double-amputee sprinter, to compete for the Olympics. Slashdot has generously already provided all the pros and cons - documenting all the fears and expectations that will come of this decision of allowing Pistorius to compete.

Our bodies are not the end of our existence - they are the beginning and while we’ve received the fortunate benefits of evolutionary drive - Pistorius is an example of how and in what way we’re going to change ourselves - engineer ourselves - to become more of what we want to be.

Cries of unfair treatment exist on both sides of this call - one side says he’s a runner and should be allowed to compete, the other point out he’s not completely human. It’s a phenomenon of introducing change into the status quo.

Pistorius’ appendages are no different when you see obese or old people on electric go-carts, or when others perform wheelchair races. We must move forward, and moving forward requires people like Pistorius to not accept his body as a limitation, Olympic members to make decisions like the one above, and for all of us people to accept those who either by accident or design set themselves so far apart.

We are phenomenal minds and we should be allowed to live phenomenal ways.

My friends nudged me to read Freakonomics by Stephen D Levitt - which I did by audiobook. Inside, the chapter “Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?”, Levitt breaks down how the drug dealing ganglife is little better than working at McDonalds. Recently, Venkatesh has given his two cents on how Grand Theft Auto 4 (GTA4) is - in my words - no better or worse than politicians or cops over at Slate.

What gets to me isn’t his knowledge take on GTA4, but his factual accounting of gang life. To succeed in gang life, people need to rely on friends, and like in business, betray associates when the opportunity arises. His basic approach blows the conventional wisdom out of the water: making money, whether from drugs or burgers, is achieved similarly - coerce others to make money for you - whether it’s by hook, crook or book.

This is rather pessimistic viewpoint, but more importantly, it’s a rational, explainable response that helps us understand our place in a capitalist society.

In the last couple of centuries, with the UK’s and USA’s efforts on the rights of children, such as child labor laws and penalties for juvenile criminals, slowly a change of perspective is occurring in other nations. We’re seeing a rise of child abuse investigations in Europe - especially former Soviet Socialist Republic, and Asia is addressing on a nation-by-nation basis, such as Japan beginning to rethink their anime/hentai industry and Thailand’s continuing crackdown on sexual tourism.

For a long time, I’ve postulated a society hold the ethics it’s resources can hold, but here’s a heinous example of how these changes are taking far too long a time to cross cultures: Monster Father imprisons his daughter for 24 years, sires 7 children, kills one of them. The mother did nothing. This isn’t to say that Austrians are pro-abuse as a culture, just that their police didn’t execute when this girl and the children needed them most.

As more of these warped people come to light due to changes in culture, the more likely we’re going to encounter similar extraordinary events, and expose entire cultures of institutionalized and consensual child abuse. Eventually, we have the potential to communicate the abhorrent treatment of young women facing a culture of rape and mutilation in more remote locations.

Children don’t have a choice. We need to set a finite line. A person who physically abuses children as a form of cultural control needs to be excised from the gene pool with prejudice. Cultures that embrace these cultural memes should be pressured by the UN to change and economic efforts should be brought to bare.