h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's the requested kitchen tool. Keep digging.

Ok Mund, you asked for it. One can 'o worms opened, so I'm pretty much free-forming here, please don't expect aa reasoned scientific argument or anything.

Thoughts on 'womb envy', genetic manipulation and the general wierdness of procreation (natural or otherwise)
- recent research has indicated that it is *possible* to create a human embryo from the genetic material extracted from 2 eggs i.e. no sperm required. This caused a flurry of "Lesbians can make babies without men!" shock-type headlines, but how might it affect the dynamic of our currnt argument? Would this make the drive to *artificially* create life (which I percieve as a predominantly male urge) stronger?

Would the possibilities and choices involved in gene manipulation, and it's associations of 'designer' babies, perhaps satisfy the need to *manufacture* people?

Does AI in it's purest form, i.e a purely computer-based inteligence, withour humanoid/robotic casing, count as "manufactured man" in the sense of this thread? Is the act of creating intelligence also the act of creating a person?

As I said, I'm just free-forming, and it may or may not make sense to you.
Personally, I have the pro-creative instincts of a brick, and believe it God's idea of a joke to give me child-bearing hips. I do however believe the creation of life is a privelidge which should not be casually abused.

So you can create life from two eggs. I would have thought the male target was to create life fom MY single donor cell implanted in a single egg "carrier" without its own genes (but you do have the problem of the mitochondrial DNA...).

How do the "Lesbians can make babies without men!" headlines stack up against the underlying "Men can make copies of themselves with only the usual passive involvement of women but none of the women's genes" (same "but" as above).

"Designer babies" and "manufactured men" certainly seem to be related concepts.

I didn't want to include AI, because the physical form was an important factor in setting this thing off, but it's probably an arbitrary decision even if I stick to it.

You may have the procreative instincts of a brick, but just think how many bricks there are in the world! And child-bearing hips are rather essential for those women who - whether they really wanted to or not - end up bearing children. A bit better than a joke?

I believe the creation of life is not a right, not a privilege but a responsibility, but it should certainly not be casually abused.

Just to toss in the reference: one of the main characters in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" was the computer that ran the base, named "Mycroft" by its maintainer (whose name I forget). Eventually, in pursuit of independence, Mycroft acquired a second identity, "Adam Selene", who was a video image. (Heinlein knew what computer graphics could do, even that far back.) He looked human, acted human (to the point of becoming a leading figure in the revolution), but never actually had a material body. So. Does "manufactured" mean "material", or would just the image do? (For the record, Adam Selene passed the Turing test with flying colors. Most of the Lunar residents firmly believed he was human.)

Hope that one didn't duplicate anything. Wrote it before I realized the thread was as long as it is. (It's easy to forget newly-discovered threads aren't necessarily new ones.)

As I said a few minutes ago, I wanted to talk about manufactured men as physical manifestations. But virtual beings have come up from time to time (I'm sure I inserted at least one myself), and they do tie in with the underlying threads of the subject...

Why would you want to manufacture a man/android/robot/image of a man?

And what would you want it to do? To the rest of us? With the rest of us?

All I know is if this computer ever achieves sentience and a voice it's going in the bin.It's already snippy and snide with all it's error messages.
Why would anyone want to manufacture a man/women along these lines.The originals aren't too hot and who is to decide what is an improvement?Let's just leave it up to Mother Nature.After all you only have to look at Man's attempts to improve on Mother Nature to know that he's made many mistakes.Like taking rabbits to Australia and then using disease to try and control them.How many ecological disasters have we created?Man is crap at playing God because he can't second guess because he isn't all knowing therefore he keeps making mistakes.Manufacturing superhumans is bad news I'm sure of it because we can't see into the future.I'm even beginning to wonder if trying to use gene manipulation to cure disease IS a good thing after all.Making a mistake in this area could lead to us making things much worse.

Man is crap at making things better.

But what about all the stories about the better beings we make?

Do they tell us something about ourselves?

God didn't get it all right, either. But man is in no position to criticise.

Man wants to be God, because God created a being that is popularly believed to be perfect, pinnacle of evolution and all that. It is popular in fiction simply because Man is crap at the actual deed. There is bound to be something about men wanting to sprog without women involved to produce the perfect son, rather than that shifty lay about that his mother has spoiled all these years. Its been popular in stories (from at least Samson and Delilah) that women corrupt men, so producing the perfect, artificial man without female "interference" could be seen as part of that mysoginistic streak. Also, building a man gets you past the nappies and tantrums bits

Just free thinking on a Friday morning, feel free to ignore.

I don't know. Now that you've told me I'm a corruptive influence, it sort of changes my outlook on life a bit. So I shan't ignore it.

Oh that's all I need now, people listening to what I say.

Do we want to build something perfect, or do want something to do our bidding?

Mund
I feel I must clarify on the hips front. My point was that I have been equipt in abundance with all the neccessary bits for producing a brood, but none of the 'instincts' to use them. I find this somewhat ironic - hence the reference to cosmic jokularity. This was meant to illustrate that, just as men can have procreative urges; women can also be happy without them.

on a lighter note - just as well we're discounting the AI side of things, or we'd be knee-deep in references to Orac, Zen, Holly and Max Headroom!!

Coruption of men? Been doing it all my life (although, as an equal-ops. corupter, I'll take on women as well)!

I'm sensing a general consensus among these posting that this is very much a "boy's game"

Probably just because the majority of these tales have been written by men, or are about men. There is probably an interesting bit in the differences between those written by/about men and those written by/about women. Sadly I can't think of sufficient examples.

Well, isn't the corrupting women idea caused by the puritan religions. The ones that tell you that pretty much everything you enjoy is bad, including carnal pleasures. And since the mere sight of a beautiful woman can induce an urge for that, women hinder our route to the divine. So they should be covered up like in muslim countries and such. I doubt the old greeks had any corrupting women ideas, since their gods were much more sensible and knew how to have a good time.

Sorry I mentioned the hips. I knew what you meant but I was pretending not to. A case of post-click regret.

The real classic - Frankenstein - was by a woman, but the rest seem to be male inventions.

*I drafted a wonderful and coherent reply, and then lost it - and I have had too many rum and cokes tonight to remember what I said in detail... *

It occured to me that maybe the reason why most of the manufactured men tales are by men, is that a women can manufacture a man any time she likes - providing her contraception does not fail her. Or something. (I am posting when pissed, and when pissed off, which is a bad combination... )

(Does the phrase "womb-envy" have any relavence here?)

On a different slant - Xanatic mentioned the Greeks - and as I recollect they were mainly nice clean homosexuals, and viewed women as wild, wanton and dangerous. Can't think why...

Sorry about this - spent yesterday evening and this afternoon with my ex - whose girlfriend is young enough to want children....

B