Friday August 27, 2010

I AM THE ONE, ORGASMATRON. I just want to recommend "The Ultimate Escape: The Bizarre Libertarian Plan of Uploading Brains into Robots to Escape Society" by Sadlynaut Brad Reed at AlterNet. It's an update on that whole transhumanist scheme Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds and other libertarians are into, whereby they hope to upload their brains into robots and live forever, free from the interference of looters and littlebrains.

One choice bit, involving Bryan Caplan (best known to us as one of the intellectuals who think women were more free in the 1890s than they are now, because of the socialism):

"Yes, I wish to clone myself and raise the baby as my son,” he confessed earlier this year. “I want to experience the sublime bond I'm sure we'd share. I'm confident that he'd be delighted, too, because I would love to be raised by me.”

If you've ever noticed that libertarians don't seem to care about people who do not very, very closely resemble themselves, this may explain a lot.

A useful concordance from my back catalogue: Reynolds' Universal Robots.

UPDATE. In comments Jay B explores the sitcom potential in Caplan's clone child: "Me 2: Millionaire narcissist Joseph Marriott (Macaulay Culkin), a self-help guru, realizes his dream of cloning and raising himself using his own 'living strategies'..."