I'm just back from BayCon, an annual science fiction convention in the San Francisco Bay Area. I quite like cons, and I've been going to cons of various flavors for more than two-thirds of my life, though this was a bit unusual in that it was a much more businesslike trip than most of the other cons I've attended. My expenses were paid by a group of folks who really wanted to see me present (which was awesome, and I'd like to say "thank you" to the con organizers for helping make that happen), and I spent three days on various panels talking about everything from polyamory to creativity.

There's quite a lot of interesting stuff that came up during those panels, some of which I'll no doubt be blogging about for the next several days or so. One thing in particular that I want to talk about, though, concerns the way those of us who are active in alternative lifestyles tend sometimes to create and foster--sometimes deliberately, sometimes unintentionally--an atmosphere of exclusion and ostracism that perpetuates the very same kinds of things that we claim to be working against.

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One of the panels I was on concerned the topic of defining alternative relationships. Throughout the panel, several folks, both on the panel and in the audience, referred to people who are neither polyamorous nor into BDSM by terms like 'mundane' and 'muggle.'

And this is, I think, a huge problem for those of us in the kink and poly communities, or indeed in any sort of non-traditional social or relationship community.

Now, it seems to me that the problem with doing this should be self-evident. It's self-congratulatory and divisive. It creates a completely unnecessary schism. It lumps everyone who isn't into whatever we're into in together as though they are all part of one great undifferentiated lump, which is just blindingly stupid; there are lots of folks who are neither kinky nor poly but who nevertheless are anything but normal. (I'll warrant that the life of folks like James Cameron, who designed and built the world's deepest-diving submersible because he wanted to check out what was going on at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, or Elon Musk, who designed and built the Falcon/Dragon successor to the Space Shuttle entirely privately on a shoestring budget because he thought that starting a private spacefaring company might be a cool thing to do for a living, are rather more interesting than the life of the average sci-fi fan even if those folks never once lift a flogger or date more than one person at the same time!) It does exactly what kinky and poly folks complain they don't want others to do to them--it judges other people based on stereotypes mostly ridiculous and assumptions mostly baseless.

And, all those things aside, it's simply bad policy.

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I am a pragmatist. I tend to be less concerned with how people "should" behave and more concerned with what sorts of behaviors actually work.

And I think that every single derisive use of words like "mundane," "vanilla," "muggle," and so on actually ends up hurting the folks who use them.

The problem with describing people outside of one's community this way, aside from the fact that it's arrogant, dismissive, and inaccurate, is that it recognizes no distinctions between all those "normals." To someone who dismisses anyone not kinky or poly as a "mundane," a Unitarian who works for acceptance, sex-positivity, and compassion is no different from someone who belongs to Westboro Baptist Church, America's most well-known trolls.

And not only is that stupid, it's counterproductive. It alienates potential allies. It pre-emptively antagonizes folks who are simply neutral. It creates an us vs. them mindset which, at the end of the day, the "us" is almost certain to lose; when the "us" is a single-digit, or perhaps at the most optimistic a low double-digit, percentage of the size of the "them," fabricating an us vs. them mentality is simply bad tactics.

It is also exclusionary. A lot of folks who are poly, or kinky, or both, tend not to be part of the kink and poly communities, because this "us vs. them" mentality subconsciously shapes attitudes and opinions in ways that limit participation in the community.

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When I lived in Tampa, I was for a number of years a regular host for PolyTampa, which appears to be as of this writing the longest-running polyamory support group in the country that's still ongoing.

Anyone who's been part of the community for any length of time has probably noticed that a disproportionate number of folks in the poly community tend to be geeky, middle-class, pagan, gamer...the stereotype of the "bi pagan poly gamer geek" is prevalent for a reason.

But it might not be the reason that people think.

I've watched a lot of folks talk about why the poly and kink scenes are so overwhelmingly gamer geek pagan bi (and, though it rarely gets mentioned, white and middle-class), and the explanations I hear usually fall along the lines of "Well, once you've started questioning monogamy and relationships, it follows naturally that you'd question other things, like religion and culture and stuff too. It's because we're so openminded and unconventional!"

Which, honestly, sounds like self-congratulatory horseshit to me.

There's another reason, though I think it's more subtle. It's something I think a lot of folks in the poly and kink communities are blind to; namely, that the communities are hostile to anyone who ISN'T cut from the bi pagan gamer geek cloth.

I don't think it's deliberate or malicious, mind you. (At least not usually; there are some exceptions, like one exceedingly unpleasant chap I encountered on Facebook recently who claims quite stridently that all monogamous relationships are abusive, anyone who prefers monogamy does so only because he wants to control his partners or he simply hasn't broken the brainwashing of conventional culture enough to look at relationships critically...but I digress. Not everyone in the community shares anything like those beliefs.)

During the course of the time I spent hosting PolyTampa, I noticed a fair number of people who would come to a single meeting, hang around for a bit, and then leave, never to be seen again. I also spoke to several folks who talked about being polyamorous but also about how they felt unwanted and unwelcome in the poly community, because they weren't pagan, New Age, geeky, gamers, or techies.

I don't think there's a lot of pagan New Age gaming geeks in the poly community because being poly means challenging accepted social norms about religion, hobbies, or attitudes. Quite the opposite; I think there are a lot of pagan New Age gaming geeks in the poly community because the poly community can be quite unfriendly to folks who aren't pagan New Age gaming geeks.

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Now, let me be clear that (with very, very few exceptions) I don't believe it's intentional. Aside from that one unpleasant Facebook fellow, I've never encountered anyone in the poly community who would tell someone else "you're not welcome here."

However, as I've said before, any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

It doesn't matter that it's down to social incompetence more than maliciousness; the fact is, the poly and kink communities do tend to see the world in a polarizing, us vs. them light, and do often make themselves unfriendly to folks outside the pagan New Age gaming geek mold.

It's subtle--so subtle that the folks who do it are probably totally unaware that they're doing it. It happens through a process of normalization--of seeing everyone who doesn't fit the pagan New Age gaming geek mold as a "mundane," a "normal," a "muggle," part of an undifferentiated mass. It happens through tacit, rarely acknowledged expectations that if you're poly, of course that means you aren't Christian, you prefer video games to NASCAR, you have the free time and the money to meet and socialize at restaurants, you get the jargon and lingo of the geek crowd.

I've had folks come up and talk to me after poly meetings to say that they feel unwelcome because they are evangelical Christian, or because they'd rather go fishing than play World of Warcraft. Like I said, it's not intentional, it's subtle, but it shows in a thousand different ways. There are subtle little expectations, occasional barely-acknowledged disparaging remarks about all those other folks who, heh heh, just mindlessly cling to some mainstream religion instead of, you know, something more spiritually thoughtful like paganism, the offhand remarks about how the rest of the world is just stuck in the boring rut of vanilla sex... All of these things create an unmistakeable social subtext: this is who we are, and if you're not one of us, you're one of them. The Mundanes. The great boring unwashed mass of People who Just Don't Get It.

And we're cleverer than they are, oh yes. We appreciate diversity more than the mundanes do. We understand the value of being our own individual, something all those people don't. Because, you know, they're all the same. And they aren't as smart as we are, or as tolerant, or even able to challenge their own assumptions. You know, the way we can.

It seems that being subjected to unwarranted prejudice and unfounded assumptions tends to make one skilled at doing these very things to others.

During the panel, when a few of the panelists had derisively referred to non-alt people as "mundanes" and "normals" several times, I chipped in that I don't use that sort of language because I find it unnecessarily divisive and totally inaccurate. It creates a myth of "normalcy" that doesn't actually exist; the mundanes that the other panelists derided do not, in any real sense, actually exist.

After the panel, a woman approached me to say that she was Mormon and in a D/s relationship, and found the kink community to be quite hostile. The assumptions that came from her being Mormon rather than pagan--she must be politically conservative, she must be anti-gay, she must be a blind puppet of organized religion--were subtle but real to her. When people in the community assume a baseline of pagan New Age gaming geek and talk about "mundanes" and "muggles," she saw a rejection of her in that--or, perhaps, a rejection of a distorted funhouse mirror picture of her, as rife with unchallenged assumptions as any that poly or kinky people will ever be targeted with.

And that's a damn shame. We need to do better than that.

Okay, so I don't really do comic books. By which I mean I really, really don't do comic books. (I do like Watchmen, but that's, like, totally different because it's a graphic novel and not a comic book, and stuff, which is different because of reasons.)



I walked into the theater with my sweetie zaiah, her husband, their daughter, a gigantic barrel of popcorn, and a prayer of hope that Joss Whedon wouldn't let me down. After all, he gave us Firefly, right? Man's got mad skills.

As it turns out, the Avengers movie is more an ode to the special effects technician's art than to the storyteller's art...but then again, it is based on a comic book. Or a bunch of comic books. Or comic book characters, or something, I'm really not quite sure.

The movie goes something like this:

The scene opens at a SECRET BASE. Lots of people are RUNNING AROUND in a PANIC.

Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson: There are lots of people running around in a panic. What's up?
Distracted Scientist Dude: Sir, it's the plot device! Our instruments show that it's generating 38% more plot than it was before. If this keeps up, there may be no place in this movie to escape the plot!
Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson: Did you try turning it off?
Distracted Scientist Dude: Yes! It keeps turning itself back on!

The PLOT DEVICE emits a sudden surge of PLOT

Loki: Hi! I'm Loki.
Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson: Drop your staff.
Hawkeye: It's okay, sir. He's Loki. He's a mischievous trickster god who likes playing games but isn't usually actively evil. If we ignore him he will probably get bored and go away.
Loki: No, that's the other Loki. I'm the whiney, kind of annoying narcissist who wants to destroy the world and then take it over, or something.
Hawkeye: Oh, sorry, my mistake.
Loki: Hey, don't sweat it. Happens all the time.
( Cut for spoilers... )
Tony Stark: So whaddya think? You think a Russian spy and a guy like me...
Luke Skywalker: No.
They all go out to DINNER

I've been a part of the polyamory community for a very long time. In that time, I've seen a lot of folks talk about how they feel when their wives or husbands or lovers or significant others take on a new partner.

Naturally, a lot of people feel fear and angst when it happens for the first time. We're brought up to believe in all sorts of notions like Soulmates and The One and Happily Ever After, so of course when someone we love expresses an interest in someone else, it's a bit scary.

On top of that, a lot of folks feel jealousy, especially early on in a new relationship; the new lover can be seen as competition, the Other, someone dangerous and scary.

But after a while most of us find that our lovers have new partners and, even if there are some rough bits early on, it's not The End of Everything. Our fears don't come true; our lovers don't leave us as soon as they realize how laughably inferior we are in every imaginable way to The New Shiny, and life is still happy.

So folks who've been around the proverbial block a few times generally will say things like "Naah, it's not that big a deal when my lover meets someone new. As long as it doesn't threaten our relationship, I'm totally OK with that."

And that's not necessarily a bad attitude to have. In fact, I think being relaxed about the prospect of a new relationship is, generally speaking, a very good thing in poly relationships. I've talked before about how when we're afraid or insecure about something, we can often make choices that make it more likely that the thing we're afraid of will happen; if we're afraid our partners will leave us for a new person, we might emotionally push our partners away, or try to impose unreasonable controls on their behavior, or just generally act out in ways that make us disagreeable to live with, and then yes, the new person starts to look pretty appealing in comparison.

But there's an elephant lurking in the room, one I almost never hear anyone in the poly community talking about. And that is: Yes, a new relationship really is potentially a threat to the existing relationship, no matter how poly-skilled the folks involved may be.

---

So there it is, the elephant in the room. Put simply: A new connection, a new relationship, is a threat to an existing relationship...in the sense that any significant change in any relationship is potentially a threat.

Marriage counsellors and therapists have known this for a long time.

A new child often threatens a relationship. Loss of a child, doubly so, or more...many, many otherwise healthy, happy relationships between genuinely loving couples can be destroyed by grief or loss. A change in financial status is a threat to a relationship; I've heard it claimed that more people break up because of financial stress than for any other single reason. And, perhaps paradoxically, it works both ways; couples will often break up after a significant positive change in their finances, too.

An illness or infirmary is a threat to a relationship. Many people find it difficult to cope with stressors like long-term illness or debilitating injury.

A new job is a threat to a relationship. Moving to a new city is a threat to a relationship. A change in the religious beliefs of one or both people can threaten a relationship.

Even something as seemingly simple and straightforward as buying a house can be a threat to a relationship. I mean, hell, I've seen people break up over pets!

The point is, any change whatsoever to the structure of a relationship is a threat to that relationship, whether we acknowledge it or not. Taking a new job in a distant city and deciding to have a child are both significant threats to a relationship, but you will rarely hear people say "Okay, I guess we can move to Denver, but only if it doesn't put what we have at risk" or "Okay, we can try for a baby, but only as long as it doesn't threaten us." We don't think of these things as threatening, even though a glance at the statistics shows that they are.

We do, however, think of new partners as threatening, because they go right to the core of what society tells us is Bad And Scary. So we will say "Sure, you can pursue new relationships, as long as they aren't a threat to our existing relationship"...but I don't think that's realistic. Of COURSE they are! They are a significant change in the emotional focus, composition, time, and attention. That makes them a threat to the existing relationship!

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So there it is. I said it. I don't think it's realistic to say "I don't mind new relationships as long as they're not a threat."

However, that doesn't mean that I advise not doing it. Far from it! There are many things which we do all the time--have kids, buy a house together, take a promotion at work, start a new hobby--that potentially introduce stressors into our lives that could threaten our relationships, but that we choose to do anyway because they're worth doing.

Since I find relationships to be one of the most rewarding parts of life, I think it's worth the potential stressor in my existing relationships to be open to new relationships, and to have partners who are open to new relationships.

It's scarier to acknowledge that any new relationship is potentially a threat tan to say "I am OK with my partner having new relationships because I don't see them as a threat." But I think it's better to say "Any new relationship will potentially introduce new elements and new stressors to my relationship. I don't mind, as long as I know that my partner is dedicated to preserving our relationship, and that my partner and I have the skills, the willingness, the desire, and the intention of making choices that will protect our existing relationship."

In practice, there are a lot of things that I can do that will mitigate that stressor. One of those is to adopt a policy of resilience--to know that even if things change in my relationship, I will be OK. Another is to advocate for my needs; if I need something from my partner that I'm not getting, but I don't ask for it, clearly and directly, then it's not my partner's fault if I don't have it. Still another is transparency--always sharing with my partner, even things that might be hard to talk about or that I'm afraid my partner might not want to hear.

These tools don't make it 100% safe for my partner to start new relationships. But then, nothing can do that; there's no choice my partner makes that's ever 100% safe for our relationship, and I think it's time to acknowledge that.

Instead, what these tools do is they make it much less likely that my partner's new relationships will actually end up damaging us. And, as a rather nice side effect, they also make it much less likely that any of life's other stressors will threaten our relationship, too.

I've placed an order for the first run of posters, so they are now available in my online store! The posters are 16"x20" and printed on heavy semigloss paper; they look quite lovely.



There are some very (very) minor differences between this version and the last version; you can click on the link in the cart to embiggen the final version.

Okay, here's the third (and, with luck, final) go-round.

I've alphabetized all the definitions and done some tweaking of some of them. I think this makes for a much easier to read poster, though one consequence of doing that is there's a definition in the right-hand column that is broken. Sorry, not much I can do about that.

I've also gone back to the parchment background. I tried a number of different styles of background, from metal to abstract swirly things, and I don't think any of them work nearly as well. However, the observation that the parchment doesn't really fit with the modern sans-serif typeface on the title is a good one, so I've changed the typeface on the title (and on the names of the circles in the Venn diagram).

I think this is pretty close to the final design. Let me know what you guys think!

As usual, clicky the image to embiggen.

Here's the second go-round of the poster version. As usual, clicky the picture for a much, much, MUCH bigger version. I've made some changes based on feedback I've gotten in my LJ and in email.

This version has a metallic background, which might be more in keeping with the look of the design than the parchment, but I'm not sure if I'm so crazy about. The columns have been adjusted so that no definition breaks, and I've removed the icons from the circles.

I experimented with several ways to try to indicate on each definition which part of the chart it falls into, using different colors, icons, and bullets, and it all ended up looking cluttered...which is too bad, because I think the poster would benefit from it. But it's very dense as it is, and struggling with competing requirements of even text alignment, having no definition break, and trying to color-code or tag the definitions was a bit much.

As usual, click the image to embiggen.

Edit: A third revision is now up here.

Since several people commented and emailed to say they'd like to see the post I made a while back on logical fallacies in poster form, I've spent a while redesigning the chart as a poster.

Here's a first go-round of the poster version. As usual, clicky the picture for a much, much, MUCH bigger version. The finished poster will be 16" by 20". Comments welcome!

Edit: A second go-round of the poster is here.
A third revision is here.

Traditionally, Friday is Date Night between zaiah and I. There are certain rituals and traditions we have associated with Date Night, some of which I shan't go into here, as I fear they may upset those of you with more...delicate sensibilities. One of those traditions which I feel it is safe to discuss is the tradition of watching a movie on Friday.

Usually, this means Netflix, as watching a first-run movie every week would require taking out another mortgage on the house. Occasionally, this means going to the cheap theater for a second-run movie and pizza, which a couple of weeks back is where we saw the Americanized version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a remake of a Swedish film that was less than half as abominable as I had any right to expect. (As a matter of fact, it was quite good, and even improved on the original in a couple of minor ways...and the original is one of my favorite movies, and a movie I have seen many times.)

This week, we decided to see a first-run movie; namely, The Hunger Games. We made this decision based on two criteria: first, it looks for all the world to be a perfect film to enjoy after an afternoon of extraordinarily kinky sex; and second, zaiah's daughter has been bugging us to see it, on the grounds that the book version is her favorite story of the moment and she wanted to speak freely gush enthusiastically about it without worrying about spoilers.

When we went into the theaters, gentle readers, I will confess I had no idea what to expect. I'd vaguely heard of the film, in the sense that I knew its title, but nothing else about it at all.

And then it happened.

They showed us trailers in front of the movie.

For Prometheus.

Which is Ridley Scott's prequel to Alien.

Which has had a larger impact on my life than any other movie ever committed to film.

Because I saw it one month and two days after turning ten years old.

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The movie Alien has been a fixture in my life from a very young age. What I mean by that is that the movie Alien has given me nightmares for approximately two-thirds of my entire life.

I am not quite sure what my parents were thinking, to be honest. In most other regards, they raised me pretty well, and I will thank you in the back there to stop that snickering. However, what on earth would possess otherwise fine, decent, upstanding, tax-paying, non-serial-killer-being grown adults to take a ten-year-old boy to see the movie Alien is quite beyond your humbler chronicler. I say without the slightest trace of exaggeration or hyperbole that it gave me nightmares for more than thirty years, and yes, that does date me.

Seriously. No shit. That movie gave me nightmares for Thirty. Fucking. Years. I can recall one particular occasion, back when I was still working pre-press in Tampa, when I and a buddy of mine were alone in the building, I was tasked with the job of running some film through the automated processor. This basically means carrying a large canister into a room that is pitch black save for the softly glowing readouts on the displays of the automated film processing equipment. And on this particular night, a wandering opossum, I shit you not, fell through the ceiling with quite a loud crash.

It took my coworker and I a couple of hours to catch it. Most of the pursuit was very Keystone Kops, truth be told--the two of us running around through the film strippers' territory with a big plastic trash can...you don't want to know. But the bit when it fell through the ceiling? The nightmares had been going into remission then. After that, they came back with redoubled vigor.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Prometheus.



I had planned to write a review of The Hunger Games. Instead, I am going to write a review of Prometheus.

Now, I can hear your questions already. "The movie comes out in June," you say. "This is only April. You clearly haven't seen it. How can you write a review of it?"

To that I say, "pish-posh." It makes no difference if I write the review after I've seen it, for I will be just as qualified then as I am now, considering that I am likely to have my hands in front of my face for the entire thing. And yes, Gentle Readers, I am going to see it when it comes out.

So, without further ado...





Cute Female Scientist: Look! We've discovered something interesting in these abandoned ruins! Many ancient civilizations on Earth have drawn the same pictograph, even thought they had no contact with each other. And look, it's a star map!

The Weyland-Yutani Corporation: We would be happy to sponsor an expedition to see what's up with that.

Audience: Oh, fuuuuuuuck. This isn't going to end well.

Ridley Scott: It's a motherfucking Alien prequel. What, you expected My Little Pony?

Sinister Weyland-Yutani dude: I work for the company. But don't let that fool you. I'm really an okay guy.

Cute Female Scientist: Let's go!



Captain: We're here!

They find some REALLY CREEPY STUFF.

Other scientist dude: Man, this is some really creepy stuff.

Yet another scientist dude: I'm getting life signs down there.

Some guy who's totally insane: Let's go investigate!



Something REALLY BAD HAPPENS.

Crew of the Prometheus: Something really bad has happened. We need medical attention here.

Something REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD HAPPENS.

The movie GOES BLACK, as I put my HANDS in front of my EYES and curl up into a FETAL POSITION.

Someone on the CREW starts SCREAMING HORRIBLY and DIES.

One of the scientists: Oh, fuuuuu--

Something REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD HAPPENS.

One of the crew: Wait! I have an idea that could keep this from turning any worse than it already has, and might even save some of us!

The SINISTER WEYLAND-YUTANI DUDE does something UNSPEAKABLE.

Surviving crewmembers: Oh fuuuuuu---

Something EVEN WORSE happens.



People do HEROIC THINGS. It DOESN'T HELP.

Me: Oh fuuuuu--

I have NIGHTMARES for THIRTY MORE YEARS.

Ridley Scott: Pwn3d j00!

By the way, The Hunger Games rocks. Go see it.

Quite some time ago, I wrote a blog post about the notion of inalienable rights, in which I mentioned the concept of personhood theory, an ethical structure that provides a framework for deciding what is and is not a "person."

The idea of inalienable rights isn't necessarily the same as the idea of personhood, though in most moral systems they're certainly related. Most of us at least recognize the term "human rights," and tend to think of them as being good things, and something separate from, say, animal rights.

Now, I will grant that the notion of human rights, if history is any example, is more of a pretty sound-bite than anything we as a species actually take seriously.

To quote from one of my favorite George Carlin skits: "Now, if you think you do have rights, one last assignment for you. Next time you're at the computer, get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, I want you to type in "Japanese Americans 1942, and you'll find out all about your precious fuckin' rights, okay? ...Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most, their government took 'em away. And rights aren't rights if someone can take 'em away. They're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country, a bill of temporary privileges."

So it is with some skepticism, leavened with a dash of cynicism, that I talk about the notion of "rights" at all.

However, the fact that we tend not to be very good at respecting things like "human rights" doesn't mean the idea has no value. In fact, quite the opposite; I think that the notion there are certain things which one simply should not be permitted to do to others, and certain things which all of us ought to be able to expect that we can do, is not only valuable but also absolutely essential--not just in an ethical sense, but in a practical sense too. I believe quite strongly that respecting the idea of "human rights" is not just a moral imperative; it has immediate, utilitarian benefits to the societies which respect them, and the more a society respects these ideas, the better (in many tangible ways) that society becomes.

But that's a bit off the point. What I actually want to talk about is personhood theory specifically, rather than the idea of rights in general.

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In the US these days, the idea of "personhood" has become conflated with the abortion debate. The Religious Right has been advocating the notion of "personhood" as a way to promote an anti-abortion agenda, so when i've talked about "personhood theory" in the last few months a lot of folks have assumed that what I'm talking about is abortion.

Personhood theory as an ethical framework isn't (directly) related to abortion at all. As an ethical principle, the idea behind personhood theory is pretty straightforward: "Personhood," and with it all the rights that we now call "human rights," belongs to any sapient entity.

Put most simply, that means that a hypothetical intelligent alien organism, a hypothetical "strong" AI, a person whose consciousness has been transferred into a computer, or an animal that has been modified to be sapient would all qualify as "people" and would be entitled to the rights and responsibilities of people, just like you or I.

Now, there is one potential pickle in this definition, of course, and that's in the notion of sapience.

It's impossible to prove that a computer, or an uploaded person, or even your next door neighbor down the street is sapient. We can apply the Turing test to a computer to see if it can converse fluently and flexibly enough to be indistinguishable from a human being, but that presupposes that artificial intelligence would be similar to natural intelligence, which isn't necessarily so. We can test generalized problem-solving capability, though it's possible to imagine that what looks to be intelligent problem-solving is actually brute-force, blind pattern matching done very quickly, of the kind that a computer chess-playing program does.

But ultimately, it may not really matter that we can't ever come up with a way to step into the subjective experience of an alien or an uplifted animal or a computer and say that it is sapient, because we can't do that with a person, either.

I can't be absolutely, 100% certain that I am not the only person in the world with self-awareness and a rich subjective internal experience. It might be that my neighbor and the clerk at the convenience store down the street and the cute blond lesbian with facial piercings who used to work in the sandwich shop near me are actually "philosophical zombies," utterly devoid of any internal experience, repeating words and phrases, paying taxes, doing their jobs only through some kind of incredibly complex clockwork. It doesn't matter because when I make ethical decisions, the negative effects of assuming everyone else to be an empty clockwork shell, should I be wrong, are much more profound than the ethical consequences if I assume that they are aware, living people and I am wrong. The ethical principle of least harm demands that if they seem to be people, I treat them as people. The alternative is sociopathy.

The same moral logic applies to uploaded people and smart computers. No, I can not objectively prove that they are self-aware entities instead of fabulous automatons, so basic ethics demand that if they appear to be self-aware entities, I treat them as I would treat self-aware entities.

All this is, I believe, a pretty straightforward idea. But the concept of personhood theory often runs off the rails when people, particularly socially or religious people, talk about it, for reasons that I find very, very interesting.

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The arch-conservative, Creation "Science" Discovery Institute says of personhood theory, "In this new view on life, each human being doesn’t have moral worth simply and merely because he or she is human, but rather, we each have to earn our rights by possessing sufficient mental capacities to be considered a person. Personhood theory provides moral justification to oppress and exploit the most vulnerable human beings."

An that takes a similar approach article in SFGate says, "Relying on personhood instead of humanhood as the fundamental basis for determining moral worth threatens the lives and well-being of the most defenseless and vulnerable humans among us. Here's why: In personhood theory, taking life is only wrong if the being killed was a "person" who wanted to remain alive. [...] Basing public policy on such theories leads to very dark places. Some bioethicists justify the killing of Alzheimer's patients and infants born with disabilities. Others suggest that people in comas can be killed and their organs harvested if their families consent, or used in medical experiments in place of animals."

Self-described ethicist Wesley J. Smith, who has worked with the Discovery Institute, claims that personhood theory is nothing more than an attempt to legalize infanticide: "'After-Birth Abortion' is merely the latest example of bioethical argument wielded as the sharp point of the spear in an all-out philosophical war waged among the intelligentsia against Judeo/Christian morality based in human exceptionalism and adherence to universal human rights. In place of intrinsic human dignity as the foundation for our culture and laws, advocates of the new bioethical order want moral value to be measured individual-by-individual — whether animal or human — and moment-by-moment. Under this view, we each must earn full moral status by currently possessing capacities sufficient to be deemed a 'person.'"

Now, I will admit that when I first heard of some of these objections to personhood theory, I was absolutely gobsmacked. It seemed beyond all reason to misinterpret and misrepresent what, to me, seemed like such a simple idea in such a profound way.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense that people would interpret personhood theory in such a bizarre, backwards way...because the principle idea simply does not fit into their conceptual worldview. They interpret the idea incorrectly because their frame of reference doesn't permit them to view it as it was intended.

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The gist of personhood theory is expansive. It expands the conventional definition of "person" beyond "human," to include a number of hypothetical non-human entities, should they ever exist. Personhood theory says "It's not just human beings who are persons; anything which is sapient is a person, too."

The objections to personhood theory see it as a constrictive or limiting framework. This suggests to me that these objections betray a worldview in which human beings are the only things which are persons, so any definition of the word "person" that is not "a human being" must necessarily limit personhood to only a subset of human beings.

It is trivially demonstrable, even if we can not objectively state with absolute certainty, that something is sapient, that all of us at some time or another are not sapient. A human being who is under general anesthesia would fail any test for sapience, or indeed awareness of any sort. A sleeping person is less sentient than an awake dog. I myself am rarely sapient before 9 AM under the best of circumstances. (It is beyond the scope of this discussion to ponder whether a person who is in an irreversible coma or whose mind has been destroyed by Alzheimer's still has the same rights as any other person; whether or not things like euthanasia are ethical is irrelevant to the concept of personhood theory as I am discussing it.)

Personhood theory, at least in its original formulation, clearly applies only to classes of entities, not to individuals within a class. So for example, human beings are sapient, regardless of the fact that each of us experiences transient non-sapience from time to time; ergo, human beings are people. Strong AIs, if they ever exist, would (by definition) be sapient, even if individual AIs themselves were to be disabled or shut down or whatever; therefore, strong AIs are people.

Personhood theory as a construct works on a general, not an individual, level. No transhumanist or bioethicist who talks about personhood theory proposes that it can be used to justify shooting sleeping people on the basis that they aren't sapient and are therefore not really people; such an interpretation is, on the face of it, absurd. (I will leave it as an exercise to the reader as to whether or not it's more absurd than the notion that dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden and were present on Noah's ark.)

Rather, transhumanists and bioethicists who talk about personhood theory--at least in my experience--use it as a way to construct some sort of system for deciding who else gets "human" rights in addition to human beings, with the obvious candidates being the ones I've mentioned.

There is, though I hate to say this, particular irony in Wesley Smith's talk of "Judeo/Christian morality based in human exceptionalism and adherence to universal human rights," considering the Judeo/Christian track record on such issues as slavery. "Universal human rights," in the Judeo/Christian literature, are anything but universal. The cynic in me is reluctant to place the application of universal rights to anyone, much less non-human entities, in the care of conservative guardians of Judeo/Christian morality.

It took quite a long time for people to figure out that human beings with a different color of skin were people; the Southern Baptist Convention was doctrinally white supremacist until after WWII, and the Mormon church was doctrinally white supremacist until 1977. To this very day, the Discovery Institute seeks to deny "universal human rights" to gays and lesbians, using one of the most bizarre chains of logic I've ever witnessed outside of questions about how we know dinosaurs and human beings shared the same space at the same time.



I frankly do not envy the first uploaded person or the first true AI. Any non-human sapience will, if history is any guide, have a rough time being treated as anything other than property. The people who object to personhood theory because they see it as a constriction rather than an expansion of the idea of personhood are, I think, quite literally incapable of recognizing the personhood of something like an AI; it exists so far outside their worldview that the argument doesn't even seem to make sense to them.

And in a world where strong AI exists, I fear for what that means for us, and what that says about our abilities as moral entities.