Transhumanism

[SteveS]

Why does it matter so much that you remain human?

Hehe - so it seems to me.  I don't really care if I'm "human" or not.  I just want to live forever in good health without worrying about what I do (eat, drink, exercise, whatever).  Reasonable request, right?  :wink:

[McQ]

Why does it matter so much that you remain human?

Hehe - so it seems to me.  I don't really care if I'm "human" or not.  I just want to live forever in good health without worrying about what I do (eat, drink, exercise, whatever).  Reasonable request, right?  :wink:

Ditto!

[Kona]

For those of you who are ready to part with your humanity, then I suggest you read Brian Herbert's pre-quel to "Dune".  I think the first book is called "The Butlerian Jihad".   Good reading....though he is not as good as his father Frank Herbert.

[McQ]

For those of you who are ready to part with your humanity, then I suggest you read Brian Herbert's pre-quel to "Dune".  I think the first book is called "The Butlerian Jihad".   Good reading....though he is not as good as his father Frank Herbert.

Didn't read Dune. Not gonna read this either. Care to give the Cliff's Notes version to us lazy bastards?  

Are we headed for hell because of it, or just deluding ourselves with our transhumanistic leanings?

[ReflectingNarcissist]

Care to give the Cliff's Notes version to us lazy bastards?  

If Brave New World, Anthem, and Star Wars had a three-way, The Butlerian Jihad would be the likely byproduct.

But, that's not a bad thing. It's a good book.

[Kona]

Basically, the prequals to Dune chronicle the war of humans vs. machines....somewhat the original Terminator.  The humans went through a procedure in which their brains were removed and placed in a modular vat of sustaining fluid which essentially gave them immortality and allowed them to interface with numerous forms of machines.  These 20 original Titans, as they were called,  then conquered the human race and moved on to the rest of the galaxy.  One of them happened to be a crack programmer who developed a program that then ended up conquering them. As a reward to faithful servants, the Titans would offer this immortality in exchange for loyalty. Not all chose this path, however.  Some chose to become philosophers devoted to helping humanity.

Ok, beyond the sci-fi aspect, it is much more likely that humans will choose to take over their own evolution through genetic modification with some cyborg element, but I don't think their will ever be something a long the lines of a machine with a transplanted human consciousness.

[pjkeeley]

I thought of an analogy recently that prefectly sums up my ambivalence towards transhumanism. Anyone young enough to have grown up playing video games will know the feeling. You're playing a great game, and then one day you find out from a friend or a magazine that there exist secret codes that you can enter that let you cheat at the game. These cheats will let you do anything; become invincible, walk through walls, skip to any level, give you unlimited lives, and so on and so forth. At first you're incredibly excited about the concept and start cheating with great enthusiasm. Subconsciously, you feel that by making the game easier you will make it more fun. Then you start to give up on playing the game properly and just mess around doing whatever you want just because you can, and it's great fun for a while. But it gets boring very quickly, and you soon feel a dissapointment when you realise the game was much more fun before you knew you could cheat at it.

The difference is, you can just restart a game, but transhumanism is irreversible. People need to think long and hard about what makes their life worthwhile now before they start eliminating supposedly negative aspects of it that, I would argue, in fact make existence more meaningful.

[McQ]

I thought of an analogy recently that prefectly sums up my ambivalence towards transhumanism. Anyone young enough to have grown up playing video games will know the feeling. You're playing a great game, and then one day you find out from a friend or a magazine that there exist secret codes that you can enter that let you cheat at the game. These cheats will let you do anything; become invincible, walk through walls, skip to any level, give you unlimited lives, and so on and so forth. At first you're incredibly excited about the concept and start cheating with great enthusiasm. Subconsciously, you feel that by making the game easier you will make it more fun. Then you start to give up on playing the game properly and just mess around doing whatever you want just because you can, and it's great fun for a while. But it gets boring very quickly, and you soon feel a dissapointment when you realise the game was much more fun before you knew you could cheat at it.

The difference is, you can just restart a game, but transhumanism is irreversible. People need to think long and hard about what makes their life worthwhile now before they start eliminating supposedly negative aspects of it that, I would argue, in fact make existence more meaningful.

That's a very interesting analogy, Pj. Certainly one way to look at this topic. The cheats do give you a very hollow feeling, don't they?

I do look at transhumanism differently, even more differently than the traditional transhumanists (can't believe I just typed "traditional transhumanist"!).

To me it's a matter of knowing and coming to grips with the fact that all organisms that have ever lived and will ever live, will become extinct eventually. What exists now is a tiny fraction of all life that has ever lived on Earth.

So transhumanism, to me, is simply going to happen anyway. Humans are one piece of twig of the endless tree of evolution. We will continue to evolve. Can't stop it from happening. So I don't worry too much about various aspects of the changes that humans will undergo, one way or the other.

I'm not saying we have to manipulate genetic changes to try and speciate, but just as we have done through human history, we can try to make the life we have more robust and better while we have it.

But I do think your analogy is a good one to keep in mind. I think it is one of the many things that people should stay aware of as things like this come up.

[SteveS]

I did grow up playing video games - great fun!  In fact, now I'm too old for them, I think.  I don't really like much of the new stuff that comes out.  A few days ago I got Civilization (the first one) running on my DOSBox emulator and had great fun with it.  They just don't make 'em like they used too (or, I'm too old to appreciate the new stuff  :wink:  ).

I wonder, honestly, how much I would change about myself.  For example, I wear contact lenses even though I could afford that laser eye surgery business.  I guess I'm too worried about complications from the surgery to dispel what I consider the minor inconvenience of the lenses (I broke into rigid contacts in 6th grade - now I wear soft ones, but I'm so used to wearing the contacts it doesn't really bug me).

But - what if I had cancer and had to wear a colostomy bag all the time?  Maybe I'd change that.  Or, what if I had a limb amputated and could somehow "grow" a new one?  Prevent a serious and debilitating/fatal disease?  I think I'd go for it.  In other words, contacts don't bother me but blindness would.  So would deafness.  So would paralysis.

I guess I view "transhumanism" more as a way to prevent these sorts of human diseases than as a way to become superman.  What if my "transhuman", "post-blindness" eyes were robotic/cybernetic?  I wouldn't care as long as they work!

I think I get a feel for what you're saying, though, pj.  No doubt some would use the technology to make themselves 6 foot 5, blonde-haired blue-eyed, maybe even alter their emotions so they don't feel sad or anxious or depressed, but in these cases I agree with pj that there is a long-term emotional bankruptcy that's analogous to the video game cheat codes.  I think I'm smart enough to avoid this trap.  If everyone looks beautiful, what will beautiful be?  If everyone is strong, what will a strong athlete be?  If everyone can run fast, what will it mean to run a 4-minute mile?  If all success comes without effort, what will it mean to be successful?  Not a whole lot.

But, if everyone is healthy, does this mean being healthy is worthless?  I'd say it just means that nobody is sick.  Afterall, nobody longs for the simple days when half the town occasionally died of bubonic plague, right?  :wink:

[LARA]

I think transhumanism is pretty damn alluring, but then I think it tends to veer wildly away from reality when you start getting into Moore's Law being infinite in a world of finite resources, and when you hear Aubrey Du Grey insist that we can and should live forever and this will be a good thing. The Transhumanist I'm most familiar with is Ray Kurzweil and he has a most excellent website on the subject with many great science links, so I get a lot of my info on the movement from him.  I personally don't enjoy being a meat puppet all that much and would probably like becoming a downloadable conciousness that could get beamed around the universe so I could spy on the evolution of other worlds and even possibly other dimensions, if they exist.  I'm sure there could be a way to work the sensation of touch into all of this and possibly add new senses to the whole shebang if we are actually able to do any of it in the first place, if only for the benefit of getting laetusatheos assimilated.

[Kylyssa]

I live with chronic pain.  I've suffered multiple severe injuries resulting in brain damage, nerve damage, and the aforementioned chronic pain.  I also have a laundry list of autoimmune diseases and a brain tumor the size of a bouncy ball which seems to be giving me all sorts of neurological issues.

Hook me the fuck up!