science Your thoughts on transhumanism. Good or evil?

[Steel Accord 6,660]

 

 

But merging with technology is a bad idea at our current state.

 

Well yeah, of course. I mean it's not even possible right now, forget ethical.

 

 

 

Imagine some people hacking your brain, heart or lungs. Imagine being in a virtual hell for eternity? Things like that. 

 

Okay NOW you're sounding paranoid. There's a thin line between actual threat consideration and science fiction horror hooks. The more immediate problem with merging with technology would come in the form of things like malfunction, bodily rejection, shoddy models. You know things that actually happen not if Skynet was a James Bond villain. 

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

Well yeah, of course. I mean it's not even possible right now, forget ethical.

 

 

 

 

Okay NOW you're sounding paranoid. There's a thin line between actual threat consideration and science fiction horror hooks. The more immediate problem with merging with technology would come in the form of things like malfunction, bodily rejection, shoddy models. You know things that actually happen not if Skynet was a James Bond villain. 

I'm not being paranoid, just that we can't even handle the society we have now. I'm not saying the world will end. But transhumanists might want to focus on taking technology in a different route.

[Steel Accord 6,660]

I'm not being paranoid, just that we can't even handle the society we have now. I'm not saying the world will end. But transhumanists might want to focus on taking technology in a different route.

 

Well "transhumanists" includes me, first of all. Second of all, what route of technology are you considering?

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

Well "transhumanists" includes me, first of all. Second of all, what route of technology are you considering?

We need to clean the planet before we even do any frankenstein work on our bodies. And no, I didn't intend to insult you. But I'm the type of guy who if I lost my arm tomorrow and if I could get a biologically grafted arm... Or a robot arm..... I go get my original arm back. 

[Steel Accord 6,660]

 

 

And no, I didn't intend to insult you.

 

No insult perceived. Just confirming that I AM a transhumanist in that I support research into sciences such as human augmentation, a.i. research, etc. So any discussion on what "transhumanists want" would include me.

 

 

 

But I'm the type of guy who if I lost my arm tomorrow and if I could get a biologically grafted arm... Or a robot arm..... I go get my original arm back. 

 

If you "lost your arm" you couldn't get it back. You going to tell the paraplegic vet to just go and get his leg back? (Illustrative hyperbole)

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

No insult perceived. Just confirming that I AM a transhumanist in that I support research into sciences such as human augmentation, a.i. research, etc. So any discussion on what "transhumanists want" would include me.

 

 

 

 

If you "lost your arm" you couldn't get it back. You going to tell the paraplegic vet to just go and get his leg back? (Illustrative hyperbole)

If you can augment and restore the original dna and 3d print my original organ or body part, that would b ideal.

[Steel Accord 6,660]

If you can augment and restore the original dna and 3d print my original organ or body part, that would b ideal.

 

Well that's exactly what stem cell research is trying to accomplish. Cloning people's individual body parts in case they need new ones. No more people with bad hearts on a waiting list. Just a blood sample and they can clone a DNA match of their heart. Once that's out of the way people could have limbs replaced and reattached.

[Invincible 2,091]

First of all, let me say I don't believe in good and evil. I believe in people, and people are what they are. Good and evil are subjective, selective constructs to me. Technology is never evil, nor good, it only becomes such in the hands of people.

 

Now that this is out of the way, i think transhumanism is inevitable in our evolution. You can't see its obvious manifestation or the impact, but i think the future historians would all agree it had to happen.

 

To me life is basically the exchange of chemistry and electricity in the brain, this doesn't mean it's cheap to me, but organic matter decays and fails. I, as an individual, as a personality, as an entity would definitely prefer to outlive my organic body if it means preventing the death and destruction of my entity.

 

This doesn't necessarily mean i would accept any vessel or artificial brain given the chance, I would prefer to remain physically mobile and independent.

 

AI, true AI, is coming along, and I don't think it'll be as apocalyptic as some people believe it to be. I think that if AI is created in a controlled environment and with hardware limitations, it'll be safe for interactions with humans. At the very least, it'll also be an inevitable outcome.

[Anneal 2,197]

Imagine some people hacking your brain, heart or lungs. Imagine being in a virtual hell for eternity? Things like that. 

 

...That's not possible unless you say your brain was literally connected online. Brain augmentation is done to either treat certain disabilities, disorders, and diseases or enhance certain abilities. Home computers commonly get viruses, trojans, worms, or malware because they received it from a carrier online, whether its an email, website, link, or installing something suspicious (thankfully most malware you get are more annoying than harmful).

 

Augmentations are not home computers. They do not connect to anything outside or have some sort of WiFi that makes it possible for you to be hacked, unless someone physically got into your brain and modified your augmentations. 

 

Okay NOW you're sounding paranoid. There's a thin line between actual threat consideration and science fiction horror hooks. The more immediate problem with merging with technology would come in the form of things like malfunction, bodily rejection, shoddy models. You know things that actually happen not if Skynet was a James Bond villain. 

 

And like what Steel said, rejection and malfunction is much more likely to happen than a part of your brain being hacked and mind-controlled. I don't expect brain augmentations to actually replace any parts of the brain, but rather lie on top of it like a pacemaker. But if we can have any of that technology, a lot of our medical worries will be permanently over, like Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis or even some behavioral or mental disorders. 

 

I'm more on the fence for people who want to place enhancement over treatment, however. More priority should be placed on ones who are suffering rather than people who are already fine and want more. On another note, though, there is plenty of research being done on augmentation, and scientists have successfully done trials on animals to restore some memories. Yes, it's very likely we'll get it within a decade. And while it's not completely related more efficient artificial organs are on the way. Maybe within the century we might become more machine than flesh.

 

Well that's exactly what stem cell research is trying to accomplish. Cloning people's individual body parts in case they need new ones. No more people with bad hearts on a waiting list. Just a blood sample and they can clone a DNA match of their heart. Once that's out of the way people could have limbs replaced and reattached.

 

Stem cell research is already being done now, and there are even some ongoing clinical trials. Some scientists are going as far as to research ways to 3D-print certain organs (though some others remain too complex) that are purely organic (there are already 3D-printed skeletal parts though), partially through stem cell therapy. If achieved the sick would receive great boosts in life extension efforts. 

[Badow 10]

well there are 2 things I consider here: 

 

#1: out of all things we have prefected cloning my friend is 22 years old now and has no belly button as hes a test tube baby...so my point on that is if we got human duplication down in a whole...how long is it going to taske for the scientist of humanity to get ...um ...idk....curious? i mean they probs already have  it would just cause too much panic in the religious community as well as the human rights groups so  its best to keep those projects on the DL (shhh dont tell) anyways...

 

i've been wanting to get a movable pair of wings grafted on to my shoulder blades and there are surgeons who do just that!! i kid you not!! 

 

#2: when we have computers that are capable of statistically graphing out every event in history up to 20 years from now ( google  does this) from a single growth of a blade of grass???  whats there to say there isnt a program capable of re-programing someone's DNA?

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

First of all, let me say I don't believe in good and evil. I believe in people, and people are what they are. Good and evil are subjective, selective constructs to me. Technology is never evil, nor good, it only becomes such in the hands of people.

 

Now that this is out of the way, i think transhumanism is inevitable in our evolution. You can't see its obvious manifestation or the impact, but i think the future historians would all agree it had to happen.

 

To me life is basically the exchange of chemistry and electricity in the brain, this doesn't mean it's cheap to me, but organic matter decays and fails. I, as an individual, as a personality, as an entity would definitely prefer to outlive my organic body if it means preventing the death and destruction of my entity.

 

This doesn't necessarily mean i would accept any vessel or artificial brain given the chance, I would prefer to remain physically mobile and independent.

 

AI, true AI, is coming along, and I don't think it'll be as apocalyptic as some people believe it to be. I think that if AI is created in a controlled environment and with hardware limitations, it'll be safe for interactions with humans. At the very least, it'll also be an inevitable outcome.

I was born in 1993, so it seems this will happen when I die. I am not in the crowd of apocalyptic future, but we definitely need to evaluate if this is the course we should take. I mean thinking about black friday mobs and people being attached to their phone more than people is what concerns me. It all boils down to if the brain is computable in the sense of generating self awareness. AI being conscious is not  defined. You can make the fastest information databases in the world, whether or not its alive. You can't prove. Since we have a bias for our own technology, we would label it as alive. Uploading my mind sounds like  cool idea, but I am skeptical and as of now, most futurists claims are just that.....claims. 

[Anneal 2,197]

well there are 2 things I consider here: 

 

#1: out of all things we have prefected cloning my friend is 22 years old now and has no belly button as hes a test tube baby...so my point on that is if we got human duplication down in a whole...how long is it going to taske for the scientist of humanity to get ...um ...idk....curious? i mean they probs already have  it would just cause too much panic in the religious community as well as the human rights groups so  its best to keep those projects on the DL (shhh dont tell) anyways...

 

i've been wanting to get a movable pair of wings grafted on to my shoulder blades and there are surgeons who do just that!! i kid you not!! 

 

#2: when we have computers that are capable of statistically graphing out every event in history up to 20 years from now ( google  does this) from a single growth of a blade of grass???  whats there to say there isnt a program capable of re-programing someone's DNA?

 

1: We actually haven't perfected cloning and it's still very much in its infancy. Cloning Dolly took 277 attempts. Human embryos are possible and have been cloned before, but there's no legitimate reason for a regular person to do it because of the sheer several hundred attempts just to get one successful selected baby. Cloning a complete adult human is impossible as of now, and the controversy behind cloning had caused most countries and the UN itself to ban reproductive cloning due to ethical issues.

 

Right now most scientists are keeping it small and working on cloning other things. Stem cells have successfully been cloned, and there is continued development to clone more things, going as far as cloning organs (hasn't been done yet but will be done very soon).

 

Also, while there are a lot of grafting going on for strange parts, a pair of wings probably won't be functional for flying. Human anatomy unfortunately don't allow that, especially with your lower body being too heavy. Humans aren't made to fly like that; they need rigid wings and fuel on them. 

 

2: What will happen in the future besides scientific progress is very hard to predict. Computers can already do a lot already, and Moore's Law assures that they will get better and better. It could be closer than you think. 

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

Wanted to breathe life into the topic again. If transhumanists are truly for the people and not the government or corporations, then I can see myself supporting it. I can see robotic limbs being a reality. But mind uploading? Not sure. If it were to be real and a law of nature... Then you can put to rest about 90% of thousands of years of philosophy, if you know how a mind works and can replicate it. 

[I used to be a stranger 7,993]

I believe it is impossible for human consciousness to be fully emulated by a computer. And robotic emulation of human existence so that we could survive using artificial replacement implements would be either intolerable or prohibitively complicated. Either way, impractical and not worth pursuing in the end, and definitely making "living forever"  also impossible. I mean sure, you could have "living indefinitely" but that's what you're doing right now.

 

Maybe it's possible for a computer to fully encapsulate the functions of a human brain: supposing this technology exists, what if it's not physically possible to make this technology portable on a personal scale, or can't react at natural human real-time? I wouldn't want to live with the body of a bulldozer living at half speed just to accommodate my "lightweight allegedly portable" supercomputer brain. Even if it extended my life 500 years, those would not be years I would enjoy. And it would suck to just exist on the internet. Balls to youtube, I want to climb a mountain and feel winces from my legs, and get guck on my fingers trying light a fire with a stick and a magnifying glass.

 

When it comes to Transhumanism, I always think of a mental picture of millions of people in their homes plugged into the Matrix, and living out their lives virtually, with wealth and ease of access to pleasure and comfort and no need of the physical world because Transhumanism would free humans from the limitations of the physical. Tell me if this imagined world is too strong a fantasy.

 

I know however that while those people in that mental picture of a Matrix would think they would be free of the physical world's limitations, the physical would most definitely still be there. Electrical infrastructure, parts, manufacturing and logistics, all nightmarishly complicated and too involved for a set of computer programs to handle. Such a matrix would require a real world physical economy to support it. Which reduces the fantasy of humans to simply a fantasy of the wealthy.

Edited November 14, 2016 by Blue

[SunsetBaconDrive 169]

I believe it is impossible for human consciousness to be fully emulated by a computer. And robotic emulation of human existence so that we could survive using artificial replacement implements would be either intolerable or prohibitively complicated. Either way, impractical and not worth pursuing in the end, and definitely making "living forever"  also impossible. I mean sure, you could have "living indefinitely" but that's what you're doing right now.

 

Maybe it's possible for a computer to fully encapsulate the functions of a human brain: supposing this technology exists, what if it's not physically possible to make this technology portable on a personal scale, or can't react at natural human real-time? I wouldn't want to live with the body of a bulldozer living at half speed just to accommodate my "lightweight allegedly portable" supercomputer brain. Even if it extended my life 500 years, those would not be years I would enjoy. And it would suck to just exist on the internet. Balls to youtube, I want to climb a mountain and feel winces from my legs, and get guck on my fingers trying light a fire with a stick and a magnifying glass.

 

When it comes to Transhumanism, I always think of a mental picture of millions of people in their homes plugged into the Matrix, and living out their lives virtually, with wealth and ease of access to pleasure and comfort and no need of the physical world because Transhumanism would free humans from the limitations of the physical. Tell me if this imagined world is too strong a fantasy.

 

I know however that while those people in that mental picture of a Matrix would think they would be free of the physical world's limitations, the physical would most definitely still be there. Electrical infrastructure, parts, manufacturing and logistics, all nightmarishly complicated and too involved for a set of computer programs to handle. Such a matrix would require a real world physical economy to support it. Which reduces the fantasy of humans to simply a fantasy of the wealthy.

I really think we are heading towards that route. I'm not saying I would ever stay in some virtual reality for eternity. But I can see the longevity thing being the crowning achievement of transhumanism. The moment of truth will be in 2017. Why? A guy offered to risk having a head transplant done and such an experiment can answer questions regarding consciousness. 

 

http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/worlds-first-human-head-transplant-going-ahead

 

 

First of all, let me say I don't believe in good and evil. I believe in people, and people are what they are. Good and evil are subjective, selective constructs to me. Technology is never evil, nor good, it only becomes such in the hands of people.

 

Now that this is out of the way, i think transhumanism is inevitable in our evolution. You can't see its obvious manifestation or the impact, but i think the future historians would all agree it had to happen.

 

To me life is basically the exchange of chemistry and electricity in the brain, this doesn't mean it's cheap to me, but organic matter decays and fails. I, as an individual, as a personality, as an entity would definitely prefer to outlive my organic body if it means preventing the death and destruction of my entity.

 

This doesn't necessarily mean i would accept any vessel or artificial brain given the chance, I would prefer to remain physically mobile and independent.

 

AI, true AI, is coming along, and I don't think it'll be as apocalyptic as some people believe it to be. I think that if AI is created in a controlled environment and with hardware limitations, it'll be safe for interactions with humans. At the very least, it'll also be an inevitable outcome.

 

Will it be available for us who were born in the 1990s? If not then why should I get hyped? Because the future sounds awesome and I will be spending it in the ground not living. 

Edited November 15, 2016 by SunsetBaconDrive

[\/ 651]

This thread is not big enough. There's just so much to talk about here.

First of all, let me say I don't believe in good and evil. I believe in people, and people are what they are. Good and evil are subjective, selective constructs to me. Technology is never evil, nor good, it only becomes such in the hands of people.

Now that this is out of the way, i think transhumanism is inevitable in our evolution. You can't see its obvious manifestation or the impact, but i think the future historians would all agree it had to happen.

To me life is basically the exchange of chemistry and electricity in the brain, this doesn't mean it's cheap to me, but organic matter decays and fails. I, as an individual, as a personality, as an entity would definitely prefer to outlive my organic body if it means preventing the death and destruction of my entity.

This doesn't necessarily mean i would accept any vessel or artificial brain given the chance, I would prefer to remain physically mobile and independent.

AI, true AI, is coming along, and I don't think it'll be as apocalyptic as some people believe it to be. I think that if AI is created in a controlled environment and with hardware limitations, it'll be safe for interactions with humans. At the very least, it'll also be an inevitable outcome.

A body would not need to be mechanical to support beyond-human life. In fact, it would be a limitation. It would be better to alter one's genetic code to produce more efficient mitochondria, create photosynthetic cells grow in our skin, make all of our biomachines more efficient. Cells are small not only due to physical and chemical limitations, but because they're redundant. Redundant systems are close to flawless, and very durable. You can tear out 80% of someone's liver, and it'll grow back fine, all the while still function properly. No need to throw away that kind of engineering. Rather, build upon it and upgrade it. Your body could be your body still, but slowly become a different organism while you still inhabit it.

 

As for an AI, I feel it would be best to let it hijack the human species and see where it goes, with the agreement to keep us along for the ride. To become one with that kind of superintelligence would be the ultimate form of accelerated evolution.