Transhumanism vs Bioconservatism.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

This quite frankly terrifies me, because there is no one universal logic for people with Asperger's. A lot of them, for instance, are really great with animals. Then you get ones like my cousin who can talk about politics and God at three years old. If we're banking on them all making the exact same kind of sense, we're fucked seven ways to Tuesday.

What you are describing isn't differances in logic. By logic I mean your way of drawing conclusions. Aspies being more prone to using statistics and inductive reasoning.

I honestly have no clue how humanity would evolve sociologically with Aspies being the vast majority. The differances are about as varied as with NTs, I believe things would be somewhat simular but dip deep into the uncanny valley. Its the nuances that will be differant, general political and economic structures would be the same. Cultural mores and customs will not be, since they mostly wont exist anymore. My main concern would be aspie iron clad moral structure. It is incredibly rigid but not universal. Humanity would probably be alot more factionalized

Other would be potential interaction with alien intellegences. Without NTs to force alternate perspective aspies will develope a society that will view social rituals as idiotic wastes of time and if this alien life form values such things. Yea that wont end well. Aspies dont do well when they must walk into a situation with no knowledge or guidance. NTs would be far better suited to first contact

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Yrcrazypa

We are apex predators running around naked. All we have to do is look for a sharp stick and stab things with it. Our knowledge of how to use tools is our tooth and nail. Why would we need them when we can make them? We don't need thick skin because we can take something elses' thick skin. Plenty of other animals use tools, or the environment to their advantage, why can't we?

Originally Posted by Premmy

THANK you, whenever people make the "Take away all our cars and buildings and we'd die" argument it drives me nuts. It's stupid, we survived a long-ass time without them, and we can do so again, would EVERYBODY survive? hell no, does every tiger survive in the wild? also hell, also no.

I'll be brief because I have to run to class, but I'll say that tools are totally okay. One of our biggest issues though is we have zero survival skills at this point and the ratio of people who would survive to those would wouldn't is probably quite poor.

People in Africa get by just fine living much closer to nature in some cases, like the Masai. On the other hand, Western society may as well just move to the moon.

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

I'll be brief because I have to run to class, but I'll say that tools are totally okay. One of our biggest issues though is we have zero survival skills at this point and the ratio of people who would survive to those would wouldn't is probably quite poor.

...

On the other hand, Western society may as well just move to the moon.

Probably not. I mean survival would be dictated by food availability, so if we lost most of our technology, most of us would starve regardless of being Survivor Man or not. However, even people in "western society" are walking adaptation machines. A lot of us would find ways to survive. Of course, both opposing statements are just piles of speculation, so who knows!

[Aerozord]

Actually wouldn't bioconservation include geneticaly modified foods? In that case, wow we'd be screwed. Most nations have difficulty with food and water. Most of the freshwater on the planet (not in ice) is in North America, and its the third largest provider of food. So just forcing people to live off of "home grown" local foods will cause most nations populations to tank.

[Amake]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

I think we have a conflict of definitions here.

Yes.

There's a great deal of people out there who use the word "nature" to mean "everything I like or am comfortable with" so that they can declare things unnatural, or against the natural order of things and therefore inherently bad, without ever having to actually consider what nature is or how things fit or don't fit into it or how inconsistent their logic is.

It's a pet topic of mine usually related to sexual orientations, mental disorders and my writing. In order to defend those things I've found it useful to define the natural world as the subject of the natural sciences, in other words the sum of the entire universe. So it kind of cramps my style when you use it to mean "a sustainable ecosystem" or whatever.

Of course I'm all for a balance of technology that would allow us and all the other animals and plants to survive indefinetly. I just disagree with your use of the word nature.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Invisible Queen

Yes.

There's a great deal of people out there who use the word "nature" to mean "everything I like or am comfortable with" so that they can declare things unnatural, or against the natural order of things and therefore inherently bad, without ever having to actually consider what nature is or how things fit or don't fit into it or how inconsistent their logic is.

It's a pet topic of mine usually related to sexual orientations, mental disorders and my writing. In order to defend those things I've found it useful to define the natural world as the subject of the natural sciences, in other words the sum of the entire universe. So it kind of cramps my style when you use it to mean "a sustainable ecosystem" or whatever.

Of course I'm all for a balance of technology that would allow us and all the other animals and plants to survive indefinetly. I just disagree with your use of the word nature.

My use of the term is really not all that complex. I define things as either natural or manufactured for the most part. We live heavily in a manufactured world.

Obviously, there's some wiggle room in that. You could get picky and say a sharpened stick is "manufactured." In all technicality, it is. But I don't think anyone's going to argue it's nearly as complex as a gun. And I'm not saying that having things manufactured is in any way wrong, but I don't exactly see lions building themselves monorails.

Just to use a hot-button example, I think homosexuality is totally natural. It's been around for as long as we have and the animal kingdom sports it, too. I liken the persecution of homosexuals today to the persecution of lefties in the Middle Ages and Roman Empire. You look back at it and your first reaction is to think of how silly it is, but then you start drawing the parallels and it says a lot at just how stupid we are about that kind of stuff. Homosexuality will probably be just as normal to people similar hundreds of years from now as left-handedness is to us today.




Backing up now, to explain where I draw the line on what we do to ourselves, it's pretty simple. Things like clothing are necessary because they protect us from the environment. Things like glasses are okay because they help us find our way around our environment like our peers. Prosthetics, cochlear implants, and the new technologies we're developing to help blind people see are just dandy because all of them help people with disabilities function like the rest of us.

All of these technologies are fine in my book because they help the physically disenfranchised live in normal society.

Now, for things like giving ourselves cybernetic super-strength, or seeing into other parts of the spectrum, or wiring our brains into the Internet, that stuff isn't doing that. It's just creating a new divide. It's not "helping" people as much as it is "enhancing" them so that they can be a step above everyone else, and I think that's pretty much the last thing our self-absorbed, materialistic culture needs. We have enough trouble dealing with the people who can't function up to the same level normal people do without creating a biological or bio-mechanical elite using money and resources that would be better-served in bringing people up to standard.


Basically, the real question I have is why our own normal functioning isn't good enough. It's gotten us far enough to be having this debate. The idea that these enhancements are going to somehow make life so much easier confuses me. It's not a matter of not seeing any applications. Super strength would be great for construction, for example. But that's all any of it is good for is specific applications. You don't need to be able to bench press a bus if you're working an office job. The issue with introducing all this technology is that for most people, it's utterly pointless, and things like wiring Internet into our brains, well, there are some obvious issues with giving other people direct access to your mind.


Now, I'm going to come out and say if it's removable, I have no problem with it. We already have an exo-suit that lets a normal person hold hundreds of pounds like it's nothing. It's lightweight, strong, flexible, and you can take it off at the end of the day. Why change your eyeballs to see other parts of the spectrum when we already specifically have cameras for that purpose? No surgery or genetic modification required. Stick it in a visor and off you go. Really need the Internet at your command hands-free? Voice technology. It's actually getting to a point where it's working decently. Stick that in a pair of HUD glasses to display the screen and you're golden.

There are plenty of ways we can get the benefits of all our technological advances without mucking around making permanent changes to our own bodies. Maybe a CSI wants to be able to look around a room and see bodily fluids just to make examining a crime scene that much easier. Then maybe he'd rather not know about all the stains on the insides of the stalls the next time he needs to use a public bathroom. Maybe a construction worker wants to come home and throw some ball with his son without having to worry about blowing a hole through his chest because of his cybernetic implants, and not be marked by his job for the rest of his life when he goes and gets a desk job.

It's not like we NEED to modify our bodies. We have stuff that gets the same effect without doing so and is probably fuckloads cheaper. And better yet, transferable.

[Magus]

Oh, yeah, let's go ahead and make machines more intelligent than us, that'll turn out well.

Except it seems impossible to make something smarter than yourself. It could seem more intelligent for all intents and purposes, such as being able to process information faster or having a vaster array of knowledge that it can connect together in more ways, but that is not really "more" intelligent, it is just as intelligent as a human could be without physical constraints. It probably couldn't even come up with anything new, it would just be the same lame philosophy and math and culture we have already but arranged differently at a faster pace. Big whoop.

Also Blues why you hate on corn so much? It's not as big a problem as you make it out to be, dawg. They are growing other stuff, mang. Yeah, it strips nutrients, that's why they have crop rotation and fertilizer and stuff. You need to get over this corn hatred, before it consumes you! I understand that the farm factory system is raping the environment, but it's not all about the corn...just mostly about the corn.

Also lions wouldn't build monorails. They would build something fast to catch gazelles with, like motorcycles. Obviously.

[TDK]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

[I don't exactly see lions building themselves monorails.

What exactly is your point here? Onoes monorails aren't a natural part of nature therefore are wrong?

Homosexuality will probably be just as normal to people similar hundreds of years from now as left-handedness is to us today.

Who says left-handed people are normal? They're called wrong-handers for a reason. [/jk]

Backing up now, to explain where I draw the line on what we do to ourselves, it's pretty simple. Things like clothing are necessary because they protect us from the environment. Things like glasses are okay because they help us find our way around our environment like our peers. Prosthetics, cochlear implants, and the new technologies we're developing to help blind people see are just dandy because all of them help people with disabilities function like the rest of us.

All of these technologies are fine in my book because they help the physically disenfranchised live in normal society.

Now, for things like giving ourselves cybernetic super-strength, or seeing into other parts of the spectrum, or wiring our brains into the Internet, that stuff isn't doing that. It's just creating a new divide. It's not "helping" people as much as it is "enhancing" them so that they can be a step above everyone else, and I think that's pretty much the last thing our self-absorbed, materialistic culture needs. We have enough trouble dealing with the people who can't function up to the same level normal people do without creating a biological or bio-mechanical elite using money and resources that would be better-served in bringing people up to standard.


Basically, the real question I have is why our own normal functioning isn't good enough. It's gotten us far enough to be having this debate. The idea that these enhancements are going to somehow make life so much easier confuses me. It's not a matter of not seeing any applications. Super strength would be great for construction, for example. But that's all any of it is good for is specific applications. You don't need to be able to bench press a bus if you're working an office job. The issue with introducing all this technology is that for most people, it's utterly pointless, and things like wiring Internet into our brains, well, there are some obvious issues with giving other people direct access to your mind.

Who's to draw the line between disability-fixing and enhancement? Compared to the smartest man in the world, the average person is retarded. If we have the technology, why shouldn't we fix retardation? If you cannot draw an exact line, there is no line.

Now, I'm going to come out and say if it's removable, I have no problem with it. We already have an exo-suit that lets a normal person hold hundreds of pounds like it's nothing. It's lightweight, strong, flexible, and you can take it off at the end of the day. Why change your eyeballs to see other parts of the spectrum when we already specifically have cameras for that purpose? No surgery or genetic modification required. Stick it in a visor and off you go. Really need the Internet at your command hands-free? Voice technology. It's actually getting to a point where it's working decently. Stick that in a pair of HUD glasses to display the screen and you're golden.

There are plenty of ways we can get the benefits of all our technological advances without mucking around making permanent changes to our own bodies. Maybe a CSI wants to be able to look around a room and see bodily fluids just to make examining a crime scene that much easier. Then maybe he'd rather not know about all the stains on the insides of the stalls the next time he needs to use a public bathroom. Maybe a construction worker wants to come home and throw some ball with his son without having to worry about blowing a hole through his chest because of his cybernetic implants, and not be marked by his job for the rest of his life when he goes and gets a desk job.

It's not like we NEED to modify our bodies. We have stuff that gets the same effect without doing so and is probably fuckloads cheaper. And better yet, transferable.

What I'm getting out of this is that you have a problem personally with your body being modified because you hold the human form in some kind of holy reverence despite it being disgusting and inefficient, and you are projecting that onto the rest of humanity as some kind of moral imperative against modification.

Why have our brains wired into the internet? Because it would be the next major paradigm shift in information exchange and would revolutionize everything about our lives.

The reason to build it in rather than have supplementary equipment is that the latter is no different from what we have now. SURE, if I want to pick up my car I can go get a crane, but you can't possibly tell me you wouldn't rather just be able to DO IT.



We could have someone who is superstrong, sees the whole spectrum, and has access to the internet in their brain, or we could have someone carrying around a cumbersome robotic harness and a couple pairs of HUD goggles. Which is superior?


Also, many things, such as intelligence enhancements (a very real possibility) would be completely impossible to do without some kind of implant or modification. Not all technologies like this could be implantable.


Really your argument comes down to "well I'm not okay with modifying the human body because well its good enough even if it could do so much more". You're old people saying fax machines are plenty good enough and you don't need no new-fangled internets.


Also, part of your argument mentioned people not needing upgrades for desk jobs and stuff? What makes you think, with this level of technology, anyone would need to be sitting in an office working? Are there really any jobs like that that couldn't be done by sufficiently advanced computers?

Part of the thing I love about the singularity is that with 'robots' to perform menial tasks and whatnot, people will be more free to pursue their creativity, advance technology, create entertainment, etc. Although that's an idealistic notion. I feel like with the way US society works right now, they'd somehow find a way to quash the creativity of the masses and force them into soul-crushing jobs that parallel all the things wrong with office jobs regardless.

[Azisien]

Originally Posted by TDK

We could have someone who is superstrong, sees the whole spectrum, and has access to the internet in their brain, or we could have someone carrying around a cumbersome robotic harness and a couple pairs of HUD goggles. Which is superior?

Well honestly the harness and goggles might be. First of all it's a big stretch to call the effects of being "superstrong" (whatever THAT entails exactly) being perfectly comfortable and a robotic harness that MUST BE cumbersome.

The main reason I say this, though, is probably because of upgrades. What does Super Strong Man have to go through if his artificial muscles suddenly stop working, or malfunction and snap a spine, or need an upgrade or refuel or whatever?

The harness, at least, can wear and tear separate of the user and be tossed away when harness V2.0 comes around. Now with less cumbersome!!

Edit: I change my stance. I want to be super strong and also have a robot harness (the cumbersome-ness of which is completely denied due to my super strength).

[TDK]

My thinking was that a strength-enhancing harness would by necessity be somewhat cumbersome because it must have material enough to support the weight it can lift and also distribute it somewhere else besides your frame.