Transhumanism vs Bioconservatism.

[Premmy]

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?

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.

[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.

[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).

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by 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.

I use corn just because it's the biggest example. When 90-some percent of all products in your entire country contain one plant, you have an issue.

Originally Posted by TDK

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

Missing the point entirely? I was defining to IQ the terminology I was using.

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.

That's an incredibly simplistic view of things. I'll just direct you to the example of Harrison Bergeron. Or rather the rationale used to limit the population in it. We humans thrive on diversity. If everyone is equally smart, and equally strong, and equally good at math, soccer, picking their noses, and writing books, what the hell is the point? If anyone can do something as well as anyone else, it takes incentive and effort out of everything. You become a society of caged lions. You know what they do to help keep zoo lions entertained? They make them work for their food. Effort is a requirement for feeling reward. If anyone can do anything without ever having to put work into it, it all becomes meaningless.

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.

Or, y'know, it might be that some things are both unnecessary and expensive and while no, I wouldn't get modifications myself, and I do hold humanity as a living work of art, I think trying to dismiss my points under that banner is just being dismissive.

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.

If we even used it responsibly as things are. Office workers waste untold hours of time playing Facebook games and looking at porn as it is. Also, can you honestly tell me you expect students to not be messing around online when they're supposed to be paying attention in class? Or how about a practical issue. Wiring up requires hardware and software. Last I checked, being a programmer and all, viruses aren't all that hard to write. One goes around and it can do anything from redirect you wherever the hell the writer wants or flood your brain with crap signals. You know how viruses can crash your computer? What happens when someone decides to crash your brain? Seizures, ahoy!

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.

Or, spend two seconds strapping on a suit? Are we really that impatient that we can't take that small of a trip before throwing cars around?

And, uh, really? No, to be honest. I have no reason to be lifting cars. If that's the kind of thing people are going to be using this kind of thing for, I think we need to seriously consider why we're handing these things out.

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?

Depends on the situation. If you have a guy whose sole purpose in life is to look up porn while moving motor vehicles and checking for pee, then sure, enhance him.

See, I think you're missing the whole idea of utility, here. These things are only useful when they'd be, well, useful. You could have people all running around that way, but when super strength becomes widespread, you're going to have to redesign everything, and I mean everything, to withstand it so an angry girlfriend doesn't pull off all your car doors and then throw it through the side of your house.

In some cases, it's useful to NOT have something. It means you don't have to worry about it. Much as we love giant robots, they tend to cause collateral damage, for example.

Or, in more benign cases, something is less harmful and more just pointless, and should be really be wasting money on "enhancements" that don't do us any good?

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.

I'm going to come right out and say that out of all the ideas in this thread, enhancing our intelligence has to be the worst idea presented. For one, intelligence is hard to quantify, or even define. For two, once you start handing out "smart pills" or however you do it, you instantly grant an inordinate power imbalance to people with money to buy them. Y'know, the people who happen to love screwing everyone else.

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.

No, my argument is a lot more complex than that and involves a lot of questioning our society, raising concerns over negative side effects, and wondering at the necessity of certain things.

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.

Well, to be blunt, we already are automating a lot of stuff and we're slowly finding out that it's bloody stupid. Business concerns have already been royally fucked up because we gave the jobs to machines, including manhandling the housing crisis, making the stock market take a nose dive until they turned the system off, and other smaller concerns, like how everyone wants to burn automated phone systems to the ground.

The sufficiently advanced computers argument is a really selective one. Wouldn't sufficiently advanced computers be able to create music? Hint: it's already been done, in the 70s no less, and it pissed a ton of people off to the point the guy who wrote the program deleted it, purged the source code, and burned all his notes just to stop the death threats. And if they can write good music, why not create art? Or generate movies? Or do anything we can do, only potentially better?

Human brains essentially ARE sufficiently advanced computers. Thinking that machines are going to take up all the crap work and leave us in a creative utopia where we're free to run and frolic and create poetry is just naive. When computers get "sufficiently advanced," there's going to be no point in having us around anymore, and that takes all the meaning out of life.




Edit: PS - the suit in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynL8BCXih8U

[Azisien]

I'm not going to be impressed with suits like HAL until we slap them on a bodybuilder and start going 4000lb deadlifts.