Do you want to be Transhuman?

Maybe! The whole subject and obsession with machinery as the one way to become transhuman just strikes me as odd.

The problem is not wether machines think, but wether men do, as B.F. Skinnner said

Actually that would be more post-humanism. And while that may be the ultimate end goal for a a lot of transhumanist thought, they do still recognise the transitional forms that might be best described as "augmented/altered but still human" are necessary transitional stages. Hence transhumanism.

On the definitional issue, as I've said before, anyone who uses vaccination as an example of transhumanism (regardless of their definition) is fundamentally misunderstanding how they work. Short version, they do not alter or in any way change the human immune system. The immunity conferred by a vaccine and actually catching the disease and recovering are the same thing, vaccines just do it in a way that doesn't make you sick (by inactivating the disease vector or using things like protein signatures).

Now you're just putting words into my mouth.

You are the one who defined the hand as a part of me and not a tool because the brain controls it directly by sending it signals. When I challenged that logic with the would also include a prosthetic that is connected to the nervous system, you went, "Nope. it is not something you're born with". Then I challenge that logic with "that would mean that transplanted hands are also tools". You are the one Moving the Goalposts here. I'm just following your goalposts to their logical conclusions.

Scale matters.

Vaccinations is not the same as extending your lifespan to thousands of years because the former isn't going to cause the problems of resources and overpopulation, concerns raised by people here which I think are solvable and can be worked around. Using stones tools are not the same as having your hand cut off and replace it with a better prosthetic, because to some people that is destroying a part of the person (maybe including you, maybe not. Do you think that your hand is a part of you or just "a tool"? You've been Moving the Goalposts so much that I'm not even sure), which I disagree because I think my hands are just an instrument for me to interact with the world. Redefining "transhumanism" so narrowly to the point that massive life expansion and cyborgs are excluded is pointless, because those things in terms of impact and scale are much more dramatic and influential than just simple vaccinations and using stone tools. You might as well as argue "Nuclear bombs are just weapons like stone spears. and so there is no such thing as WMDs".

edited 5th Jul '14 7:25:52 PM by IraTheSquire

No one said that machinery was "the one way" to achieve transhumanism. It is, however, one of the ways - contrary to your assertions and your personal idea of what transhumanism means (whatever that is - eternal? natural? not involving tools at all? makes regular humans "worthless"?).

Other forms of transhumanism have been mooted, not just ones involving mechanical enhancements.

As far as many of them go, human-machine interfaces and advanced prosthetics seems one of the most versatile and applicable to "normal" humans (it's something anyone could have once the price is low enough) and is one of the areas in which a) great advances have been made and b) great advances will continue to be made due to the fields of medical prosthetics and industrial/commercial/domestic robotics and the very broad overlap of those two disciplines.

Yeah I would say a new hand or leg isn't transhumanism. Immortality is. Upgrading our very minds is.

Our minds is what defines us. Upgrading it to become more intelligent and removing cognitive biases would be a game changer.

Thing is though, there are people who reckon that switching away from a body of flesh and bone to metal and plastic (and ceramics probably) is somehow deviating away from the "essence" of "being human", whatever those two actually mean.

As long as there are still people who do that, we cannot exclude those from "transhumanism" because that would just complicate the discussion with no gain.

Here my thoughts:

- wheter I want to become Transhuman and what I want of it :

In regard of the first question, I answer shortly "Yes". I don't see, why not. What I want from it? Well, my giftlist goes the following: potential immortality (e.g. that I die no sooner and no later than the moment I decide, that my work as a livingbeing is done, and that there is no age related degradation in place), super-calculating skills, having access to the internet without any devices, having the memory storage to allways have a dump of the entire wikipedia and apleathora of dictionaries at brain, superstrength, technopathy (including telepathy to other people with a compatibly implant setup) and the ability to see a far greater range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

- which path would I like to go?:

I wiull go for a mixed strategy. Kybernetics as far as they are avaible, Mind-Uploading as soon as avaible. If the Mind-Uploading isn't of the destructive kind, I will keep going in my Cyborg-Body and regulary make a new backup of myself, which is to be keept inactive, until my biological brain is demaged beyoind repair (at which point the Mind-Upload will get the life). If the Mind-Uploading is of the destructive kind, I'm okay with being the second one to do it (the second one to see on the first one if it really is already ready)if I'm not suffering on any terminal diseases or injurys, and being the first one if I have a condition like that.

- Is a Mind-Upload really "me"?

I think, if the Mind-Upload has all memorys my biological self has in that moment, the same personality and continous though-proces (aka that the Upload doesn't go though the grocery list while the biological brain mentally sung macarena during the scan) it is me. In the following, I will call my biological self "me1", my mind-upload "me2" and the secruity back-up of me2 "me3". My Idea would be, that me1 continue his life until he dies (while, of course, he actualieses me2 regulary so the gap don't grow to big), at which point me2 will be activated (I don't want to have 2 of me running around - that would complicate things to far [I suspect, both me's would quarell about who get's the life] so me2 will be kept just as data before me1 dies) and get transfered into an Android body and continue the life (while also regulary actualising me3 and the new backup me4) until me2 also dies somehow (maybe the android-Body got destroyed before I could transfer out?), at which point me3 (with backups me4 and me5) takes over and so on.

- legal implications about mind-uploading:

I suppose, it will be illegal for more than one version of you to be active (for the stated reason - how could be determined which one inherits the life?). If someone destroys a version purposefully, but one is left, that will be either attempted murder (if the preperator didn't know about the left version) or a heavy case of criminal assault (if the preperator knew about the copy). If the preperator destroys all versions that exists in this moment, that will be plain murder (since then it clearly is a lasting death).

- Hacking transhumans:

Since both Cyborgs (since otherwise you couldn't use your artifical limbs carefully) and Mind-Uploads (since otherwise that would be exteremly close to sensory-deprivation torture) require the possibility of computer-generated sensory input, that will open the door to hacking (though I don't think you could just rewrite the brain - not a biological one, neither a simulated one). Simply though feeding you unsetteling sensory input until you do what the hacker wants(lets say you get the input of eating feces forever, seeing the most grusome and disguesting pictures in the world forever, hearing ear battering music all day [sleep deprivation is a known torture method] and feel forever like standing on fire until you transfer all your money to the respective criminal, who smuggeld this nasty virus on to the website where you were downloading the sensation of screwing your favorite porn star [that will most certainly exist - we are talking about humans, after all, even if simulated and kybernetically enhanced one]). It will most likely exist, give the anti-virus industry days of glory they nether imagined and will legally probaly handeld as an amalgation of modern day cyberattacks and battery.

- regarding racism, sexism and classizism

full scale transhumanism probally reenders racism and sexism as we know it largely pointless, since your physical and mental abilitys would no longer depend on your biology, but on your enhancement. Classizism may seem like the greater threat (and maybe actually is, if the lower classes overlook it), but could be compensated (if enough of the lower class cares) by forcing riches, who go transhuman, to pay some extra costs used to give some of the lower classes the chance to go transhuman too. But will that mean the end of prejudice? Probally not. What if, sometime at the end of our century, Cyborgs and Mind-Uploads would duke it out, who inherits the earth from the, now gone, baseline humans? (I would really like to see that movie)

All in all, I see mostly good in moving on from humanity to transhumans.

Also, another thing about hacking: no one has yet to hack into a digital camera so that, in real time, they show something real that doesn't exist (like another person). I haven't seen any prove that can be done.

I was thinking, it's not really super high-tech (I don't think?), so why don't we have PCs and smartphones that act like they have personalities? I don't think we do anyway.

I mean, not act like a full-blown person, more like a cute pet or baby-thing. Like, give it a face and some facial expressions, and some simple cute wordless vocalizations.

Don't people love sort of thing?

edited 18th Aug '14 6:29:55 AM by CassidyTheDevil

Isn't the basic idea of computer hacking is to fake being an authorized connection? Just put the person in control of their network input so that they shut down anything not supposed to be there.

Yeah, but before in this thread people are also talking about reprogramming the drivers for bionic devices so that, for example, you get hallucinations of spiders crawling up your arm or something.

That's the equivalent of me making a virus that enters digital cameras or digital tvs so that every time you use it your video will have a naked person running around, in real time. Which is a bit out there and far fetched.

Hijacking a connection through a network for control, maybe. But reprogramming almost literally the whole thing so that it does things so specific? Highly unlikely. At best a virus can only shut down the bionic device or make it nonfunctional.

edited 18th Aug '14 10:40:28 AM by IraTheSquire

Are you talking about the Laughing Man?

You don't necessarily have to hack altered images directly into sensory centers. It would suffice to hack the interface and stimulate the brain into doing the work for you.

That would actually seem pretty trivial if you already have advanced enough implants to be of any particular use.

edited 18th Aug '14 9:14:50 PM by Pykrete

Again, I'll wait until somebody has done something similar to a digital camera/webcam in real time. Because if it is trivial then we should be worried about using our webcams, right? Who knows when it is going to get hacked and the person we Skype with suddenly goes "what that behind you?"

Also, we should be mindful that what we sent to others via e-mail because who knows if someone has tempered with our modems and make it "mistranslate" the digital/analogue signals into something that you do not intend.

edited 18th Aug '14 10:41:52 PM by IraTheSquire

I like that. It may be the only excuse we haven't gptten yet in the Edit Banned thread.

"It wasn't me. It was a malevolent AI."

"Somebody hacked my modem so that it changes all my posts into troll posts!"

"Help! My last update for my DVD-ROM drive has a virus that makes it to read any disk that I put in to become porn!"

Edit: Oh, and btw, the people with cochlear implants should beware that their implants will get hacked and they would be end up listening to Rebecca Black's Friday in loops.

edited 19th Aug '14 12:45:00 AM by IraTheSquire

Still, gives an entirely new meaning to the term "Ear Worm"...

You know this could just be solved by putting the person in charge of their network connections. If you have something odd in your vision turn off the network channel streaming it.

I do not like this "Oh well machine modification/machine bodies might have issues. So let us stay with normal biological bodies that are hackable through the auditory channels. With backwards upside down retinas and organs that don't have enough support and brains that has a weak reaction to a million deaths and a strong one to a single death. "

edited 19th Aug '14 7:41:03 AM by higurashimerlin

China Restaurant Relies on Robot Cooks and Servers

How could this possibly go wrong? Player Piano, anyone?

edited 19th Aug '14 5:12:48 PM by Cyran

As I mentioned before, robots replacing humans is not transhumanism as humans are not enhanced or improved in any way.

Now if they start putting human brains in those robots, on the other hand...

True, but it's a stepping stone. And I couldn't find a "I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords" thread.

Only a stepping stone as far as "might become a catalyst for people to find ways to increase their abilities to compete" or "technology can be used for artificial limbs for people".

"You know this could just be solved by putting the person in charge of their network connections. If you have something odd in your vision turn off the network channel streaming it."

when I talked about "feeding unsetteling sensory" I didn't mean it in the sense of a live-stream (like a Youtube-Video), more like a conventional computervirus, that resides on it's targets hard drive. Just that what this computervirus does, is hijacking the output-channels. And you can't turn the channels off. The network-conection would just be the way, over wich your system get infected in the first place.

"I do not like this "Oh well machine modification/machine bodies might have issues. So let us stay with normal biological bodies that are hackable through the auditory channels. With backwards upside down retinas and organs that don't have enough support and brains that has a weak reaction to a million deaths and a strong one to a single death. " "

well, that wasn't what I was saying (and I wouldn't like it either), I was just thinking about how a world that was fully hit by transhumanism would look like. And one of my answers to that question is, that the age of transhumanism would be a golden age for the anti-virus-industry, since, if a nasty computervirus could not just delete (or spy on them) your computerfiles, hijack your browser or monitor your computer-activities but also give you a mindrape, who would be that cheap not to buy the best anti-virus-software on the market?

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but Neurosecurity is something that is at least theoretically discussed as a legitimate issue.