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[Scoops Novel]

Then again, why not just go for bio-punk? It's also a feasible possibility, considering how we're going on the synthesizing front.

[toomanysecrets]

There are certain elitist cliques within the scientific world that seem to think that the human body is a pathetic laughingstock and will soon be obselete.

I completely and totally reject this mindset. I'm an optimist, and I think humans have such amazing potential and creativity without any implants or chips or any of this nonsense.

Also, it will be a much later date than 2030 when this stuff can be mass-produced for a reasonable rate.  If you're reading articles like this and getting excited about becoming a cyborg and living forever, you should ask yourself one question: Do you have millions upon millions of dollars to spend on the procedure? And then further millions to spend on maintenance? It seems to me there would be a bunch of invenstment bankers and hedge fund hyenas going cyborg and laughing at the 99.9% who can't afford it.

It's not as if a robotic arm that lifts more than a human arm is instantly "better."  What about mobility and reflexes?  A processor is not "better" than a brain because it is 100x faster.  There's reasoning and emotion to think about.  There are certain things that humans will always be better at.  A super-strength robot arm would likely be awful at dicing an onion or quickly catching something that fell to the ground.  Likewise, an AI trying to get a date or console someone would epic fail so hard it would be painfully embarassing.

TLDR: I'm keeping 100% of my humanity. Because I like it and it will never, ever be obselete. I'm not going anywhere near even an RFID chip (which will be the stage I of all of this garbage).

[i2amroy]

There are mental illnesses that don't show any notably corresponding defect in the physical structure of the brain. In any case, the debate over whether psychology should focus on the brain or the mind is hardly a settled one. The mind is more than the physical structure of the brain, though the brain does change based on mental activity. I highly doubt that a cloned brain would have a mind identical to the original.

Actually the currently believed main theory is that "everything psychological is also physiological", or at least that's what they are currently teaching at my college. For those diseases that don't appear to have a corresponding defect the belief is not that they don't have one, but rather that the one they have is subtle enough or hidden so that we just haven't found it yet.

And personally I'm all for options 1&2 that are listed in the OP, though really I see option 1 as the best (as it removes a lot of other problems like wear and tear) but option 2 as the most likely (we already have the technology to edit the genome of a living thing without needing to have done it before birth. We have already cured red-green colorblindness in monkeys, and the technology they use there is identical to what could be used to give you eyes that could see in the dark, for example).

Option 3 I really don't see how it could work that well. I mean sure you can amplify some portions of your body with drugs, but there are limits to how far you can go with the human body as it is now. You might be able to make yourself slightly stronger, but go to far and you start to rip muscles off of your bones. You might be able to accelerate your brain's thought process a little, but go to far and your brain burns out. Those are flaws inherent in how your body functions as of this moment, and the only way to remove them are to either replace the hardware or alter it so that it has better specs.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think that I'd enjoy a medium between the robotics and upgraded human.

We got some pretty efficient body parts, and I still want to be able to... well... you know...

Play chess.

If you're really so concerned about playing chess, you could just forgo total cybernetic replacement for upgraded cloned replacement or just straight gene modification.

Also, it will be a much later date than 2030 when this stuff can be mass-produced for a reasonable rate.  If you're reading articles like this and getting excited about becoming a cyborg and living forever, you should ask yourself one question: Do you have millions upon millions of dollars to spend on the procedure? And then further millions to spend on maintenance? It seems to me there would be a bunch of invenstment bankers and hedge fund hyenas going cyborg and laughing at the 99.9% who can't afford it.

Market pressure, my friend. Everyone is going to want this stuff, and so it will be more profitable for businesses and governments to increase its availability as much as possible. A few very wealthy customers are peanuts compared to hundreds of millions of not-wealthy customers.

It's not as if a robotic arm that lifts more than a human arm is instantly "better."  What about mobility and reflexes?  A processor is not "better" than a brain because it is 100x faster.  There's reasoning and emotion to think about.  There are certain things that humans will always be better at.  A super-strength robot arm would likely be awful at dicing an onion or quickly catching something that fell to the ground.

You're just pulling that out of nowhere. Our biology is the result of selected but unguided evolution, and we can easily improve upon it in all fields. Furthermore, adding an artificial processor to your brain would literally be adding: the rest of your brain would remain, augmented. 

Likewise, an AI trying to get a date or console someone would epic fail so hard it would be painfully embarassing.

We've never even made an AI, you can't say anything about what they'd be like. In fact, it stands more to reason as that AIs would be created by humanity, and humans like to mimic things, that a true AI would have a very human mindset.

[penguinofhonor]

If the super strong robot arm isn't as precise as my hands then I'll just keep them and have five or six limbs.

[toomanysecrets]

@ Metalslimehunt

I was just trying to put to words why my hair raises when I think about this stuff.  I think cybernetics and AI are and will be useful for specfic, specialized applications but not for mass consumption.  I don't need implants to lift something, I need a tool or another HUMAN BEING to help me.

But I didn't just pull it "out of nowhere."  I think a good chunk of the population would fight to the death before getting brain augmentation.  Terrifying prospect IMO. Even if I were terrible at math.

Oh, sorry for saying "AI" again.  Do people not say this anymore?  Should I have said "our current machine intelligence
capabilities as we slowly progress towards AI???"  Or perhaps "OCMICAWSPTAI"

[Levi]

Nobody is going to force anyone to get implants, that would be ridiculous and immoral.

A lot of people WILL want them though.  I know I certainly would. 

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I was just trying to put to words why my hair raises when I think about this stuff.  I think cybernetics and AI are and will be useful for specfic, specialized applications but not for mass consumption.  I don't need implants to lift something, I need a tool or another HUMAN BEING to help me.

Implants are a tool.

But I didn't just pull it "out of nowhere."  I think a good chunk of the population would fight to the death before getting brain augmentation.  Terrifying prospect IMO. Even if I were terrible at math.

I hate to break this to you, but we aren't talking about dystopic forced augmentation. Most people are going to get them, and they're going to get them of their own free will. Humans do not have a history of rejecting innovation.

Oh, sorry for saying "AI" again.  Do people not say this anymore?  Should I have said "our current machine intelligence
capabilities as we slowly progress towards AI???"  Or perhaps "OCMICAWSPTAI"

Not really the same thing. AI implies a fully sapient machine, which we thus far have not made much progress towards at all. We don't even know when we'll cross that threshold, or even if we can.

[Bdthemag]

I never asked for this.

But really, I eagerly anticipate the point in human evolution where we can better ourselves through genetic engineering and advanced prosthetic parts. We'll be able to fix humanities flaws, the things we'd be able to achieve would be epic and amazing in scale.

If the option became widely available to replace parts of your body and augment them, you better bet I'd be rushing to the nearest hospital to have them installed.

[i2amroy]

But I didn't just pull it "out of nowhere."  I think a good chunk of the population would fight to the death before getting brain augmentation.  Terrifying prospect IMO. Even if I were terrible at math.

Correct. A good chunk of the population wouldn't want them, but a good chunk of the population also would. And once enough people are doing it it then becomes normal. I mean if you see someone on the street wearing glasses or contacts do you think "How horrible! That person is augmenting their eyesight by external means!". No, most of the time you probably don't even notice it. The same thing will most likely happen to mechanical/genetic augmentation in that in the early days everyone who gets one is looked at weird, but as it becomes more and more commonplace it just becomes an accepted part of life.

Oh, sorry for saying "AI" again.  Do people not say this anymore?  Should I have said "our current machine intelligence
capabilities as we slowly progress towards AI???"  Or perhaps "OCMICAWSPTAI"

The thing is that what we have nowadays isn't really the same as "AI" taken in this sense. What we have nowadays is what is called "weak AI", which is basically just equivalent to a computer with a lot of rules. It's a chinese room in the sense that the computer doesn't actually understand what it is saying, it just knows that when this bunch of symbols or sounds comes in that it needs to output that bunch of symbols or sounds over there (like Cleverbot). It doesn't actually understand what it is saying, regardless of how complex its rules get.

The type of AI being discussed in this type of topic is what is called "strong AI", however. A strong AI functions exactly identical to a human in the aspects that it does actually understand what it is saying. It also is similar to humans in other ways, such as being able to learn, and potentially having emotions. (Studies have shown that emotions are an essential part of the decision process. People with brain damage that renders them emotionless have been know to spend hours shopping, simply because they can't decide on things like "Which brand of potato chips do I buy?" As such it is very likely that a strong AI would have emotions similar to those of a human.) Were one of these strong AI's to attempt to get a date, they would have just as much a chance as you would (assuming we are looking just at personality/intellect here, not the physical aspects), and in fact would probably have a better chance because they would have more "time" (due to their brain running faster) to examine each thing they were going to say before they said it. Imagine if you had a whole day to consider everything you were going to say. How often do you think you would say something stupid or accidentally? It's the same idea here. A strong AI would be identical to a normal human for all intents and purposes except for two things, namely that its brain would run faster and that it would be much better at remembering things.

[Frumple]

Nobody is going to force anyone to get implants, that would be ridiculous and immoral.

A lot of people WILL want them though.  I know I certainly would. 

Enhanced memory, built in full-function calculator, internal wi-fi connected to the collected technical knowledge of the human race (or just storage for it), dedicated co-processor assigned to analyzing everything via the heuristic of formal logic, specialized programs to create music and art based on imagination, extended visual range (into infrared, etc.) and corrected and enhanced vision... mm, the list goes on. Gods fuck, but it's like the majority of the weaknesses inherent to the flesh could be bypassed. Sign me up.

Not expecting any of that to happen in my lifetime, at least on a scale I'd likely get access to it, but... damn. I like the flesh as much as anyone, but I could do so. Much. More. With a nice bit of augmentation. Shame most of the really interesting stuff (read: Neurological enhancement) is probably going to come after the physical stuff, which I'm less interested in. Third arm or mechanical tentacles or whatever's cool and all, but I want to network my brain with like, five other copies. After the power struggle in which we kill off two or three of ourselves, the remaining melding of the minds would just be incredible.

[Levi]

Even fleshy bits can be engineered, we don't need to be cold steel robots.  Synthetic flesh with a wider range of tactile senses is being worked on right now for robots, so there is no reason in the future you couldn't have super sensitive synthetic skin that has an even better range of sensations(or the exact same ones if you are boring  ).

[Scoops Novel]

To be honest, the majority of the population, including those who want it, will back away on the off-chance of a kill-switch, ever so much with neural implants I'd rather not have my limbs disabled, let alone my mind hacked.

[Levi]

Just like the guys with heart transplants right?  Right?   

I mean, right now I could get cancer or have a stroke or a thousand other things.  Getting hacked probably won't be a huge problem for the most part.  At worst you'd need to reboot.  And if we are talking about the age when we have fulling robotic brains, well that is what backups are for.

[Thecard]

Yeah, see, I think that the soul is made by God and cannot be replicated.  That soul is what makes us human, what lets us think.

@ Metalslimehunt

I was just trying to put to words why my hair raises when I think about this stuff.  I think cybernetics and AI are and will be useful for specfic, specialized applications but not for mass consumption.  I don't need implants to lift something, I need a tool or another HUMAN BEING to help me.

Implants... yeah.  As Hunt said.

But I didn't just pull it "out of nowhere."  I think a good chunk of the population would fight to the death before getting brain augmentation.  Terrifying prospect IMO. Even if I were terrible at math.

Yeah, there are some people who would be afraid, and it would raise many moral questions.  Hopefully, it would be more of "do what you want, I'll do what I want" but it probably won't work like that.  Parents will get implants for newborns to try and stimulate them, even if the person wishes they remain pure when they get older.  But, that's progress.  You know potatoes?  Well, back in the good ol' days of serfdom and rampant plague, people were afraid of potatoes.  I'm not at all surprised, that shit is scary.  But, they are really good for you, so lords forced peasants to eat them, and the lifespan of peasants shot way up.  There will always be opposition to any given idea, but there will also be supporters, and you cannot keep any idea down.  You cannot kill the abstract.

Oh, sorry for saying "AI" again.  Do people not say this anymore?  Should I have said "our current machine intelligence
capabilities as we slowly progress towards AI???"  Or perhaps "OCMICAWSPTAI"

I don't know why you're upset, you used the term incorrectly.
Artificial Intelligence means the computer is capable of sentient thought.  We... we don't have that, and personally I think we never will.  That whole "soul" thing.  Y'know.


Damnit, three fucking ninjas?  Did it take me that long to write this?

...I want to network my brain with like, five other copies. After the power struggle in which we kill off two or three of ourselves, the remaining melding of the minds would just be incredible.

I'm gonna say this to that: You cannot create or kill a soul.  You can't form several into one either.  Melding yourself with five other people is not to get you (assume x=you) x⁵ or 5x.  You'd just be a self-inflicted schizophrenic.  You're better off just... y'know, talking to five other people.

Another ninja?  Damnit, every fucking time!


But... yeah.  I think augmentations would be nice, but AIs are... yeah.

Oh, and this reminds me of that myth, about the ship that gets rebuilt?  Someone brought it up in a different thread, but it applies here.
"It's like, a ship gets repaired so many times the ship no longer contains any of the material it was originally made with.  Is it the same ship?"
Me, I think it is as long as the crew is the same.


Two fucking more?  What the hell, self?  Click the Thrice-Damned-Button already!