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[Moghjubar]

The soul is our humanity, our link to God and to each other.

Mine seems to be in operable; I’m not able to communicate with either.

Maybe I’m that philosophical zombie you’ve heard so much about.

Obviously we need a Philosophical Zombie Society for collections of physics/patterns like us.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't know why you all are so worried about there not being any "pure" humans (which is kind of prejudiced, in my opinion). Even if we have extensive cybernetic modifications, the biological children of Transhumans are still going to be Humans. At most we'll be genefixing them before they're born, but frankly the kind of genes we'd want to dispose of are the kind I don't care about humanity keeping. Genetic disorders are not the heritage of our species.

[Descan]

Eh, who's worried about that? DXA? I think he was being facetious.

The OP? Um, I dunno about him.

Can't think of anyone else.

[RedKing]

I don't know why you all are so worried about there not being any "pure" humans (which is kind of prejudiced, in my opinion). Even if we have extensive cybernetic modifications, the biological children of Transhumans are still going to be Humans. At most we'll be genefixing them before they're born, but frankly the kind of genes we'd want to dispose of are the kind I don't care about humanity keeping. Genetic disorders are not the heritage of our species.

How dare you deny my potential grandchildren their birthright of floppy heart valves and hyperflexible joints!

Seriously though, this runs into the thorny question of what constitutes a "defect" and what constitutes variation. If there were a gene discovered that predisposes for homosexuality, you can be damn sure there would be a group of people lobbying to have all children tested and gene therapy done to "erase the defect". 

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If there are "gay genes", it is a safe bet that most people at least carry some of them, even if they don't display them. Same goes for autism. It's pretty much impossible to eliminate.

Plus, I'd imagine we'd enact legislation restricting pre-birth genefixing to things that are physically harmful. I'd say that's a good policy.

[RedKing]

They'd argue it *was* physically harmful. Not saying they'd be at all justified, just saying they'd try. And some legislators would be among their numbers.

Then there's things like lactose-intolerance. Which is actually the genetic "norm" for the species as a whole, but is replaced with a beneficial mutation found in the majority of Caucasian populations. Although "beneficial" may be YMMV, considering there's a school of thought that argues humans shouldn't drink animal milk.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

They'd argue it *was* physically harmful. Not saying they'd be at all justified, just saying they'd try. And some legislators would be among their numbers.

They'd already fail. Even amongst most of those who oppose gay rights, I doubt we'd see much support for eugenic genocide. I think it's fair to say that the new normal in Western culture has become acceptance of homosexuality.

Then there's things like lactose-intolerance. Which is actually the genetic "norm" for the species as a whole, but is replaced with a beneficial mutation found in the majority of Caucasian populations. Although "beneficial" may be YMMV, considering there's a school of thought that argues humans shouldn't drink animal milk.

Lactose tolerance is spreading even without our intervention. I would rule that you could give your children lactose tolerance, but not take it away.

[Thecard]

Man, do you guys on the internet never sleep or something?  Aw, you're part of the 'net already, aren't you? 

You might know, the Ten Commandments can be summarized into 1)Love God; 2)Love other people.

That is not exactly accurate. Especially the second point. The Ten Commandments demands towards treatment of other people are not very demanding: Honor your parents, don't kill, don't steal, don't adulterate, don't perjure, don't covet. I don't even violate those standards towards people I hate. Except the coveting, but that isn't even harmful.

As for the first, you could still love Yahweh and have other gods, worship Yahweh through a graven image, take his name in vain, and work on the Sabbath. It is very explicitly emphasizing a style of worship rather than loving this particular god at all.

No.  That I did not come up with that one, Jesus did.  And I summarized them a little bit.  The first one is fully "love the lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul."  It isn't just "loving," though you can not possibly worship other gods and still love YHWH.  No one can have two masters, one will be loved and the other scorned.
And, as I say later in that comment, I know you love your neighbor.  I say that.  I think you're part of the non-Christians who aren't dicks.  Only a few are, and there are just as many "Christian" assholes as there are atheist assholes.

So... yeah.  I guess that's sorta my overall stance on y'all.  But I would never try to judge you, that isn't my place.  I want you guys to know that.

You are totally judging us, you're just sugarcoating it and diverting it off onto your religion.

No.  I have never met you, and I don't know what is going to happen to either of us.  Hell, maybe you'll go to Paradise and I'll go to Hell.  I don't know what will happen.  And I won't try to figure out what will happen.  Please, don't assume you know what I think of you.

[pisskop]

I asked a philosophy professor about this, and he got into the soul quick enough.  Its another aspect of this, but only if you believe in a soul.  He doesn't but he knows I consider this stuff, so. . . In the end it ended up as typical, "If god exists and he let's evil happen, isn't he evil for his complacency?"

We had a fun a talk about that and that led into Solomon's Keys and long story short, he never actually answered my questioned.  Go figure, how philosophical.

[Thecard]

Can we keep religion to the religion thread? This is the Human ascendancy or no thread, and while I'm sure religion would play a part in the dilemma, this isn't the thread for it.

Alright, I'm fine with that.

[Graknorke]

I am all for making humanity better.
We need to change fast, and MUTATION TOO SLOW.

[Lectorog]

Ooh, then we get to put our "breeding stock" on special reservations, and issue other restrictions to keep them safe and pure.

Yeah, there's no way that can become dystopic and horrible.

I see it going pretty well.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But what is the mind?  As far as I can tell, the mind is entirely derived from the structure and function of the brain.  The only way to transfer it would be to mimic its structure in a new format.  That's not really transferring, that's copying.

Aside from actually pulling out your brain and putting it in a robot body, I don't see how you can have a continuous chain of existence.

I've thought about this a lot. In fact, it's why I want to go into neuroscience.

My hypothesis is, if you replace the neurons slowly enough with a more durable, machine analog version, continuity of the mind will be retained, and you can "upload" your mind and have it be YOUR mind.

This idea right here is probably the best, and it gets around the whole "copies aren't really you" problem. All we have to do is replace your brain one piece at a time, so we put you under, replace a chunk, and then wake you back up. It would even provide helpful feedback in that we would be able to check to see if each replaced chunk was working correctly before we replace the next one.

I very much like this idea. Also avoids the problem that alway presented.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The trouble with brain-duping is it requires at the very least highly advanced robots which are much smaller than neurons. You can't do it when they're dead; decay of both tissue and signal occurs almost instantaneously (which is also why cryonics are a bit nebulous). In order to capture both the nervous structure and electrochemical data, you would need to pepper the brain with trillions upon trillions of nanobot sensors, ensure they were distributed to each and every nerve and synapse, and then have them all record their respective data at exactly the same moment, then have some way to retrieve that data. It's probably doable, but yeah, it's at least 50 years away, if not 100 or more. Probably well after the creation of advanced general intelligence.

Can't believe this thread has gone on so long without mention of Ray Kurzweil!

The Singularity is Near is excellent reading for this topic.

I was first.
Also, the singularity he talks about is not the melding of man and machine, as many misconceive. This is actually it, summarized below.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• The equivalent of a $1000 computer (an average computer) is one billion times as computationally powerful as the entire present human race.
• Machines surpass humans as "the best" and grow beyond possible long-term prediction.
• Humanity will forever be changed.

The first is his actual defining criteria (as presented in the referenced book). The second and third are where the Singularity part comes from.

Maybe I’m that philosophical zombie you’ve heard so much about.

Obviously we need a Philosophical Zombie Society for collections of physics/patterns like us.

I'm only pretending to be a philosophical zombie.

[Korbac]

Aside from actually pulling out your brain and putting it in a robot body, I don't see how you can have a continuous chain of existence.

/haven't read rest of topic disclaimer

I'm glad somebody noticed this. This is where most theories of 'clone - bodies' or 'copy of conciousness' come in. Yes, the being created is exactly like you, but it isn't you. For example - if my brain data is copied into a machine that then replaces me, I have generated Korbac 2 from Korbac 1. To everyone else, their behavior is identical, but effectively, Korbac 1 is dead.

An interesting idea to consider is that Korbac 2 will think he's Korbac 1, and Korbac 1 won't be able to tell them otherwise (because he's dead.) Thus leading us to develop technologies which result in all of us killing ourselves accidentally.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You should probably read the rest of the thread then, since plenty of us are in opposition to that viewpoint.

[Graknorke]

Aside from actually pulling out your brain and putting it in a robot body, I don't see how you can have a continuous chain of existence.

/haven't read rest of topic disclaimer

I'm glad somebody noticed this. This is where most theories of 'clone - bodies' or 'copy of conciousness' come in. Yes, the being created is exactly like you, but it isn't you. For example - if my brain data is copied into a machine that then replaces me, I have generated Korbac 2 from Korbac 1. To everyone else, their behavior is identical, but effectively, Korbac 1 is dead.

An interesting idea to consider is that Korbac 2 will think he's Korbac 1, and Korbac 1 won't be able to tell them otherwise (because he's dead.) Thus leading us to develop technologies which result in all of us killing ourselves accidentally.

If it makes you feel better, the continuous you is an illusion created by the current version of your mind to make sense of past experience.
I would post an SMBC because relevance but I can't pick one.