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[LordBucket]

Eh, depends, LB. If you're getting people to do it with consent, and you manage to
lower the risk enough, it's about as unethical as drug trials.

I think I'll try to refrain from making assertions about the ethics involved myself. But I suspect that society in general, lawmakers and the medical and insurance industries will resist purely cosmetic and "cosmetic/functional" implants for people who are already perfectly healthy. It's one thing to restore functionality to an amputee or a paraplegic. Amputating a perfectly functional limb to replace it with a "superior" mechanical limb, or inserting the previously proposed calculator brain implant into someone without any problems in the first place...I suspect that will be viewed with more skepticism than viagra trials.

[LordBucket]

Bionics, Transhumanism, and the end of Evolution (Full Documentary)

Discusses human augmentation, nanobots, grey goo, human uploading, morphological freedom, microchips made with brain cells and other topics.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Interesting, but that fucking comment section:

This is pure garbage and the work of the devil. Ray Kurzweil and his legion on NWO devil worshipers need to get a clue. Here's a little advice: God created man and all men will eventually die. No machine can keep somebody alive forever. These people need to wake up from their screwed up dreams. 

whats wrong with these people saying that making us machine like will be so amazing ya we will lose are emotions our souls i hate these wanna be god scientist so much why cant you just be grateful for what we are now the human body is so much more amazing then any crap these guys create they make you think their just trying make us better but truth is all they want is power we are perfect the way we are these people need to be taken out back and put down before they ruin our species for good

Pretty reactionary. Oh well, as they say, stage one is denial. There's no stopping what's coming, only changing how we react to it.

[WillowLuman]

1 word: youtube. At least the story wasn't on Yahoo; the comments there would have found a way to take the story as proof that Obama is here to incorporate us into the Borg.

[LordBucket]

Pretty reactionary. Oh well, as they say, stage one is denial. There's
no stopping what's coming, only changing how we react to it.

Well, yes. But we are basically talking about the extinction of the human race. I can see why some people would be bothered by that.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Your view of "extinction" is pretty narrow, as we've been going over for most of this thread and in several others.

[LordBucket]

Your view of "extinction" is pretty narrow, as we've been going over for most of this thread and in several others.

I think you're unfairly lumping together two separate issues. Individual continuity of consciousness is a different topic than what constitutes a species. Quite a few scenarios discussed in that video could reasonably be described as the end of the human race.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

No, I know what you're referencing, I think you have an arbitrarily narrow view of what constitutes humans.

[wierd]

I have often pointed out that something like "world peace" (in the genuine, non-dystopian sense) would require humanity to stop being human, and thus would require the extinction of the currently existing human race.

This is just a logical deduction; human nature currently precludes that level of social cooperation. We can't even get along with silly things like what sports a person likes. It is not an advocation for genocide-- rather that humanity will have to change to accomplish that goal, and that as a consequence of that change, the old humanity will be extinct.

This is not received well, despite being--as far as I can tell-- truthful.

[LordBucket]

No, I know what you're referencing, I think you have an arbitrarily narrow view of what constitutes humans.

Oh? What's my view of what constitutes humans?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I have often pointed out that something like "world peace" (in the genuine, non-dystopian sense) would require humanity to stop being human, and thus would require the extinction of the currently existing human race.

This is just a logical deduction; human nature currently precludes that level of social cooperation. We can't even get along with silly things like what sports a person likes. It is not an advocation for genocide-- rather that humanity will have to change to accomplish that goal, and that as a consequence of that change, the old humanity will be extinct.

This is not received well, despite being--as far as I can tell-- truthful.

That's pretty demonstrably untrue. Structures for widespread societal peace have already been established. Democratic government, separation of power, and open society result in peace. This standard has been steadily increasing, and I see no reason for it to stop. World peace isn't here yet, but the process has started.

No, I know what you're referencing, I think you have an arbitrarily narrow view of what constitutes humans.

Oh? What's my view of what constitutes humans?

Your view of what constitutes humans are members of Homo sapiens sapiens lacking any significantly divergent cybernetic or genetic alteration that can be carried down through generations or are ubiquitously used. And probably some element about your weird New Age spiritualism and not interrupting chakra.

[LordBucket]

I'll interpret that as a senseless dismissal and that you're not interested in talking about it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That isn't a dismissal. That is what I've gotten from your posts on this topic before. You've said that you believe that your consciousness is distributed through the entire body rather than just the brain and that the significant alteration of any part of it is effectively ceasing to be human.

Edit: I even found the post in question:

Honest answer? I'm not a firm believer in the "my consciousness is exclusively in my brain" worldview. If my heart were removed, I'm not sure that I would be "me" anymore. It's not uncommon for heart transplant patients to report emotional and personality changes. If you're replacing your heart with a purely metal and plastic part...that has implications I wouldn't be eager to explore.

It would be one thing to be an individual who had an accident and was to choose between death and having a plastic heart. It would be another thing entirely to have society as a whole replacing biological hearts with plastic on birth as casually as we circumcise and pierce ears. Yes, it might be "efficient." It might eliminate the leading cause of death. It also might destroy us an an emotional species.

[wierd]

MSH:

Evolution implies the destruction of the old. Autralopithicus is extinct, but we are not. Australopithicus became us. We exist, because they became us.

That does not mean australopithicus is still alive. That species is no more.

The same would be true of our decendents, who have evolved past being petty imbeciles. They would no longer be humans as we understand the term. The human race would be extinct.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

What I'm trying to convey to you is that our views of taxonomy and species are pretty arbitrary. You can't hold to the morphological standard, because that would mean we already have wildly divergent species of humans. Nor can you really hold to the reproductive standard, because technology can overcome those boundaries. There is no defined point where you can say "this is human, and over this line is not human".

This whole "human extinction" thing is just an emotionally charged phrasing to get people riled up for no meaningful reason. If you accept that standard, the human race is already extinct because of the changes we've made. We're hardly the hunter-gatherers of the world anymore.