Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Propman]

The ultimate purpose of life, if any, has yet to be scientifically proven or disproven, and as such while discussions concerning it can give one many interesting takes on the matter, from a wide spectrum of views, know that there is currently an equal chance that the ultimate meaning of life is to "figure it out yourself" as it is say, a random number generator to a pointless metaphysical machine that rearranges extradimensional matter into geometric shapes of varied proportions (until proven otherwise of course).

[alexandertnt]

The "best" course of action depends on the desired results.

Absolutely. Are your goals the survival of what you view as the human race? Because you diddn't base your choice on anything beyond the fact that a side resembles "us".

Is the person that wants a bacon sandwich stupid for not wanting a turkey sandwich instead?

Of course not. But its quite difficult to compare some sort of racial (specist?) conflict to picking lunch. Doesn't have quite the same impact on other people.

Turkey is, by most standards, considered healthier than bacon, so would that make turkey the only logical choice?

See above, your turning my argument into something it's not.

What if he is unconcerned with the health effects of a single bacon sandwich, and prefers to have a much better tasting sandwich?

You can kill yourself in a conflict if you really want. But in our hypothetical conflict, choosing "your favourite tasting lunch" could seriously hurt other people and cause significant misery.

Ultimately, if you want to pick the bacon side, regardless of the fact it could be causing the most harm to other people, then I don't know what else to say.

What's the point of playing the game if you can guarantee being dealt a perfect hand every time?

Life is not a game, that's ridiculous. If your going to use that metaphor, whats the point in gambling when your only going to lose?

People need a reason to live, and these involuntary little imperfections and variances can spice up an otherwise very bland existence.

If perfection was boring it would not be perfect.

Who said people had to make themselves perfect? Even if people wanted to, why must perfection be bland? Because it sounds poetic? Regardless, if I could change myself, my goals would not be perfection, but something far more personal.

Regardless, I would be interested on your definition of what "perfection" actually is and why other people would want that. Becase I can't find a concrete definition of perfect existance and it seems if people were to go for perfection they would end up being quite distinct from one another. Your perfect bacon sandwich would be someone elses horrible turkey sandwich.

[alway]

On the topic of species uplift, there's some evidence we are doing this already in an unintentional manner.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/23/urban-animals-evolution

Who said people had to make themselves perfect? Even if people wanted to, why must perfection be bland? Because it sounds poetic? Regardless, if I could change myself, my goals would not be perfection, but something far more personal.

This. Homogeneity means vulnerability, stagnation, and death. Homogeneity is also the exact opposite of what most cybernetic or biological enhancements would result in.

Take for example cybernetics for living in space. The idea there is to allow us to live on other worlds, or even deep in space, without wrecking our quality of life. That last bit is the key here. Humans, in their current form, can live on the Moon. They can live on Mars. They can live in space. They can live basically anywhere. But only if there is sufficient infrastructure to support them. No human would ever want to live their life in a modern space suit. It's highly uncomfortable, unwieldy to the point where you can barely use the simplest of tools, and inflexible enough for movement to be difficult. And on top of that, the life support systems must be constantly tended to prevent sudden death. Similarly, a tiny Mars colony is far from ideal living conditions. Without incurring all the problems of the space suit, you are still left with a variety of psychological needs which would go unmet by an inability to simply go outside of your apartment-sized living quarters. The idea, then, is to modify the human such that they are meant to live in their environment, and are able to do so without any more difficulty than a modern human lives on Earth. It takes the idea behind the space suit and turns it into a part of who you are. Heterogeneous humans for heterogeneous environments.

Or another example, modification of the human form. We already do this to a large degree; cosmetic surgery, and such. But the main theme behind this is the ability to modify one's appearance beyond what they normally could. The easier/cheaper/faster/less permanent this becomes, the less homogeneity you will see. There would be fads and fashions, sure, but the overall trend would be towards much more diversity backed by the trivial cost of changing if something didn't work out well.

[BFEL]

GAH FUCKING SHIT.

Why is it that EVERY time a interesting thread pops up it does so when I can't spend time on it? HATE my job.

[Sergarr]

GAH FUCKING SHIT.

Why is it that EVERY time a interesting thread pops up it does so when I can't spend time on it? HATE my job.

It's not like it will be erased tomorrow, you know.

[Vattic]

PTW.

[Gukag]

I think an important part of this debate that sometimes gets ignored is the whole "Gattaca" aspect. A lot of the transhumanist fans I've argued with on the internet approach the whole thing as a potential utopia. It's refreshingly positive in a naive, faith-like way. I can't help but view it with cynicism.
Access to this cutting edge technology will obviously be restricted by wealth. It may just be so initially, if you believe the technology will eventually be so cheap as to be trivial. But I don't see how that is possible. People said the same thing about flight, that it would bring humanity closer together, that it would be accessible to all, that having fulfilled man's age-old desire to fly war and conflict would be a thing of the past. Given what I know about history, genetic manipulation is much more likely to create self-reinforcing division and "castes" of haves and have-nots. Except now when they will talk about their "natural" and "genetic" superiority, they will actually have a point. I don't know about you but that scares me. Not to mention the whole military application angle. Again the parrallels with flight: the leaps and bounds in the technology will almost assuredly come from government financing aimed at military superiority.

[alexandertnt]

TBH, I think transhumanism is sometimes just imaginative tecno-magic which is backed up with claims of being "not impossible". A lot of the utopian ideas seem to be related to the more outlandish and speculative claims.

My earlier responses are mainly due to the fact I don't think there is anything inherently special or unique about being human, I have no particular desire to maintain my human-y-ness, or any notion of human purity (however you would even define what that is).

[Knit tie]

Still, Gukag, a lot of people do fly nowadays and flight indeed has brought many humans togeter. Perhaps not in the capacity utopists predicted they would do so, but planes have fulfilled their ordained purpose. I believe cybernetic enhancement will do the same - not everybody will have a pair of, say, mechanical legs, just as like not everybody nowadays has a car, a house or the ability to travel around the world, but enough people will do for those enhancements to become an integral part of human culture and alter it in a significant way.

As for your concerns about societal division between the rich and the poor, I would like to say that, having witnessed said division in its most blatant form in Russia, sticking some mechanisms in a rich man will not make him any more different from a poor man than he already is. The rich are already more priveleged and more capable of doing what they want as opposed to what they have to do than the poor, giving them the ability to upgrade their bodies in addition to their cars will not change much. Likewise, the societal division between "haves" and "have nots" already exists and has always existed, except instead of expensive cybernetics it was expensive land, expensive cars, expensive clothing, expensive food and everything else people might want to conspiciously consume. The only thing transhumanist tech will do is bring this division to the surface.

As for "Gattaca", the concerns raised by that film are perfectly valid, but they are less about transhumanism and more about the societal effects of distinct eugenic castes - for what does genetically modifying your babies produce, if not that? Assuming all modifications of his body are performed with a person's choice and consent, the problem depicted should never arise.

EDIT: Goddamn does it feel nice to have an intelligent discussion instead of an endless propagandesque back-and-forth between the opposing sides!

[BFEL]

2. The mind. Thought processes, grown out of your biological component, and shaped by environment. To forcefully alter the mind of another is to remove all dignity they have, a terrible fate.

Well since everyone else ever has thoroughly dissected your first argument let me be the one to cockslap this one.
Specifically "to forcefully alter the mind of another removes all dignity"

How precisely do you go about "forcefully altering" someone's mind? You don't need any subliminal messaging or high tech memory replacement to do this, all you need is one of humanities first inventions.

LANGUAGE.

Chew on this: Every single time you have a conversation with someone that goes past "hi" you are MANIPULATING them. Every single word in the English language and in ALL languages was made for the sole purpose of putting ideas into someone else's head, ideas that you are putting their to further your own goals, whether those goals are "make someone else kill the president" or "have someone to watch a movie with" the concept is the same.

Is it a removal of dignity to convince someone to have a pizza with you? Am I inflicting some great evil upon you by conversing with you and sharing my opinions?

So this perfect world you have imagined is a place where not only is everyone the same race, gender and body type (because of "biological integrity") but they absolutely, positively can NEVER speak to one another for fear of "forcefully altering someone else's thoughts"

And you think OUR ideas of utopia are boring?

[Knit tie]

BFEL, no need for such strong emotions. We are discussing science, not politics.

[BFEL]

BFEL, no need for such strong emotions. We are discussing science, not politics.

I....get worked up about debates. Pretty much any debate. Holy FUCKING SHITBALLS do I love debating :3

EDIT: Though I see your point, I have a habit of turning everything into "the people I'm debating are Nazi's" which is really bad not only because of Godwin's Law, but because the people I'm debating are not in fact Nazi's. And I know this. Mostly.

I should probably seek help for this.

[scrdest]

Re: Gattaca argument:

The thing about people who are currently rich is that they like being rich, and since status quo is what allowed them to become and remain rich, rich people inherently err more on the side of conservation of the status quo. Unless, of course, progress happens as a side effect of making them richer.

[Helgoland]

As happened in the industrial revolution, for example. PTW.

EDIT: As the definition of 'human' is blurry at best, let me propose an alternative question: Does it matter what's human and what's not?

[Baffler]

Take for example cybernetics for living in space. The idea there is to allow us to live on other worlds, or even deep in space, without wrecking our quality of life. That last bit is the key here. Humans, in their current form, can live on the Moon. They can live on Mars. They can live in space. They can live basically anywhere. But only if there is sufficient infrastructure to support them. No human would ever want to live their life in a modern space suit. It's highly uncomfortable, unwieldy to the point where you can barely use the simplest of tools, and inflexible enough for movement to be difficult. And on top of that, the life support systems must be constantly tended to prevent sudden death. Similarly, a tiny Mars colony is far from ideal living conditions. Without incurring all the problems of the space suit, you are still left with a variety of psychological needs which would go unmet by an inability to simply go outside of your apartment-sized living quarters. The idea, then, is to modify the human such that they are meant to live in their environment, and are able to do so without any more difficulty than a modern human lives on Earth. It takes the idea behind the space suit and turns it into a part of who you are. Heterogeneous humans for heterogeneous environments.

I really didn't want to get dragged into this discussion again, but I couldn't resist forever. First off, the space suits we have now are simply not designed for comfort. But I don't know a whole lot about those, so I won't spend too much time on that.

On modifying biology for living in space though, there's simply no way. It would be a matter of moving someone's brain into a specially made robot with all you'd have to change, and even then you'd need a hefty support system to keep just the brain alive. There's no air in space, and we need oxygen and other atmospheric gases to run our metabolic system, and just about everything else. The solution would either be 1) integrating an air tank, which a space suit does anyway, or 2) rework humans to run on some other power source. Now, all of our organ systems are, naturally, geared to use the nutrients and other goodies blood supplies them with. Everything would need to be replaced. But you can't exactly replace someone's brain, so we come back to an external life support system. Granted, it'd probably take up less resources than a full human, but it simply isn't worth doing.