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Author Topic: Spirituality and Consciousness  (Read 9324 times)

i2amroy

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #90 on: March 20, 2015, 03:24:41 am »

@Grek:
"Spirituality is bad" is absolutely not what I meant. What I'm getting at is that the dogged belief in technological resurrection and apotheosis is the effective "spiritual" component of transhumanism, which actually makes it quite similar to certain eschatological religions. It may not be traditional body-soul-dualism per se, but it still expresses the same dichotomy between the fallen, corruptiple state of worldly existence, and the purified -- resurrected or uploaded -- existence after the salvation. That is your form of spirituality, and I'll do my best to respect it. But I don't have to like it.
I'd like to note that just a belief in the eventual end of (most forms) of death does not necessarily mean one takes any sort of spiritual or dichotomy based view towards it. The difference comes in that there are really two different kinds of transhumanists. There are those that look on the technology as some sort of magical thing that is going to whisp them away and fix all their problems; essentially a "god" for all intents and purposes. These are the transhumanists that exhibit the dichotomy that you note here between the uploaded or whatever and the non-uploaded, with there being some vast line between the "saved" and the "profane". For them transhumanism is essentially a religion with the numbers filed off.

On the other hand there are the more wordly-focused and scientific transhumanists, those who see no real difference between those who are uploaded and those who are not other then their lifespan and resistance to damage (along with a few other nifty things, like increased thought speed). They see no magical problem fixing science to be done, nor any real dichotomy between the uploaded and non-uploaded states. In fact most of these tend to agree that there isn't even going to be some sort of definite split between those on one side or the other of the "uploaded" boundary. They are much more likely to see a gradient ranging all of the way from "totally unaltered human" to "totally virtual consciousness" with all sorts of spots in between the two (assuming we even go for a virtual method, we could also totally go a biological engineering way as well).

Personally I fall into the second category. There is no reason why technology is going to magically solve all of our problems at once, because technology doesn't work like that. What science and technology are good at doing is solving one problem at a time, and even that depends on the people and engineers of the world to actually implement said solution. There isn't going to be some great "mind uploading" where we all go to centers and are "raptured up" into some great mind collective in the computers. What we are going to see instead (assuming we got the virtual route) is the gradual augmentation of the current brain. Piece by piece we'll learn how a specific part works, and how to replace it when it starts to break down. The line between "outside computer" and "inside brain" will become increasingly blurred, until we won't even be able to tell when we've crossed the boundary line between the two. Society might resist it at first, but the number of people who turn to brain augmentation or replacements will slowly increase, and it's number and the number of people who were born after it existed increases it will gradually be accepted as a common thing. There's no clear delineation or dichotomy anywhere in the idea, just the slow and steady march of both progress and society together.

A similar modern example might have been the development and spread of the phone. When phones first came out the very idea of being able to call someone up and talk to them was a radical one, and many people claimed that it would never catch on even. Yet phones continued to spread, and their accessibility to all broadened. Eventually we got the "mobile phone", and the first people began to take their phones with them. This lead to further push back from society, as we can see present in how often it's considered rude to check your phone while eating with others or similar things. Yet we're reaching the point where everyone has a phone with them at all times, and even things like younger groups of friends eating together often spend a fair portion of their time checking their phones and remaining in contact with their much broader social circle. I wouldn't say that at any point there was some great change between the "unpure" who couldn't contact each other except when face to face or through waiting days for a letter to be delivered and the "pure" who can contact with others around the globe nearly at the speed of thought, yet we can observe plainly that at some point a "human" moved to being someone who has gained a sort of "telepathy", being able to communicate with others whenever they want, regardless of both sender and recipient's actual physical locations. In much the same way we'll never be able to draw a line between the "nonuploaded" who are much identical to our current definition of "human" and the "uploaded", who can do things like travel around the globe in moments, think faster, or not suffer from aging.
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #91 on: March 20, 2015, 05:52:27 am »

^ Several very good points in that post, particularly the point about not everyone being crazy (I tend to forget that). 
I'm not opposed to technological progress on principle, and I do think that there's room for certain "improvements," such as genetic engineering and implants... but, I don't see any reason why striving for immortality is a good idea, in the ethical sense. The primary purpose of progress should be to repair the damage that has already been done by progress, and to improve the living conditions of all life on Earth -- not to concentrate on extending the lifespans of a handful of vainglorious apes with insatiable appetites for natural resources.
The practical questions that really need answering are brutally simple and difficult: How to stop the Earth from becoming uninhabitable within the next hundred years? How to stop the majority of Earth's species from going extinct? How to provide food and water to a destitute population of billions? The answer I do not want to hear is: "Oh, we'll just digitize the entire Earth and be done with it!" -- the prevalence of that attitude is one of the reasons why I'm not particularly fond of living.
Sigh. Kurzweilian new-age nonsense is fine and dandy between the covers of an SF novel, but we must not allow technological hubris to contaminate our view of reality. Whatever expectations we have for the future of science, they should not be founded on bottomless human vanity and irrational fears of death.       
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That Wolf

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #92 on: March 20, 2015, 06:38:57 am »

Yeah. Our style of living on this sphere isnt healthy, and we should ensure its a still a habitable place to get that far with science, im already used to sleeping in forests and the wilderness though so its easy for me to say this. Alot of people think its insane to leave their coffee, electricity, and comfort to be in the wilds.
But its more insane to deny where you came from.
Im not saying citys are bad, not at all. They are amazing. The fact I can post this is amazing. But its still nothing like warming yourself by a fire after a hard days cutting wood and walking all over the place.
But we need to sort out our social and emotional issues before we make it. Actually. If we dont sort out these issues we simply wont make it.
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scrdest

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #93 on: March 20, 2015, 06:43:47 am »

The primary purpose of progress should be to repair the damage that has already been done by progress
This reminds me of that Soviet Bloc quip about communism: 'Communism is a system dutifully fixing problems that don't exist in any other system', just substitute progress for communism.
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #94 on: March 20, 2015, 06:58:17 am »

The primary purpose of progress should be to repair the damage that has already been done by progress
This reminds me of that Soviet Bloc quip about communism: 'Communism is a system dutifully fixing problems that don't exist in any other system', just substitute progress for communism.
Uh-huh. Traditional "Progress" is all about solving a problem by creating two new problems. That's why sustainable development is preferable, and progress of the "LULZSINGULARITYNAO"-type is simply unethical.
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Grek

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #95 on: March 20, 2015, 07:06:26 am »

The practical questions that really need answering are brutally simple and difficult: How to stop the Earth from becoming uninhabitable within the next hundred years? How to stop the majority of Earth's species from going extinct? How to provide food and water to a destitute population of billions? The answer I do not want to hear is: "Oh, we'll just digitize the entire Earth and be done with it!" -- the prevalence of that attitude is one of the reasons why I'm not particularly fond of living.

Good news! These are all solvable problems!

Pollution can be fixed by implementing green farming techniques, increasing the rate of recycling and switching over to large scale, low-impact energy production. Which means either nuclear power, and/or orbital solar arrays. Both produce lots and lots of power with a very small ecological footprint. Wind, Hydroelectric, Geothermal and (ground based) Solar are also "green" in the sense that they don't produce CO2, but they all cause environmental issues in some other respect, be it Wind and Solar taking up lots of room or Hydroelectric disrupting river ecosystems. Nuclear power takes up little space, produces no CO2 and produces very dense solid waste which can be stored compactly. Orbital Solar is mostly located in space, where the one thing there's lots of is empty space.

The biggest threat to biodiversity is habitat loss. And the biggest cause of habitat loss is human development. Therefore, the solution to the biodiversity problem is to move as many humans as possible away from the habitats of wild species and allowing the wildlife to reclaim their former habitats. Maybe this means building acrologies. Maybe it means space colonization. Regardless, the answer here is to decrease the amount of land humans are using on Earth.

World hunger is an economics problem, not an agricultural problem. There isn't actually a food shortage on Earth - if we (somehow) divided all of the food and water up evenly between all the people, everyone would have more than plenty. The question is: what policies do we have to implement to ensure this happens instead of people in Somalia starving because they can't pay for food. Give you a hint: it involves getting rid of the antiquated notion that people should have to work if they want to have access to basic necessities like food, water and shelter.

Note: All of these are policies that could be put into motion within a decade. There's no need for a "singularity" (which imo is a dumb concept) magically fixing it all. Just actual, modern day humans cooperating to improve things despite the apathy of others and a lack of a profit motive.
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Eagleon

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #96 on: March 20, 2015, 07:21:29 am »

^ Several very good points in that post, particularly the point about not everyone being crazy (I tend to forget that). 
I'm not opposed to technological progress on principle, and I do think that there's room for certain "improvements," such as genetic engineering and implants... but, I don't see any reason why striving for immortality is a good idea, in the ethical sense. The primary purpose of progress should be to repair the damage that has already been done by progress, and to improve the living conditions of all life on Earth -- not to concentrate on extending the lifespans of a handful of vainglorious apes with insatiable appetites for natural resources.
The practical questions that really need answering are brutally simple and difficult: How to stop the Earth from becoming uninhabitable within the next hundred years? How to stop the majority of Earth's species from going extinct? How to provide food and water to a destitute population of billions? The answer I do not want to hear is: "Oh, we'll just digitize the entire Earth and be done with it!" -- the prevalence of that attitude is one of the reasons why I'm not particularly fond of living.
Sigh. Kurzweilian new-age nonsense is fine and dandy between the covers of an SF novel, but we must not allow technological hubris to contaminate our view of reality. Whatever expectations we have for the future of science, they should not be founded on bottomless human vanity and irrational fears of death.       
I think that it is worthwhile to strive for immortality, because I value people, and I think that saying that having a fear of death is irrational in the same breath as praising ecological unity or whatever is about as useful to ecology as telling another animal that they should get along better with their food. You can call it hubris if you like, but technology has been contaminating our reality for a while now, and I'm not just talking about telephones or cars. From the moment we learned to shape flint, our society has started to shape around it. Does that consume who we are, or help define it?

You mention a primary purpose for progress. Why does it have to be a zero-sum game? If we've made mistakes, we have to stop and fix them before we do anything else? That would be horrifically inefficient - not everyone can work on the same problem, if nothing else but because physical limitations would get in the way. I see misanthropy as environmentalism's biggest barrier, not as a rallying point - the people unwilling to see humanity as some kind of plague or horror naturally tend to recoil from this sort of language. "Bottomless human vanity," really? No, we're successful, and ignoring that success will do nothing to stop evolution from producing the same end result. It's a switch to throw, between humans having some sort of vile core, some sin that they must fight at all costs to themselves (but especially other people), and humans being animals with the burden and opportunity to be caretakers instead of pillagers. The former lacks any joy in life, and I refuse it.

Maybe this sort of self-loathing is part of a psychoevolutionary adaptation against overcrowding, too... but eh. That's just kind of sad. Are we too successful? Maybe. But whipping ourselves over it is insanity.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2015, 07:26:12 am by Eagleon »
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WillowLuman

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #97 on: March 20, 2015, 08:30:53 am »

I have to agree that progress is not a zero-sum game. Reality isn't some kind of video game where we only have so many "research points" to allocate to various projects. It's true that there are limited resources and people, but scientists (since they are people and every person is unique) are NOT interchangeable. For any given problem, only certain people will have both the interest and ability to do something about it, and only some people will (due to their unique situation and perspective) will have inspirations that lead to leaps forward on certain problems. It's not the case that every person working on a given problem subtracts effort that could be going to another project, because any given person can only contribute meaningfully to certain projects.

As a student of Environmental Science, I can tell you that we have, in total, the resources to provide for everyone on the Earth right now, it's just a matter of managing it (which is extremely difficult, but I believe ultimately possible). But I think that's going somewhat off-topic.
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousnessme
« Reply #98 on: March 20, 2015, 08:37:06 am »

... Just actual, modern day humans cooperating to improve things despite the apathy of others and a lack of a profit motive.
There's the rub! What's the incentive for developing cleantech if it isn't profitable? "Consumers don't want cleantech," says the market analyst, "they want flying cars, fancy trinkets, and digital replicas of their brain!" As Roy just pointed out: It isn't enough to just invent neat stuff -- you must also have the wherewithal to implement it. Since the current market economy is beyond the control of all democratic institutions, and because Research is married to Money out of necessity, Technology will go exactly where Money leads her. It's obvious that the vicious circle of "Technology <3 Capitalism" has to be broken before we can get to fixing things, but how do we wreck Capitalism without wrecking society and the environment? If the current system goes on, well just have more "progress" and more problems. If the current system collapses, we'll have seven billion people burning firewood to cook and keep themselves warm -- a situation which isn't going to last very long. Perhaps true ecological progress is sustainable economical and technological regress? I don't know.

@Eagleon:
1. Humans are capable of rationally comprehending their own mortality. Death is just a fact of life, and denying it is irrational.

2. The inherent "vice" of humanity (including myself) is narcissism: The stubborn conviction that I have the right to leave an indelible mark of myself upon the universe; that the universe has to notice me, and care about me, and remember me for ever and ever and ever. It's not exactly evil, but extremely childish and harmful to the environment.

@Hugo
I agree that the theme of environmentalism is a bit off the mark, but the rest of the conversation is quite relevant to the topic of spirituality.           
« Last Edit: March 20, 2015, 08:44:00 am by surqimus »
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Eagleon

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #99 on: March 20, 2015, 09:01:30 am »

@Eagleon:
1. Humans are capable of rationally comprehending their own mortality. Death is just a fact of life, and denying it is irrational.

2. The inherent "vice" of humanity (including myself) is narcissism: The stubborn conviction that I have the right to leave an indelible mark of myself upon the universe; that the universe has to notice me, and care about me, and remember me for ever and ever and ever. It's not exactly evil, but extremely childish and harmful to the environment.         
Death is a fact of life until it isn't. There's no denial here - everyone knows that we can't provide functional immortality right now. There are no 'facts of life,' in fact. I would point out powered flight and etc. but I feel that you're grown up enough to have heard the allegories.

And you won't call it evil, but I think that you think that it is. Your 'vice' is shared by every animal on earth. It's part of our instinct for survival. I don't think we need to surrender that or fight that in order to behave intelligently about our environment. Humanism is not incompatible with environmentalism. Obviously you're here arguing for ecological balance, you're a human being, so humans can understand that they aren't invulnerable. Dig?

For a long time we had no choice but to fight for ourselves and our place in the world. Additional opportunities and possibilities are opening up. We naturally tend to grow to our limits, but right now there are no limitations other than each other. We have no predators. Knowing that, it's incredibly dangerous to rely on people to hate themselves enough to just not do the things they naturally do - even if it did work, where do you stop hating "people" or "humanity" and go back to just living and breathing without the guilt? I foresee massive amounts of depression in that world. That's what I mean by misanthropy being a barrier - people will not accept that, but a better option like simple, practical necessity without the shaming is not being presented in any kind of media that I've ever seen.
As a student of Environmental Science, I can tell you that we have, in total, the resources to provide for everyone on the Earth right now, it's just a matter of managing it (which is extremely difficult, but I believe ultimately possible). But I think that's going somewhat off-topic.
Sorry about the derail, humanism practically is my spirituality =P Debating and/or cheering up misanthropists is kinda my thing. I have other things to talk about, but it hasn't come up yet.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2015, 09:03:23 am by Eagleon »
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #100 on: March 20, 2015, 09:21:40 am »

There are no 'facts of life,' in fact.
...
Your 'vice' is shared by every animal on earth. It's part of our instinct for survival.
No comment required.

Sorry about the derail, humanism practically is my spirituality =P Debating and/or cheering up misanthropists is kinda my thing. I have other things to talk about, but it hasn't come up yet.
Wait, what? I thought I was the one defending traditional humanism from misanthropic techno-nihilism! And you apparently thought that you were the one defending humanism from misanthropic eco-fascism! :D Our narcissism leads us into weird places, don't you think?   

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Eagleon

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #101 on: March 20, 2015, 09:44:24 am »

There are no 'facts of life,' in fact.
...
Your 'vice' is shared by every animal on earth. It's part of our instinct for survival.
No comment required.

Sorry about the derail, humanism practically is my spirituality =P Debating and/or cheering up misanthropists is kinda my thing. I have other things to talk about, but it hasn't come up yet.
Wait, what? I thought I was the one defending traditional humanism from misanthropic techno-nihilism! And you apparently thought that you were the one defending humanism from misanthropic eco-fascism! :D Our narcissism leads us into weird places, don't you think?
=P You're the one that said you weren't particularly fond of living. You also mentioned trees or something I forget. You also seem to be treating vast sums of people as rather negative things, and I felt the need to pull you away from an impression like that - for the most part I think people indoctrinated into the singularity 'movement' have moved on to more practical concerns like actually making the good parts of that vision happen, or are otherwise pretty harmless. I could be wrong, but I don't think it's some overwhelming force of evil in our society. Full disclosure: I used to be way too into Kurzweil. Then I saw him make a for-profit, non-accredited university and figured out he had a game.

I don't think the first two points are contradictions. Instinct can be altered. We can also question whether we should alter instinct, which is what I'm doing - I personally see nothing wrong with a singularity occurring and humanity exploding across the cosmos like a goddamn plague very horny swarm of apemachines, because I know there are a few biology nuts like me who would stop and try to work out the details for new kinds of life. That's kind of whatever point life has - to spread. Even if it's a monoculture, new habitats are (presumably - we've never seen truly new habitats, rather than small niches, open!) always filled by monocultures, and then speciation.
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #102 on: March 20, 2015, 10:51:25 am »

@Eagle
Let me clarify my position for a bit. I'm an atheist and a traditional humanist who happens to entertain certain anti-humanist notions in environmental matters. I value (human) life as much as you do (probably), but I'm rather old-fashioned in my definition of what constitutes human existence, as opposed to "posthuman" or whatever fanciful twaddle is in vogue at the moment. Humans are mortal: an "immortal human" would be analogous to "dehydrated water" or "a colorless green idea" -- it's just a trick of language and a figment of imagination. Even with extended lifespans longer than the potential age of the universe, we would still be mortal -- nothing is eternal, we are not eternal, and we cannot do anything to change that fact. Humanism, as I understand it, is about accepting human life as essentially flawed and evanescent, but nevertheless valuable, and you are of course right to point out that this is evocative of certain Christian notions -- because, you know, humanism is an outgrowth of Christianity. However, the opposite of humanism is not anti-humanism, but nihilism (in the Nietzschean sense): the idea that current human life is worthless because it is flawed and evanescent, and that we should spend our lives waiting unhappily for a miraculous release from that fallen state. (This is the view held by crazy transhumanists, as Roy pointed out above.) I, however, believe that the value of being human can only be fully realized by accepting our mortality, and that there is some value in being mortal, therefore. Call me old-fashioned.                   
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Eagleon

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #103 on: March 20, 2015, 11:04:39 am »

Yeah, I just grew up with the idea that we might begin to fight a little against aging. I also grew up around old people, who were still very much interested in being alive and all that meant right up until they died. There's nothing glorious or beautiful to me about death - it's a tragedy however inevitable. We shouldn't surround ourselves with unnecessary tragedy because 'that's the way it is.' I'm not interested in preserving that, it would be quantitatively great to me if we could live longer with our faculties intact, because people are wonderful. Not as corpses but as people, 1, 20, or 400 years old. You don't need nihilism to fight death. You don't need to hate life to want more of it. If respecting that isn't humanism, I really don't know what to call it.
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Spirituality and Consciousness
« Reply #104 on: March 20, 2015, 11:34:34 am »

There's nothing glorious or beautiful to me about death - it's a tragedy however inevitable.
We can not, and indeed we should not agree on that, because death is just that personal.
It's nevertheless interesting to see how other people deal with their death, and to compare it with your own method of dealing with yours. It's all the same though -- everyone loses in the end. 
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