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[Frumple]

Oh, of you're looking for blame, trek lets you always blame the Q. It's oddly convenient.

[Max™]

GOD DAMN I FORGOT ABOUT PIKE, seriously, stick that fucker in a metal body for fuck's sake, I don't care if he becomes a bad guy, that chair is awful.

Heck, that might be why I always loved Q, besides Delancey being so damn entertaining (got a chuckle out of the one with him trying to bang Janeway.
"what are you doing here with that mongrel"
*Janeway and Q look at the dog*
"I wasn't talking about the puppy."
*Q: O_oO*
'Dude, you are totally messing up my game.'
"What game, I wasn't interested at all!"
'Now look what you've done.'

[overseer05-15]

Data was not a transhuman, he was an android, 100%. So the ultracompetent and meek personality was more or less intended. At one point he essentially gets a patch to feel emotions but it's really buggy and he about died.

[Taricus]

The big issue with transhumanism is that it does force a societal divide between those that are augmented and those that aren't. And given that the costs of such augmentation are going to make it impractical for most people in general to actually obtain such augments so there's effectively another layer of societal divide to deal with.

And to further add in, immortality, by it's very nature, is an immoral thing for anyone to have; between the exponential rate of population expansion and the fact that ideas that people hold aren't dying effectively proclaims a stagnation in ideas and knowledge since new ideas aren't able to gain traction, which only compounds the more generations that are born.

EDIT: Pressed post early, whoops

[Max™]

Yeah, he got a chip so he could feel emotions, and amusingly the "whizbang" number they quoted for him at one point was apparently 60 Teraflops, 20 less than Watson's peak, though we're still a ways off from hauling around 800 Petabyte drives.

He was based on Soong physically and personality-wise, and it seems probable that the same mind which could make something like Data could figure out how to upload into one, he's just another of many possible extensions of transhuman potential left fallow by the Federation.

Then you get Lore, what happens when you take helpful and polite and capable Data and let him feel the richness of human emotions? He writes poetry so beautiful it makes you weep? He becomes a religious icon who travels the stars helping those in need and spreading the wisdom of some amazingly rich yet logical belief system he founded? Maybe he'd just be Data but better, funnier, more exciting and passionate, but still in control?

Hah, nope, he's a psychopath, good luck everyone who doesn't have a supercomputer for a brain!

The big issue with transhumanism is that it does force a societal divide between those that are augmented and those that aren't

You have a massive external memory and recall faculty available at all times if you want it, you have the ability to record and replay video of absurdly high resolution at will, you can access the minds of a vast segment of all humans alive, see them if you want, talk to them, you can determine your location at any point without the slightest bit of effort, perform all sorts of calculations ridiculously quickly, obtain definitions and spelling and pronunciations as needed, and even speak to someone in a language you don't actually understand, plus many more things, just by pulling the fondleslab out of your pocket.

That thing went from being a unique gadget made by a mad scientist, to a complex gadget which took at least a feat and some wealth, to a high end but still common piece of equipment, to a standard issue sort of thing (rope, two torches, three sacks, two weeks rations, smartphone,  waterskin, flint, etc), and now it's over in "assume everyone has this equipment because I don't feel like having to specify that all of you aren't naked" territory.

You may have glasses, filled teeth, repaired bones or joints, corrected lenses so you don't need glasses, artificial limbs of ever increasing capability, and so forth.

Arguably transhumans are here, who said it has to be "full conversion cyborgs" or "genetically engineered superbeings" when "surpassing the limitations of unaugmented humanity" suffices perfectly well?

[McTraveller]

Fun topic: Intellectual Property reform.

Personally I'd eliminate patents entirely and limit copyright to lifetime of the author, no transferral to any third party or company ownership, zero extensions.

Second fun topic: lifetime wealth limits.  I'd put the limit at 1000x the average mean annual salary. That is, once you amass about 10 average-person-lifetime's worth of wealth, you get no more*.

Other fun topics: property tax. (Kind of ties into the first one - maybe if you want to keep IP, it needs to have property tax imposed.)

EDIT: *In the US, this means about $55M. Kind of astonishing how many lifetimes' income the ultra-wealthy have. Think about it.

[itisnotlogical]

Sunshine and warm weather are fucking bullshit. It should be overcast and breezy all day, every day, until the end of time.

[Taricus]

]You have a massive external memory and recall faculty available at all times if you want it, you have the ability to record and replay video of absurdly high resolution at will, you can access the minds of a vast segment of all humans alive, see them if you want, talk to them, you can determine your location at any point without the slightest bit of effort, perform all sorts of calculations ridiculously quickly, obtain definitions and spelling and pronunciations as needed, and even speak to someone in a language you don't actually understand, plus many more things, just by pulling the fondleslab out of your pocket.

That thing went from being a unique gadget made by a mad scientist, to a complex gadget which took at least a feat and some wealth, to a high end but still common piece of equipment, to a standard issue sort of thing (rope, two torches, three sacks, two weeks rations, smartphone,  waterskin, flint, etc), and now it's over in "assume everyone has this equipment because I don't feel like having to specify that all of you aren't naked" territory.

You may have glasses, filled teeth, repaired bones or joints, corrected lenses so you don't need glasses, artificial limbs of ever increasing capability, and so forth.

Arguably transhumans are here, who said it has to be "full conversion cyborgs" or "genetically engineered superbeings" when "surpassing the limitations of unaugmented humanity" suffices perfectly well?

Well, I'm that much of a luddite that I don't have a smartphone, but still

As for what is transhuman, while I do agree the latter definition is it, what defines is augmentative rather than corrective. Things like prosthetics, glasses, dentures and so forth aren't transhumanism per-se, as they're corrective device to bring an individual up to the 'baseline' of a healthy, unhindered human rather than surpassing it.

[Starver]

Sunshine and warm weather are fucking bullshit. It should be overcast and breezy all day, every day, until the end of time.

Good for the Wind Turbine industry.  PV-cells would be less useful, but not completely and (day by day) they'd at least be consistent, so you could re-engineer to that spec.

And I'm not good with 20C+ temperatures, so I have really have no complaints if the lower ground-level insolation balances out with better insulation against cold temperatures (the continuous horizontal air movements evening things out even better, between latitude).

[misko27]

The big issue with transhumanism is that it does force a societal divide between those that are augmented and those that aren't

You have a massive external memory and recall faculty available at all times if you want it, you have the ability to record and replay video of absurdly high resolution at will, you can access the minds of a vast segment of all humans alive, see them if you want, talk to them, you can determine your location at any point without the slightest bit of effort, perform all sorts of calculations ridiculously quickly, obtain definitions and spelling and pronunciations as needed, and even speak to someone in a language you don't actually understand, plus many more things, just by pulling the fondleslab out of your pocket.

That thing went from being a unique gadget made by a mad scientist, to a complex gadget which took at least a feat and some wealth, to a high end but still common piece of equipment, to a standard issue sort of thing (rope, two torches, three sacks, two weeks rations, smartphone,  waterskin, flint, etc), and now it's over in "assume everyone has this equipment because I don't feel like having to specify that all of you aren't naked" territory.

You may have glasses, filled teeth, repaired bones or joints, corrected lenses so you don't need glasses, artificial limbs of ever increasing capability, and so forth.

Arguably transhumans are here, who said it has to be "full conversion cyborgs" or "genetically engineered superbeings" when "surpassing the limitations of unaugmented humanity" suffices perfectly well?

If you are going to water down transhumanism in that way, of course it's already here! It's been here since at least the 11th century when glasses were invented. And "unaugmented humanity"? We've had glass eyes since the 15th century if that's what you mean, but if you are going to water it down that much we may as well cease to discuss transhumanism at all, since it is obvious that it is a very uninteresting topic. Come now! And fake teeth even? Romans had fake teeth! To speak of "ancestors" and "predecessors" would do you much more good than looking at a Venetian who is contemporary with the Byzantine-damn-empire and calling him an early transhumanist.

None of the things you pointed to are "surpassing unaugmented humanity", they are "bringing others up to speed with unaugmented humanity". The only different case was your argument about phones, which is another barrel of oddness; what about a computer is qualitatively different than any other information storage that existed previously? Why isn't carrying a book around a sign of transhumanism? Is it just the quantity of information held? Or does it have to do other things? If so, how much stuff does something we carry around have to do before it becomes transhuman? I mean really. Transhumanism isn't just a really useful swiss-army knife you know. It's like how a man with a sword has a better shot in a fight than an unarmed man: It's just tool-using, and using tools is human, not above human. There's nothing a person born today has that can make them intrinsically better at a given task than a person born two thousand years ago, only superior tools for those tasks. Transhumanism is the idea that after you strip a person down, the base of the augmented human is a cut above the rest. It's called H+ for a reason. Humanity Plus. If I was stripped and left naked in a field, I'm just a regular naked human. I could blend seamlessly with the humans of 16,000 years ago because I'm really no different than they are. More educated, but that's nurture, not nature. Transhumanism must change the nature part of that equation to qualify.

So no. Your smartphone is not transhumanism. And even if it was, you haven't explained why superior augments will not lead to a divide between the rich and poor. Does everyone have a phone? Sure. But are all phones equal? No. And what happens when the phone is actually part of you, and has far more powers, and far more influence on your station and abilities in life? What happens if the difference is qualitative, not quantitative (i.e. how much memory/processing power it has)?

[Egan_BW]

What the smartphone is a good example of, is how quickly even incredibly advanced technology can become available to nearly everyone, not just the ultra-rich. So I don't buy the idea that transhumanisim would lead to an underclass of the unaugmented.

Also, I believe that we have a transhumanisim thread somewhere.

[misko27]

What the smartphone is a good example of, is how quickly even incredibly advanced technology can become available to nearly everyone, not just the ultra-rich. So I don't buy the idea that transhumanisim would lead to an underclass of the unaugmented.

Also, I believe that we have a transhumanisim thread somewhere.

Ugh, the smartphone analogy is fundamentally dependent on the specifics on a single technology; namely, the shrinking size of chips and the general dropping price of processing speed and memory. Rich people always have better phones than poorer ones, but technology evolved such that the difference doesn't matter. But if that is only a specific situation and not generally applicable, there is still a problem. If, for example, the technology is more medical in nature, then there is the potential for a great divergence: the only reason poor people haven't fallen behind in medical tech is insurance. But insurance only covers the fixing of things that are broken, not making things better than they were before. So there's a potential gap right there. Will any charity build augmentation clinics in the third world like they do regular clinics? I think not.

[Max™]

@misko, like I said, bringing up the average of what "unaugmented" means is an improvement over the "pure human experience" and it means the baseline is rising compared to what it was. We live longer, healthier, more informed lives than ever before, and it wasn't just tool use that did it. It was tool application, integration, and so forth along with the accumulation of knowledge and understanding. As for the fondleslabs, I mean, it's not even a phone anymore is it? That's a side feature on the little computer stuck to your hand, it's a little window to the rest of your brain for more and more people, and I'm pretty sure all of us have a significant chunk of memory and information processing which we keep online without even really thinking about it. If I know something offhand that's fine, if I'm unsure, ctrl+t a new tab and check duckduckgo, part of my head is on that side of the screen it feels like. The stuff with glasses and fixed teeth is just like I said above, raising the general "this is what a baseline" is by picking up the lower end towards the center. Using technology to augment our ability to sense and perceive, our ability to recall information, our ability to interact with the world around us, each other, and ourselves, why is that any different from using something to make you able to lift a half a ton or run at 60 kph?

I've also never heard it as "it only counts if they're ahead when nude with nothing else" and I'd have to wonder, do prosthetics count? What if they're more like the powerbocking things I linked down below? Neural interfaced bionics? They could probably be removed, but I don't agree on the "has to be at our most base state" bit at all.

Well, I'm that much of a luddite that I don't have a smartphone, but still

Me either, real computers have big chunky cases, real keyboards have number pads, and real monitors have real estate dammit! Get back to me when the smartphone VR thing is full blown and omnipresent.

As for what is transhuman, while I do agree the latter definition is it, what defines is augmentative rather than corrective. Things like prosthetics, glasses, dentures and so forth aren't transhumanism per-se, as they're corrective device to bring an individual up to the 'baseline' of a healthy, unhindered human rather than surpassing it.

Some of them are merely correcting damage or errors, but in the process it raises the whole definition of what baseline itself is. We're getting closer and closer every day to seeing people deliberately removing limbs for better ones, especially with dudes like this doing their thing. I loved being the fastest kid in my group of friends, loved being a powerful and healthy teenage male crashing through the woods because fuck it, I don't see why a fucking hill should get to decide which way I go, I don't care how tall it is!

My feet though, my running gait barefoot was more natural and comfortable, but I could fuck up even my hardened and calloused soles pretty quickly with a bit of bad luck or glass or whatnot, but shoes are so damn annoying. Hacking them off for something which behaved more like say, these crazy kangaroo boot things, that's got some appeal to me.

[itisnotlogical]

What the smartphone is a good example of, is how quickly even incredibly advanced technology can become available to nearly everyone, not just the ultra-rich. So I don't buy the idea that transhumanisim would lead to an underclass of the unaugmented.

Also, I believe that we have a transhumanisim thread somewhere.

Smartphones were hardly some crazy mad-genius invention. Proto-smart devices like PDAs, MP3 players and portable gaming devices existed decades before the advent of the smartphone, many even had touch screens (shitty ones but still). What was missing was things like Wi-Fi, Blutooth and 4G to make the applications of a smart device really apparent or even possible. Things like watching Youtube anywhere you have cell signal. Miniaturization has been an area of research about as long as personal computers have existed, you've probably seen the old briefcase computers that cost thousands upon thousands and were marketed to businessmen. Those were among the first "traditionally-sold" (available in shops, not sold through a hobby magazine) portable computers, and smartphones are just the most recent manifestation of that thirty-year-old inspiration.

[misko27]

I've also never heard it as "it only counts if they're ahead when nude with nothing else" and I'd have to wonder, do prosthetics count? What if they're more like the powerbocking things I linked down below? Neural interfaced bionics? They could probably be removed, but I don't agree on the "has to be at our most base state" bit at all.

Then how is it transcending human? It's not. It's entirely social and cultural and all those other things; if augmentation is external to the human being, then it is not a change in human beings, it is a change in society. Short version: nurture.

If you want me to buy that A: I am already Transhuman, and B: I am transhuman because of something that is, quite emphatically not a part of my body or being in any way, than what I want you to describe to me where, precisely, we became transhuman, historically speaking. What invention, or what idea, or what did it, and more importantly, why. Why did this invention, or this tool make us transhuman? If not whatever the lingo "fondlepads" is supposed to be (if not something obscene), than how about phones? Was the jump from phones to pads transhuman? If so, why? If not, then how about PDAs-to-phones? Was that the human/transhuman divide? If so, why? If not, how about beepers? Or radios? or gramophones? etc.

Here's a point: it's not transhuman if it's just a tool, because a tool is already the most human thing there is. We had tools 16,000 years ago, which is when the species settled on the modern Homo Sapiens. Humanity, 16,000 years ago, was not Transhuman, since it the species had just began to be human. You are stating that Humanity, in 2017, is Transhuman. Ok. So when between 16,000 years ago and now did we precisely become transhuman?

My argument is that if you can't identify that point, or if you argue Transhumanism happened 16,000 years ago, than Transhumanism is a bankrupt word that means nothing very useful at all, and Transhumanists are just futurists by another name. You are essentially defining Transhumanism as "technological progress", and if you are going to do that, we may as well just stop discussing transhumanism as if it meant something and just say "technological progress". So in a nutshell: how is transhumanism by your usage not just a catch-all word for all human technological advancement?