This is probably a bad topic for it so I'll give you the condensed version: Evolution sucks.
We are not some super species with bodies gifted from some omnipotent being. We have stroke, heart disease, diabetes, susceptibility to cancer, ALS, hemophilia, frailty, osteoporosis, bad vision and hearing, the list goes on. That's just the physical crap. We're vulnerable to addiction, swayed by hormonal reactions like a pack of chimps, and so, so many of us are incredibly vulnerable to every kind of psychological attack.
And that's the real problem: we're almost fully sentient. Some of us are starting to get there, others don't even know where to start, most are horrifically misled. We're smart enough to make fusion bombs and we've almost been dumb enough to use them.
Chuck Darwin's just beginning to save us from this, but it'd take fifty thousand years to make real improvements and that's if we went with strict breeding controls. The only rational course is to use what we've learned to improve what we can, directly modifying human genetics as fast and as much as possible. Start with germ-line gene therapy to cure what we know can be cured, then go on to real bodily improvements. Anything directly improving the human brain is a priority because then the people with that power can start improving things faster. (No, there's no such thing as singularity unless there really is a way to break the laws of physics.)
And no, I don't favor the creation of some super-elite with all these improvements (although I know people who do...), if it were up to me I'd grant Doctors Without Borders or some other NGO the $billions they'd need to distribute every last human improvement they could, everywhere from East Siberia to Central Africa to Tierra del fucking Fuego.
State-less governance? I wish we could get there, but unless you seriously start re-engineering human behavior clear to what's effectively mind control, it's not likely to leave the realm of fiction. The government (and there will probably be only one) of 2500 AD won't look like our governments, but there will always be social problems of some kind so long as there's such thing as society, and whatever arbiter is called on to settle these problems becomes the de facto state.
Clinical immortality? Seriously, there's people opposed to clinical immortality? "No thanks, I'll take slow death"? You have two choices, pick one:
A) Hug your great-great-great-granddaughter (titanium-laced bones, skin strong as spider silk) and tell her that you've chosen to leave this world at the age of 250 as your brain has finally filled up and you figure it's better to have a new person than to start removing memories or relying on computers. She laughs and tells you about the new neuron upgrade.
B) Start forgetting things, slowly but surely, your granddaughter with tears in her eyes as she reluctantly signs you over to a nursing home. You don't know who these people are, you can't remember their names or even what you had for breakfast this morning (some form of mush, most certainly), the uncontrolled prions of Alzheimer's ravaging your thoughts. There's a four-digit code to get out of the building, and it's the current year. What year is it, again? You have no idea. 2010? Is Barack still president? By the time your lungs finally stop moving air and your DNR kicks in, you don't even remember your name.
No, seriously, pick one. The only rational opposition is of the "either we can't have kids or the world will become overpopulated" variety, and that's something we can deal with through better land management and space expansion.
This isn't fantasy, just futurism. Average, unfunded college kids getting and staying rich through making websites? Now that's fantasy.
Author
Topic: The Transhuman Ozymandias - Realistically Creepy (Read 11098 times)