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[Heron TSG]

There's a reason why you don't see any immortal species.

Because they're underwater?

[Retro]

...including a movie that I can't believe anyone on the planet would actually pay money to see...

(ignoring pretty much everything else from the OP)

The Social Network? I felt this way too until I got curious enough to check out the reviews and saw that it had gotten 100% on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic (though has since 'dropped' to 97% and 95% respectively). I was intrigued at how suck a stupid concept had gotten such incredible reviews, so I went and saw it and what do you know? It was incredible, and that's coming from a probably-becoming-elitist film studies student. It's not "lol ppl liek facebook lets make a facebook movie cuz we the big studios ar SO HIP" at all, actually; it's mostly about the relationships of the few guys involved with a little bit of the whole 'social networking is cool k' stuff mostly in the background. And it's marvellously acted, directed, written, etc. as well. Take the advice of a random internet guy and give in and watch that sucker.

[Armok]

Glory be to Eugenitor, you just won this thread.

[G-Flex]

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.

Yes, this is fantasy. You're representing it in the most romantic and fantastical terms possible without explicitly saying "you'll never die if you clap your hands and believe".

Death is always inevitable. Nothing lasts forever, including you, no matter what snazzy computers there are. Whether you last another ten years, eighty years, thousand years, or eight-hundred-thousand years, you're going to die, whether it's because of old age, a firmware error in your Magic Transhumanism Robot Head, getting hit by a train, some other random problem, the Sun exploding, or the heat death of the freaking universe at large, you cannot count on scientific progress ever approaching a "deathless society". We'd have to break far too many of the known laws of physics, and at that point, you're going past scientific speculation and more into the realm of abject fantasy. Sure, maybe someday post-human scientists living in computers inside tubes will figure out how to reverse entropy, but if you're going to violate the laws of physics, you might as well say "maybe they'll found out how to make me live forever in a stable timeloop like in that cartoon I saw that one time".

Maybe we'll figure out how to achieve clinical immortality in the sense that lobsters have it. Maybe scientists will figure out how to go further than that and prevent disease and aging in general, or even industrial accidents and the like. But no matter what happens, people will still die. Death is not a question you can answer by simply avoiding it, or pretending we'll ever make it cease happening. You do not answer a question by pretending the question will be eliminated, especially not when it's something that can't be.


You're romanticizing transhumanism because you're pissed off about the human condition. This is natural. It's also hideously indicative of the same parts of human nature you probably hate, like the frequency with which we make decisions and adopt beliefs simply because they make us feel better emotionally. You don't like human nature, and you don't like death, so you're speculating that maybe someday we can be rid of those parts you don't like, and that we can live forever as some sort of hypothetical post-human society composed of individuals (or collectives!) that better fit your ideals.

I'm not saying you don't make any good points, but you're no better than those aspects of humanity you disparage, are no more qualified than anyone else (and if there's a decent metric for even judging competence at this, there are probably people a whole lot more qualified), and are romanticizing the hell out of this concept for your own personal comfort. It really sounds like something you don't even want to question.

[nenjin]

It's not some immutable transcendent law that we get that way as we age. It's just the way evolution's shaped us.

This is where I start disagreeing with you. One Geology course will teach you that NOTHING is forever. Everything in the universe just operates on a different time scale. Ours is, if we're lucky, a hundred years. Rocks and planets on the order of a few billion. The universe several hundred billion.

I fully believe that yes, it IS some immutable transcendent law that things fall apart over time, because it's a universal truth found at every level of existence, from the single atom to the largest star known to man.

Is there the possibility of the eternal out there, that we just haven't found or engineered? Sure. But as it stands, death, decay and degradation ARE fundamental truths of reality, not just some quirky by-product of evolution. This isn't to say we can't circumvent these limitations....but the sheer hubris of acting as though reality is merely inconvenient is.....funny and disturbing. Is it time for a forum game of Mage: The Ascension up in here yet?

So yeah. For all realistic intents and purposes, transhumanism is fantasy, on the same level as "do unto others as would you have them do unto you." It's nice. In theory and in our dreams.

Also I'd like to just out point the rampant hypocrisy inherent in your post, where you try to make people feel guilty for seeking pleasure while in the same breath referencing playing Dwarf Fortress. It's those little incidents that make the line between rhetoric and action pretty clear. Exactly what have YOU done with your existence, lately?

[DJ]

With real clinical immortality the old will not be "old". Telomeres won't shorten, organs won't degenerate (or can get regrown in a tank somewhere), brains will not find it appreciably harder to form new memories. The reason old people become set in their ways, or revert to ways they knew back in childhood, isn't because they happen to have existed X number of years; it's because of their fucking brains wearing out! It's not some immutable transcendent law that we get that way as we age. It's just the way evolution's shaped us.

No, people get set in their ways because people don't like leaving their comfort zone. Once you find your place in life, you don't want anyone rocking the boat. Adolescents rock the boat because they haven't found their place yet, so each new generation develops a slightly different world-view. If you cut the influx of people trying to figure out their lives, you won't get new ways of thinking.

Oh, and immortal people would never get anything done. I'm procrastinating too much as it is, if I were immortal I'd just put everything off for the next millennium. The clock that's ticking away is what forces us to achieve things, you want the make the most of your life because it's so damn short.

[G-Flex]

So yeah. For all realistic intents and purposes, transhumanism is fantasy, on the same level as "do unto others as would you have them do unto you." It's nice. In theory and in our dreams.

To be fair, not all "transhumanism" is of the "we'll engineer a fairyland where nobody ages and everyone is free of the foibles of the current human condition" variety.

Oh, and immortal people would never get anything done. I'm procrastinating too much as it is, if I were immortal I'd just put everything off for the next millennium. The clock that's ticking away is what forces us to achieve things, you want the make the most of your life because it's so damn short.

To be fair again here, if you were immortal then procrastination would make less of a difference anyway. It doesn't matter as much how much time it takes you to do things if you've got literally all the time in the world.

[Aqizzar]

"Human nature"- really? Fuck human nature. That's the whole point. If we start altering ourselves and our nature isn't improved, we're doing it wrong.

I have, again, yet to hear any explanation of how you would intend to do this.  What is it in the human brain that makes us be human?  Being the starting-point here, just look at Peter Thiel.  I certainly haven't heard anyone here lionize any of his philosophical points, save his embrace of the future.  Therefore I can hopefully assume that none of you agree with his Gordon Gecko theory of political economics.

Peter Thiel is not a dumb person.  It really does take brains to build the financial empire he has.  He is not old, he is not crotchety, he is not clinically insane, and yet, despite his youthful skull-throbbing intelligence, he's a rapacious powerbroker out for himself first and alone, save for any little prodigies he gets to craft in his own image.  The point being - "intelligent" does not equate "altruistic".  Making people smarter, which is as ethereal a notion as human genetics can tackle, does not necessarily lead to a more humane and benevolent and forethinking society.  Changing society does those things.  And so it comes back full circle to the eternal stick in the craw of transhumanism - if you want the means and ability to change any significant chunk of humanity for the "better", first you have to deal with all those pesky humans.

Of course all it would take to make an equitable and just and eternal human society of no significant lack is for everyone to just drop their self-interest and do it.  That's all it would have taken since the beginning of time.  And yet, in ten thousand years of human history, in as many countless times and places as the notion has been raised, it's barely been attempted and failed miserably in all of them.  And as people from Thiel to Peter the Great to Karl Rove demonstrate, the problem is not in itself a lack of brainpower.  Has it never occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, those dang human beings are not the only problem in the equation, and that maybe you've been asking the wrong questions about how to proceed?


As for clinical immortality, there's a difference between wanting to die, and not being afraid to die.  To embrace one's mortality is not a direct line to suicide.  And as for physical immortality answering all those sticking points about living forever with a failing human body, call me back to sell me on it once that stuff is at least within the conceivable realm of scientific possibility.  Would I like to live forever?  Sitting here right now, yeah sure I would.  But I'm not pining for every fleeting moment of my existence knowing that that's probably not going to happen.  And who knows, maybe after I've lived for a thousand years and seen my society stagnate after everyone having to stare at the exact same people for a millennia, I might decide it's time to bow out and take the big sleep.  Can't say for certain from the here and now.

[nenjin]

"we'll engineer a fairyland where nobody ages and everyone is free of the foibles of the current human condition" variety.

This would be the kind I'm addressing in my post. Although I'd generally agree with the statement that we're just the smartest animal on the planet, and denying what we are only goes so far. I'm more concerned about what attempts to break away from human nature are going to produce in the long-term; because the darker side of eugenics makes better business sense in today's world than the positive side ever did.

[Eagleon]

Oh, and immortal people would never get anything done. I'm procrastinating too much as it is, if I were immortal I'd just put everything off for the next millennium. The clock that's ticking away is what forces us to achieve things, you want the make the most of your life because it's so damn short.

Really? It's not the fact that there are things to be done, ideas that you have, and people to meet? That you want to live life now instead of a millenium from now? That's pretty sad, DJ. You should stop procrastinating, and you should also probably stop assuming everyone else will as well. </tongue firmly in cheek>

There will always be entropy. By the logic that we shouldn't push the limits of it because we can't push it all the way, we should all just kill ourselves. Now. It's pointless because you'll die eventually anyway, right? And, ignoring whether or not increased education leads to positive social change (which is honestly debatable), we should abandon making ourselves smarter because there are problems in the world it can't solve.

Aqizzar: Part of it is that, whether or not it's possible within my lifetime, I advocate progress towards it because I know people are dying, people don't want to die, and people can do interesting things. You have to think ahead a little. If no one did any work on fusion power in the 60s, we wouldn't be talking about how it will be available to us in 20 years Maybe I'm unusual but I like to see funding going towards longer term, potentially more useful projects rather than knee-jerk social experiments and short-cut economics.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Trying to predict things as far in the future as clinical immortality is an exercise in futility, I think. If any of you are near forty or older, I'd like to know what you thought 2010 would be like when you were a kid, because I seriously doubt it's anything like the reality we know today. I'm still pretty young to have that level of looking back on how the world has changed, but what I do remember from the 90's seems almost alien compared to right now. That, and every written prediction of the future (now present, or even past) I've seen has been wrong. Dead wrong. The world moves forward in strange and unexpected ways, in no small part due to knowlage being cumulative. The more we as a species know, the more we can learn. For someone living in the 1000's, the 1600's would be a strange place indeed. Same with the 1600's to the 1800's, and the 1800's to 1900. From 1900 to 1950, the world changed greatly again, as did it between 1950 and 1980. The past seems farther and farther away closer and closer as the world advances. I never would have guessed that we would have the iDevices, Youtube, computers the width of a piece of paper, computers with more memory storage than anyone would ever practically need, or most of the things we developed in the past ten years.

Looking to our future like this is, at this point, grasping at straws. Could honestly say you have a good idea of what 2030 will be like? Because I don't, and I severly doubt anyone does. The utopian clinical immortality being discribed here could become a complete reality, a partial reality, or it could be lauded as the crazy beliefs of a less advanced age, like how we laugh at early doctors an their ideas about "bad humors" causing illness. In short, we're wasting our time on predicting this sort of stuff, and I say we just try to go with the flow to find what insanity the future holds for us.

[nenjin]

There will always be entropy. By the logic that we shouldn't push the limits of it because we can't push it all the way, we should all just kill ourselves. Now. It's pointless because you'll die eventually anyway, right? And, ignoring whether or not increased education leads to positive social change (which is honestly debatable), we should abandon making ourselves smarter because there are problems in the world it can't solve.

No one said the only alternative is a defeatist attitude. It's about what you personally desire for yourself though. People talk a lot about how humanity as a whole can be better, when really all they can do is focus on themselves. That's the real disconnect. Quit trying to tell humanity to do something you're not capable of doing yourself on a daily basis. Or better put, since no one you know is going to be here in 200 years, what are you really left to worry about except your own experience?

Again, it's not that the system can't be beaten. It's more the lack of respect for the system by some. As though humanity is inherently smarter than the reality that gave birth to it. Hubris. There's just no other word that fits.

[G-Flex]

There will always be entropy. By the logic that we shouldn't push the limits of it because we can't push it all the way, we should all just kill ourselves. Now. It's pointless because you'll die eventually anyway, right? And, ignoring whether or not increased education leads to positive social change (which is honestly debatable), we should abandon making ourselves smarter because there are problems in the world it can't solve.

Who are you even responding to here? Nobody suggested such things. I can't speak for anyone else, but my point wasn't that we shouldn't try to live longer, but that it's unreasonable to think those efforts even could eliminate the inevitability of death. If the inevitability of personal death is the problem, no transhumanism can possibly be the solution, regardless of what other positive things it could do.

[sonerohi]

Just going to throw this on out there, Transhumanism is cool sounding but highly unlikely to happen because of the people that want it to happen.

[Aqizzar]

Aqizzar: Part of it is that, whether or not it's possible within my lifetime, I advocate progress towards it because I know people are dying, people don't want to die, and people can do interesting things. You have to think ahead a little. If no one did any work on fusion power in the 60s, we wouldn't be talking about how it will be available to us in 20 years Maybe I'm unusual but I like to see funding going towards longer term, potentially more useful projects rather than knee-jerk social experiments and short-cut economics.

Don't get me wrong, all sciences always need more resources and development.  I'd love to live in the Jetsons' world tomorrow.  I just a have realistic appreciation of how long it takes for things to develop, and how humanity in general reacts to things.  And it's certainly not always negative.  I know one big transhuman thing is interpersonal-computing and communication, like being able to walk down the street and see the Internet just by looking at buildings and chat with anyone any time.  Just look at how ubiquitous cell-phones and Netbooks have become compared to alien things like that were fifteen years ago, with little more public resentment than some throwaway comedy about crappy service.

People can embrace changes and advancement, even changes in ways of thinking, it's just not a quick process.  And If I have a particular beef with transhumanism, it's the haughtiness, and being berated for holding a more cautious assumption of what and when things change.  I don't advocate staticism, I just don't expect the future to plop in my lap any day now.  Angrily wishing it were so doesn't get it there any faster, and if anything, turns a lot of people off to the idea whatever changes are being pitched in such a manner.