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What ever happened to the transhumanists?

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Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#111

Post by pessimizer »

Tenoke wrote: post #63
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #46

Is there a pre-agricultural movement I could sign on to? It seems like every development post-hunter-gatherer has been in service of extending our lives while simultaneously making them (and the environment) worse. We talk about quality of life, but what kind of life is it to sit inside a box 2/3 of your life, or breaking your back in a factory, or on a farm? Most hunter-gatherers actually have more leisure time and…

I don't know how to break it to you but many if not most pre-technology hunter-gatherers lived horrible lives, full of pain and misery and died much younger, usually as babies.

> died much younger, usually as babies

This is of course because they were pretty long-lived, but had a high infant/childhood mortality rate. It's certainly a way to look at it, but if you counted every miscarriage as a negative lifespan, you could make the average lifespan even shorter.

When hunter-gatherers lived past childhood, they lived almost as long as we live.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#112

Post by concinds »

adastra22 wrote: post #85
concinds wrote: post #58

It was replaced by Virtual Reality. The transhumanist philosophy was transcendental. Man, armed with innovative genius and deep technological knowledge, could one day remake himself and transcend his limitations. It wasn't so much a "philosophy" as a prediction of an inevitable and obvious future, which they were simply impatient to reach. Freedom from all biological, physical, intellectual constraints! Today, people…

Am I being dense? What does VR have to do with transhumanism? Seems like a total non-sequitur.

See my answer to bufferoverflow.

Also: virtual reality isn't just a heads-up display or an iPhone camera feature. Augmented ears that can hear things normal humans can't hear, augmented eyes, or an augmented brain inherently means you lose sovereignty over your own mind since there is a necessary and irreducible degree of trust you need to have in your government and in corporations: trust that they are not interfering with what you hear, see, or think.

I count that as virtual reality, just as movie theaters (where, early on, people screamed when they saw a train driving towards the camera, i.e. towards them, though that may be apocryphal) were a very primitive and early form of virtual reality. Ok, duh, movie theaters aren't dystopian. But the frontier is soon going to breach the boundaries of our bodies and skulls. There are clear dangers involved.

Neither the Free Software movement, nor any "cognitive sovereignty" legislation as proposed by some transhumanists, would solve this. There's a fundamental trust issue that seems unsolvable.

I am trying to provoke thought; to me, the core issue with transhumanism is that other humans will be capable of subtly, undetectably and plausibly-deniably change your perception of reality and of yourself. Even people who focus on the "politically dystopian" aspects of transhumanism tend to ignore this; and instead focus on inequality, discrimination, and so on, which in my view are secondary.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#114

Post by trhway »

concinds wrote: post #95
bufferoverflow wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was not replaced by VR. I am a trans humanist. As soon as there's a better than natural artificial heart proven to work for decades and with low risks, I will happily undergo surgery. Major cause of death avoided. My eyes are good for now, but I imagine in 20 years they will start really going downhill. If there's an artificial option, I will switch. Same goes for most organs. Unfortunately all these advances…

Transhumanism isn't just advanced medicine. The idea isn't to replace a human heart with an artificial heart that's mostly functionally identical (current-day technology). The whole idea is to transcend biological limits using technology, i.e. develop eyes, ears, and brains that are functionally different and superior. Prolonging human longevity is just one of the (many) goals of the transhumanist movement). Its core…

> while corporations and governments gain exponentially more control

that is unavoidable. Transhumanism doesn't guarantee preserving full individuality. Achieving transhumanism most probably would require giving up significant degree of individuality as the tightly connected "collectives/hives" - once such possibility become practical - would outcompete individuals. I.e. Borg is one of the most probable and close description of the future transhuman society.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#115

Post by pixl97 »

danjoredd wrote: post #96
pixl97 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are already transhuman now. I have two pieces of technology glued to the outside of my body as we speak, they are monitoring my blood glucose levels and adjusting the amount of insulin my body receives in near real time. Could someone hack it and attempt to overdose me with insulin. Yes, it is a risk. But it is a risk I'm a thousand percent willing to take because life before it was chore where you risk fallin…

Yes, but would you have it if you didn't need it? That was my point. I can see using transhuman augmentations to help those in need...give the blind sight, amputees limbs, etc. But my concern is when it becomes a vanity issue over a needs-based issue. Replacing body parts should not be a light decision unless it is something needful.

I mean, it's not a light issue currently because the risks are high. As high risk individuals have these parts replaced over time we'll be able to quantify these risks. The risks will reduce and eventually people in 'no risk' scenarios with their current body parts will be able accurately judge if added risks of mechanical parts are worth it. Eventually the risks will be borne by the people that do not accept augmentations. But typically these things will take very long periods of time to play out.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#116

Post by bjt2n3904 »

api wrote: post #103
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like you're getting caught up on the prefix "trans" in conjunction with the current culture war zeitgeist. That's not what transhumanism is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

Why not? Isn't part of transhumanism the idea that a person could control their own biology? Trans people (especially those who have actually transitioned) seem like early adopters to me. I think the histrionic overreaction to trans people shows one of the things that will hold any kind of real transhumanism back though. If you think we have a culture war now wait until we have extreme life extension, really powerful…

Right on point. TH encompasses TG, and is really it's spiritual essence.

Yes, there will be political and religious pushback against this. But it is certainly not histrionics, or an overreaction.

With regard to transgenderism, the brutal surgeries are a poor facsimile. Even atheists and those on the left are hesitant to pursue intimate relationships -- and the stories of physical suffering are just beginning to surface.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#117

Post by revolvingocelot »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #100
revolvingocelot wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? An ant hill or a beaver dam are mere reorganizations of known matter types, and could be analogized to humans building things like walls. Stone, and even some types of mortar, participate in the great cosmic dance of Gaia [0], just like the works of the animals cited above. They decay, they are broken down by various processes over time, they are fashioned of things found in the environment. PFAS, by…

Not sure that's accurate. Animals aren't trying to create things that break down easily; they're not trying to do anything but survive. The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'. By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that c…

>The argument is circular: if animals make it, it's part of Gaia else it's 'unnatural'. Animals didn't make plastics, so they're 'unnatural'.

Er, this is your argument, not mine. Mine is: "if animals make it, and it is unmade (or remade, or recycled, or broken down [0]) by something else, then this is 'natural'." Plastics nor PFAS meet that standard. Those matter types stay static. The animals called 'humans' make plenty of other stuff that can't be adapted by microbes and fungus and rot that keep things from the natural world participating.

>By definition I guess, not by any real difference between them and bone or termite mounds or dinosaur bones or geodes...you know, things that can last for millennia

But this is the real pièce de stràwman: the objects under discussion have expanded from things that animals build, to natural features that don't chemically interact with the environment. Of course fucking bones and geodes aren't the same as nonbiodegradable plastics or PFAS -- not only are they contained physically by virtue of their properties, but they are also regularly destroyed by the various systems of Earth, like UV light or multicellular life, or the same geological processes that create them, respectively.

Every example provided in the parent is, and has been, a part of the world for so long that they're not disruptive to other systems, or at least are physically contained.

>I don't applaud plastics entering the environment carelessly

Should they be introduced more thoughtfully? The point is that the system is unfamiliar with it. It can't be broken down and reused by something new.

[0] Plastics 'break down' into smaller plastics. I don't think that quite counts.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#118

Post by adastra22 »

concinds wrote: post #112
adastra22 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I being dense? What does VR have to do with transhumanism? Seems like a total non-sequitur.

See my answer to bufferoverflow. Also: virtual reality isn't just a heads-up display or an iPhone camera feature. Augmented ears that can hear things normal humans can't hear, augmented eyes, or an augmented brain inherently means you lose sovereignty over your own mind since there is a necessary and irreducible degree of trust you need to have in your government and in corporations: trust that they are not interferi…

Most transhumanists I know are interested in biological immortality, mind uploading, hive minds, etc. VR does nothing for that.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#119

Post by jholman »

solveit wrote: post #106
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #46

Is there a pre-agricultural movement I could sign on to? It seems like every development post-hunter-gatherer has been in service of extending our lives while simultaneously making them (and the environment) worse. We talk about quality of life, but what kind of life is it to sit inside a box 2/3 of your life, or breaking your back in a factory, or on a farm? Most hunter-gatherers actually have more leisure time and…

For the same reason that I think it's good for people to live in a different culture for a while, I wish it were possible for people to live in a different era for a while. There was a time when it wasn't smoking and obesity that killed people, but smallpox, plague, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases. When a single epidemic could kill a double-digit percentage of the entire population of whatever unlucky reg…

You think that smallpox, plague, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases were major killers of pre-technological hunter-gatherers? I don't think that's correct.

But you're certainly right about the problems with child mortality, maternal mortality, birth control, and infected cuts. I think it's not a given whether or not these are necessarily deal-breakers (personally I think the maternal-mortality-plus-birth-control combo is the most horrifying, but YMMV), but they're certainly very huge problems. Very huge problems.

But I am not so sure you're right about problems with the justice. Again, GP didn't talk about the wonders of 15th-C England or 3rd-C Rome (never mind the really bad eras), they talked about pre-technological hunter-gatherer societies. Since "justice" is just a fiction we've come up with to try to match our evolved intuitions, my guess is that we'd be happier with the justice of that era than we are with the justice of the present era (and I agree that the present-day first-world situation is much better than pretty much all of the alternatives in the last 10,000 years). But you made a particular claim here, that "everything we know about criminal justice tells us that small insular groups of people are actually terrible at justice", and so maybe you have some references you'd care to share that could help me understand how right you are. I'd appreciate that.

Personally, I, too, am a pretty big fan of printed books and (the output of) looms. (I mean, I'm actually a big fan of LCDs, too, but I think that's a less obvious win.) But I think that your final paragraph is basically begging the question. My understanding is that existing hunter-gatherers (the very very few of them that there are) are actually happier.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#120

Post by Animats »

"Like so many others after 9/11, I felt spiritually and existentially lost. It’s hard to believe now, but I was a regular churchgoer at the time."

Ah, the will to believe. In something. Anything. The believer crowd is usually not the group that makes it work. Today's "metaverse" enthusiasts and actual metaverse implementers have quite limited overlap.

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