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What ever happened to the transhumanists?

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Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#171

Post by walterbell »

myownpetard wrote: post #168
walterbell wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we did so without fully understanding feudal society. No human understood feudal society? What about the leaders of those societies?

There is probably some folk theorem about this. The emergent structure of a society is always more complex than the analytical tools available in that society are capable of modeling. As the tools become more sophisticated, the same technologies and institutions that enabled their development results in a correlated increase in complexity in the social structures. Forever keeping true contemporary introspection out o…

> more complex than the analytical tools available in that society are capable of modeling

One would need to include non-public analytical tools, which are unfortunately not available for inspection.

There are different economic incentives for public and private tools of analysis and thought.

One modern equivalent would be export-controlled tools and technology, but there are many more onion layers.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#172

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Banana699 wrote: post #158
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every day a human spends not killing or blowing up humans is a sin, a day lived by an immoral coward who doesn't deserve to live. First: By your own standard, you don't deserve to live. I'm not telling you to kill yourself; I'm telling you your standard is hopelessly twisted. Second: You condemn Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman, because they killed people . And then you come out with the above sentence. Y…

>By your own standard, you don't deserve to live. Correct. This is something I say myself in the comment, if you bothered to read carefully. >You condemn Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Truman, because they killed people. And then you come out with the above sentence. You're a bit self-inconsistent here. False. I don't condemn any of those people (not because they killed anyway), I point out your own hypocrisy, a…

> I point out your own hypocrisy, and that of most people, when they worship those mass killers

You're sure free to tell me what I think. You should stop, because you're not very good at it.

> They kill their own number 7 times per year ? I call bullshit.

You don't think a cat kills 7 birds and/or rodents a year? They've put cameras on cats' collars. They're far more deadly than just 7 kills a year. You don't think a seal eats 7 fish a year? I don't have research from seal cameras, but I'd be astonished if they ate that little. And most of all, you don't think a whale eats 7 plankton a year? Or do plankton not count?

> And if it's true, it doesn't change anything.

It destroys your statement that "There is no species on earth that kills its own number 7x+ times each year." And it destroys the logic that depends on it. So, you think killing animals is immoral, and you want to kill all the humans (except perhaps the Jains) because they kill animals. So, what are you going to do? Kill all the eagles because they eat fish and rabbits? Kill all the seals because they eat fish? Kill all the Venus Flytraps because they eat flies? Kill all the whales because they eat plankton? I don't see any possible way for you to have a consistent position here.

I'm done with this conversation. I leave you the last word, if you want it.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#174

Post by bluescrn »

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…

Yeah, if you think things are pretty grim at this point in 'late-stage capitalism', it could rapidly get a whole lot worse if anti-ageing tech comes along, and we're suddenly living under a ruling class of immortal billionaires/trillionaires.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#175

Post by AndrewKemendo »

*waves hand*

I have at certain points in life considered myself part of this movement. I think I'd still consider myself one, but with a lot more cynicism.

At this point it's unquestionable to me that people will eventually do some version of "mind uploading." However I doubt we'll ever answer the question whether you'll be uploading "yourself" or not - my guess is not.

Unless we somehow make a literal "Matrix" like the movies, it's just not going to happen and I see no reason we would or should build such a thing.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#177

Post by red75prime »

daoist_shaman wrote: post #6

I used to identify as a transhumanist and believed that technology could do no harm. I was an adolescent donning rose-colored glasses, with a burning passion for science, technology, and improvement of our species. Only after an electrical engineering degree, 10-15 years of more wisdom, and dabbling in biohacking have I realized that we really have no clue about the massive deleterious impacts that technology has on…

> I hope that it isn’t too late to try to fix what we’ve destroyed.

It will be like pumping the brakes and critically thinking, while staying in a landslide (caused by you, but blame assignment will not do much at the moment). Climate change will not wait. Extinct species will not pop up back into existence. Asteroids on impact course (if any) will not stop moving for that matter. We need to run faster than ever to have a chance to fix at least some things.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#178

Post by maroonblazer »

peteradio wrote: post #97
photochemsyn wrote: post #91

To become transhuman or posthuman, you'd first have to understand what it is to be human, and we're not anywhere near that. Some of the enthusiasm about the hopes for such a transition were raised by this: > "The Human Genome Project finally released a complete human genome sequence in 2003, in a project that took 13 years to complete." The most remarkable thing about that accomplishment was how little it resulted in…

You could potentially make a thing that acts like you, that's it. The only reason our existence is tolerable is that we agree with the guy that when he goes to bed he is dead and I take over in the morning and I make the same deal tomorrow.

What, or where, is the "I" in this deal?

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#179

Post by mlinksva »

celdon25 wrote: post #162
notsapiensatall wrote: post #49

IMHO it's in a trough on the hype curve. Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again. The promises of devices like neuralink are decades away from widespread voluntary adoption, at least. You can get small things done today, as you could 10 years ago, but they aren't ready for primetime. Anecdotally, I got a small coated neodymium magnet implanted in a finger during my youth. It was cool as a college student, I cou…

> Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again. No, it doesn’t, and waiting for the iteration of tech-consumerism that resembles your childhood fantasies is everything that was wrong with the transhumanist movement. It attracted too many people who sat on the sidelines and did nothing to move the needle. It was a magnet for people who couldn’t cope with reality, which occasionally helped, but usually stirred chaos.…

Just curious, what 1980s attempt are you referring to?

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#180

Post by awayto »

peteradio wrote: post #135
nickff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite like that phrasing (in your second sentence); did you come up with it yourself, or did you catch it somewhere?

I think I've read it somewhere but I never keep track of citations. Might have been Michael Keaton in that movie, moral of the story, if you copy yourself then your copy is gonna bang your wife.

I enjoyed this article posted here recently about the topic. Author goes into some interesting thought experiments on the topic of always waking as a brand new person.

https://www.naturalism.org/philosophy/death/death-nothingnes...

Previous thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32049237

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