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What ever happened to the transhumanists?

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Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#301

Post by dekervin »

coenhyde wrote: post #10
danjoredd wrote: post #2

Does anyone working in tech ACTUALLY thin transhumanism is a good idea? It seems like a field ripe for criminal exploitation and hacking, even in an optimistic future. Unless I lose a limb, or an eye, keep my body offline.

I'll be keeping my body offline. But I think fusion with AGI is inevitable if we want to remain somewhat in control of our future. Otherwise we will be super ceded by super intelligent AI and become their pets.

There was a span of 14 years between an implant allowi g control of an artficial hand, in 2005 , and an implant allowing speech synthesis from brain signals , in 2019 [0]. I am not sure the pace of innovation is accelerating drastically. (Edit: Sorry, I posted the wrong url in the previous version of my reply)

[0] https://roboticsbiz.com/the-history-of-brain-computer-interf...

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#302

Post by 0dayz »

yarg wrote: post #219
toofy wrote: post #210

We currently have a massive chunk of society who are losing their collective minds about people engaging in the very early iterations of transhumanism—transgender folks. I still regularly encounter people who are spitting angry against transgender folks and then later in the conversation will completely unironically talk about how much they love the cyberpunk genre. Not many of them realize they would be the weird cu…

I really don't feel that's a fair comparison. The transgender community needs to stop pushing the notion that it's healthy and desirable; it's not - it's a devastating hormonal/fertility disorder. We can't even look into the extent to which the androgenisation of humanity is the consequence of the pollutants that we've introduced into the environment. Now, comparing this to trans-humanist body mods - how many of thos…

I mean you're quite frankly arguing with a straw man, and being vague with the word "healthy", no trans community is advocating that taking opposite hormones is physically healthy.

They push for it because that's the only viable option for them to appear as the opposite gender which helps them mentally.

Although it is funny you're in a way talking about how men are turning into femboy meme.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#303

Post by the_omegist »

zizee wrote: post #201
jholman wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To become transhuman or posthuman, you'd first have to understand what it is to be human What? Why? I'm post-adolescent (at least biologically, please don't bring up all of my emotional immaturity), and I still don't (and definitely didn't then) understand what it is to be adolescent. I live in a post-feudal society, and while I think we understand a few things about what it means to be feudal, I wouldn't bet on us…

I am interpreting the parent as saying before we can say something is post-human, we have to define (understand) what "human" is. If we cannot agree on what it is to be human, how can anyone be post-human? I.e. you can't define a "noun with modifier" until you define the noun.

You can differentiate a human from a dolphin ?

Then you know all that is to be known about what an human is.

You don't need to understand "dolphin-ness" to know that by enabling a dolphin to talk or fly you created a post-dolphin.

Post/Transhumanism is not just about physical changes. Those changes , of course, will create/lead to philosophical/metaphysical questions, but no one understands transhumanism as a "branch of philosophy that questions itself about ...."

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#304

Post by yarg »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #291
yarg wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A disingenuously paraphrasing quote? Sure thing. But I'm not espousing my values, but values vital to the continuation of life. Values that have been around for thousands of millions of years. Perhaps there's the potential for this to change, but it'll just be fertility in another form.

>"But I'm not espousing my values, but values vital to the continuation of life." There are no self-grounding values. You cannot objectively justify why fertility is the overriding value here, rather than, say, fairness, liberty or anything else. So yes, you are absolutely espousing your values. If you want to make an argument, make it, don't pretend it's self-evident.

Not all of your ancestors had lives that were free or fair, but every last one of them was fertile.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#305

Post by mkmk3 »

Elinvynia wrote: post #289
mkmk3 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fraction of people who want to prevent children transitioning or claiming youre a different gender, versus people against general body mods, is smaller than it needs to be? That might be a really good point if true.

Transitioning for small children is literally just wearing different clothing. When they get a bit older, at most they can extremely rarely (due to people pushing against it, even though it reduces suicide rates and saves lives!) get puberty blockers. Those can then be stopped with minimal consequences if they decide that's not something they wanna do. What is actually cruel is FORCING kids to undergo their AGAB pube…

Idk what the effect of taking blockers for 3 years and then realizing its a mistake would be. Do you experience puberty for the same duration, to the same extent? If youre male, are you going to be shorter for instance?

Regarding clothing, maybe its just wrong to emphasize gender in the first place? I think a lot of people are cool with kids doing whatever, its just weird when the people around them start really reaffirming the decisions made by someone we dont trust to have autonomy in most things.

Maybe transgendered people have some biological or psychological drive thats distinct and not related to the people around them, but if I were around this rhetoric as a kid I can very easily see how it could have wrecked me, considering how I dealt with the subject of gender from pre to late teens. Maybe itd be a worthy price, Im skeptical but trying to make sense of it

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#306

Post by the_omegist »

tomhoward wrote: post #213
jholman wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we did have to invent the (social) technology that enabled us to transition to a post-feudal society. And we did so without fully understanding feudal society. For another technological example, we didn't fully understand bronze when we transitioned to the iron age (in fact, at least in the west, the transition to the iron age happened in large part due to our understanding of bronze getting substantially worse )…

No one person had to understand everything about feudal society for the next stage to emerge. It just emerged, as always happens in an evolutionary process. To try again with a more complete answer to your initial question: Why is transhuman-ness or posthuman-ness a special exception for the to the general rule that surpassing (or at least passing) something does not in fact require understanding it? In all the examp…

> If by “transhumanism” we mean a transition of human “life” (i.e, consciousness and culture) off our evolved biological platform onto some other recently or newly-created technology platform, someone would have to understand what human life actually is in order to make it happen or recognize that it has happened.

What you mean by that? Except for "mind uploading" I don't see what you referring to...

Like the Iron Age didn't succeed the Bronze Age in one night there is nothing to understand or to prepare to pass into a "transhumanist society"... because we already are...or even we always were.

Glasses, prosthesis, eye surgery, ... : all are the start of what is called transhumanism. That's why I think it should be used rather as a mindset than as a social goal.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#307

Post by fzeroracer »

fastball wrote: post #299
fzeroracer wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a million things more dangerous to the continuation of the human race than a few people willingly becoming sterile to solve other issues with their body. For decades we were shoving lead into gasoline and poisoning an entire generation for the sake of more money, for example. And the 'androgenization of humanity' seems like some nonsense, considering there's zero data or otherwise to back that up.

> a few people willingly becoming sterile to solve other issues with their body. Most of the controversy around trans issues that I've seen would not exist if this was the only dimension to it.

Most of the controversy around trans issues is made up nonsense being pushed by a propaganda machine pining to politicize an entire group of people. The same group of people that have turned towards trying to harass gay, lesbian etc individuals because they know they can harness a certain virulent part of their base to harass and antagonize people.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#308

Post by 0dayz »

the_omegist wrote: post #286
dragonwriter wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> . Nobody is " against trans " people, whatever that means What it means is “actively seeking to eliminate trans people, including by the simple expedient of killing them by means such as prohibiting care that is proven to greatly reduce suicidality in, especially, young trans people.” And lots of people—indeed, entire state governments in the US—are “against trans people”.

> “actively seeking to eliminate trans people, Put it such extreme and dishonest way, reducing sugar in food it an attempt to eliminate obese people... No , the attribute is not the object. > indeed, entire state governments in the US—are “against trans people”. So you deny the rights of a community of people to decide what they deem legal or illegal ? All this for the personal benefit of a (literal) couple of people…

>So you deny the rights of a community of people to decide what they deem legal or illegal ? All this for the personal benefit of a (literal) couple of people

By that logic if said community is for incest, pedophilia and extremely violent and barbarian punishment, the country has to allow it?

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#309

Post by fastball »

Elinvynia wrote: post #289
mkmk3 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fraction of people who want to prevent children transitioning or claiming youre a different gender, versus people against general body mods, is smaller than it needs to be? That might be a really good point if true.

Transitioning for small children is literally just wearing different clothing. When they get a bit older, at most they can extremely rarely (due to people pushing against it, even though it reduces suicide rates and saves lives!) get puberty blockers. Those can then be stopped with minimal consequences if they decide that's not something they wanna do. What is actually cruel is FORCING kids to undergo their AGAB pube…

> undergo their AGAB puberty against their will

It's also weird mental gymnastics like this that people are pushing against. For anyone who is not familiar with the acronym, AGAB means "Assigned Gender At Birth", and is push back against the fact that we broadly lump all people into either the male / female camp when they are born. It can be useful when talking about gender norms, etc – which are discussions worth having. But when you start to move into the region of "biological sex is unimportant" it takes on an entirely different slant.

"AGAB puberty" is an oxymoronic statement. If the gender was merely "assigned" to them, then why is their body naturally going through puberty in a certain direction. It's not their AGAB, it's their biological sex. We are not saying "this is a boy" and then giving them testosterone when they hit 12 so that they match their "assigned" gender. Their body is the body of a boy which naturally produces (much) more testosterone (and other obvious hormonal and physical differences) than that of what we broadly call a girl.

Nobody is FORCING anything – that is just something our bodies do naturally because we are a sexually reproducing species of mammal so our DNA causes us to split broadly into male and female.

Re: What ever happened to the transhumanists?

#310

Post by the_omegist »

armchairhacker wrote: post #14

"Transhumanism" is already here, in a way. We have medications including some complex drugs, most people at least take multi-vitamins, we have surgeries and sometimes do weird stuff like transplant limbs or faces. Even simpler, we have knowledge of diet and health which lets us stay in better shape than before (though a lot of people are in worse shape due to junk food...we have access to high-protein diets and effec…

“The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet” (Gibson, but not sure)

For a tribe in the Amazon forest, Shanghai or Tokyo could be from a scifi movie set 500 years in their future. For a villager in a small-sized town in Belgium perhaps only 5 or 10yrs in the future.

So transhumanism is not something that will be : it always was and currently is. It just a word for a mindset that embraces these changes and want them to happen faster and sooner.

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