Open for discussion (Research first, please.)
To live forever.
No suffering.
No disease.
No disability.
The perfect human being.
This is simple! Post your opinion. I will not be posting my opinion but rather questioning all that participate. Though I'll say I am leaning towards being a transhumanist and am against very little of the broad concept.
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A wonderful ideal to end human suffering with technology, but at what cost? The end of unnecissary pain but at the cost of the things that make life worth living. One cannot know true happiness unless they have been through suffering, eliminate suffering and how can people truly be happy if there is no sadness.
ReplyDeleteImmortallity would sure prove more of a problem than a solution. Without people dying, how are we supposed to make room for the incoming youth? Also without the fear of death comes no real reason to procreate. A necessary factor in life itself. Granted this also provides heightened intelligence, but the elimination of that which makes us humans is not worth it.
That being said I do commend the push for development regarding technogaiansm, which I do feel is imperative to the survival of humanity.
I disagree with majority of the H+ movement such as:
Abolitionism
Postgenderism
Immortalism
However I do agree with:
Singularitarianism
and
Technogaianism
Response to first paragraph: It really depends on your religious stance and whether you're a hedonist. I mean, is happiness really the goal of life? Is there a goal in life?
ReplyDeleteParagraph two: Of course overpopulation is an issue, but I'm looking more into the concept rather the possibility, personally. I don't know how or why people not fearing death would lead them to not wanting children or sex. Some don't want children, but will still have sex which will result in children. Life will go on.
I will start with my concept of the universe. My concept of us. And the concept of the singularity.
ReplyDelete1. The universe is information.
2. We are the emergent intelligence of the universe (we are the software, and the programmer of reality)
3. We program ourselves through natural selection, we are programmed through our DNA which is programmed by viruses, and mutations.
4. We are approaching a technological singularity (intelligence explosion) which is being caused by our ability to export our thinking onto computers using our software (languages).
So when we look at our current situation we are at a crossroads where we can continue on with the path we have been on and face almost certain extinction, or we can use our technology to raise our level of intelligence so that we can survive.
A film to watch to understand what is happening is idiocracy. When we select partners we do not select them based on intelligence, or talent, we typically select partners based on how they look physically. This type of physical selection was essential for our tribal ancestors who had to deal with the harsh jungle environment, but this type of selection is useless today.
A second very common form of selection is selection by class. This form of selection is slightly is more intelligent than selecting a partner based on physical appearance, but it's also flawed because intelligence and talent does not play a role. An individual can be born with money, and under capitalism money is fitness. So the term survival of the fittest actually means survival of the richest. The flaw in this is that the richest aren't necessarily the smartest, the most talented, or the "fittest" and their strength comes entirely from their place in society and depends entirely on capitalism being the factor which determines fitness. We call this breed of human homoeconomicus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus
The most advanced selection/breeding pattern is to pair the smart with the smart, the talented with the talented. This is also known as positive eugenics. If two physically unattractive nerds pair up, the genes which gave them the traits to be brilliant will pass on to their offspring and their brilliant abilities will pass down. This is probably the most important kind of selection in a world where intelligence is what determines fitness.
Now how do we respond to the problems associated with the pairing up of the poor unintelligent, unattractive, unhealthy?
ReplyDeleteWe respond by building lots of prisons, paying a fortune for healthcare expenses, all of these are ways we currently solve the problem. Transhumanism takes a different approach, starting from the time they are a fetus the goal is to enhance their natural abilities. It starts with concepts like genetic screening, so that diseases can be cured in the womb rather than to have to pay the expenses of treating them in adulthood. It involves giving parents the option to have designer babies, this is the ability to choose certain features of a babies physical appearance in the womb while they are still forming.
In childhood the students who struggle in school will be able to upgrade their brains, literally. Stem cells have the ability to upgrade or fix any cell in the body. If you suffer brain damage, stem cells might be able to grow new braincells. If you have diabetes, or other kinds of damage stem cells can regrow new cells to produce insulin, or regrow your liver, your kidney, your heart. This has the potential to revolutionize modern medicine and it gives us the option to focus on life extension, which would slow the rate of aging so everyone can have an extended childhood, an athlete can be in his or her physical prime for decades, etc.
Transhumanism would solve a majority of the issues we fight over as humans. It would improve quality of life for virtually everyone. It would allow us to use computers and techology to make us all more intelligent, and if we are going to survive long term as a species transhumanism could be what saves us from self destruction.
There are some dangers, from nanotechnology (the grey goo problem), from bioengineering (you can make cures and treatments but you can also make bioweapons), and you will have the problems associated with terrorists who don't want to use this technology to improve quality of life, but instead want to use it to control and enslave other people.
The main concern is who and what controls transhumanism and the technology associated with it. If for example we are given longer healther lifespans, and we don't have any human or civil rights, essentially sweatshops and ghettos everywhere, this wont be good at all. And if we use our gene technology to make very good looking dumb people, the situation would only get worse because the total intelligence of the population as a whole would decrease as the population rises.
And by intelligence I don't mean results on an IQ test, I'm not a believer of "general" intelligence, I'm saying our population of talented people will drop and we will be left with a large population if physically attractive mediocre individuals. The goal should be to produce as many talented people as we can produce, and to use our technology to do that.
"Immortallity would sure prove more of a problem than a solution. Without people dying, how are we supposed to make room for the incoming youth?"
ReplyDeleteWe will have to solve the population problem long before we have the technology to have immortality. Immortality is important because if we are going to expand out into space we will need much longer lifespans than we currently have. We'd start by moving to Mars, and then elsewhere but we have to solve these problems eventually because our fragile lifespan is what hinders our ability to travel through space. Also lets consider the possibility that there might be alien competition out there somewhere, if we don't populate these planets first we could find that somebody or something else is already there.
WARNING: Long and boring and whiningly complainingly....something
ReplyDeleteAGE:
Immortality is a wonderful promise for most. As is a world without sickness and a world without want. Live life as you want and the consequences of our day will be naught. Population is not a problem. The U.S. alone can feed the entire world currently and there are many places that are sparsely populated. (Such as Love county in Texas....it was 12 people last time I checked and bigger than Delaware)
But it's never going to happen.
We haven't really increased a person's maximum lifespan at all in the past 1000 years (actually 2000 it seems ( http://www.livescience.com/health/090821-human-lifespans.html )) . People lived to a hundred yrs OLD many years ago. What we do have now is customary hygiene and a 'civilized' society that allows for the average age to go up. No matter what wealth they had or medical technology they had (I've heard that Roman surgery techniques were equal to today's) Human lifespan does not increase.
For every 110 yr old there's a person dying at 40. I think the words of the oldest person in the world when asked before he died how he had lived so long was something to the tune of "I smoked, I drank, and slept around."
EUGENICS:
Hitler had the same idea for progressing the Human Race. His idea involved culling. I don't find that process attractive especially since they failed at lowering retardation or gayness in their society.
THE STUPIDITY OF SOCIALISTS:
Communists were transhumanists. They believed that all could be had by all and that science and understanding could flourish in their society of 'freedom'. They built thousands of Universities and educated everyone freely. They solidly won the Olympics every cycle and had the most well educated scientists in the world. They failed. Their society fell in corruption and waste even though they were so well learned. No progression was had. Most of the former Soviet Union fell into a mob state etc.etc.etc
PESSIMISM
I am a pessimist. Humans are dumb. Humans naturally hope in things that show little promise and little proof of ever coming to fruition.
So there.
EVOLUTION OF SPECIES
We can't even figure out why people get cancer or how to stop it. We can't stop world hunger or massive death-tolls from diarrhea or even explain what is amnesia/prion diseases/MS/etc. How can we evolve humans without even being able to do more than the ancient Native Americans could do medically?
"Hmmm....it seems that there's a problem with your brain. We know that this area of the brain causes it so let's poke a hole in there and see what happens."
Grr....Our medicine is so amazing that many people turn to herbs and finding their Chi balance to cure themselves. And the funny thing is how often alternative medicine works compared to how often 'modern medicine' works.
COMPLAINING:
I could go on and on complaining. I'm really good at it, it seems. Here's some random points:
Human's are no smarter than they were in the past.
People have wanted the same things for thousands of years
Is our society really that much more amazing than those of the past?
Life is a miserable thing. Why live forever when you can die and A) move on or B) be done with it?
We have vast wealth. How hard do you have to work at minimum wage to have food, shelter, air-conditioning, a car, heating, clothes, books, internet, a computer....? 20 hrs a week. If you don't spend money on random junk that everyone HAS TO HAVE so badly, you can work 20 hours a week and live a comfortable life.
With all this wealth people want more. No matter how much more they are given they will want more.
Meh, I'm going to stop complaining/whining/pessimising oh yes....pessimising.