While i doubt it’ll get me banned anywhere, it does get me very weird looks if i bring it up in meat space, so I’ll bring it up here instead!
As a product of totally random processes selecting for absolutely nothing in particular humans are pretty cool, but from any kind of intelligent perspective we are a failure. Our teeth don’t fit, our backs don’t work right, we have organs with no other purpose than to kill us. God or evolution, which ever, has put in an absolutely minimum wage effort into our bodies and i think we should strive to do better, to be better. I understand being against current possibilities (I’m not getting magnets in my hands or the musk brain chip), but to be against transhumanism in general is completely insane.
I definitely agree with this notion. It’s a miracle we’re alive in general. Our organs are so inefficient that it’s frustrating to say the least.
I’m on board with trans humanism so long as whatever firmware for whatever takes the place of certain organs is completely FOSS. No proprietary software at all. I don’t trust the Microsofts and Apples of the world to not have backdoors in them.
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Isn’t apple is actually decent about not having back doors? but you’d absolutely have to have apple brand everything or your brain disconnects from your body. I’d also add not being easily wirelessly accessable, it’s already kinda insane that pacemakers can be hacked.
I guess I remembered it wrong. I was going to post the article where the FBI wanted Apple to unlock a shooter’s iphone and they complied. But apparently they didn’t comply and the FBI just exploited their way into getting into it.
Nevertheless, they use closed source software and I still wouldn’t trust it.
I myself, am in a way, living this kind of life as is. My digestive system doesn’t work, I was born without a working one. I need a central line I.V (which was surgically “installed” into my chest) to get the nutrients I need that others get by eating.
This being said, I kind of hate it, I’m weird in this way, I am generally against any foreign object being in my body and I actively avoid others. I wouldn’t get a BCI except maybe under very specific circumstances.
I would also be concerned about others having it. The idea of having a BCI, a device which can read, write and override thoughts is extremely concerning. Especially if this device wasn’t 100% open hardware, open source, open firmware, literally open from the ground up to the point where anyone could make their own if they wanted to. Even then, I have my doubts, what about hackers? Could you literally have your brain be hacked? That’s a huge concern.
I’m all for things that help individuals with disabilities to live, like myself, for example, even though I feel personally uncomfortable that I need to have these foreign objects in my body in order to live life.
My wife also just reminded me of something else that might be worth mentioning. I am generally opposed to smaller body modifications as well. I find tattoos, earrings, makeup, and similar minor forms of body modification to be extremely unappealing, this is just my personal preference, but it might also help with understanding my overall opinion on body modification as a whole.
I hope this could kind of give a decent idea as to where I stand on the matter, please feel free to ask any questions. I know I can be a bit disjointed sometimes.
Oh yeah. I forgot to mention in my post that it has to be open hardware too. Really I’m more in favor of augmentation of anything but the brain now that I think about it.
If neuralink is a thing, then it cannot connect to the internet at all, no Bluetooth either or any other protocol that can connect to other devices. It’s just asking to get hacked since it’d be akin to leaving your front door locked. Will it deter a lot of people? Yes. But others might just kick it open and break in.
The neuralink just needs to be there to increase efficiency of the human body in many ways, and that’s it. Use a smartphone if you want your entertainment/dopamine fix.
Could you literally have your brain be hacked? That’s a huge concern.
In its basest form, isn’t that what advertizing is? :)
The idea of having a BCI, a device which can read, write and override thoughts is extremely concerning.
That’s…not what a BCI is, though? It’s just any direct interface between brain and computer. Doing anything with thoughts is not an inherent aspect of the concept—if you look at fiction you’ll see plenty of BCIs that are limited to receiving motor signals directed at them and sending sensory signals. And AFAIK a lot of current research into BCIs is focused on just reading motor signals (for prosthetics and such).
I’m getting most of my info from things like Neuralink which Musk has said will be able to “Cure” things like autism and schizophrenia, pretty sure he’s mentioned it’s ability to write/override thoughts directly before too. But even if he hasn’t the only way to “Cure” these issues would be to override/cancel out their thoughts.
That’s almost my worry how do we define “imperfections”. At a certain we begin to erase parts of our humanity. Even something seemly benign like curing deafness, would end up slowly killing off thousands of languages. Historical these things are tested on those deemed “retarded” first. Gay conversion “therapy” is widely agreed to be abusive, yet it’s fine to be used on autistics when it’s called “ABA”. The people spearheading this are Elon Musk, their concerned about “perfecting” society to fit their own interest.
As much as I like some of the companies he’s invested in, Musk isn’t exactly a reliable source of accurate scientific information.
Do you actually get that strong of reactions brining this topic up? I have conversations about this sort of thing kinda often.
I don’t disagree in general, but I do want to point out that, although parts of the evolutionary process are random, the selection is not (though it is a greedy process). There is a specific objective: the ability to survive as a species. Humans are very successful in performing this task, even outside their original environment. And I would argue the the main reason is their intelligence (the meaning of ‘intelligence’ is a different topic entirely, mind).
But yeah, evolution is a slooow process. Organisms are basically living on the dev branch and have to deal with bugs and weird legacy functions that seem to do nothing but cause problems when removed. On the other hand, if creationism is right, then Jesus christ the development period should have been longer than 7 days.
Anyway, about transhumanism itself. There is a mountain of literature about it and I’m not sure I have much to add personally. The main argument I have against it is: evolution has given the human body millions of years to improve and go through testing. It may not be the best, but it normally works (in the statistical sense). My main argument for it is that successful natural selection isn’t guaranteed get you anything more species-wide survival. It’s natural to want more than that.
So, improving the body? Sure. Want to phase out the appendix? Be my guest. But when you start messing with the brain, some things get weird. The sort of things that technological advancement can’t hand-wave away. Identity, action attribution, thought influence, etc. Since cognition enhancement is a fundamental part of transhumanism, I can’t embrace it wholeheartedly.
And in general, the human body makes the LHC look like a toy in terms of complexity. We need a measured approach when trying to modify it.
to be against it in general is completely insane.
I’m pretty unplugged about a lot of things. Is this actually a thing or just a few people chasing contrarian brownie points? Because it seems really asinine in the face of implants we already do like pacemakers.
I have absolutely seen people argue about the ‘sanctity of the human body’ and other such nonsense. There are entire religions based on rejecting medical since as it stands now and i doubt they’ll see the light when we can start wholesale replacing parts of our bodies.
And i wasn’t joking about the weird looks either!
I always look at those people weird if they have earrings. I never have had anyone make a moral argument about naturalism about earrings.
Oh for sure you can find contrarians on any subject. It’s more a matter if they’re numerous and influential enough to steer decision making.
Personally, I expect transhumanism to go down like any other trendy product - once it reaches a certain critical mass of convenience, even skeptics will quietly change their tune; people generally follow the path of least resistance (and relatedly, most convenience).
And i wasn’t joking about the weird looks either!
I dunno if I have much input to give on that without hearing out a look-giver’s perspective as well.
I don’t think this will happen by convenience, but rather by forced necessity. Some parts of the world are virtually impossible to live in without internet access or a smartphone right now because society forces demanded so.
I’ll split hairs by saying I still think it’s still the other way round. It is getting progressively harder to function in developed society without smartphones and internet, yes. But they weren’t always necessary, and their original consumer-side popularity stemmed from being convenient tools. At some point popularity reaches a criticality where it’s no longer popular, it’s the de-facto standard, and eventually a necessity as the standard becomes assumed.
It is splitting hairs, since I do think they’re different stages of the same overall process. But in contemplating whether a product will be ubiquitous in the first place, I think it’s more relevant to focus on the earlier, more tumultuous stages.
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I wouldn’t accept neuralink because it’s musk, the guy is even shifter then the average corpo. However if we’re just talking generic scifi brainjack I’d get that shit right now. The brain in the jar treatment wouldn’t be my preferred magical-surpass-humanity idea, but I’d totally take it, assuming some kinda uplink was installed of course.
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My concern is the brain it’s self is an imperfect organ and is linked to rest of our imperfect bodies. The brain is fundamentally linked to other organs, if an limb is removed the physical part of your brain the controls movement will change. Even the bacteria is also linked , to the point there is an significant different between the gut bacteria in neurotypicals and autistics. am fine with replacing a body part to keep your self alive, my brother was born cleft palate and would been have dead otherwise.
But I’m weary of making unneeded changes to the body for it’s own sake. Cosmetic surgery has already shown when you try to toy with the body for no reason. The body will actively reject silicon implants and cause infections. Even common things like pricings are prone to infection.
I’m personally not a fan of any device that is used to influence or “enhance” the human mind. The human mind is the core of the person, and any edits to that core is an erasure, at least in part, of the individual. Mental deficiencies, quirks, and “imperfections” are major aspects of the individual, and to erase those is, in my opinion, a dangerous precedent. The only time I would even entertain the notion of doing something of that sort would be for disabilities that are highly destructive to either the individual or others, and the individual has to ask for the change first, any system that encourages or coerces such a procedure should be seen for the eugenicist hell it is, no matter how “good” its intentions are.
Physical enhancements, if they were to reach the point of being Sci-Fi magic seem fine imo. The question of how much of our selves is because of the biology of our bodies (hormone regulation and other biological functions) would be the only thing that would give me pause on such procedures. As my body withers and dies, the idea of being revitalized, or hell, even being put in a jar Krang style doesn’t feel too terrifying to me, so long as my mind is still there. I wouldn’t personally partake in unnecessary enhancements without a need to continue persisting, although the idea of enhanced durability/survivability would likely be something I’d make an exception to, especially as time goes on.
For the transhumanistic concept of uploading your mind to the internet or otherwise cloning yourself, I find it to be impossible to transfer the true self into such a thing, and whatever being that comes of it is just a new being that believes it is me, and so I completely reject those, for partaking in them is to partake in my own suicide.
I mostly just want something that would allow me to communicate with a computer without destroying my hands.
