What is your opinion on Transhumanism? On the future?

[Pinsir]

Here's the guy i was talking about,





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Thats pretty cool and scary!

[Alvarez]

Personally, I'm down for it... but at this point it's wishful thinking.

There's a great documentary you'd guys dig called Transcendent Man.
Goes into the whole theory and hope for what's to come.... or not.
It's pretty much about the futurist/inventor Ray Kurzweil.

[Marvel_Is]

Is it anything like Transformerism? If so, I would also like the ability to change my hand into a battle axe.

[Ebon]

It will be the future of humanity, once we get the technology to move past the shackles of biology. Kurzweil is probably too optimistic about a time-frame for this, but it will happen at some point.

Basically you're looking at a convergence between computer science, materials science, and biology - biology is the real hold-up at the moment because it's hideously complex. Every year, though, we find out more about how the brain works and how it processes information. We're still at the baby-steps part of the curve but we're still vastly further along than we were in, say, 1970. The big hold-up so far is the man-machine interface. I have every confidence we'll lick that within a century or so.

I'm pretty confident for having designer kids by mid-century or so - where you'll be able to pick levels of intelligence, racial characteristics, sex, orientation, probably predispositions towards certain talents.

My opinion on 'the future' is that you haven't seen anything yet. We're still at the stumbling adolescent stage of the Industrial Revolution - we've had barely a century of real progress and now that we've pretty much picked all the low-hanging fruit as it were, we're finding that getting further up the tree to be a little harder than we were initially led to believe. Yes, I'm as disappointed as everyone else that I don't have my personal robot servant and that my local airport doesn't list 'Luna' as a destination, but I don't take that as 'science sold me a bill of goods' that some seem to have done.

Things will continue to progress. I think global culture will change yet again, and we'll eventually tire of the media-fueled frenzy we've been partially distracted by for the last half-century.

[Charles RB]

Ha! That's funny. They know Xavier's school is a death sentence...

It gets better, Deathlok goes around telling everyone the specific probabilities that they will turn evil or die in the next few years.

It's fun for SF, but I'm skeptical that it would ever really happen on a large-scale basis in reality.

I forget who pointed it out, but there was someone on the net who pointed out that the singularity myth is based on widespread, ever-increasing tech as seen in the developed world and richer end of developed nations. So what about the other 2-3 billion humans? Where do they fit? (Answer being, nobody thought about them when doing the theory)

[Michael P]

On the other hand, there's mileage in a story where the first world uploads itself into the Matrix or whatever, and the rest of the world seizes the day and builds a real utopia now that the privileged are out of the way.

[MikeP]

As far as I can see, the only realistic form transhumanism will take is in the area of prosthetics. They are already making incredible progress in that area.

[MikeP]

I saw a dude on TV the other day who had one of the more advanced prosthesis' i've seen. It was some daytime TV show.

It looked liked one of the cybernetic arms people have in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and worked almost as well as a regular fleshy arm. What wasn't obvious, was how much crushing power it had, or if it could be upgraded with secreted blades, devastating firepower or concussive energy blasts.

I think that game had a very excellent vision of how future prosthetics might take shape. I don't think we'll have rioting in the streets, however.

[Charles RB]

On the other hand, there's mileage in a story where the first world uploads itself into the Matrix or whatever, and the rest of the world seizes the day and builds a real utopia now that the privileged are out of the way.

Hmm. That would be a good story, wouldn't it?

[Michael P]

As far as I can see, the only realistic form transhumanism will take is in the area of prosthetics. They are already making incredible progress in that area.

THAT stuff is awesome. I just wish nerds wouldn't leapfrog off of it to fantasize about how they're going to be cool ninja cyborgs in the Matrix.

[cgh]

Any speculation about the future has to come back to energy requirements. It's one thing to come up with neato stuff but it's another to power it and our entire society. Even if the Singularity or whatever happens, there are still billions of people on Earth who aspire to the standard of living enjoyed by the West.

This isn't some foamy-mouthed Commie talk but a pretty basic thermodynamic analysis. Here's what I'm referring to: https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math...-scale-energy/

The money quotes:

"Let me restate that important point. No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years. A word of warning: that power plant is going to run a little warm. Thermodynamics require that if we generated sun-comparable power on Earth, the surface of the Earth—being smaller than that of the sun—would have to be hotter than the surface of the sun!"

"But let’s not overlook the key point: continued growth in energy use becomes physically impossible within conceivable timeframes."

The thermodynamic end game on Earth is a greatly reduced population and an expectation of the end of economic growth. How these things will come to pass and how they will change our societies is a largely unaddressed question, although the follow-up post contains some further analysis: https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math...c-growth-last/

[Mikekerr3]

Parts will jhappen parts will not, you can seldom go wrong by considering anyone who claims to be able to predict the future accurately, or labels themselves a futurists is either a fool or a charlatan

[Guy Smiley]

I said don't get me started on that Singularity nonsense!

Seriously, I read a book by Kurzweil back in high school. Well, most of one. Basically I dropped it when it became blindingly obvious that logic wasn't the guy's strongest point. To paraphrase: "Man has conquered every threat to it's existence that it has encountered so far, and overcome every scientific hurdle that it has overcome, so therefore Mankind's 100% success rate means that it can never die or be slowed down in its progress."

... Yeeeah. Oh wait, there's more!

"Because of this, Moore's law will never, ever, ever hit a roadblock, and instead accelerate, meaning we will begin seeing computer power double every nanosecond! Computers will be so powerful we will be able to upload people's brains for a fraction of a penny, leading to the upload of everybody on Earth! Because some scientists claim that exact duplicates of a thing are the same thing, nobody will object to having their meat bodies, minds still intact from the upload process, thrown into incinerators en masse now that they're useless. Especially not the meat bodies themselves!"

So, no. When I talk about transhumanism, my thinking is genetic modification and prosthetics.

Humanity, meanwhile, is not looking so good on the "future-thinking" front. I could go on at length, but the topics would belong in other threads. I will condense things into "We're plunging like an out-of-control race car into simultaneous economic, ecologic, and sociologic crises that make what we are looking at now pitiful in comparison. Some of us are trying to step off the accelerator and will consider that "mission accomplished" even though we'll still be going forwards. Some are trying to step on the gas for whatever reason. Some are oblivious to the whole thing. Some are plotting on how they're going to rifle through all the other guys' corpses' pockets after the crash. Absolutely nobody is trying to put on safety helmets and engage the airbags."

[Mikekerr3]

Humanity, meanwhile, is not looking so good on the "future-thinking" front. I could go on at length, but the topics would belong in other threads. I will condense things into "We're plunging like an out-of-control race car into simultaneous economic, ecologic, and sociologic crises that make what we are looking at now pitiful in comparison. Some of us are trying to step off the accelerator and will consider that "mission accomplished" even though we'll still be going forwards. Some are trying to step on the gas for whatever reason. Some are oblivious to the whole thing. Some are plotting on how they're going to rifle through all the other guys' corpses' pockets after the crash. Absolutely nobody is trying to put on safety helmets and engage the airbags."

And if you read history, yo s will see that people have been making essential the same complaints since the dark Ages ended. By what epricic measure is being human worse than it was at any other time?

The good old days are faulty,memory, and ignore of the past teamed up with nostalgia to produce delusion