[HN Gopher] Transhumanism: What's the Plan? (2020)
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Transhumanism: What's the Plan? (2020)
Author : haltingproblem
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-02-27 19:43 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulskallas.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulskallas.substack.com)
| throw7 wrote:
| The Elflord and the Mayfly
|
| https://existentialcomics.com/comic/353
| cortesoft wrote:
| The flaw in the elf's argument is that they imply that "things
| to know" and "things to do" are finite, that they are stuck
| with infinite time but finite activities and knowledge to fill
| that time with.
|
| Knowledge is infinite.
| WJW wrote:
| Is it? That remains to be seen. At the very least, it seems
| likely that "relevant" knowledge is not infinite. Sure, it
| seems likely that there will be an unending amount of
| knowledge about fictional universes like Star Wars or Middle
| Earth, because content creators "fill it up" with more lore
| faster than you can consume. But is that really worth
| spending eternity on?
| hn8788 wrote:
| Another example is Gabe Newell, who has taken a big interest in
| AI, VR, and Brain-Computer-Interface technology as he gets older.
| It's a different approach though, because instead of trying to
| keep your body healthy, you just control a virtual body that will
| always have perfect health.
| ta988 wrote:
| I love how people go to believe this is in any way possible
| with current technology. It is exactly like when people thought
| you could just make an intelligent agent with brass gears and
| pulleys.
| emteycz wrote:
| Very interesting article, thanks! Where can I find out more about
| this topic? Are there online communities?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| There are, but this article isn't terribly accurate. (It's not
| _bad_ , but it's not as good as the Wikipedia article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism)
|
| Stuff like this:
|
| > _Indeed, since we live in a post religious world now, they
| will become gods themselves. Transhumanism is a contemporary
| version of a modern project of human self-deification._
|
| is mostly just sensationalism; most transhumanists I know of
| don't think like that.
| pepperonipizza wrote:
| Which is the most active community online outside of
| r/transhumanism?
| rglullis wrote:
| Could you provide any counterexample? What you call
| sensationalist I would call almost tautological: those who
| want to find a way to live forever reject natural order of
| life and all of its metaphysics.
| hn8788 wrote:
| I think the sensational part is where it describes
| transhumanists as wanting to become deities, not just live
| long healthy lives. I personally think it's a natural path
| to go down, in a similar vein as clothing, tools, and air
| conditioning. There are definitely ethical issues, like
| poor people not being able to afford augmentations and
| compete in the world, but I think elective
| medical/mechanical enhancements are an inevitability.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I'm curious why anyone would think TH was all about
| rejecting the natural order of life and all of its
| metaphysics.
|
| To me it seems more like falling prey to some very obvious
| and predictable instinctual drives without being
| consciously aware of it.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| depends on which transhumanists I guess. There's certainly a
| lot that are obsessed with the singularity and the God-AI,
| which seems to be to be a post-religious projection of
| Christian Rapture. Or mind-uploading, or cryonics, or other
| over-simplified approaches to something like immortality. But
| there's also those who are interested in things like the
| quantified self, human physical/cognitive enhancement,
| bioengineering, that sort of thing. It's a big tent.
| ggreer wrote:
| One big difference is that the Christian rapture only
| rewards believers and punishes nonbelievers with eternal
| torture. The goal of transhumanism is to allow _everyone_
| to live as long and as healthy of a life as possible. Also
| transhumanism doesn't promise immortality. Best case,
| consciousness would persist until the heat death of the
| universe. A very long time, but infinitely less time than
| infinity.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| > One big difference is that the Christian rapture only
| rewards believers and punishes nonbelievers with eternal
| torture.
|
| Isn't this basically the same as Roko's basilisk?
|
| It isn't really a big difference anyway. Both are
| pursuing an instant of uplifting immortality. The fact
| that the 'new' form is non-exclusionary is just like the
| fact that it's non-religious: unimportant.
|
| > Also transhumanism doesn't promise immortality. Best
| case, consciousness would persist until the heat death of
| the universe. A very long time, but infinitely less time
| than infinity.
|
| sounds like a distinction without a difference.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Christian eschatology is much more complicated than what
| you've said.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology
| ggreer wrote:
| I was using the simplified definition of the rapture that
| the parent poster was most likely referencing. I'm aware
| that different sects have different beliefs about what
| happens to nonbelievers. Still, the vast majority of
| Christians do not think that atheists, Muslims,
| Buddhists, or Scientologists will get into heaven.
|
| Also the article you linked to does not contradict me:
|
| > The rapture is an eschatological term used by certain
| Christians, particularly within branches of North
| American evangelicalism, referring to an end time event
| when all Christian believers--living and dead--will rise
| into Heaven and join Christ.
| emteycz wrote:
| I'm very interested in the second group, especially in
| topics around mind. Do you have any tips where I could meet
| these people?
| exdsq wrote:
| The extropian mailing list has both groups on it,
| including some fairly 'big' names in the field. Hal
| Finney was a member before he died and is cryogenically
| preserved, I met Anders Sandburg on there once who works
| on things like whole-brain emulation.
| mindcrime wrote:
| https://transhumanism.reddit.com
| morpheos137 wrote:
| https://hedweb.org
|
| Nothing has happened since 1996 or whenever; lets you know how
| impractical it all is. Fascinating sci-fi read though.
| [deleted]
| yurielt wrote:
| Plan?
| topynate wrote:
| Not sure why "lindyman" is on the front page but it's not too
| surprising. He's talking about the transhumanist plan. Very well,
| let's talk about that. Hormones, anti-aging, even cryonics are
| not the plan, but rather short-terms tactics. The transhumanist
| plan is to change nature - to restructure reality so that
| morality becomes as intrinsic as gravitation. Death, per
| transhumanism, is an evil, or even the only true evil. So it
| follows morally that death must be excised from reality itself.
| That's the plan. (How's _that_ for impracticality?) Everything
| else is just doing a hecking science.
|
| If that sounds cool then the places to find out about it and to
| talk about it are Less Wrong and Scott Alexander's substack. In
| no way do I consider myself affiliated to transhumanism as a
| movement, but I do, still strongly encourage exploring the ideas.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| I don't see what restructuring reality to make morality as
| intrinsic as gravity has to do with anything. If the plan is
| "to not die" then that does not have to be inspired by anything
| deeper than the basic human instinct that makes us not want to
| die.
| topynate wrote:
| This would make Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, a
| transhumanist. His fear of death had him seeking an
| immortality potion. This was about 2200 years ago. But this
| wasn't an "-ism" - just instinct, as you say.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Are you saying it's not exactly the same, then? What's the
| difference, besides the technology we have now?
| topynate wrote:
| It's not the technology as such, because the technology
| to defeat death doesn't exist right now. It's the
| systematisation of the anti-death instinct, creating an
| ideology that logically justifies that instinct and
| fleshes out the full implications of being thoroughly
| against death. Qin didn't do that of course - this was
| the "burning of books and burying of scholars" dude. I
| think modern technology is a prerequisite for
| transhumanism in the sense of making it possible to think
| in a transhuman way, but that doesn't make transhumanism
| identical to technology, or to using technology to live
| longer.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| I guess it's just a matter of perspective. In my view the
| systematisation of _anything_ is a part of modern
| technology, and if Qin was alive today he would surely do
| the same.
| Vinnl wrote:
| > death must be excised from reality itself. That's the plan.
|
| I feel like I must be missing something in your comment, but...
| Saying how something must be doesn't sound like a plan? It's a
| goal, but it seems like a plan should detail how to achieve
| that goal?
| rrdharan wrote:
| You meant immortality, not morality, right?
| topynate wrote:
| It's a two-step manoeuvre: one, morality is "immanentised",
| meaning, it's made into an essential and necessary part of
| reality, and two, immortality is taken as the moral Good. You
| can also refine this by justifying immortality as the Good on
| utilitarian grounds (for example, so that euthanasia isn't
| ruled out a priori).
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Is Scott Alexander into transhumanism? He's never seemed
| particularly focused on it to me. I guess it's part of that
| whole self-proclaimed rationalist milieu.
| topynate wrote:
| He was on LW for a good while, but it's not his focus, no.
| However, his substack is a good place to have a chat about
| it.
| naebother wrote:
| > We are the first society in which being an elder is not
| indicative of superior fitness.
|
| What? Old people have never been looked up to for their superior
| fitness.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Yeah, so a lot of folks who take Adderall and Vyvanse actually
| need it just to function normally. The speculative b.s. does a
| real disservice to those folks.
| grawprog wrote:
| I know this probably won't fly well here...but i'm fundamentally
| opposed to most of transhumanism.
|
| The basic premise of transhumanism rests on the idea that humans
| should transcend nature and shape the world and all life,
| including humanity, into a world shaped by humans.
|
| I really despise this idea for so many reasons...
|
| Humans, despite their arrogance are incapable of even basically
| managing this planet. We know basically nothing about its proper
| functioning and we arrogantly assume we should take
| responsibility of it all and shape it and all the life here as we
| choose.
|
| Humans have barely managed to keep a functioning society together
| in the brief 10000 years or so we've been trying to have one.
| 6000 years if we're going back to the beginnings of agriculture
| and such.
|
| To think we have even the slightest idea as to how to control
| nature and this world that's existed for billions of years is
| completely ridiculous.
|
| The fundamentals of transhumanism are no different than the
| fundamentals that led judeo-christian religions to exploit and
| destroy the world.
|
| The idea that somehow, either through divine gift or supreme
| intelligence, this world belongs to us and should be used and
| shaped how we please.
|
| We presume we should expand beyond life itself, yet all we manage
| to do on this earth is destroy and conquer.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Your own stance does not seem completely devoid of judeo-
| christian rhetoric either, though, to put it mildly.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| How did Judaism and/or Christianity exploit and destroy the
| world? I have no idea what you are referring to, genuinely
| curious. If you mean wars, then that seems more a generic human
| tendancy than a religious one
| rabidrat wrote:
| Genesis 1:28:
|
| > And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful,
| and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and
| have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of
| the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the
| earth.
|
| This is foundational Judaism/Christianity, and is the evident
| subtext behind many of the movements that have led to its
| dominance. To wit: the Crusades, conquistadors, manifest
| destiny, catholic missions, modern evangelism. Domination and
| exploitation are consistent principles embedded within the
| culture and religious framework.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Transhumanism is impractical dystopian bullshit. When we can't
| make a taxi hailing app (uber) that is under 300 MB (because of
| "complexity," i.e. organisational failure), I find the idea of
| re-inventing the human being to be laughable.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| How in the world do those have anything to do with each other?
| Is Uber the peak of human technology?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's not about Uber, it's about the fact that we have a lot
| of experience with etching silicon while having almost no
| clue how to optimise our own behaviours for maximum
| collective intelligence.
|
| And until we do we're not going to be able to build lasting,
| stable systems for humans to live in.
|
| Hyper-upgrading human hardware without understanding our own
| psychology is going to to make our already dysfunctional
| systems even more hostile and aggressively un-survivable.
| ta988 wrote:
| It is especially a concern for me as many of the more vocal
| proponents and moving forces of transhumanism overlap
| greatly with the people pushing completely inhuman and
| dysfunctional technologies.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| They don't except perhaps some absurd stereotyping of the
| mythical "techbro" who exists in the doublethink
| superposition of antisocial loner loser who never even
| touched hands with a girl and a overgrown frat douchebag
| serial sexual harasser until one state is convenient to use
| as an attack. It is an ad hominem that shows they aren't even
| trying for logic just being a dumb emotion pump pushing one
| dimensional good and correct and bad and wrong axis to sway
| by association. He is ugly therefore he is likely to rob you
| kneejerk narcissistic 'logic'.That digression into sadly
| prevalent memes aside.
|
| "Cannot" fundamentally misunderstands the design goals. It is
| a mass market product where one of the major end goals is
| presentation so it propagates.
|
| One could go with a demoscene essentially CLI user interface
| with compressed maps but there wouldn't really be a user base
| for it defeating the point of a connection app.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > Is Uber the peak of human technology?
|
| Sure it is, according to the invisible hand.
|
| It pays better than just about any other job you can get
| working in technology. If economics is about how humanity
| chooses to allocate scarce resources, the peak achievements
| of human technology are taxi apps and online ads.
| dudeman13 wrote:
| Using capitalism to define what is peak human technology or
| not seems silly to me.
|
| Humanity is historically bad at allocating their scarce
| resources. Faster horses and all that.
| exdsq wrote:
| On a more optimistic note, we're flying an autonomous
| helicopter on Mars. I wouldn't look at (even successful)
| consumer apps as a metric of our engineering and computing
| abilities!
| ta988 wrote:
| No, you're absolutely right, but the fact that many of our
| best brains are used to just sell more ads to sell more
| things to sell more ads is concerning... Same with the best
| brains being used to "disrupt" things without taking humans
| into account.
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