>At 05:05 PM 2/27/98 -0500, DOUG.BAILEY@EY.COM wrote:
>
>>Extropian art? I've just do not get it. What is the
>>significance of art by people who actively strive for
>>transhumanism.
>
>Some transhumans are artists. Their work, as professionals or as hobbyists,
>is very dear to them. Their art provides them with a venue to explore and
>expose ideas -- a means to express their views of transhumanity.
>
>What is the significance of science by transhumans? What is the
>significance of developing technologies by transhumans? What is the point
>of writing transhuman science fiction, or transhuman non-fiction? What is
>the point for designing healthy foods, or working out? What is the point of
>living, for that matter?
IAN: Natasha asks all the right questions that spontaneously
answer themselves (talk about efficient!). But at the same
time Doug raises an important question that pertains to the
meaning of transhuman. I think that the answer here is that
"transhumanization" is not equivalent to "dehumanization,"
even though such an equivalence can be extrapolated from
the term "transhuman."
To become transhuman need not imply becoming dehumanized.
What is the point of living forever is all sensory pleasure
is nullified? I suspect that our desire to live revolves
around the desire to experience more pleasure and joy. Art
is joy. And "art" is more that graphics: to the mathematician
math is more than empty numbers, to the mathematician there
is beauty and thus joy and de facto art in the math. So "art"
is far more than the class of things commonly called "art."
A broader definition of art could be: an ordering of elements
that invokes sensual experience, generally pleasurable exper-
ience. Recently I vacationed in Naples, Florida, and walking
around those fabulous homes and trees I realized that I was
walking in art, I realized that what made the area I was in
so "high class" and beautiful was simply the artistic, and as
such sensually pleasurable, ordering of all the atoms in the
area. If you took all those same atoms and scrambled them
up, it could be a mess, a slop house. So art is an ordering
of elements the sum of which produces a sensual experience;
a sensual experience that would not exist if all those same
elements assumed a different order. In that respect, art
transcends the physical entities of which it is composed,
and in some way that is also what transhumanism is about.
Life without joy, life without art, is not life, and there-
fore an eternal life without "art" is not an eternal life.
So I think the point here, with respect to the mechanics of
transcendence, is that the uploaded human that is uploaded
into a system that does not allow for the experience of joy,
is as good as dead. I suspect that you cannot be a computer,
and therefore some giant steps forward are necessary before
the full transhumanist ideal can become a plausible reality.
And it stands to reason that an understanding of what is art
is an integral feature of understanding what it is to be a
human and thus what it will take to become a transhuman.
**************************************************************
VISIT Ian Williams Goddard ---> http://www.erols.com/igoddard
______________________________________________________________
IDENTITY MATRIX | I D E N T I T Y C O N S E R V A T I O N
-----------------| The basis of logic is identity (ID). The
1 2 3 | basis of ID is difference. Degrees of dif-
_________ | ference can be quantified as ID units. The
1 | 0 1 2 | | ID Matrix shows the ID units of three num-
| | | bers, and may do so unto infinity. The ID
2 |-1 0 1 | | units of each number are derived from the
| | | others, and therefore ID is holistic not
3 |-2 -1 0 | | atomistic. As the sum of all ID units unto
----------- | infinity equals 0, identity is conserved.
_________________|____________________________________________
GODDARD'S METAPHYSICS-> http://www.erols.com/igoddard/meta.htm
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D I S T R U S T A U T H O R I T Y