Re: Genetic transition to posthumanism

From: Emlyn (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Tue May 01 2001 - 00:39:02 MDT


J. Mathieu wrote:
[snipped stuff about nanotech & AI, which needs addressing, but by someone
else]
> I won't even get
> into the sociology of people turning themselves into robots.

Please do get into the sociology of people turning themselves into robots...
I'm intrigued to understand your point of view.

I've wanted to become one myself, ever since I saw the cybermen when I was
about 5, on Doctor Who (and Davros, my hero). Nowadays, experiencing early
degradations in my physical state, I'm more resolved to it than ever. I'm a
bit kooky about it... I don't care how weird, and "unnatural" it looks; in
fact, a bit of freakiness is a bonus to my mind.

> I myself like being human. What would you be without your humanity?
Something more? Maybe,
> but then again maybe you'll end up a lonely lost set of data in a make
believe world that some
> AI programmed. What is the point in that?

How do you know you are not such already? :-)

Seriously, I love being human too. Being human is excellent. My point of
view is that the truly natural progression for humans is to advance our
tools, and inevitably to merge with them. We are the ultimate creators and
manipulators, and there is nothing wrong with us turning those natural
predilections inward. It is an entirely human impulse, and its exercise is
as natural a course of action as any I could imagine.

The urge to explore, discover, to know? The urge to create? The urge to
reshape the universe as we see fit? I can't see that in changing myself
through advanced technology, that I would lose any of those fundamental
drives, unless I so choose. Where, then, has my humanity gone?

Think of it from another angle... Take an altered human, vastly altered, who
is over 100 years old, for example. Perhaps it's the cliched humanoid robot.
Perhaps it's the human-in-the-sim. Perhaps it's an uploaded mind,
distributed over a swarm of nanomachines, speeding away from the solar
system and across the void.You may talk about loss of humanity all you like,
but what is the "natural" alternative? Death. A dead body has no humanity
that I can point to; it is the opposite of human. As we are the very
definition of animate, so is our corpse the negation. Thus, an altered
human, a transhuman if you will, in retaining any humanity whatsoever, is
vastly preferable, even by your own metrics.

I think unaltered humanity has been done to death, if you'll pardon the pun.
I'm up for something else. It could end up being a stupid idea, to be sure.
It could all go horribly wrong! But I'm a bit irrational... I'm only human,
after all.

Emlyn



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