Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

Anyhow, we’ll set the rest of that discussion aside for now, since I want to clarify how I differ from some of the others.

I don’t believe in the purely mind-pattern definition of self.

I don’t see uploads, if possible, as being identical people to the originals.  You might be able to Ship-of-Theseus something to cross that causal barrier, but then you have to actually Ship-of-Theseus it to get the appropriate causal entangling.

If I get shot, and you re-instance a brain backup into the blank nervous system of some sort of empty clone doll, I don’t wake up - the clone does.

My suspicion has only grown greater on this with the whole quantum stuff.

…not that having a near-identical clone go on without me isn’t at least somewhat comforting as an idea, but then, so is a nice grave compared to naught at all.

[cultureulterior]

What about sleep?

[mitigatedchaos]

It’s the same physical hardware, and I think that makes a difference.

[its-okae-carly-rae]

Does that apply to your hypothetical digital copies as well, do they have to go through elaborate protocols of continuous operation to transfer from one datacentre to another without dying, or is it just the flesh-to-silicon transition that has this problem?

[mitigatedchaos]

do they have to go through elaborate protocols of continuous operation to transfer from one datacentre to another without dying,

I would think so, but I am less likely to believe that consciousness is purely classical these days.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

It's okay to fear death if you don't let that fear control you. We should be pushing the spare capacity for risk we've generated, not resting and letting our potential go to waste. The same applies to any future capacity medical advances generate. To put it in the crudest possible terms, immortality is for pussies. Choose instead to die gloriously.

The grand irony is that all the other medical technologies acquired along the way as part of the general pattern of technological development necessary to achieve enhanced lifespans would very well allow me to achieve much more of my potential.

…to have energy, to have focus, to have executive functioning, for all these to be much less of a battle, why did you think I wanted to live so long in the first place?

There’s a lot of art to make, way more than can be crammed into a single human lifetime, much less a single dysfunctional human lifespan.

The “but living longer will remove meaning from human life!” arguments were always somewhat bizarre to me.  Making a book, or a comic book, or a movie, it takes a long time!

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anyhow, we’ll set the rest of that discussion aside for now, since I want to clarify how I differ from some of the others.

I don’t believe in the purely mind-pattern definition of self.

I don’t see uploads, if possible, as being identical people to the originals.  You might be able to Ship-of-Theseus something to cross that causal barrier, but then you have to actually Ship-of-Theseus it to get the appropriate causal entangling.

If I get shot, and you re-instance a brain backup into the blank nervous system of some sort of empty clone doll, I don’t wake up - the clone does.

My suspicion has only grown greater on this with the whole quantum stuff.

…not that having a near-identical clone go on without me isn’t at least somewhat comforting as an idea, but then, so is a nice grave compared to naught at all.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[kissingerandpals]

Transhumanism just sounds really gay but also inevitable so I guess we’re all going to be gay cyborgs one day

[mitigatedchaos]

I believe it will involve a lot of literal, rather than metaphorical, homosexuality.

The first generation to gain the ability to change to a new sex easily and cheaply and completely passing (on a physical level) will also start experimenting with new sex configurations, probably.  For the generation after that, it will be normalized, and manipulation of hormones at key points in development may used to guide sexual orientation towards bisexual or pansexual.

So yeah, gay cyborgs.  

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

honestly I’d really appreciate it if people who dislike transhumanism point me in the direction of why

[discoursedrome]

The main reason is that most people I’ve encountered were big boosters of transhumanism seemed to consider it a kind of cheat code for fundamental social and ecological problems – in other words, they conceptualize it as a way to get easy answers to hard problems, with the details left extremely vague. Very often they seemed to have a fantasy of technological wonders saving them from death and taxes. So, that all goes in the same bucket as other sorts of utopianism.

I’m not against the idea of using technology to solve our problems, even if it means changing ourselves in the process, but that isn’t some kind of new thing, it’s a continuation of the same process as the invention of agriculture, in the same way that GMOs are a continuation of ancient crossbreeding. Calling that “transhumanism” implies a quasi-religious millennarian outlook, which makes me extremely wary. It seems like a way to get religious salvation out of technology for a lot of people, and that is not the kind of outlook I want someone to have when tinkering with radical, dangerous civilization-scale technology.

[mitigatedchaos]

I don’t think it actually solves race or gender, per se…  I mean, kind of.  It sort of explodes them instead, and new issues are created, but often dealing with the new issues will be preferable to the old ones.

What does race discourse look like when you can change your race?  Or less radically, when you can copy all the non-appearance genes from whatever race you like?

What does meritocracy look like when everyone already has the basic “good” genes and massive, expensive genetic problems only exist in the time-local version of anti-vaxxers?

What does gender discourse look like when people can change their sex easily?

Et cetera.

I think it’s net beneficial to go there, but I see it as important that we are prepared, first.

(Also, notice how totally unprepared most WNs are for these changes.)

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

honestly I’d really appreciate it if people who dislike transhumanism point me in the direction of why

[mitigatedchaos]

Some of it is consequential - there are some potential dark futures in that direction.  But I think mostly, they’re at peace with their sex, their body, and with aging, so H+ seems like an alien, “arrogant,” or “immature” value system to them.

[argumate]

kinda independent though? like I’m at peace with not being splattered across a mountainside but I don’t get enraged at people who fly wingsuits.

[mitigatedchaos]

Once the Transhuman Genie is out of the bottle, there’s no putting it back.  The alternative of banning it prevents them from having to become the cyberpunk version of the Amish, leaving them in the mainstream.

To pick another example, letting gays get married also means living in a society in which gays can marry, in which that becomes normal, even if you don’t get gay married.  And that’s a bit less irrevocable!

So if you don’t want to see what Tumblr users will become when allowed access to 2090-era robotic surgeons, implanted computers, and automated tissue engineering facilities, you have to oppose it before it starts.

You’ll also die because a cure for whatever disease you have won’t exist, or else your body will fall apart, but you already didn’t care as much about that, soooo…

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

By the by, @kissingerandpals, one of the reasons I’m not a pure Capitalist is that I think such things should be voluntary, even living in communities based on it.

If you are a purist Capitalist and not a Transhumanist, then I suggest abandoning Capitalist purism.  In the long run, Capitalism will sell you out to Transhumanism unless it is leashed by a strong hand.  Its alignments with traditionalism in some cases are less to do with its fundamental nature as technology increases, and more to do with other factors (like not needing the same structure to enforce as the economy of the USSR).

[mitigatedchaos]

I am not a capitalist, I do not know how you came to this conclusion.

“If” wasn’t a throwaway word, I really did mean “if you are…”.  

A lot of the people who are against Transhumanism are also Traditionalists and Capitalists, who have bought into the right-wing moral justification for Capitalism.

I disagree with the right-wing moral justification for Capitalism, partially because I worry about some of the dark futures it may create, so I leverage people’s hatred for/fear of cybernetics and the like in order to convince them to ditch it.

If not you (maybe you’re a Communist or a Distributist or something), then one of the other readers will be both averse to Transhumanism and a moral Capitalist.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@kissingerandpals: #what is wrong with transhumanists #hasn’t technology ruined our lives enough?

No God in Heaven, no Devil in Hell.  The only paradises can be the ones we make for ourselves, and one man’s paradise is another man’s torment.

My paradise, the body I want, doesn’t come standard, so the only thing to do is build the society capable of producing it.

Come to me with real magic and I might reconsider.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[quoms]

all these immortality people are in like their 20s max. you’re physically in your prime and you’ve been cognizant for less than a fourth of the total time you can expect to live. incredible hubris

[mitigatedchaos]

What, that they might make it this time, or that they should? Because it isn’t particularly arrogant to not want to die.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[maddeningscientist]

local social corner talks a lot about the Glorious Transhumanist Morphological Freedom Future

but like as commonly described i’m not sure that’s a world where i’d actually want to like

live

u know

[maddeningscientist]

metagorgon said: ynot?

itsbenedict said: ?

it is v amusing to me that i didn’t expect ppl to find this puzzling

uh non-exhaustive collection of reasons

A) i don’t like being obsolete.  i like solving problems and building cool things and stuff, and i like it when those things are useful.  

a_1) it tends to go along with something resembling Fully Automated Luxury Communism Where Machines Will Do Anything For You If You Ask

a_2) it tends to allow for arbitrary intelligence boosts and/or hivemind creation

a_3) i don’t think i want to live within range of either of those things because A

B) takes a very gung-ho attidute toward modifying minds which i consider a thing to be done Extremely Cautiously

b_1) i should not be able to make significant changes to myself on impulse. especially not irreversible ones.

C) many of the Ideal Forms i have heard described i would not actually ever want to be in the presence of, often due to effects relating to B

D) pettiest objection: monsters are not my aesthetic :V

[wirehead-wannabe]

E) I REALLY do not want to end up in a Red Queen race where everyone is recklessly modifying themselves so they aren’t at a mental or physical disadvantage relative to their neighbors.

[mitigatedchaos]

In the future, this era of involuntary death, famine, and war will be thought of as in some ways a more innocent time where the barriers of reality as we intuitively know them were only just starting to break down.

I will miss the year 2007.  However, for those unwilling to die, there is no choice but some level of Transhumanism.

What we do in this time, however, matters perhaps more than at any previous time in human history.  The ideological justifications for Capitalism as a moral system rather than a means to an end (merely a pragmatic choice based on its effectiveness) must be destroyed if total competition is not going to destroy everything we hold dear.

Honestly tho I just want to be Motoko Kusanagi or Hideo Kuze plzthx.