Transhumanism

[Tr6ai0ls4]

I think that if the technology ever came out it would of greater interest to corporations then to individuals. Individuals probably wouldn't even have to pay for their implants. Think about it... What if a CEO can make an investment in a worker that would quadruple their efficiency without having to raise their pay or pay 3 more employees? The augmentation itself would be payment enough.

I would love to not have to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom if it was ever possible. Not getting sick would be great as well, as I am pretty almost always sick.

As far as altruism goes, who knows what would happen. I dont think true altruism exists in this world though. Nobody does anything without some sort of self-interest at play. Even if the altruistic person is getting nothing out of it except for the satisfaction of doing a good deed for somebody else, that satisfaction in itself is enough to make that act no longer altruistic. The person would be commiting the act simply for the satisfaction of having done so. I dont think its possible for somebody to do something they truly dont want to do if they are not benefiting from it in some way, even if they are just avoiding guilt, or chasing satisfaction.

Altruism is good because our planet needs it. Period.

Not really... Our planet doesnt' really need anything. Its a planet. It doesn't care. Us humans talk about all this stuff, ohhh good for environment, good for the planet, blah blah blah .. What they really mean is .. oh good for me. There is no such thing as good for the environment in the overall sense of the word good. Its only good because its good for us. The environment itself doesn't care.

I actually somewhat agree with Mugen as much as I dislike his attitude about it. Its pretty dumb to not care about yourself and constantly do things that are detrimental to your existance.

I understand that this sets off an alarm in most peoples heads because of the moral implications. It seems heartless and evil to only care about oneself because its been taught to us through religion and whatever else that its good to care about others. However, everybody does it all the time without even realizing it. Be good to others, do good unto others, etc.. These are all just pretty meaningless morals that people have put values in, and for selfish reason. As an example, take the saying "do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This is a completely selfish moral. If you follow it, you're not really doing anything because you actually care about the other person, you're just doing it because YOU want to be treated a certain way in return.

I dont know.. I could see how talking about this usually results in an almost violent responses to defend and uphold the moral values which are accepted as being correct in todays society. Its very easy to become jaded when you see life this way as you are constantly provoked by others who dont get that you're not actually some evil heartless bastard and that in actuality you're not that much different from anybody else minus trying to take the moral high ground.

 

[elemenohpee]

I dont think true altruism exists in this world though. Nobody does anything without some sort of self-interest at play. Even if the altruistic person is getting nothing out of it except for the satisfaction of doing a good deed for somebody else, that satisfaction in itself is enough to make that act no longer altruistic. The person would be commiting the act simply for the satisfaction of having done so. I dont think its possible for somebody to do something they truly dont want to do if they are not benefiting from it in some way, even if they are just avoiding guilt, or chasing satisfaction.

What if that person rejected the dualsim between themselves and the rest of the universe? They would realize that what's good for the universe as a whole is good for "themselves" since they are a part of that whole. Does that make sense to anyone?

 

[socko]

^It still doesn't look like true altruism, as Tr6aiols4 seems to be defining altruism. Given that true altruism doesn't exist, that person would have rejected the dualsim between himself and the rest of the universe for a selfish reason. Even if it's for the satisfaction of doing something "good," to avoid guild, to feel happy, have a sense of oneness with the universe, or whatever.. it still looks like the they're not acting truly altruistic.
But they are acting about as altruisticly as a person can act.

 

[elemenohpee]

^^This is true. I guess the fact that you feel good when you do good things makes it a little impossible. But hey, if you want to do something for the good of humanity because you know its right, I say go for it

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

I'm with elemenophee. If true altruism doesn't exist, than neither does true selfishness, since the boundary between 'you' and 'everything else' is an imaginary one when it all comes down to it. What you do affects the rest of the universe, and what the rest of the universe does affects you. Is it easy to pinpoint at any moment which is acting and which is reacting? Not at all.

Without dark there would be no light. Without altruism selfishness is equally as meaningless.

This is, like most philosophy, a semantic game. Let's get practical. If someone is doing something at his own expense that benefits others, great! Period the end. Case closed. I fail to see anything to be gained by questioning the motives, unless someone is being harmed. Nor do I see any benefit to the individual, the greater human world, or the biosphere by knocking down an impossible abstraction of a straw man in order to justify reckless disregard for the well being of others. We've evolved an ability to care for others because it increases our own chance of survival. Again, great! Let's milk that for all it's worth and use it to save ourselves from ourselves.

I see nothing alarming about caring for others as an outgrowth or extension of care for onesself. Whoever said they're incompatible? Straw men belong in cornfields, Tr6ai0ls4.

Tr6ai0ls4, we are part of the environment. We ought to treat it with respect because it's a part of us and we of it. I don't know about you, but I think this whole 'sentient being' thing is pretty damn awesome -- a rare gift. You seen any more of it floating around the cosmos anytime recently? I think it's worth preserving simply for its own sake. I also think that because I'm a living being, and life's most basic drive is to perpetuate itself.

I find attitudes like Tr6ai0ls4's are the result of a feeling of disconnection from other people -- a problem that can be remedied.

 

[Akoto]

Transhumanism

What are your thoughts on it? Do you find it immoral or otherwise offensive? I personally agree with alot of what transhumanists are trying to do, but I can understand how it seems crazy to a lot of people. Telling people you want to get your mind uploaded into a computer is sure to get some strange looks. Is this something we should be doing? Is it inevitable? Where do you see this leading?

While I like the idea of consious human evolution, I can definitly see something like this going very wrong. We simply don't know enough about our own bodies to go around changing them in hopes of it becomming better.

Selective breeding is an option, but then again there are problems still with racism and desiding who defines what "better" is.

 

[Pegasus]

*chews gum thoughtfully* people like you truly and completely bemuse me. i just cannot imagine how it is that you and your ilk can purport to undertake rigorous intellectual or philosophical analysis while positing such a staggering number of unjustifiable assumptions. don't you ever think to turn your mightly intellect (*sniggers*) towards your inane assumptions and question those? for example, does it not ever occur to you to think 'errm wait a second, why do i care about the welfare of the entirety of homo sapiens sapiens again?'

This was written between bites of eggiwegs, lomticks of toast, and lovely steakiwegs.

 

[elemenohpee]

Excellently said MDAO. I think that just because an individual benefits from something doesn't mean it cannot be altruistic. As long as it leads to a greater good overall, as long as you are not harming someone else for your benefit, that should be considered altruistic. If we want to get rid of the whole individual/universe dualism, then whatever the universe does in order to benefit itself I would consider altruistic.

 

[Tr6ai0ls4]

I see nothing alarming about caring for others as an outgrowth or extension of care for onesself. Whoever said they're incompatible? Straw men belong in cornfields, Tr6ai0ls4.

Certainly not me. Go back and read what I wrote and show me where I said it was "alarming" or bad or whatever else. As for the straw men comment, next time, just stick to the topic without trying to give me a psychological analysis.

^It still doesn't look like true altruism, as Tr6aiols4 seems to be defining altruism.

I'm not defining it, the dictionary is.

Without altruism selfishness is equally as meaningless.

Neither one of them is meaningless. I never said they're meaningless, I just said that altruism doesn't exist, which I'll actually take back since you didn't understand what I was getting at. Altruism exists but people dont care, and thats ok cause if they did, we'd probably be dead. Its almost always better to be "caring for others as an outgrowth or extension of care for onesself," as you put it, and that is what everybody does.

We've evolved an ability to care for others because it increases our own chance of survival. Again, great! Let's milk that for all it's worth and use it to save ourselves from ourselves

Once again, I never claimed otherwise. You just simply misunderstood what I was getting at and then passed judgement on me + added your psychological analysis of me having a disconnect from people.

You know, for somebody whose alias is "mydoorsareopen," I didn't expect that type of attitude. Here you are basically saying that you're an open minded person, yet you judge others who see things from a different perspective. wtf?

Tr6ai0ls4, we are part of the environment. We ought to treat it with respect because it's a part of us and we of it.

And where did I disagree with that again? All I was saying is that when people talk about being good to the environment and the planet, they dont actually care about the environment or the planet. They care about not being able to breathe the air, or drink the water, or being too hot.. etc...

The environment can't be bad. We can't ruin it. We can't do anything bad to it if we tried. What we could do, is ruin it for ourselves. If there was no oxygen left, it would be bad for us not for the environment or the planet or the universe, or whatever else.. That isn't philosophy, that is just being objective...

I'm not at all saying we shouldn't treat it with respect or anything of the sort. You better believe I care whether we have good air to breathe, etc.. I just dont fool myself by thinking that I'm caring about the "environment".

Your post is a perfect example of something I just said... Here it is again..

I dont know.. I could see how talking about this usually results in an almost violent responses to defend and uphold the moral values which are accepted as being correct in todays society. Its very easy to become jaded when you see life this way as you are constantly provoked by others who dont get that you're not actually some evil heartless bastard and that in actuality you're not that much different from anybody else minus trying to take the moral high ground.

 

[Tr6ai0ls4]

I think that just because an individual benefits from something doesn't mean it cannot be altruistic.

Actually, yes it does.

 

[elemenohpee]

not under my definition:

If we want to get rid of the whole individual/universe dualism, then whatever the universe does in order to benefit itself I would consider altruistic.

 

[Tr6ai0ls4]

Then at this point .. Yes, it becomes semantics .. we can change definitions of words all day long without getting anywhere.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

I confess I knee-jerked on this one without reading the whole thread. My apologies, Tr6ai0ls4. I've heard the lack of true altruism used by uncompassionate asshats to justify their behavior too many times, I guess

I didn't mean to imply that that was you.

 

[elemenohpee]

Then at this point .. Yes, it becomes semantics .. we can change definitions of words all day long without getting anywhere.

That's why I tried to outline a new definition in my post. The conventional definition of altruism is plagued by this dualism between the self and the rest of the universe. Without that distinction, the very idea of some "self" benefitting becomes absurd. So in lieu of true altruism, I think this is what we should be striving for.

 

[Portillo]

Transhumanism

What are your thoughts on it? Do you find it immoral or otherwise offensive? I personally agree with alot of what transhumanists are trying to do, but I can understand how it seems crazy to a lot of people. Telling people you want to get your mind uploaded into a computer is sure to get some strange looks. Is this something we should be doing? Is it inevitable? Where do you see this leading?

I love these 2 quotes, because they speak of timeless truth.

contemporary obsessions with slenderness, youth, and physical perfection", which she sees as affecting both men and women, but in distinct ways, as "the logical (if extreme) manifestations of anxieties and fantasies fostered by our culture”

"simply to covet a prolonged life span for ourselves is both a sign and a cause of our failure to open ourselves to procreation and to any higher purpose. … [The] desire to prolong youthfulness is not only a childish desire to eat one’s life and keep it; it is also an expression of a childish and narcissistic wish incompatible with devotion to posterity."

 

[qwe]

Actually, yes it does.

what matters is the motivation for doing something

eg, if someone does action A in order to increase happiness to person B, without any other motivation to do that action, then it is an altruistic action

if it happens to increase his own happiness as well, it still is altruistic unless increasing his own happiness was part of the motivation for doing it

 

[ninjadanslarbretabar]

Transhumanism...
..."unnecessary aspects of the human condition"...

unnecessary...
hum, i think this is just a unevolved and limited way to deal with reality

i feel its like the "jesus will save you" philosophy

(the (technological ) Singularity is great but not the Transhumanism take on it)

 

[qwe]

^how is it 'limited' when its entire premise is pushing our limits (emotional, intellectual, physical capacities) as organisms (using technology)?

 

[psood0nym]

^I certainly wouldn’t say the idea is “unevolved” either. In fact, I always thought the best argument for transhumanism is precisely that humans will need get a handle on a kind of “self-determined evolution” just to keep civilization on track. Technology is advancing faster than we can safely and effectively assimilate it into our society, a hardware upgrade, at least among the elite, may be necessary simply as a matter of avoiding catastrophe. I say better give it a shot just in case.

I would also think that the really influential aspects of the transhumanist movement would be those focused on enhancing cognitive abilities based purely on genetics via somatic cell gene transfers, at least at first. Tsien’s work on the “doogie mice” is evidence that cognitive enhancement via genetic alteration can work, even in the dangerously convoluted environments of the human genome and brain (for example, the increased calcium influx that speeded Hebbian conditioning along in the treated mice did not immediately cause a widespread apoptotic (cellular suicide) reaction among the gene-altered neurons as some suspected it would).

The exciting thing about cognitive enhancement (for those not familiar) is the idea of compounding intelligences, where the “enhanced” minds are set to the task of finding better ways to enhance minds. These minds, we might think, would be able to find even better and safer ways to enhance the mind, with the added benefit of ever-advancing technological means of doing so. What kind of creature would result from this, what its motives might be, and what its relationship would be with us mere mortals is probably impossible to guess at if your IQ is under 250. Whether we try to keep a handle on the dangers of technology and information as the glorified chimps we are or attempt an “upgrade”, thereby risking subjugation by or even extermination by super-intelligent elites, we are rolling the dice.

 

[skywise]

I'm skeptical (big surprise, right?) that technology can make us more "enlightened". I think you're right that technology could eventually make us smarter. Because of this I think being smarter *can* hurt. I don't think we will put our intellect to good ends. I'd be afraid that if in the next 100 years we develop technology to make us super-intelligent that the results will be something along the lines of albert einstein and nucleur technology in the dark ages. If thats a little obscure, I'm basically saying that I think transhumanism will cause our intellectual powers to move foward at a much higher speed than our moral ones and result in disaster.

p.s. I don't know much about transhumanism but those are my initial thoughts based mostly on what I read in this thread.