(no subject)

[beetiger]

Although I really enjoy hanging out and dreaming with people who are, I'm definitely not a transhumanist.

I think one of the reasons probably overlaps with one of the reasons that I'm not a Christian. I'm wary of any philosophy that focuses on the "next world" while not paying enough attention to this one. I'm afraid of feeling disconnected from the things that are right in front of me. I love the warmth of sun and the stars in the sky and the smell of ozone from rain on pavement and the sound of human voices singing, not just because of my experience of them, but because of the mundane conceptual background that tells me that they are there, and real. From this spot in my life, I like the reality that now matters, because we don't have forever. I still really think this is one of the things that drives us to do the work that does, in fact, move our world into the future.

This pregnancy makes me feel very biological. It's draining, in some ways, and I certainly am not happy about the temporary loss of the ability to think as critically as usual, but essentially it's a marvel. There's a groundedness about knowing that my body knows how to make a person, a person who is currently squirming and kicking and is going to do something that I've never dreamed of, in a world I'm never going to see. Check in with me in a few decades and ask again, but right now, I think I'm going to be ready to give the world to him to do that.

Maybe I'm not a transhumanist because I don’t think I'm likely to be as smart as the people who come after me, if I'm willing to step aside and leave them the world to play in. Maybe I'm not a transhumanist because I want to love this life to its fullest, and I really don't believe we are ready to succeed in time for me to realize those dream, and that fills me with frustration, rather than anticipation. Maybe I'm just lucky enough to be living in a body that mostly works. Maybe I'm just not very ambitious.

But I don't see much of a point in living forever if we haven't even figured out yet how to fully live right here, right now.

Comments

[pyat.livejournal.com]

What do you mean by transhumanist? Is this similar to were or otherkin?


*curious mouse*

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Not particularly related, no, except in that it's a philosophy that tends to attract people who are dissatisfied with their human bodies as they stand.

Briefly, transhumanism is a school of thought that feels that the next stage in human growth and evolution is to step out of the limitations of our human bodies using technology. Robotic/cybergenic enhancements, cryogenics, cloning, life extension and aging reversal are all topics of interest.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Ahh, okay. I know of folks with those beliefs.

[tygermoonfoxx.livejournal.com]

I'm not a transhumanist either, possibly for the same reasons you listed. One of my biggest beefs with the Christian church was the practice of denying oneself the pleasures of this world because it would all be there for you in the next.

I'm a sensual person and so I'd rather experience everything totally on a day-to-day basis. THus I end up treating every day as though it were possibly the last.

[werellama.livejournal.com]

Amen girlfriend!

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

I want to live forever precisely because it's such a big job to figure out how to live right here, right now. Why waste the effort by dying before you have time to make any real progress?

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

You took the words out of my audio output device. Also, transhumanism holds out the thought that we might actually become _smarter_, or that at least our machines might, and then perhaps we'd do a better job of running our lives and correcting all the horrible damage we've done to ourselves and the biosphere.
But on the other hand, my faith in transhumanism/singularity/the power of technology in general has taken a hit lately. It's nice to have insanely advanced hardware, but most of the important decisions are made at the software level. We have tons of resources, technology and smarts right now, but those riches are mostly squandered on trivialities or disastrous folly. For the most part, we aren't even _looking_ for the answers to the most important questions about our future -- and that's because of our society's misplaced priorities and bad memes. What we really need is _wisdom_, another highly subjective term, but one that regardless isn't likely to show up in implantable chip form anytime soon.
This leaves me in the disquieting position of putting my hopes for the future on _human beings_. Yikes.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

[I think I ended up just restating what you said in my own terms.]

Right: hardware, which has improved and will improve according to Moore's law until it doesn't anymore, can only make processes faster and more reliable, not more correct. Wisdom is in software.

But where does wisdom come from? Experience, integrated with existing wisdom. Faster I/O means experience comes in faster and faster CPUs mean it can be integrated faster. So to me it's still credible that we can have Really Wise AI by starting with something as wise as we can write (perhaps even just an image of a human mind) and giving it an imperial arsetonne of bandwidth and CPU cycles with which to advance itself. We just need to bootstrap things up to that level, either by augmenting the brain or by improving our programming techniques, and a lot of these processes are still hardware-limited.

This is where the priorities and the memes that set them come in, of course. I could rant about this for a long time, but my priorities are misplaced; I must resume extracting resources from my small organization that exists to extract resources from large organizations programmed to extract resources from my countrymen and destroy them in order to destroy or control resources belong to other people. Because, you know, actually using resources to accomplish things other than the acquisition of more resources is bad. Maybe the right chip in my brain would give me the sense to quit my job and write the software I want to write.

[neillparatzo.livejournal.com]

This is so true. Life is hard. Give me some time to figure it out, for Christ's sake!

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

I think I am too deeply influenced by early reading of the FULL Gulliver's Travels (J. Swift) to ever want to live forever.

[mister-wolf.livejournal.com]

I myself don't think hope for the future is incompatible with enjoying the here and now, with regard to transhumanism or Christianity.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Nor do I, really. In fact, I have a ton of hope for the future. The transhumanists --and Christians-- whom I know well and like best, often can walk the right side of the fine line between hoping for the future and focusing on it to the exclusion of the enjoyment of the present.

I guess I think that the main hope for the future lies in a real focus on the present, and I don't want to lose that.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Thanks, my basic sentiments too. More detailed response coming soon (even if only over cafe desserts in a week), but my basic response is that the most important thing about transhumanism is the "humanism."

To me, it's about reversing the recent historical trend of technology being a means to put human beings to mechanistic uses and alienate them from the things they do best and most uniquely -- feeling, loving, contemplating, dreaming...

Some of the obstacles to those humanistic goals seem like natural ones, and we're afraid to surmount them, because we've taken them so much for granted. But there's plenty we can do in the here and now to take charge of our social and physical environment, use the tools our nature gave us to enhance the way we think, and use our technology to break the production-and-consumption cycle we're stuck in.

It's really just about questioning and testing the boundaries of what makes us human, believing we could have an active role in that definition and in our own evolution. It's not something that has to be accomplished purely with cold servomotors and nanopaste -- in fact, I don't think it can be. Dropping acid on a moonlit evening, reading about multiple personalities and recognizing that fragmentation in every human being, applying Zen deconstructive techniques to the mind, even dressing up like a vixen, if it's done as a deliberate show of the arbitrariness of "humanness" is IMHO part of the transhuman project. The spaceships and brain transfers are just a particularly showy part of it...

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

*laughs* All right, I'll admit, some of the lack-of-appeal for me about classic transhumanism is the aesthetic. I'm a nature lovin' hippie at heart. The part you describe about testing our limits in the context of the rest of our current world *does* in fact appeal to me. The idea of learning better ways to communicate with each other and find our home in the universe does, too.

But I guess I really think that our mortality is a driver of humanness I'd hate to see us lose. I also believe that body-knowledge is part of what we need to learn. Also, call me a neo-Wiccan dipshit, but I sincerely believe that there are things we've probably forgotten as we've gotten more divorced from our environment, things we ought to know.

It's really the life-extension drive that bothers me most, I think. There's learning in being around a long time, but there's also stagnation. I guess I'm unimpressed by the world I imagine would exist by just keeping an enhanced version of those of us here now for a much longer time, versus the one I imaging the people after us could build. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with the disease curing progress we've made over the last cnetury or so, and I'm not sure exactly how long I think is getting to be too long.

[werellama.livejournal.com]

I don't want to live in this body forever...and I don't want any mechanical enhancements to keep me alive...but I do want to come back and try again if I don't find enlightenment in this life time. I agree with you about the importance of living life in the now. I think too many people get caught up in fantasies about their future. Nothing is perminent, and even the best laid plans can be knocked off course by even the littlest things. If you put all your hope in the future, how can you enjoy the now?...and if your plans for the future are forced to change, how can you bend with those changes instead of break?

Here and Now

[runnerwolf.livejournal.com]

:) That's one of the things I like about my tradition. It is very pragmatic and very rooted in the here and now. There are traditions to it, but they are fluid and there is more concern for where we are than where we will be.

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

Quakers (sorta Christian, depending which ones you talk to) don't really consider the afterlife, and are concerned about making the world a better place.

Having kids changes so much of your world view. I wont say you will think like me, but you will think differently. It's weird.

as it seemed applicable.

[hbergeronx.livejournal.com]

"We are like water creatures looking up at the land and air and wondering how we can survive in that alien medium... Yes sir, the fish said, I'm just going to shove a little aquarium up onto the land there, got everything I need in it."

--William Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads, special thanks to lapis_lazuli for finding that.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I think one of the reasons probably overlaps with one of the reasons that I'm not a Christian. I'm wary of any philosophy that focuses on the "next world" while not paying enough attention to this one. I'm afraid of feeling disconnected from the things that are right in front of me. I love the warmth of sun and the stars in the sky and the smell of ozone from rain on pavement and the sound of human voices singing, not just because of my experience of them, but because of the mundane conceptual background that tells me that they are there, and real. From this spot in my life, I like the reality that now matters, because we don't have forever. I still really think this is one of the things that drives us to do the work that does, in fact, move our world into the future.

But I don't see much of a point in living forever if we haven't even figured out yet how to fully live right here, right now

OTOH, I am a transhumanist for exactly this reason. I love the sensations of the world and being in it. I in no way wish to give that up. What I want (in order of preference) is:

1) Physical immortality, so I will have time to watch redwoods grow and (f possible) stars age and time to experience all the wonder there is in this world. Naturally, vastly enhanced healing, immunity to all diseases and suchlike would be included in this.

2) A perfect memory, so I will never forget any of these wonders and so that I can forever hang onto everything that I have learned.

3) Increased intelligence so that I can understand myself, the world, and other sentient beings better.

4) Dramatically enhanced senses so that I can experience more of the world.

Other techno-fripperies like neural jacks would be nice, but are not terribly high priorities for me.

In part the difference between us may be that while I firmly believe in reincarnation, it is also completely irrelevant to me on any sort of personal or emotional level. Clearly, memory either does not survive or survives at most in small and disconnected fragments. Therefore by all of my definitions, I end with my death and whatever continues on is in no way me. I am not willing to accept that and instead wish to be immortal so that I can keep being, learning, understanding, and caring.

Transhumanism (and a more general belief that "natural" in no way necessarily means better) is another reason (in addition to issues with the way Wicca privileges gender duality) that I no longer consider myself to be Wiccan.

In any case, I'm not living my life for the future, I'm simply hoping that it continues in the future and looking into reasonable options that may make that happen. In what way might this disconnect me from the world?

[schitzie.livejournal.com]

In the words of Freddy Mercury... "Who dares to live forever?"

Personally, I'm scared schitless as to what'll happen when the time comes for this life to be over... but I can obscess over that, or just realize that this is my life right now, assume that there is no afterward, that it is just a concept created by older generations to comfort themselves in their living troubles... and that this may be my only attempt at whatever this life is.

... and if it's my only chance... why not just live it.

As for my religious background... Christian, but my own version of it, spliced a bit with taoism, and a good helping of hedonism...

Cut and paste religion... prayer-ware for the modern age... gotta love the implications.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

Personally, death is an incredibly scary thing for me. I like being alive and all that comes with it. If given the chance to extend that, I'd take it without a second thought.

I'm admittedly confused by some of the parallels you draw between Christianity and transhumanism, though... I think of transhumanism as more of a way of improving the here and now, rather than some "next world". I mean, where do you think all the cyborgs and such are going to be living? Right here on Earth, presumably. :)

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Given our current overtaxing of the earth, even if we figure out all of that technology about how to turn our garbage into fuel, if we start using technologies for extreme life extension, at least one of three things are going to have to happen:

1) A select few people are going to be allowed access to that technology. And I tell you babe, it probably ain't gonna be me and you.

2)We're going to have to stop having children entirely. And as I've said above, I really have more faith that entirely new people are going to do more to keep this world going than the same bunch of us who are here now, even if we all do gain a hell of a lot of wisdom. It will drop us out of a certain part of the cycle of life that's our heritage, and I think that would be a terrible, terrible loss. (Yes, I know some of the folks here disagree with me on this.)

3) We're going to have to take significant populations off-planet. And although I think it's fine if human evolution goes that way, I'm personally not interested.

As far as the relationship between some kinds of Christian thought and some kinds of transhuman thought: there are certainly folks who take an excuse of looking toward a bright and shiny future as an excuse to dismiss the importance of the present.
(I'm not saying any of you do this, by the way. I actually wasn't saying that any of you shouldn't be transhumanists, or Christians. I'm glad both exist, especially good, life-affirming examples of them who like to talk to me. They're just not philosophical frames that work for me personally.)

[lediva.livejournal.com]

1) A select few people are going to be allowed access to that technology. And I tell you babe, it probably ain't gonna be me and you.

Well... that doesn't mean the technology has NO redeeming values. Y'know A-bombs vs. power plants, etc.

2)We're going to have to stop having children entirely. And as I've said above, I really have more faith that entirely new people are going to do more to keep this world going than the same bunch of us who are here now, even if we all do gain a hell of a lot of wisdom. It will drop us out of a certain part of the cycle of life that's our heritage, and I think that would be a terrible, terrible loss. (Yes, I know some of the folks here disagree with me on this.)

3) We're going to have to take significant populations off-planet. And although I think it's fine if human evolution goes that way, I'm personally not interested.

I think I can respond to both of these... now, you know I'm an optimist generally. I believe that should people begin living significantly longer, they would take what is now a rather short-sighted self-interest into a longer-sighted self-interest. By which I mean I think people would realize the value and potential of our environment, and take better care of it, while simultaneously making better use.

If we make more efficient use of land and other natural resources, there wouldn't need to be as big a drop in childbirth. As it is, many countries are reaching just about Zero Population Growth.

As far as moving off-planet... well, I'm not going to try to convince you of anything. I'm not particularly trying to convince anyone of anything in here anyway. I think it'd be nifty.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

As far as moving off-planet... well, I'm not going to try to convince you of anything.

All I can say is that's going to make for one hell of a long-distance relationship. :0

[lediva.livejournal.com]

See? This is why we need FTL travel!

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

If given the chance to extend that, I'd take it without a second thought.

To be honest, given a body that hadn't fallen apart yet and a soundish sort of mind, I assume that at any particular point if I were to be asked "Are you all done now, or would you like to keep going for a bit?", I'd choose living. That's a characteristic of healthy living things, and I think there would be something pathological in anyone who wouldn't choose that on an individual level.

That's rather different than thinking about where we really ought to be going as a species, though.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

I dunno, my personal understanding is that transhumanism is about providing people with that choice.

And as far as evolution as a species... well, why not apply all our collective intellect (and the fruits thereof) towards that question?