A New Technology of Transhumanism
Exactly 2 days before I saw an @adsactly post about Transhumanism, I read and a little confused. Then I looked for some reviews about this and I read and understand, this is not much different from the exposure of @fulltimegeek about Donald Marshall who talked about [MK-Ultra] technology or the like. This is a great science.
Transhumanism is a common name for technological efforts to improve the human body and soul. That, in the words of Francis Fukuyama, an idea that "evolutionary development has not become reality" and that, unlike before, we can control this development.
Of course, there are a number of philosophical questions. There are questions about ethics, human opinion, political rights and perhaps some religious issues.
Transhumanism
Can you love a silicone-based soul? The will for radical change is the condition of eternity and life without the limits of the body of the flesh. The lifestyle collection of fellow tourists and honorable researchers sees the overall change in human terms as profit. For them, it is about strengthening the wet shask - the biological body - with different unlimited visionary and material. They call themselves transhumanists.
A ladder to the future
One can imagine a ladder for the future. At the bottom of the stairs stands a man of high technology, as we know in the early 21st century. Let's say this man is deaf. Then it can restore hearing with an integrated chip that transmits sound from the outside world directly to the brain nerve.
In the next step we find someone who can see in the dark. The translation between digital signals and how the brain works now may be so sophisticated that infrared cameras can be directly built into the human body.
In the third stage things get very strange: People can send thoughts and feelings directly to each other without saying a word and, if necessary, they can download additional intelligence from the Internet.
Does not matter? Transhumanists say there are examples of possible developments. They even hope that it is only a matter of time before the possibility to step further up to the next stage. They find the possibility that people no longer need to die.
What is transhumanism?
On the ladder to the future, the conditions of human life will gradually change in line with many technological innovations that will be traversed by each step of the ladder. Until the beautiful day of human life, body and consciousness are so changed compared to now that it is no longer meaningful to say that it is the same kind.
Transhumanists believe that such a future may already exist in this century. They welcome the fact that, with the help of technology, we can now deliberately shape human development. The creation of new kinds of people is fully in line with their goals as long as it implies what they perceive as improving the quality of human life: a longer life, preferably immortality, intelligence higher, better mood, more freedom - unlimited possibilities.
Transhumanists regard transhumanism as a movement in the immediate extension of enlightenment. From here, they inherit the belief that humans through insight into the mechanisms of nature can improve the conditions of human life and the quality of life.
Transhumanists will support the development that eliminates human aging and they will support technologies that can radically improve human intellectual, physical and emotional abilities.
The first paragraph of the Transhumanian Declaration reads:
"Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We anticipate the possibility of redesigning basic human conditions, including parameters such as the need for aging, the limitations of human and artificial intelligence, innate psychology, our suffering and confinement on planet Earth.
Who are transhumanists?
When you hit the door of the internet into a transhuman salon, you feel the diversity of moods and humans. But everyone shares the same longing and almost melancholy for the future.
Some have technological legends that are daydreaming. But you also see degraded philosophical reasons, for example against the fear that people will unite and stumble emotionally as in Aldous Huxley's "Trades New World". Huxley's horror vision is a totalitarian society in which the individual's free will is removed from power. Instead, transhumanists work for the future with self-determination of individuals at the center.
Like the flu in the walls of transhumanists, one also feels something that is characteristic of the visionary community: the drive to personalize the vision. Immediately appear in some key names. Names, not to mention their parents: Max More, Tom Morrow, as well as the legendary FM-2030 and dead, was born FM Esfandiary.
FM-2030 died at the age of 69 in 2000. One was amazed to read about a dead transhumanist. But the body of the FM-2030 was frozen in liquid nitrogen at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. Sleepy on a day when science can wake him to life again. Freezing is a popular insurance scheme among transhumanists. Because, as a transhumanist joke, it sounds: Freezing is the second worst thing that can surpass you (after death!).
Serious scientists with wild ideas
It is tempting to try to divide the transhumanists into two categories: A wild undercrowd futurist with strange names and a higher air team with serious researchers. But it does not go away.For example, FM-2030 is a future researcher and taught at the highly respected New School for Social Research in New York.
Transhumanis Hans Moravec is another example of a front researcher who has wild ideas about the future. Hans Moravec is a successful robotic engineer. One must assume that such a person has the capacity of the brain to think even very strongly mathematically. But to an outsider, his future vision resembles a brain surge.And then, Moravec's story of the future is something strange like some kind of degrading optimism.
Moravec has, among other things, narrated his eyesight in an interview with Wired in 1995. And in fact, it can look like an idea for The Matrix - classic science fiction classic. In 1995, Hans Moravec said calmly that he found the possibility that our entire reality is a simulation created by "future" machine intelligence. They will be interested in preserving their ancestors and their civilizations rounded off. This is a destruction scenario for Moravec, but he thinks it's pretty funny:
"For me, the whole concept of reality is very unreasonable, but when you are in the scenario, you can not help to play the rules. So we can also imagine that everything is real - even though it is likely that things like those they see are very small".
Transhuman technology
Transhumans' main platform is the World Transhumanist Association. This organization has a seat in Connecticut, USA. The current chairman of the organization is Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University, Nick Bostrom. He has participated early in the organization, and has compiled a FAQ on Transhumanism, as about 100 transhumanists have contributed. This FAQ is the best overall insight into what transhumanism is. Includes which technology transhumanists specifically associate their expectations with:
Brain research and computer technology
Transhumanists strongly believe in the development of artificial intelligence and the creation of interfaces between computers and the human brain. One example is superintelligence.Superintelligence defines them as intelligence far beyond the best human brain in all areas. Including not only scientific creativity, but also social skills, for example.
Transhumanists envision some possible scenarios for how superintelligence can occur. One can develop super-artificial intelligence which is a super-fast computer and does not remind many of the human brain. The increasing processor speed is very important for this. But we can also imagine creating machine intelligence that teaches the way in the same way as humans. It will be possible if new brain research can break the code of brain learning process and transfer it to digital form.
Aim? Introduction to transhumanist FAQ status:
"Technologies such as brain and computer interfaces and neuropharmacology can improve human intelligence, improve emotional well-being, improve our ability to engage in life projects or people we care about, Yes they can even expand the registry and possible emotional truth".
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is engineered at the molecular level. This is a branch of research that is on the lips of everyone here at the beginning of the 21st century. The new important thing is that you become better and better to control and create matter by moving around molecules and even atoms.
When speech falls on nanotechnology, there is usually a path between reluctant and those who predict the revolution. Some focus on making better material. For example, water repellent fabric for trousers. Or you can expect better drugs that can be adjusted more precisely. But others are not afraid to think of wild thoughts about smart nano who can copy themselves. It is not surprising that transhumanists belong to the latter.
The transhumanis see in nanotechnology the ability to have thorough control over the basic structure of the substance itself. In their FAQ, they rely on K. Eric Drexler. Drexler is especially well known for introducing a vision called "assembler". It is a machine that can separate and combine atoms and molecules individually in the correct order. Vision is a machine that can do everything from scratch. As long as there are atoms available, you can make it one of them.
A changing world
How does it exist when there are super intelligent creatures? When can people transfer their thoughts to each other and upload them online? Where do people live forever? If they are not extinct as a species and exist only as museums of superintelligent beings who have replaced their place in the first place of evolution.
Transhumanists use the word of mathematician and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge about the final separation between a world we can recognize and an incomprehensible world. The word is "Singularity". In his original article from 1993, Vernor Vinge used the concept of an event which, according to him, is as unique as the appearance of human life on earth. The super brief summary itself of this event is as follows:
"In 30 years, we will have technological tools to create super human intelligence, and soon after that, the human era will be over."
If the problem is considered from the point of view of technological improvement of what is inherently qualitative, one can come to a standstill. To improve the Soul is another matter, but how? Technology? No. Spiritual growth? Yes! But this is my opinion. I would like to know others.