transhumanism

[the mole]

what are your thoughts on the topic?

for those that don't know transhumanism is the belief that people should use their knowledge to artificially enhance their abilities and their evolution.

[bandnerd]

My thoughts on this are no thoughts...I've never heard of it. However, I think I'd rather let us evolve on our own. It seems to have worked well enough so far. And we already enhance our abilities...if you can't do math, get a calculator, if you can't play music, get a synthesizer, if your vision is bad, get glasses or contacts...didn't know this was a belief system, just humankind's way of helping ourselves out where we are weak.

[Midtowner]

Like becoming a cyborg?

I wish I could get this message to play that sound effect from the "million dollar man."

[jbrown84]

Like the movie Gattaca. Bad idea IMO.

[SpectralMourning]

I support it, though I don't support voluntary extinction. Transhumanism may actually be the salvation of our species through extreme capabilities and more than likely will be our next step in our own evolution. I'm sure posthumans will end up being our labor force in the extreme future anyway and that we'll either have our memory transferred to these things somehow or we'll just be extremely lazy and let the posthumans do everything.

[jbrown84]

Have you guys seen Blade Runner, Battlestar Galactica, The Matrix, A.I, Gattaca, etc? Bad things happen when we try to play god.

[Midtowner]

jbrown... those are science fiction. Reality need not mimic fiction.

[jbrown84]

True, but those movies reveal why this idea can lead to all kinds of problems.

[Tim]

"Soylent Green is people!" I dunno, seems to me we already have a lot of that going on. Diseases that once ravaged cities are now easily prevented, life spans have increased dramatically in the past few centuries, once fatal injuries are healed regularly, heck, even the the heart is commonly repaired! I'd hate to think that we've accomplished all that we're capable of.

[jbrown84]

There's a difference between advancing medicine and Eugenics.

For example, less than 15 years ago when my dad was at the Univeristy of Utah Medical Center, they found a girl frozen to death in a stream in the winter. They decided to warm her up slowly, and she woke up. It turns out that damage to neurons by lack of oxygen is slowed when the body is cold, so now they have started to use this to revive cardiac arrest patients. It's called therapeutic hypothermia. They induce hypothermia and then slowly warm the person, and often the heart starts beating again and they wake up. This is a very new thing.

[bandnerd]

Yeah, I read an article about that recently--they've found that shocking the heart with those paddles can actually do more harm than good...something about the cells coming back, and being re-oxygenated too quickly.

[Midtowner]

True, but those movies reveal why this idea can lead to all kinds of problems.

And they always assume an awful lot.

The good news is though, that if we're going to base our objections to new technologies upon what we've seen in the movies that pretty much all of our problems can be absolutely solved in 1.5-3 hours

[Tim]

OK, did a little research and it turns out that transhumanism and eugenics are two entirely different fields. Eugenics deals with selective breeding to achieve certain characteristics, and transhumanism involves using technology to advance our condition to a "posthuman" state. Both involve technical and medical advances, and both strive to improve the human condition. Eugenics was very highly regarded by some pretty amazing people starting with Plato, but apparently Hitler sullied it's reputation a bit.

[jbrown84]

And don't forget Wrath of Khan.

So what exactly is "post-human"?

[Tim]

An elevated state of existance. I always thought it meant "dead".

[Oh GAWD the Smell!]

So what exactly is "post-human"?

That's where we selectively breed people for the specific task of holding up fences.