Thoughts on transhumanism?

forgot my mandatory major for this thread

also
its* doh

...

Conscious transfer is impossible. Analysing your brain and reconstructing it in a computer is copying, not transferring.
To the rest of the world it doesn't make a difference, but your own consciousness will still come to an end.

Biological immortality is possible. Consciousness transfer is bullshit. The pic OP posted is bullshit...an Aubrey De Grey pic would have been better.

If you disagree you are delusional.

>Conscious transfer is impossible.

At the moment sure, but there's no objective reason why it will always be impossible.

>Analysing your brain and reconstructing it in a computer is copying, not transferring.
To the rest of the world it doesn't make a difference, but your own consciousness will still come to an end.

What about rebuilding your brain with nanites while you're conscious, very gradually shifting from organic to synthetic in a process where you never lose consciousness?

There isn't any reason to care so much about your own personal iteration of consciousness; the cessation is irrelevant from an external perspective. Copying is perfectly fine -- in fact, I'd love to be in an integrated network of copied consciousnesses.

Just eating differently can increase longevity. Such as by calorie restriciton and stimulating hormesis.

But biological immortality sounds a bit too extreme from what I know. Living much longer and minimalizing the effects of aging is perfectly possible.
I am sure he means it in the way that both are looking for salvation and think live on earth or live as human are shitty.

"It is one of the most remarkable things that in all of the biological sciences there is no clue as to the necessity of death. If you say we want to make perpetual motion, we have discovered enough laws as we studied physics to see that it is either absolutely impossible or else the laws are wrong. But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death.This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable, and that it is only a matter of time before the biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble and that that terrible universal disease or temporariness of the human's body will be cured." R. Feynman

Biologically immortal species do already exist. Look up Turritopsis dohrnii.

>Biologically immortal species do already exist. Look up Turritopsis dohrnii.
I know lad.

aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

then why does biologically immortality seem extreme to you?

>biologically immortality seem extreme to you?
For humans.

Especially considering that many humans enjoy eating food that increases the chance of getting cancer.

your conscious getting copied to a computer doesn't mean you will live forever, a robot with your personality will live forever but YOU will die.

humans are not made of magic.

this just tells you that some humans are dumb, not that their aging process couldn't in principle be stopped.

>not that their aging process couldn't in principle be stopped
Eating better is the first step, if people can't even do that it will be really expensive to achieve mortality.

Or are you not thinking of treatment but somekind of genetic engineering?

Note that I did read a book on aging, and he knows probably more about is as me. I am sure he did say that aging was preventable, but unsure if he said immortality is possible. But becoming very, very, very old - yes.

Of course when talking of immortality I am assuming you mean the stopping of aging not death.

I think that one day we'll be able to reprogram our bodies so that we don't age anymore. However that implies fully understanding aging and we're very, very far from that.

The most promising short term strategy is the one proposed by SENS. Basically, instead of stopping the root of the damage, periodically repair the damage accumulated. You will need tools to do this, gene therapy being one of them. The strenght of this approach is that we have known for a lot of time what kind of damage is created by aging.

>However that implies fully understanding aging and we're very, very far from that.
The book said it pretty much comes down to accumulation of damage and mitochondrien going bust. Lack of stressors with recovery is another problem.

It pretty much follows the antifragile concept of Nassim Taleb.

You seem to be in favour of interventionism and via positiva i.e. the easy way out. I am not fond of that, prefer via negativa and not only because Taleb is in favour of that.

The aging book argued that morality is not natural, but I personally fear that granting some people immortality isn't a good idea.

I can imagine some science not moving forward as the Old Guard remains in place. And what if dictators were granted immortality?

artificial intelligence will likely replace humans in science advancement in the next century.

bad people will be granted immortality, but so will good people.

also it's "biological immortality"...people will still be able to die in accidents / murders

As an aside, google is currently uploading the most mundane parts of our consciousness, like the ability to identify signs and storefronts. I hope to fuck the captcha switches to moral questions and musings on art and beauty soon. Or at least on dank fucking memes. Fer fuck sake, I don't want my contribution to the all mind to be my fucking visual cortex interpreting retro-reflective fucking traffic shit.

>bad people will be granted immortality, but so will good people.
You mean the rich?
>artificial intelligence will likely replace humans in science advancement in the next century.
What makes you so sure about all of this?

Worrying as fuck. But I can definitely say kurzwell's predictions on nanotechnology is utterly wrong

>Technology will never change the the human body to a point where it won't decay.

What if there are millions of nanobots in your bloodstream repairing broken cells and fixing neurons?

>You mean the rich?

I mean everybody. There will be massive riots if people don't get access to this technology.

>What makes you so sure about all of this?

Pic related. Also the fact that we're getting a ton of results already (see Google's Deepmind) and also that neuroscience is starting to understand something.

>What if there are millions of nanobots
What's all that nanostuff of yours gonna do to the environment?
Genuinely curious.Have read a bit about it on WIkipedia.

>I mean everybody.
Don't you think you sound a bit overoptimistic here? Even if we wanted to, wouldn't it be expensive as hell?
I think the current health care in my country will already blow up in the near future. We are getting older and older but need more medications and are sicker.

I read one article that said unhealthy people are actually cheaper for the system since they die so soon.

Uhhhh! I don't know why I hated this article so much, but i did!
Fuck!
>Each metaphor reflected the most advanced thinking of the era
OH NO! God forbid anyone should use metaphor from newly created logic systems! We might get confused and try to put a gpu into our heads!
>People are not actually storing all the data on everything they ever interacted with in their heads. They can't even perfectly reconstruct a dollar bill.
Fuck me. Really? Cause every time I try to figure out what I should be doing with my life I find it so convenient that I know everything. Gosh, how do other people manage?
>In fact, all memories are stored in metaphor, rather than shoving real life objects into a brain.
Wut? How could this not be the case?
>minds are not binary, computers use binary. MINDS ARE NOT COMPUTERS!
Ulg, sure is annoying having to type this out in binary. Right anons?
>It's neat how we are all unique, not only in our geographical location, but also in what we are currently doing and thinking about!
>Brain data doesn't work without ports! Not like computers at all which are super useful even when you have no way of getting data in and out of them!
>brains are too complicated to be represented by computers!
I've never heard anyone say that something is too complicated to be represented by a computer before. I'll have to give this notion some serious consideration.

>I think the current health care in my country will already blow up in the near future. We are getting older and older but need more medications and are sicker.

That's EXACTLY the reason why this would also be economically good. Reversing aging = no old people = less healthcare costs and also no retirement. This would be a paradise for the governments expense.

>implying the mind can function without the body for sensory references

Who do you think is implying that?

I am sorry that I go ad hominem but you sound very naive and especially overoptimistic.
I acknowledge that I am too pessimistic sometimes, but you seem to say there will not be ANY kind of problems.
I find that hard to believe.

>most mundane
>ability to identify signs

They're doing it to create the best map possible, integrated with all the modern perks like navigation, business locations, opening hours, whatnot.

And the better the sign recognition algorithms become, less Bangladeshians you need to pay..

People who think you can transplant your consciousness into a computer to achieve immortality

>like protestants
lol why them?

>but you seem to say there will not be ANY kind of problems

Different user, but he's definitely not saying that. Just that the benefits outweigh the problems. And I agree. Trying to frame it as "if there are any problems at all then it's not worth doing" is extremely foolish.

>computers don't have inputs

I ain't saying it won't be a good product, but its the only thing from my mind to be uploaded into a deep net so far.

They don't have outputs either. It's kinda convenient for when op is being a fag.

>There isn't any reason to care so much about your own personal iteration of consciousness

Irrelevant because that's what people do worry about. But a "ship of theseus" gradual transition from flesh to machine gets round the problem.

but will you be able to unleash a katana?

Arent reptiles theoretically immortal? Cant we learn from or emulate them??

absence of death is perpetual motion though, feynman is just too short-sighted

>absence of death is perpetual motion though,

No it isn't. We're not talking about violating thermodynamics or escaping the death of the universe, just curing aging.

Well, not nearly, most of your digital activity probably gets logged in one way or another and algorithms that approximate this activity with a sort of average behavioral patterns create a very rudimentary picture of you. Mind you, VERY rudimentary.

This is what happens when someone who has no background in computer science tries to comment on things that he has no clue about.

A utopian ideology that replaces 'God' in religion and 'human action' in political movements with 'technology'.

Beyond that, you can expect the same from it as politics and religion, a few gems floating in a sea of shit

Right? Fuck I wish people would lurk more.

We don't even know how the brain works how the fuck are we gonna replicate it?

why am I attracted by asses? they have no direct place in reproduction

big ass ≃ large hips ≃ easier childbirth

Neither of those implications are correct.

why not

>is a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California. He is the author of 15 books, and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today.

Yeah, what a pleb. What does he think he knows about the brain that a computer scientist couldn't figure out in their spare time because they're geniuses?

they don't have to be

Why the fuck is his article so retarted than?
It's like it's tarted multiple times!
Please address my inane prattle:

>psychologist
Yea, that explains it.

It's not what he knows about brains, it is what he thinks he knows about computers and how every example he used to prove how they aren't similar simply demonstrated a lack of understanding of how the system he is trying to explain really works.

Do you want to live forever or die and live forever

Not him but I disagree with your overly pessimistic and contrary an stance. If immortality is found everyone gets it because otherwise the leadership would find its head on spikes really fast.

Otherwise they'd literally be telling their people that they deserve to die while they themselves deserve to live. Leadership tends to not walk away from that kind of announcement.

I suppose the alternative is keeping the technology on the down low but honestly how long can that last?

>Why the fuck is his article so retarted than?
maybe it's not retarded. Maybe you don't like it because it's unraveling an idea that you have spent a great deal of time and effort thinking about and you don't want to admit that you spent it all chasing an impossible fantasy?

>God forbid anyone should use metaphor from newly created logic systems!
There was a time when people thought that by 2016 we'd have jet packs, flying cars, lunar bases, casual manned trips to the outer solar system and robot maids
> Cause every time I try to figure out what I should be doing with my life I find it so convenient that I know everything.
you must be so rich and successful by this point in your life
>How could this not be the case?
Memories are elusive thing user, you don't have to be a behavioral expert to know that people often can't recall them with perfect clarity
>Ulg, sure is annoying having to type this out in binary. Right anons?
But it's not as annoying as having to go chase down your dinner, which is why we've spent most of our evolutionary history depending on tools to survive.

>It's not what he knows about computers, it is what he thinks he knows about brains and how every example he used to prove how they are similar simply demonstrated a lack of understanding of how the system he is trying to explain really works.
t. computer scientist writing about one of the products he wants to invent to replace the grey goop in your cranium

Nothing personal kid

Barely any of these responses make sense.
t. Not the same guy

Why replace it? It already functions well. Giving it newer and better types of input and easier methods of storing data outside of the system would help substantially though.

>Barely any of these responses make sense.
>t. Not the same guy
I know. He asked me to address his inane prattle (his words) and I gave it my best shot.

>Why replace it?
That was kind of my point.

Scientists suck at predicting the future and especially the way technology will develop.

are you having a stroke?

While 20 years is optimistic, technology is progressing exponentially. It could happen.

>especially the way technology will develop.

But "it won't" is always wrong.

>People are not actually storing all the data on everything they ever interacted with in their heads. They can't even perfectly reconstruct a dollar bill.
It's like he doesn't even know what lossy compression is.

He and the guy that wrote that article really probably don't.

I don't think I'll become an immortal, and I think if I do it will be really dicey to end up in an immortal state that is worth living forever. I've thought a bunch about the nature of the mind and about computers and therefore transhumanism cause like fuck, they are the most interesting things around.
>Sometimes predictions are wrong, therefore your predictions are wrong.
Very nice.
>so rich and successful
good at conveying sarcasm over the interwebs too!
Human memories being bad doesn't make human uploading a bad idea, it just makes human memories bad. Though human memories do have the definite advantage of being part of the human mind, so I'll try not to insult them too much, like this article seems to.
>typing in binary
I typed it on a keyboard with my fingers. I was trying to make a response to the articles weird view that computers don't have ports or something.

>but he's definitely not saying that.
Where did he acknowledge any problems? When I suggested only the rich would get it the answer was:
>Everyone will have it
Without any arguments backing it up - in his defense neither did I really do that.

My idea that the current health care is unsustainable the answer was:
>Immortality will solve everything
But why? Surely that has a cost to it too? And he is implying there is a fix that will stop any kind of aging and also - importantly - illness.

My reasoning goes: if the study that said healthier people cost the system more, one can savely assume that immortal people will cost the system even more - unless people will suddenly have no illness at all.

>Trying to frame it as "if there are any problems at all then it's not worth doing" is extremely foolish.
>then it's not worth doing
Did I say this? I just disagree with the means of doing so.
From my perspectieve it always seem like transhumanist wave away problems and that they want easy fixes.

I actually eat the way as proposed in that book and that means making some sacrifices. Without going full stereotype, I'd imagine the average transhumanist doesn't bother much with that and eats whatever he likes and waits until "science solves everything".

You understand what I am getting at?

Also there is a high probability that nanobots doing all the immune system stuff - if that is what is supposed to be the solution - will weaken the immune system and potentially the body.

Because the doctor on aging, who cited Aubrey the Grey by the way, said that it is hormesis what keeps the body from aging. Mushrooms, vegetables and fruit are healthy because they are lightly toxic (and other reasons such as fiber).

And this doctor and several other books (including "Why we get sick") also show how many practices to keep us healthy often go wrong and that many medication does nothing but supressing symptoms.

Stuff like that makes me skeptical.

My reply format is a bit of a mess. But I wanted to say that I wasn't even finished.
I have many more reasons to be skeptical of the transhumanist movement.

Bit of an ad hominem but also as it is popular with a demographic in which often stuff is seen as mechanistic when it is not.

>>Sometimes predictions are wrong, therefore your predictions are wrong.
not quite. It's that we should temper unbridled optimism with hard reality and recognize that models of unlimited exponential growth are founded on deeply one-dimensional premises

>Human memories being bad doesn't make human uploading a bad idea, it just makes human memories bad.
>so I'll try not to insult them too much, like this article seems to.
They're not just bad, they're notoriously unreliable, and prone to being manipulated to fit a running personal narrative. This is nothing at all like a camcorder which mindlessly records and copies data with precision.

>. I was trying to make a response to the articles weird view that computers don't have ports or something.
You'll have to be more specific about which point in the article you're referring too.

>recognize that models of unlimited exponential growth are founded on deeply one-dimensional premises
A lot of the really interesting technologies being discussed will almost certainly be possible using existing processor technology, which is expected to continue scaling at it's current rate until at least 2020. Even after these technologies stop scaling exponentially, whenever that may be, computers have little problem scaling linearly also by simply having multiple processors working with the same set of memory.
Most of the problems with advancement are not simply hardware issues, but the fact that the code for these programs has yet to be written.

>This is nothing at all like a camcorder which mindlessly records and copies data with precision.
You aren't taking into consideration the primary limitation of the brain as an information system, its uniform space requirement. All of the information of a brain must be able to be stored inside of a skull, and that would necessitate certain methods of storing data that use the fewest amount of resources possible.
Storing every piece of input with 100% resolution would be impossible and unnecessary. You don't need to know every detail of a one dollar bill in order to be able to recognize a one dollar bill when you see one, and that is the task that actually matters in your day to day activities.

>typing in binary
The point the man was trying to make is that the psychologist in question seems to believe that computers work using 'binary' and that that is somehow fundamentally different from the way brains work.
Computers do not compute using binary, they compute using the flow of electricity through transistors. Binary is a human tool for representing the state of those transistors and to model manipulating them.
He makes errors in other parts of the article also, mistaking the way that computer scientists have designed systems for ways that those systems MUST function, but I'm at the character limit.

"someday we will upload our consciousness into laser beams and shoot them at the sky so that we can explore the universe"

t. michigan kaku

I think it is cool, but the average person will never be able to afford this stuff so we'll end up being ruled over by near-immortal superhumans.

we already have legit science, why do we need fedora tipping memelords

>he average person will never be able to afford this stuff
Like personal computers, smart phones and cars. Forever out of reach to all but the upper fringes of society.

Technology is only going to progress as long as we have fossil fuels to power modern industrial society, and that won't be much longer. There is no alternative energy source capable of replacing fossil fuels. Transhumanists can't see the forest for the trees.

I think it reflects an anxiety created by the merchant class to want bigger and better, to be progressive and perfected; an idealistic group of people with so much inward anxiety about their own mortal shortcomings, reduced to degeneratively improving their own biology when it's not even broken.
These people are sick in the head. They're depressed.

>Computers do not compute using binary, they compute using the flow of electricity through transistors.
>Binary is a human tool for representing the state of those transistors and to model manipulating them.
That's awfully pedantic.
The point is that there is no evidence (I don't believe so anyway) that human neurons function according to the same off/on principle as transistors, i.e. the human mind is not binary.

A cancerous way of thinking fueled by a childish terror of human nature.

In theory it sounds good, but every Transhumanist I have ever met was a huge tool. I have met many Transhumanists.

Also, having a clone of yourself made when you die is not immortality. It is having a clone to continue your work, but you, the original, are still dead.

>die and live forever
This guy gets it. Then me and the Hitster can be best buddies.

>Implying the human brain makes correct assumptions on a regular basis

>The point is that there is no evidence (I don't believe so anyway) that human neurons function according to the same off/on principle as transistors, i.e. the human mind is not binary.

The basic function of a transistors in a computational environment is that it can receive a signal, and then that signal can effect the state of other transistors down the line. This is almost exactly how every model of the function of neurons I've ever studied works.

The signals we use happens to be electrical in nature, but they can be generated in many other ways including chemically and mechanically.

The Transhumanists are really trying to embrace technology on an ethical that previous philosophies have not. However, they have superimposed the true possibilities of technology onto a protestant work/death mindset, hobbling it.

The goal is not "eternal life" in the biblical sense, but consciousness duplication. Once an AI can be sufficiently convincing that it is at first sentient, and later on, a specific person, many of the questions about consciousness will at least have a framework.

Transhumanists see the possibilities of synthetic, post-biological consciousness, and immediately applied it to their own human desires.

Synthetic conscious will be free of human limitations on some levels, bu tied to entirely alien limitations, which will shape it's motivations.

Tr;dl the Transhumanists are hung up on biblical concepts of the soul, and are missing the point.

>afterlife cucks in this thread pretending self preservation is somehow against human nature

Transhumanism is inevitable.

What about serially replacing parts of your brain ship of Theseus style so your consciousness is never destroyed?