Transhumanism

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I guess it falls to me to both uneqivocal and "stupid" in AG parlance.

This is WRONG, people.

I'll give you the most relevant example. Bear with me.

Ectogenesis is the creation of a life outside of the womb, to then be carried to full-term, again, outside the womb. This apparently sets women free of their biologies and is the feminist ideal. However, as a feminist noted in an ethical essay I once read - Is Pregnancy Really Necessary; read it, it's fascinating; she couldn't bring herself, because of her ideology to say it was wrong - it will end up endangering the feminine gender. Either of their complete obliteration from their no longer being required. I mean, think about it. Every woman has every egg she will ever produce in her body from the moment she's fully developed. Therefore, with no need for women to reproduce, we can just grow women twenty-eight weeks and harvest their eggs to create all the babies we want, and then we don't need a woman any more. She said that all a man will then need from a woman is her secretarial skills, her small hands and docility for sweat-shop work, her nurturing for nursing and child rearing, and as sexual playthings to boost male egoism and sexual proclivity.

Wow. Real liberal, that.

If you replace your arms with robot arms, then whose to stop someone else replacing his arms with one robot arm and one semi-automatic machine gun. Then someone else with an automatic machine gun. Then someone with all sorts of armaments for no better reason than he no longer has to feel small in the world.

Well?

Can anyone else have the moral rectitude to be morally unequivocal and say this is wrong?

Why should trans-humanism lead to those things? That sounds more like the plot to a good science fiction movie about a dystopia

Yeah, that sounds rather ridiculous and insane. I mean, if women aren't needed for reproduction, it isn't as if women are now useless and second class citizens, but rather the point of feminism is that women are equally people to men. However, let's even just say that women are now useless and we no longer create them. Well.... ok? We've removed a gender. What's your point?



What's to stop someone from carrying 3 concealed guns on them at a time? People do that. I don't know how the robot arm guy is really different. I think my conscience can allow crazy robot arm guys.

The major difference I see are a few things:
1) A machine gun arm likely wouldn't be acceptable with concealed carry laws, thus not allowed.
2) A machine gun would likely be rather regulated.
3) Unless machine gun arms were popular, they wouldn't be an issue, as something has to be produced in sufficient numbers to worry about it being produced.


No, not really. Neither of these are reasonable, and instead sound like the plots for bad science fiction works. (I know, I am disagreeing with you on quality, Vigilans)

Well, the same with everything we've done. For the most part, our advancement tends to be trial and error. That being said, I am chemically enhanced by caffeine.


Too much awesomeness to NOT do it. I'd say that a moral case would likely come from utilitarianism, and the view of progress as a moral quality.


To some extent true. A modification that pushes some people away from the rest of the populace is not impossible.

Golden Age scifi - which I once devoured and was stimulus for much of my thought on these issues. Some - heritors of the Scientific Progress to Nirvana era - were all for it and could not wait to be a golden sphere manipulating the environment with energy beams - kind of like your avatar, AG.

Others, more Rousseauvian and pessimistic [I THINK you can be both] portrayed the hideous dehumanizing consequences and the inevitable repressive depressive society.

As a born pessimist, I tend to say timeo Danaos et vitam ferentes. I will wear my specs and accept a prostrhetic or two, but I do not want to go even as far as the Borg.

That's ok
I sometimes consider bad science fiction 'good' only for it's amusing qualities to me. Battlefield Earth being an example

Uber- meta- and trans-humans topic

Since our bodies are naturally continually replacing cells as they become worn out, to replace/enhance them with technological aids/extensions is not inherently dysfunctional, as AG has already written.

I find it quicker and easier to write an essay in a week that would have taken a month twenty years ago, but, if anything, our workload is increased becuae of technology. There is no free ride.

We live longer due to technology and technology helps us live longer. Humans are very much entwined with scientific creations, and they are mutually beneficial for the most part. I see no demonic underpinnings of a scenario where a borg-like robot will take over the world in a conspiratorial sort of way. Technology is a supplement, not a replacement, which means that we as a species can choose how far to go with the technology we have, and to make it work for us the best way possible.

Ooh - someone brought up Windows.

If I had any doubts before, now I am certain - count me out.

I should upgrade myself every two years just to get a different set bugs?

Nunquam reformatus quia nunquam deformatus, say I

Protoplasm has more fun.

A transhumanist thread and no mention of Ray Kurzweil?? For shame!! !!


Ray is, of course, an optimist with futurism and transhumanism but one cannot discount him entirely...especially given his contributions to humanity so far.

I think 91 mentioned Kurzweil. Didn't he write the Singularity is Near? I think he did. I bought it for my best friend last year for his birthday. All 91 did was counter Kurzweil's worshipful stance of technology with something from the other side.

WTF? Do you hear yourself? We lose women, but because feminism advocates for women it's okay to lose them because they're only second-class? I wonder, if I went to the women-only forum and posted this from a concerned man who, while not supporting feminism in its current guise, at least agrees with Tolstoy that intelligent women are a good foil for men, I wonder how long you would remain on this forum without having to abjectly apologise.




Umm. So something, if it's cool, is okay. Like, say, I don't know, when a hutu said it was cool to kill tootsies so that's what they did? Or Hitler? He was pretty cool, wasn't he?

Really. Do you hear yourself?????????????????????????????????????????



Ectogenesis, believe it or not, can "carry" a child for twenty-eight days at the moment. Bad science fiction, or not, it's real. AND WRONG!

Ah, apologies! I missed that.

But again, it has to be read with a bit of skepticism...I love Ray but he tends to be over-optimistic to the point of exaggeration about timelines and what not.

Yes, I meant that by 'becomes decent'. There is tons of work and I think that eventually, they will be able to make something that is better than the human ear. right now, the bionic ears are merely acceptable for those that have hearing issues, but it is still a cool thing that it is no longer necessary for people to resign and lose hearing.

Are you making an argument for or against this?

I voted "No, Jebus don't like no messing with his creation." although I don't see why all objections to transhumanism need to come from religion.

Francis Fukuyama belives transhumanism to be "the world's most dangerous idea". I agree.

Somebody needs to take a reading class!

I said nothing like what you apparently read, and in fact, I stated almost exactly the opposite of what it seems you understood. That's really quite bad.


I hear myself better than you do. I don't even think you have a clue what I am saying, as you don't really respond to anything similar to a comment I have made.