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Transhumanity: Truely Better?

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Sun, 2012-06-03 18:05
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LordNephets LordNephets's picture
Transhumanity: Truely Better?
As a stated main goal of the Transhumanist movement both in the real world and in the world of Eclipse Phase, Transhumanity is meant to better human society and biology through the use of technological and scientific advancements. While it is true that many advancements for the better have been made in the world of Eclipse Phase, especially in the realms of medicine, clean energy, and the cessation of true death, many mistakes had been made that put the population in jeopardy (look at the TITANS and the Fall). However, many argue that despite the Fall, humanities movement into space taught Transhumanity valuable lessons that would not be later forgotten, and allowed Transhumanity to be normatively better than humanity was in the early 21st century. My question for debate: Is the state of the sentient world (psychologically, physiologically, politically, and socially) "better" in the transhumanist world of Eclipse Phase than the very human world of the early 21st century, or are there severe drawbacks that seem to make the state of the known world normatively worse? As posts are made, I will edit this section to include a bulleted list of pros and cons.
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All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.
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Sun, 2012-06-03 19:33
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Well, as both a transhumanist and a somebody working in the philosophy department, I immediately jump at the question of what "better" means here. There is no standard everybody will agree on. But maybe we can look at a few domains: Material standard: Yes, this one is fairly unequivocal. The people in Eclipse Phase are nearly all vastly better off than people today. They have access to technologies that make most things we today spend much money for very cheap - not just cheap smartphone analogs and printed gourmet food, but also things we currently find very expensive like space travel, wearable computers and smart clothing. There are some material constraints in space that complicate a comparision, but the median EP person has a standard of living that is above ours. This is not just in terms of stuff, but perhaps more importantly in terms of culture, education and information. Everybody has a Muse. The average online education is likely lightyears ahead of the best we can do today and for free thanks to the Argonauts. There is far more to learn and experience, and you can do it full immersion and with the help of mental enhancements. Health is also clearly a near-total success. Leaving aside the bodyswapping for a moment, the fact that medichines exist and are cheap means that people are far, far healthier than they are today. Add healing vats, safe and effective biosculpting, psychosurgery and everything else, and it is clear that EP actually is far closer to the WHO definition of health ("a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.") than anybody or anywhere in the world today. At the same time it should be noted that the Fall itself can be seen as a health problem: it caused a massive amount of psychological trauma that society is still dealing with. Getting rid of the great scourge of involuntary death and ageing is a tremendous step forward: it is hard to overstate the moral value of getting rid of something that at present kills 100,000 people a day. What about the extreme inequality of the setting? It is not obvious that is a great negative: extropians would happily point out that as long as fortunes are honestly made, they are moral and one should not be envious, just stimulated to make one's own fortune. There might of course be some issue whether the inner system gerontocrats actually did make them fair and square, but the basic libertarian view is that inequalities are not automatically bad. That is likely a view not held by a lot of others, both for political and emotional reasons - people get quite unhappy by knowing there are people better off than them. And as we discussed in the credits vs. rep thread, living in the rep economy doesn't solve the problem since now you can be envious at your high rep neighbour. But material wellbeing, education and health is not everything. Human flourishing is what philosophers often talk about as the goal. A somewhat slippery concept, in the standard Aristotelian framework it has to do with excelling as a person, using your abilities in virtuous and challenging ways that you find meaningful. One can easily imagine a transhumanist Aristotelian version where this includes self-transformation into something magnificent. I think people in EP are about as good or bad at achieving human flourishing as we are today. There are some groups that very strongly aim at particular accounts (think the Ultimates), but there seem to be plenty of people who just follow the flow, living inauthentic lives full of entertainment or pleasure. There are many people who have used their new powers to become amazing, but also plenty of sheer waste (like ennui filled gerontocrats just hanging on). Social freedom is an element in liberal accounts of the good life (after Locke), since people have different life projects and must be allowed to pursue them as freely as possible in order to flourish. Most of the polities in EP seem to be more socially free than current societies, but there are issues here of interpretation (what happens to nonconformists in reputation economies?) and some nasty spots like the Junta. The transhumanist goal of becoming able of exploring the posthuman realm and finding states of great value has been fulfilled. Overall, my view is that in EP it is far more possible to live an excellent life than today, but it is still not *easy* or common. One measure of better might be the number of minds. Persons have some sort of value, and the world might become better just because you add more minds to it (check out my brilliant colleague Toby's talk on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEN5gxGPQOI ). In this regard EP has failed: the Fall wiped out billions of people, and at 10 AF there are fewer than there are now. A truly unnerving possibility is of course that some minds have much higher moral or axiological value than others. This is is how we think of humans compared to simple animals. It might also be true for TITANs: maybe their experience is so much better, their mental faculties so vast that they can understand things impossible for transhumans to get, that they have far more value than is embodied by transhumanity or Earth. In this case the Fall might have been a great and good thing, just marred by a bit of massacre - a bit like how a great wedding ceremony can be good despite some ants getting squashed on the lawn. This leads to the conclusion that justice has failed big time. There has been massive coercion and violence, but few have been held accountable - and the TITANs are clearly outside the range, even if they actually are morally wrong. Major corporations and individuals seem to be able to get away with a lot with impunity. This might be a major count against the EP world being better, although it is partially due to the fractured state of post-Fall society. I think the darkest thing in the setting is the increased risk of existential risk. Morally that counts for a lot - if there are no survivors, then there is *possibly* (depending on philosophical view) not just the death of the people killed but the loss of all the value that would have come from future generations, the loss of value inherent in the species, and turning all past history meaningless. Even a tiny reduction in xrisk is morally worth a lot - every backup taken, every remote colony in the Kuiper belt or on an exoplanet, is a treasure of value. In many ways Firewall are the most shiny heroes (morally speaking about their goals at least) I have ever encountered in any RPG.
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Sun, 2012-06-03 20:56
LordNephets LordNephets's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
As a fellow Transhumanist and working Philosophy Major, I salute you on your wonderful reply. If only more individuals on the internet had your intelligence, diligence, and clarity. Your points are all very well, yet for all the positives about Transhumanity (health, information, et cetera) there are obvious negatives (social injustice, corruption, et cetera). I've always viewed Transhumanism as a sort of Utopia project. Through technology we can create a world in which suffering does not exist, in any form. If it is only human to be corrupt, to hurt, to hurt others, if it is society that is to blame for social ills (as many do) then would not the point of going beyond humanity, beyond society, be to eliminate these qualms? I adore the progress made by the Transhumanists of Eclipse Phase. In no other place has science, medicine, and technology advanced so well, and so realistically. However, this is a game and as such it must remain interesting. There is conflict, there is corruption, there is still the possibility of losing ones cortical stack. There is poverty, sentient beings are still mistreated, manipulated, and segregated, to the point where some (Pleasure Pods, for instance) are denied basic rights. The way I see things, Eclipse Phase may have changed the face of humanity, the genetics of humanity, and the existence of humanity, but the individuals involved ultimately failed to go truly "beyond" what it is to be human; they have simply renamed the monster.
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All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.
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Mon, 2012-06-04 00:09
Sepherim Sepherim's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
I'd say that EP's transhumanity follows the flow of historical change: it doesn't get better, it just gets different. Of course, material advances in science and physical wellbeing are clear as you both have exposed, but society never advances as quickly as technology. In this sense, we will never leave society behind for we are a social specie, and as long as that exists a lot of elements will remain that bring shades into the picture: social inequalities, competition, abuse, elites, violence, etc. Those are all part of the games humanity as such is in the very core (of course, there are equally positive traits to balance them, we're grey, not black-or-white), and won't be left behind ever probably. Not at least while remaining human in any way. As such, some interesting examples reappear in EP: the reintroduction of slavery in indentures, the discrimination against the clanking masses, the zeroes with no access to the mesh, etc. There have been advances in social rights but also steps back, and democracy doesn't seem to be in it's best moment in most of the Solar System (specially the Junta and Mars are very far from a democratic ideal). But mostly there are changes that aren't easy to portray in better-worse terms: is the perpetual surveillance and the sousveillance worse or better than the anonimity we currently have? Are formalized rep systems better than capitalist economy? EP is different, but as all with humanity, it is not easy to say if better or worse. It's just the "next step" in our history, and it is just as flawed as the humanity that spawned it.
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The mind is information... hack it! [IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j166/Sepherim/Otros/F_Rep.jpg[/IMG] +4 http://tribulaciones.es/
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Mon, 2012-06-04 01:20
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
I have some points to add (maybe more later): When I was studying economics, a topic I read said that it is usually better to be poor in the future than to be rich in the past. Simply put, having the equivalent to several billion dollars about 200 years ago could not buy you air conditioning, television, or modern day medicine. In Eclipse Phase, indentureship may be considered morally wrong by many, but it provides a means for even the most poor to get new bodies. We (as of mid 2012) can't get new bodies under any circumstances. Knowledge is very valuable. Its takes time to develop, and the effort of many people... a great many in our case. In past societies, the knowledge would be past on by telling others. Such methods were unreliable as the data would get distorted by even the best of people when they tried to pass the information on to new generations. Later societies developed books so that scholars could write their knowledge in a more permanent format that could survive them. Such books were valuable enough that even royalty would run into a burning buildings to save what they could. Our society is transitioning to keeping our knowledge in a digital format where it is possible to run search programs to find information, copy large amounts of information quickly, or even run programs to analyze such information. In Eclipse Phase, people have mesh inserts that allow them do that with a mere thought, and even keep a personal digital assistant called a muse which can act without you asking. The tools needed to store information and to use it has gotten better.
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Mon, 2012-06-04 04:10
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Sepherim wrote:
I'd say that EP's transhumanity follows the flow of historical change: it doesn't get better, it just gets different.
I have no idea how you can look at history and think that things haven't become better, but only different. History shows a very clear trend of more people leading better and longer lives.
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Mon, 2012-06-04 04:44
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
LordNephets wrote:
As a stated main goal of the Transhumanist movement both in the real world and in the world of Eclipse Phase, Transhumanity is meant to better human society and biology through the use of technological and scientific advancements. While it is true that many advancements for the better have been made in the world of Eclipse Phase, especially in the realms of medicine, clean energy, and the cessation of true death, many mistakes had been made that put the population in jeopardy (look at the TITANS and the Fall).
Note that EP is not the embodiment of transhumanist ideals, and especially the TITANs and the Fall are things that transhumanism seek to avoid. The political conflict that lead to the TITAN system going online (as a military system under human control) had nothing to do with transhumanism - in fact the "inability to embrace emerging technologies in a mature and enlightened manner" is mentioned as one of the main reasons for the conflict. Regarding the risk of AI, very few takes this as seriously as transhumanism. Humanity will have a much better chance of managing this risk if transhumanist mitigation policies are fully developed and implemented, rather than AI getting developed in a haphazard way. The Exsurgent threat again can't be blamed on transhumanism. Again, in transhumanism you're likely to find the greatest awareness of extraterrestrial threats, where people will actually seriously consider what The Great Filter might be and how we can adress it (and remember, even if The Great Filter is just a very low likelihood of technological civilizations having developed in our past light cone, we'd still need to consider the threat of a hostile, exponentially expanding extraterrestrial getting a head start on us in the future). In this way, EP highlights both the good that transhumanism can bring, and the bad things that can happen if you don't adopt a transhumanist stance. It should also be noted that transhumanism is practically by definition good, as long as you agree with its premises. If you think that more people living freer, better, longer and safer lives is a good thing, you'd be hard pressed to disagree with it. There is of course disagreement on some issues within transhumanity but these are not simple questions, and like science transhumanism continually debate and explore ways to better reach those goals, and how to balance them. If you disagree with the premises, because you have an ideology such as religion or environmentalism that do not have the human condition as their core principle, or if you are a conservative who believe that our current or past way of life is optimal, then transhumanism will seem bad though.
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Mon, 2012-06-04 05:02
Anarhista Anarhista's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Since better is highly subjective. I'll speak (of course) from my perspective: People work hard just to make a basic living. As technology progressed this time required to satisfy our basic needs is greatly reduced. I think you would get very distinctive opinion from man/women/children who had to work whole day, every day that technology is better. (from 16h/day toward 8h/day and in EP minutes/day) Now that we can satisfy basic needs what about distribution of wealth? As seen on Junta (or any today state), Mars and other stratified societies it sucks to be morphless, without wanted skill-set and generally poor but you have hope to get in society that will give you better chance for good life. I am enamored in idea that (with habitats, new planets, moons...) you can make brand new society that doesn't repeat millennial old mistakes... or at least try) And finally, unending life. I think that (in any given time) there are people who would do ANYTHING to live just a little bit longer, not to mention prospect of immortality.... Leaving extremes aside with everybody living much, much longer and majority being physically healthier then today, average person sent in the past would be extremely unhappy (far all listed reasons) I am talking about average person in EP world. You can pick some slaves in pleasure pods that satisfy twisted gerontocrats desires but the same and worse can be found in today world. Or you can say with billions of minds in storage average person is not better but they are still alive and can have a good productive life. The reason I'm firmly behind Transhumanity ideas is that we have a better chance for the survival as a species (better means of surviving, TITANS are story plot) and better life for average person (OK, OK better is subjective: easier life). It is on us, now that we have the means, to make a world a better place. (or in this case Solar system and beyond)
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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
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Mon, 2012-06-04 05:48
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Smokeskin wrote:
I have no idea how you can look at history and think that things haven't become better, but only different. History shows a very clear trend of more people leading better and longer lives.
I think this is slightly complicated. No question about average and median longevity, health, wealth, access to technology, information and social freedom. Pinker's claim that we have drastically reduced the amount of violence also seem to be true, with some complicated caveats (power-law distributed violence can go down in apparent average while still having a heavy tail of very big wars). But what about happiness? Are we happier today? We certainly are complaining about the misfeatures of our civilization far more than any other civilization ever did. As David Brin pointed out, this might actually be one of our greatest achievements: a self-critical civilization that allows criticism and sometimes acts on it. No other civilization has come close to this. So I am not convinced we are more unhappy now than in the past. But the evidence that we are happier is equally spotty, regardless of how you measure things. Different cultures have vastly different amounts of flow experience, and the west is not at the top of the list. Medieval stories often seem gloomy, but looking behind the format and one can see glimpses of normal lives that seem fairly similar in terms of happiness to ours. And so on. I think progress is easy to see in easily measurable domains like health. When we get to culture in all its complexity it is not just that we cannot measure and compare it neatly, but that progress even becomes hard to define. We think we have reached high moral standards (if only for the depraved youth of today) just like every previous civilization - but each of them would be horrified by the morality of their successors. "Putting compassion above clemency?!" the Roman would sputter. "Caring about this world more than the hereafter?!" the medieval monk would shout. "Giving equal rights to women, blacks and sodomites?!" the Victorian thinker would exclaim. We might be equally amusingly outraged by indentureship, surveillance and modifying people's brains. Whether that is because we are wrong or because culture just changes, that is hard to tell.
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Mon, 2012-06-04 06:01
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
LordNephets wrote:
As a fellow Transhumanist and working Philosophy Major, I salute you on your wonderful reply. If only more individuals on the internet had your intelligence, diligence, and clarity.
Aww, shucks. :-) Of course, as soon as I upload, there are going to be millions of forks of me and then you might want to reconsider :-)
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I've always viewed Transhumanism as a sort of Utopia project. Through technology we can create a world in which suffering does not exist, in any form. If it is only human to be corrupt, to hurt, to hurt others, if it is society that is to blame for social ills (as many do) then would not the point of going beyond humanity, beyond society, be to eliminate these qualms?
Yes. Except that I fear some of these problems are universal to all forms of intelligent systems, no matter how well designed they are. David Pearce is arguing that we can abolish suffering totally from our minds with the right reengineering, but it remains to be seen if that actually works: it might be that lack of pleasure to such a mind would be just as aversive as pain is to ours. While there is probably no rational reason for cruelty ever, the potential and occasional use of various forms of aggression-like behaviours might be game theoretically necessary to sustain good outcomes (e.g. maintaining cooperation in an evolving population). There is also the question in what directions to go. Some transhumans might develop in directions incompatible with others, and it might never be clear which ones are better in any meaningful sense.
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However, this is a game and as such it must remain interesting.
Partially this is of course a good story bias. A utopian setting would be boring. But it leads to misrepresenting a lot of possibilities. Yet, given history, we know that even some of the best successes of mankind - democracy, antibiotics, the music of Beethoven - have been used in warped ways or produced unfortunate effects.
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The way I see things, Eclipse Phase may have changed the face of humanity, the genetics of humanity, and the existence of humanity, but the individuals involved ultimately failed to go truly "beyond" what it is to be human; they have simply renamed the monster.
Yup. Some have advanced better than others, but in EP transhumanity is still very much confused. But this might not be due to humanity being terribly bad, it might be that any species that evolves naturally will tend to be confused, atavistic and expand in a reckless manner - and when it takes charge of its own evolution this "original sin" will tend to follow. To actually get things right might be nearly impossible. But it is a grand challenge.
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Mon, 2012-06-04 07:45
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Arenamontanus wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
I have no idea how you can look at history and think that things haven't become better, but only different. History shows a very clear trend of more people leading better and longer lives.
I think this is slightly complicated. No question about average and median longevity, health, wealth, access to technology, information and social freedom. [...] But what about happiness? Are we happier today? [...] Medieval stories often seem gloomy, but looking behind the format and one can see glimpses of normal lives that seem fairly similar in terms of happiness to ours. And so on. I think progress is easy to see in easily measurable domains like health. When we get to culture in all its complexity it is not just that we cannot measure and compare it neatly, but that progress even becomes hard to define.
A happiness is a very different size, and from what I know happily isn't strongly correlated to external factors anyway. What we do have is that practically all measurable indicators show improvements. And while general happiness might be difficult to evaluate, we certainly have a much higher level of absence of suffering. So few now experience the death of a child. Practically everyone you know will live to old age. Much fewer people suffer debilitating effects of disease. We also so rarely suffer discomfort from the elements, lack of food, poor clothing, poor housing, poor working conditions.
Arenamontanus wrote:
We think we have reached high moral standards (if only for the depraved youth of today) just like every previous civilization - but each of them would be horrified by the morality of their successors. "Putting compassion above clemency?!" the Roman would sputter. "Caring about this world more than the hereafter?!" the medieval monk would shout. "Giving equal rights to women, blacks and sodomites?!" the Victorian thinker would exclaim. We might be equally amusingly outraged by indentureship, surveillance and modifying people's brains. Whether that is because we are wrong or because culture just changes, that is hard to tell.
I believe that we have objectively reached higher moral standards. The ideas of Romans, monks and Victorians objectively lead to higher degrees of suffering than a society based around for example transhumanist ideals. Where transhumanism is about minimizing suffering and maximizing potential, well being and quality of life for as many people as possible and exceptionally willing to think out of the box and apply scientific methods and thinking to the task and apply different solutions for different people, those you mention had a morale compass that pointed in a very different direction and got corresponding results. I'm not saying that we have the optimal design for society, but we can distinguish bad ones from good ones. Compare it a bit to building cars - we can't agree on what the optimal car is, but we can distinguish good ones from bad ones. We can identify trade offs between say carrying capacity and speed, and make different models that satisfy different needs. We know several ways of organisation that lets designers, engineers and marketers produce things that people like. We're not quite at that level in terms of building societies, and we certainly don't have the sort of incentives in our political system that lets it serve citizens as well as corporations serve their customers, but the analogy applies. We know very much about what sort of decisions will increase the level of suffering, and what sort will reduce it, and our moral discourse generally pays a lot of attention to that. We know that letting poor people die from disease rather than curing them increases suffering. We know that letting people starve or be homeless increases suffering. Corruption, oppression, discrimination increases suffering. Not having access to birth control and abortion increases suffering. Morality is only relative if you don't accept human well being as your central tenet.
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Mon, 2012-06-04 09:51
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Smokeskin wrote:
I believe that we have objectively reached higher moral standards. [...] I'm not saying that we have the optimal design for society, but we can distinguish bad ones from good ones.
I think you are right. But while it is easy to tell that a modern car is much better in important ways than a T-Ford, there are dimensions where comparison is unclear, like style. Some of the consequences of moral systems are very hard to evaluate, like the creation of dependency or competition - are they minor flaws, or major points against them? I think the most likely examples of real moral progress are our widening circle of concern: we now ascribe moral standing to people outside our direct community, race, gender etc. based on fairly general principles. We have incorporated principles to deal with human irrationality and bias in our practical ethics. We recognize the usefulness of tolerance in a complex, globalized world. But these advances have been somewhat haphazard across time, often not driven as much by logical ideas in ethics but by strong proponents. That makes me suspect that while morality might be making progress since we are a species with a cumulative culture and ability to learn from our mistakes, the progress is somewhat stochastic and not guaranteed in the short term.
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Morality is only relative if you don't accept human well being as your central tenet.
But it is not obvious - at least from the horizon of the philosophy department - that human well being should be the central goal. Sure, we like it, but that might be just like evolution giving us a liking for sweet food (carbohydrates) and sex (reproductive fitness) - it might actually be merely a motivator for something else, rather than the highest good. And the wellbeing might not even be individual wellbeing but some form of social well being - not the most popular view in our individualistic culture, but one that is being made seriously by scholars in other cultures. And so on. Morality might turn out to be non-relative but very different from what we think is moral. This is one of the real issues with giving AGI moral sentiments or motivations. Trying to get it to do what we want means it might be forced to extrapolate a flawed or parochial concept of what is right, giving it the ability to figure out what is right on its own means it might come to frightening and (to us) detrimental conclusions. And if we mess it up we may get something smart but with human-incompatible and perhaps even moral-incompatible motivations. Damned if you do, damned if you don't...
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Mon, 2012-06-04 12:25
Sepherim Sepherim's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Smokeskin wrote:
I have no idea how you can look at history and think that things haven't become better, but only different. History shows a very clear trend of more people leading better and longer lives.
It all depends on your definition of "better". Longer and healthier lifes, sure. But we also have more mental problems, for example. A good life is not one that has any specific comodity, objects, knowledge or whatever. A good life is a happy life, and I don't think we are happier now than how we were in any given moment in time. We know we would be unhappy if we lived in the past with our current knowledge and ideas, but people living in any era don't know other ways of living, and thus build the happiness with what they have. Analyzing the past from our own current standpoints is an etnocentrist view of things. And even now days we can find examples of people that live worse than they did centuries ago. Take Congo for example, which before the arrival of europeans was a small nation in itself with its kings and such, and now it's a failed state plunged into a brutal situation with no sight of being overcome. Or take a small look back and check out the Nazi Germany and compare it to the medieval Germany, would you still say Nazi Germany is better because it had better life expectancies and such? Thus, we aren't happier, we aren't truely better. I like living in our current societies better than any other before it, but I don't think others in those eras would like that. It's part of their episteme afterall.
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The mind is information... hack it! [IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j166/Sepherim/Otros/F_Rep.jpg[/IMG] +4 http://tribulaciones.es/
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Mon, 2012-06-04 17:17
Anarhista Anarhista's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
I would like to say something about happiness and human needs. First of all, we will NEVER be content and perfectly happy. While this may look bad it is actually good because if we become perfectly satisfied and happy we would soon be extinct as a species. A little example (which I'm sure everybody knows) of this is progression of our needs: we need food, water, basic bodily functions, warmth... after that we need security (physical, mental), family, resources, health... after those we need friendship, family, lovers, freedom... after which we need self esteem, achievement, respect of and by others... and finally our desire to fulfill our true potential and become everything that one is capable of becoming. So if you enrich this with more human needs and many, many wants that advertisement artfully implant in our minds, it is no wander we are hard to please. I personally don't care for unhappiness generated by wants. What I deeply care and often comment is lack of elementary human needs in eg. Africa, Indonesia... that sickens, brutalizes, wounds and kills many more then all the wars combined while we have everything needed to prevent this. We accept it because it is normal, it was before and we can't to a thing about it... which is true as long as we think like that. Hmmm, I digress again. Transhumanity and future tech will certainly ease first two steps of human needs making it better but as long as we have society that rewards and glorifies behavior like hoarding (money, power...), wasting resources, acquisition by ANY means necessary, lack of empathy etc... and punishes/ignores... everything different, we will have slavery, atrocities and other... drawbacks.
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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
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Mon, 2012-06-04 17:47
Azathoth Azathoth's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
If you're going to look at transhuman happiness, then consider the hedonic treadmill model. Some studies indicate that we tend to hover near a happiness set-point (which may largely be determined by our genetics). What they've found is that major events in our life like winning a large sum of money or losing a job only seem to affect our happiness on a short term basis before we return to our set-point. Presumably, then, all these advances in technology don't really alter our overall level of happiness UNLESS they alter our set-point... and of course with EP level tech, we could adjust the genetic aspect of our set happiness level. I know this sort of ignores the "human" aspect. Most of us would probably rather people not be stuck in indenture servitude, even if we could demonstrate that it doesn't alter their overall happiness.
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Tue, 2012-06-05 03:19
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Arenamontanus wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
Morality is only relative if you don't accept human well being as your central tenet.
But it is not obvious - at least from the horizon of the philosophy department - that human well being should be the central goal. Sure, we like it, but that might be just like evolution giving us a liking for sweet food (carbohydrates) and sex (reproductive fitness) - it might actually be merely a motivator for something else, rather than the highest good. And the wellbeing might not even be individual wellbeing but some form of social well being - not the most popular view in our individualistic culture, but one that is being made seriously by scholars in other cultures. And so on. Morality might turn out to be non-relative but very different from what we think is moral. This is one of the real issues with giving AGI moral sentiments or motivations. Trying to get it to do what we want means it might be forced to extrapolate a flawed or parochial concept of what is right, giving it the ability to figure out what is right on its own means it might come to frightening and (to us) detrimental conclusions. And if we mess it up we may get something smart but with human-incompatible and perhaps even moral-incompatible motivations. Damned if you do, damned if you don't...
I'm not advocating that human (or rather sentient) well being is the be all end all of morality for all time. I believe it is a field that should be treated like actual science rather than the dogmatic approach so many take. And as a science, it will develop with new ideas and discoveries, and technological advances will most likely have great impacts in the near future as we get the ability to model, understand, modify and upgrade our minds, and create new minds. With XP and brain stimulation, "human well being" is easily achieved, but would we consider it moral if China just hooked up its political dissidents to such a device? There are also some strong contenders to human well being as a central tenet, like growth and accomplishment. In general I believe that for low values of well being, well being is by far the most important, but once a certain level of well being is reached, we can stop talking about morality - morality has diminishing relevance as we move from "miserable" to "not unhappy" and "happy", while things like accomplishment has increasing relevance. When you talk about social well being, do you mean something different than the sum of the well being of individuals? That sounds interesting, do you have some links? The many alternative possibilities for morality you mention demonstrate the frontier of moral philosophy extremely well. We've moved well beyond the primitive ideas of both dogmatic morality and moral relativity, both of which can easily be rejected as obviously immoral with any set of reasonable axioms, and are instead able to explore and compare ideas, concepts and possible future developments. And this understanding has influenced the public and political sphere to a great degree in the developed world. I wouldn't be surprised if happiness indexes began seeing serious use at some point.
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Tue, 2012-06-05 03:57
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Anarhista wrote:
I would like to say something about happiness and human needs. First of all, we will NEVER be content and perfectly happy. While this may look bad it is actually good because if we become perfectly satisfied and happy we would soon be extinct as a species. A little example (which I'm sure everybody knows) of this is progression of our needs: we need food, water, basic bodily functions, warmth... after that we need security (physical, mental), family, resources, health... after those we need friendship, family, lovers, freedom... after which we need self esteem, achievement, respect of and by others... and finally our desire to fulfill our true potential and become everything that one is capable of becoming. So if you enrich this with more human needs and many, many wants that advertisement artfully implant in our minds, it is no wander we are hard to please. I personally don't care for unhappiness generated by wants. What I deeply care and often comment is lack of elementary human needs in eg. Africa, Indonesia... that sickens, brutalizes, wounds and kills many more then all the wars combined while we have everything needed to prevent this. We accept it because it is normal, it was before and we can't to a thing about it... which is true as long as we think like that. Hmmm, I digress again. Transhumanity and future tech will certainly ease first two steps of human needs making it better but as long as we have society that rewards and glorifies behavior like hoarding (money, power...), wasting resources, acquisition by ANY means necessary, lack of empathy etc... and punishes/ignores... everything different, we will have slavery, atrocities and other... drawbacks.
Be very, very careful with this sort od thinking. Progress and growth is incredibly hard and takes huge effort from the individuals driving it. So far the only way we know to get a large number of people to do this is with the incentives of personal gain that capitalism provides. And this created the wealth, demand and means to lift billions of people out of deep poverty. Greed and capitalism is by far the greatest force in alleviating suffering through history. Unless you can change what motivates humans (and the prospect of someone actually being able to do that is potentially quite scary - while the communists failed with their re-education camps for the bourgeoisie, give them psychosurgery and they might succeed and it isn't clear if that would be a good or bad thing), trying to reign in greed will most likely prove catatrophic, like any of the previous attempts in history. At least until developments in information and production technology will make way for a rep economy or a post-scarcity society.
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Tue, 2012-06-05 07:15
Sepherim Sepherim's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Smokeskin wrote:
Be very, very careful with this sort od thinking. Progress and growth is incredibly hard and takes huge effort from the individuals driving it. So far the only way we know to get a large number of people to do this is with the incentives of personal gain that capitalism provides. And this created the wealth, demand and means to lift billions of people out of deep poverty. Greed and capitalism is by far the greatest force in alleviating suffering through history.
I disagree deeply. Capitalism is the main force that has created the current economic disparities within societies, where the rich are getting richer and the poors are getting poorer. You can check the income disparity indexes for most countries and you'll quickly notice they are getting bigger. So no, personal gain doesn't lift the poor to the rich. The only way to do this is by approaches that minimize the importance of the self and instead focus on redistribution of wealth through the State. Which can be done in capitalism, but only in one that has been limited by the political sphere. The invisible hand never existed, and will never exist. And lots of individual gains don't equal a common gain.
—
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Tue, 2012-06-05 08:51
King Shere King Shere's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Sepherim wrote:
So no, personal gain doesn't lift the poor to the rich. The only way to do this is by approaches that minimize the importance of the self and instead focus on redistribution of wealth through the State.
I disagree to the notion that something (whatever that is) would be the only solution/ way. I also think that Capitalism isn't the source, its a often poorly held tool. More damage is done from "naive" short term slightness, the erosion of the trust between people (and thus jeopardize society) & erosion of expected gains from society. The underlying Problems might become more visual if one analyses how to divide resources amongst a group of egoists that work together , and what causes same individuals to suddenly seek to abstain from the collective. Aside from blaming their self egoistic mindset.
—
[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/tc_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/exh_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [i]"To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult."[/i] Plutarch
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Tue, 2012-06-05 09:21
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Sepherim wrote:
Smokeskin wrote:
Be very, very careful with this sort od thinking. Progress and growth is incredibly hard and takes huge effort from the individuals driving it. So far the only way we know to get a large number of people to do this is with the incentives of personal gain that capitalism provides. And this created the wealth, demand and means to lift billions of people out of deep poverty. Greed and capitalism is by far the greatest force in alleviating suffering through history.
I disagree deeply. Capitalism is the main force that has created the current economic disparities within societies, where the rich are getting richer and the poors are getting poorer. You can check the income disparity indexes for most countries and you'll quickly notice they are getting bigger.
We're talking extreme poverty where you don't even have stable access to housing, food and medical care for yourself and your family, we're talking real suffering. Compared to that, it is only a mild nuisance to be on the lower rungs in an inequal society if you have your basic needs covered.
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Tue, 2012-06-05 09:50
Anarhista Anarhista's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Smokeskin wrote:
Be very, very careful with this sort od thinking. Progress and growth is incredibly hard and takes huge effort from the individuals driving it. So far the only way we know to get a large number of people to do this is with the incentives of personal gain that capitalism provides. And this created the wealth, demand and means to lift billions of people out of deep poverty. Greed and capitalism is by far the greatest force in alleviating suffering through history. Unless you can change what motivates humans (and the prospect of someone actually being able to do that is potentially quite scary - while the communists failed with their re-education camps for the bourgeoisie, give them psychosurgery and they might succeed and it isn't clear if that would be a good or bad thing), trying to reign in greed will most likely prove catatrophic, like any of the previous attempts in history. At least until developments in information and production technology will make way for a rep economy or a post-scarcity society.
Exactly as you said: communists are doing it wrong. Good ideas with horrible results are not justifiable. On the other side let's take money as a motivator for effort that humanity/society/anyone-other-then-me benefits: 1) All great inventors (scientists, engineers...) did their discovery out of desire and satisfaction of creation (and their rather large egos proving others that they are right but let us not digress...) Take Nikola Tesla: he didn't care for the money (as long as he had for food, drink, place to live and place to work) and without alternating electricity I just can't imagine this world we are living now. And when he spent millions of dollars (from his benefactor) on idea/device that can transfer el. energy without wires, he slowly disappeared into obscurity... As you know we still use wires for transfer of el. energy and incidentally you can not sell el. energy if anyone can take it without you knowing it. And many more great minds like Einstein, Leonardo... 2) Let us take people who are very good at their work (whatever it is) and are real engine of our civilization. They LOVE their jobs and they would do it for far less money if needed (but they are not stupid so...) and/or are very competitive so they work harder to be better then... (insert competitor) without more money incense. (They want/need enough money for them but after their needs are satisfied they don't NEED more cash) 3) Who is primary motivated to work purely by money: lower/middle class with repetitive, degrading, generally unwanted jobs who must work at these jobs to pay for food, lodging... Or greed for example: let say I got my hands on great technology/product like AM radio at the beginning of 20th century. I invested ton of capital in radio (AM) towers and as this massive infrastructure begins paying off some upstart schmuck finds out FM radio waves and they are far better then AM and threatens do destroy my radio empire. What do I do? As any successful businessman I destroy FM research, discredit it and generally establish monopoly on the market. (since AM is still used I'd consider this tactics VERY effective). I actually blocked progress rather than helped it. You can say market is fair and free but then you don't understand how the market works. I don't want to make you seem stupid or something. I thought the same as you for the long time and I needed much work and reading/listening/thinking to get here with my opinions. 20 years ago I lived in socialist state and it wasn't good, but now in capitalism it is even worse. Generally money is incentive when you don't have basic requirements for living and after that, you have other motivation (love for this work, self actualization, pride...). Off course that you have people wanting more and more but when you look at our civilization it actively promotes consumerism, wanting more then we need and throwing away perfectly good products. So now we have many wants which are 'upgraded' and equalized with essential human needs. Or take great advances that would help everybody but if they can't make money they are ignored. For example energy: we are flooded by myriad sources of transferable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, micro hydroelectric power plants...) and we still refuse to stop using nuclear, thermal power plants despite continuing polluting ourselves or catastrophe like Fukushima meltdowns. This is the reason I'm turning to NEW societies, NOT old which are proved inadequate for this time and age.
—
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
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Tue, 2012-06-05 10:50
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Arenamontanus wrote:
I think this is slightly complicated. No question about average and median longevity, health, wealth, access to technology, information and social freedom. Pinker's claim that we have drastically reduced the amount of violence also seem to be true, with some complicated caveats (power-law distributed violence can go down in apparent average while still having a heavy tail of very big wars).
Even with wars taken into account, the survival percentages in the modern day are significantly high in comparison to only a century or two ago. This is especially true when you take into account births... the survival rate for children has gone from 3 deaths for every 5 pregnancies to a fraction of a percent just over the first 50 years of the 20th century. Combine that with the other benefits of modern medicine (which have completely revolutionized the survival of the human race... how often do we amputate today?), and you have a significantly increase provision of life.
Arenamontanus wrote:
But what about happiness? Are we happier today? We certainly are complaining about the misfeatures of our civilization far more than any other civilization ever did. As David Brin pointed out, this might actually be one of our greatest achievements: a self-critical civilization that allows criticism and sometimes acts on it. No other civilization has come close to this. So I am not convinced we are more unhappy now than in the past. But the evidence that we are happier is equally spotty, regardless of how you measure things. Different cultures have vastly different amounts of flow experience, and the west is not at the top of the list. Medieval stories often seem gloomy, but looking behind the format and one can see glimpses of normal lives that seem fairly similar in terms of happiness to ours. And so on. I think progress is easy to see in easily measurable domains like health. When we get to culture in all its complexity it is not just that we cannot measure and compare it neatly, but that progress even becomes hard to define.
I think the reason why we are so self-critical is twofold. For one, we have a greater degree of liberty today to question our society than we ever did before. The freedom of speech is very far reaching, and it wasn't too long ago within the long scope of human civilization that the idea of questioning state or doctrine was unheard of. Much of our self-criticism may simply be due to the fact that for the first time in human history, the common man [i]can[/i] be critical of the world around him without fear of treason or heresy. Secondly, today we are more knowledgeable of the goings-on within our society than we ever were. I used to talk to a Jehovah's Witness, who used to tell me that the world was worse because you hear about far more bad things today in the news and media. I countered that statement by responding that we simply hear about far more in the news and media... hearing more bad comes simultaneously with hearing more good. The idea that there are more horrible things happening in the world is less likely than the idea that we simply are more likely to know about them. So within that context, I suppose ignorance is bliss.
Arenamontanus wrote:
We think we have reached high moral standards (if only for the depraved youth of today) just like every previous civilization - but each of them would be horrified by the morality of their successors. "Putting compassion above clemency?!" the Roman would sputter. "Caring about this world more than the hereafter?!" the medieval monk would shout. "Giving equal rights to women, blacks and sodomites?!" the Victorian thinker would exclaim. We might be equally amusingly outraged by indentureship, surveillance and modifying people's brains. Whether that is because we are wrong or because culture just changes, that is hard to tell.
I argue that it is changing culture. To a degree, you can even see glimpses of moral disconnect simply by looking at the attitude differences between generations. The baby boomers are far less likely to be comfortable with the idea of gay marriage than people in their 30s and younger. While the civil rights act kickstarted the treatment of blacks as equals in American society, it was really more of a gradual shift to true equality as the intolerant earlier generation died off one by one. Of course, this raises an interesting point about human society that is relevant to the setting of Eclipse Phase; that mortality may be an integral force to societal maturity and improvement. This being the case, (trans)humanity might face a new hurdle in the immortal age: an eternal old guard. Traditionals and morals may exist perpetually as those who espouse them continue to thrive forever. The new economy may never truly supercede the old simply because the people who refuse to make the transition continue to persist. Rather than new civilizations replacing old, transhuman society might need to grow out more akin to a tree. New branches of civilization may grow out from old and live alongside, rather than replacing them as has always been the case before. This has very unfortunate implications for uplifts and AGI. For the first time in human history, you'd have social groups that face a perpetual form of discrimination... one that may never go away, simply by dint of the fact that their discriminators can continue to promote their form of hate eternally.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Tue, 2012-06-05 17:56
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Decivre wrote:
I argue that it is changing culture. To a degree, you can even see glimpses of moral disconnect simply by looking at the attitude differences between generations. The baby boomers are far less likely to be comfortable with the idea of gay marriage than people in their 30s and younger. While the civil rights act kickstarted the treatment of blacks as equals in American society, it was really more of a gradual shift to true equality as the intolerant earlier generation died off one by one.
No, it has been significantly faster. The US civil rights situation in 1950 and in 1975 were a lightyear apart, yet that is just one generation - and the generation that died off was the one that was already retired. The transition in gay rights looks even faster. I think people actually do shift opinions rather than stubbornly keep the ones they got in their 20s, and in addition people with the "wrong" or losing opinions often go silent as the consensus shifts, making the consensus even stronger.
Quote:
Of course, this raises an interesting point about human society that is relevant to the setting of Eclipse Phase; that mortality may be an integral force to societal maturity and improvement. This being the case, (trans)humanity might face a new hurdle in the immortal age: an eternal old guard.
Well, human societies so far have not shown an enormously strong trend towards maturity and improvement, and high mortality societies have not moved faster. I say bring on immortality, maybe that is actually the recipe for them! Ultralongevity and change means that people shaped by very different environments will hang around. But that might actually cause more diversity in problem solving too.
Quote:
Rather than new civilizations replacing old, transhuman society might need to grow out more akin to a tree. New branches of civilization may grow out from old and live alongside, rather than replacing them as has always been the case before.
Interesting point.
Quote:
This has very unfortunate implications for uplifts and AGI. For the first time in human history, you'd have social groups that face a perpetual form of discrimination... one that may never go away, simply by dint of the fact that their discriminators can continue to promote their form of hate eternally.
Assuming they do not migrate to the fresh new branches.
—
Extropian
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Tue, 2012-06-05 20:55
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Decivre wrote:
Of course, this raises an interesting point about human society that is relevant to the setting of Eclipse Phase; that mortality may be an integral force to societal maturity and improvement. This being the case, (trans)humanity might face a new hurdle in the immortal age: an eternal old guard. Traditionals and morals may exist perpetually as those who espouse them continue to thrive forever. The new economy may never truly supercede the old simply because the people who refuse to make the transition continue to persist. Rather than new civilizations replacing old, transhuman society might need to grow out more akin to a tree. New branches of civilization may grow out from old and live alongside, rather than replacing them as has always been the case before.
Sounds like this "eternal old guard" would be the last man that Friedrich Nietzsche feared. They'd be an immortal group of people who have the wealth and influence to prevent society from changing into something other than what it is they allow. Pretty much these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man I quote "The last man is tired of life, takes no risks, and seeks only comfort and security."
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Tue, 2012-06-05 21:03
Sepherim Sepherim's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
King Shere wrote:
I disagree to the notion that something (whatever that is) would be the only solution/ way.
Indeed, I apologize. There is not one source alone, and there is no one solution. But, that said, capitalism is not one thing, it's a whole social system that conditions the working of all economic, politic and social exchange. It's not one thing, it is the nucleus of one of the three main social systems. So maybe it is not the only source, indeed, but it certainly is one of the main ones.
Quote:
I also think that Capitalism isn't the source, its a often poorly held tool. More damage is done from "naive" short term slightness, the erosion of the trust between people (and thus jeopardize society) & erosion of expected gains from society. The underlying Problems might become more visual if one analyses how to divide resources amongst a group of egoists that work together , and what causes same individuals to suddenly seek to abstain from the collective. Aside from blaming their self egoistic mindset.
Actually, all those things are true, but exist in part because of capitalism itself. As an economic model, capitalist includes such things as ideals, ways of acting and creating respect, valuable and acceptable social goals, etc. Short term slightness, for example, is often strengthened by the quick speed of economic exchange, which rewards those that act quickly and drastically and move on with the gains to other quick and risky ventures.
smokeskin wrote:
We're talking extreme poverty where you don't even have stable access to housing, food and medical care for yourself and your family, we're talking real suffering. Compared to that, it is only a mild nuisance to be on the lower rungs in an inequal society if you have your basic needs covered.
So am I. Capitalism isn't limited to the wealthy countries of the First World. Capitalism is guilty of encouraging corporations to move their installations to countries with low worker wages and rights, and thus their exploitation. And even in the First World countries, we have capitalism causing one crises after the other, that deprive the middle classes of their sustenance and reduce them to low class, and destroys the lowest class. I'm Spanish, I can tell you first handedly several horror stories of middle class people losing everything this same year. And Spain is one of the richest countries in the world.
Anarhista wrote:
Lots of stuff.
I completely agree with you.
Decivre wrote:
I think the reason why we are so self-critical is twofold. For one, we have a greater degree of liberty today to question our society than we ever did before. The freedom of speech is very far reaching, and it wasn't too long ago within the long scope of human civilization that the idea of questioning state or doctrine was unheard of. Much of our self-criticism may simply be due to the fact that for the first time in human history, the common man can be critical of the world around him without fear of treason or heresy. Secondly, today we are more knowledgeable of the goings-on within our society than we ever were. I used to talk to a Jehovah's Witness, who used to tell me that the world was worse because you hear about far more bad things today in the news and media. I countered that statement by responding that we simply hear about far more in the news and media... hearing more bad comes simultaneously with hearing more good. The idea that there are more horrible things happening in the world is less likely than the idea that we simply are more likely to know about them. So within that context, I suppose ignorance is bliss.
Indeed, the more you know and think, the more self-critical you can become. Which will probably only increase in EP with the bigger access to knowledge then. And self-criticism often implies a bigger awareness of risks and problems, and thus a lower happiness in many cases (not all, of course). As for the media, they do portray more the bad news than the good ones that happen in the world, because good things don't sell as many papers as bad ones.
Arenamontanus wrote:
No, it has been significantly faster. The US civil rights situation in 1950 and in 1975 were a lightyear apart, yet that is just one generation - and the generation that died off was the one that was already retired. The transition in gay rights looks even faster. I think people actually do shift opinions rather than stubbornly keep the ones they got in their 20s, and in addition people with the "wrong" or losing opinions often go silent as the consensus shifts, making the consensus even stronger.
Indeed. Social change currently has such a speed that doesn't care for death. Death of course means some old views are left behind definitively, but most of them have changed already before those people die of age. Techonological change, culture spreadth, mass media, etc. all influence and change people more and quicker than ever before.
Quote:
Well, human societies so far have not shown an enormously strong trend towards maturity and improvement, and high mortality societies have not moved faster. I say bring on immortality, maybe that is actually the recipe for them! Ultralongevity and change means that people shaped by very different environments will hang around. But that might actually cause more diversity in problem solving too.
Agreed.
—
The mind is information... hack it! [IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j166/Sepherim/Otros/F_Rep.jpg[/IMG] +4 http://tribulaciones.es/
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Thu, 2012-06-07 04:46
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Arenamontanus wrote:
No, it has been significantly faster. The US civil rights situation in 1950 and in 1975 were a lightyear apart, yet that is just one generation - and the generation that died off was the one that was already retired. The transition in gay rights looks even faster. I think people actually do shift opinions rather than stubbornly keep the ones they got in their 20s, and in addition people with the "wrong" or losing opinions often go silent as the consensus shifts, making the consensus even stronger.
Perhaps to some degree, but black discrimination has not come anywhere near dying off. I has waned and shifted. To that end, political issues often come and go in waves... abortion rights was a silent topic in the 60s, became an issue of great contention in the 70s (after Roe v Wade), died down in importance in the 80s, led to violence in the 90s, and has become a heated discussion again just in the past decade. So I don't know if all political issues are increasingly shifting.
Arenamontanus wrote:
Well, human societies so far have not shown an enormously strong trend towards maturity and improvement, and high mortality societies have not moved faster. I say bring on immortality, maybe that is actually the recipe for them! Ultralongevity and change means that people shaped by very different environments will hang around. But that might actually cause more diversity in problem solving too.
I don't think it is mortality alone that accelerates human development. I think it is a combination of mortality and the right social atmosphere (social rights, post-enlightenment thinking, scientific progress). This does perhaps prove your point, because progress in society seems to accelerate as lifespans increase. So maybe the social advantages of mortality can be mitigated through all the other factors that amplify advancement.
Arenamontanus wrote:
Assuming they do not migrate to the fresh new branches.
The problem though is that human society is for all purposes an echo box. Unless said branch cuts off all ties to those other offending branches, conflict will arise. That rarely ever happens. It might be more feasible in the space-faring age, but I don't see it being a permanent solution.
DivineWrath wrote:
Sounds like this "eternal old guard" would be the last man that Friedrich Nietzsche feared. They'd be an immortal group of people who have the wealth and influence to prevent society from changing into something other than what it is they allow. Pretty much these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man I quote "The last man is tired of life, takes no risks, and seeks only comfort and security."
I don't know. To me, that concept more embodies hedonism, which Nietzsche disdained. Me personally, I like hedonists. They know how to throw a party.
Sepherim wrote:
Indeed, the more you know and think, the more self-critical you can become. Which will probably only increase in EP with the bigger access to knowledge then. And self-criticism often implies a bigger awareness of risks and problems, and thus a lower happiness in many cases (not all, of course). As for the media, they do portray more the bad news than the good ones that happen in the world, because good things don't sell as many papers as bad ones.
Self-criticism does not necessarily equate to unhappiness. In fact, one of the perks of self-criticism is that it helps us define our goals as individuals and as a society. When we know where we lack, we know where to improve. The enhanced ability to define goals for ourselves potentially helps to boost happiness, since many people are happy when they have goals to achieve.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Fri, 2012-06-08 06:18
Pyrite Pyrite's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
It feels to me that the most important difference transhumanity makes is it dramatically increases the inequality of violence. Hobbes points out that all men are equal because they are equally capable of killing one another, and this forces us to get along. In the Eclipse Phase universe, those with resources have a dramatically increased ability to control others, (through planned obsolescence in their bodies, through psycho-surgery, through imprisonment in simulspace, etc.) and also have dramatically increased their ability to mitigate losses due to violence (through medichines, backups, and cortical stacks, among other things.) This creates an underclass of people who are only able to avenge wrongs committed against them if being provided resources by another group, usually one exploiting them for it's own goals. Of course, skill at deception and infosec naturally become the new method by which the weak can attack the strong, and protect themselves from their predations, so maybe it's just that the paradigm shifts and those who expect to rely on desperate violence are left in the dust.
—
'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien
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Sat, 2012-06-09 13:30
LordNephets LordNephets's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
A very good point regarding inequality. To expand on it, I would like to note that in Eclipse Phase, there are not just humans, but pods, uplifts, AI, morphs of all type. Ideas of equality due to something like Hobbes explanation of our equal ability to kill each other, greatly falls by the wayside, indeed equality among race is no longer the main issue, but equality between races.
—
All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.
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Fri, 2012-06-15 13:04
OpsCon OpsCon's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Sepherim wrote:
I disagree deeply. Capitalism is the main force that has created the current economic disparities within societies, where the rich are getting richer and the poors are getting poorer. You can check the income disparity indexes for most countries and you'll quickly notice they are getting bigger. So no, personal gain doesn't lift the poor to the rich. The only way to do this is by approaches that minimize the importance of the self and instead focus on redistribution of wealth through the State. Which can be done in capitalism, but only in one that has been limited by the political sphere. The invisible hand never existed, and will never exist. And lots of individual gains don't equal a common gain.
I find this thread very interesting, and need to come back a re-read the whole thing later to make sure I got all the points (I admit to not being much a philosopher, I'm a business/IT major) but I do have to make this point or argument for the sake of clarification. Outside of black markets, [b]humanity to this point has never actually experienced a capitalistic system.[/b] The black markets are the closest where prices of the goods or services (like drugs and prostitution) are determined purely by market forces. Except not, because the very regulations that make these things black market in fact DO influence the prices and process of exchange. What we have now, in the best estimation I can make, is a perverted and advanced form of Mercantilism. Instead of physically colonizing and conquering other nations for their labor and resources, we instead do it by trade agreement or so called, "military intervention." This is not sustainable in the long run, if for no other reason that artificially keeping some areas 'down' for exploitation in the long run simply puts a hard cap on the number of consumers that can afford to buy the goods at the artificial prices set by this system. Will this current system ever mutate into actual capitalism or something else unseen entirely? I can't say. I'm not an economy major. But I do believe there will be a major shift in the next 20 years, and it will be less about the means of production and more about the knowledge of how to do so. The real question is if the shift will be smooth and voluntary, or violent and forced by revolution.
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KT Alex 'Iceshade' Andrade [img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo2_400.jpg[/img]
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Fri, 2012-06-15 14:28
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
OpsCon wrote:
Outside of black markets, [b]humanity to this point has never actually experienced a capitalistic system.[/b] The black markets are the closest where prices of the goods or services (like drugs and prostitution) are determined purely by market forces. Except not, because the very regulations that make these things black market in fact DO influence the prices and process of exchange.
True, but there might be a reason for that. True capitalism, much like true Marxism, is probably just a theoretical idea that will probably never see the light of day. Only derivatives thereof will ever leave theory and become applied.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Fri, 2012-06-15 16:19
OpsCon OpsCon's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
Decivre wrote:
OpsCon wrote:
Outside of black markets, [b]humanity to this point has never actually experienced a capitalistic system.[/b] The black markets are the closest where prices of the goods or services (like drugs and prostitution) are determined purely by market forces. Except not, because the very regulations that make these things black market in fact DO influence the prices and process of exchange.
True, but there might be a reason for that. True capitalism, much like true Marxism, is probably just a theoretical idea that will probably never see the light of day. Only derivatives thereof will ever leave theory and become applied.
Also possible, as I say, this is just an idea because I don't have the data to prove it (though both my finance professors agreed that the idea merited research, while trying to talk me into a MBA program, when I just want to finish my Bachelor and get back to working).
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KT Alex 'Iceshade' Andrade [img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo2_400.jpg[/img]
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Sun, 2012-06-17 23:51
LordNephets LordNephets's picture
Re: Transhumanity: Truely Better?
This thread blew up fast, I also need to re-read everything if I want to make that bulleted list. Me=lazy.
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All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.
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