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Transhuman timeline

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Wed, 2014-07-09 13:32

Leng Plateau Leng Plateau's picture

Transhuman timeline

Random question for the galleries. Do you expect transhumanism to become more than a theory? If so, when? If that date's not within your projected lifetime how do you feel about that?

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At least with Lovecraft, nobody pretends the gods are nice. And wherever you end up, there is guaranteed to be tentacles.

Wed, 2014-07-09 14:31

Evilnerf

I think it will be such a

I think it will be such a creep that no one really talks about it and life just makes little changes. Probably in ways we cant even imagine now.

Wed, 2014-07-09 14:31

otohime1978 otohime1978's picture

We've already sort of reached

We've already sort of reached that point, haven't we? Are we not all cyborgs? When was the last time that your smartphone was more than an arm's length away from you? We can wonder about something and look up what we want to know within humanity's vast collective knowledge in seconds and then know. We can communicate ideas to almost anyone in the world within seconds, and then get feed back, almost instantly. Soon, we can print organs. FPGAs and DLP resin 3D printers are becoming commonly available not to mention affordable to whomever has an idea and the ability to realise it, allowing for rapid hardware prototyping and deployment. Algorithms in Google Now, Apple Siri, Facebook, and many others filter through millions of news feeds based off of prior habits to give us highlights of things we would probably be most interested in at the moment. Hell, there is already a growing disparity between the haves and the havenots. Those without computers, without internet, without a smartphone, are at a huge social disadvantage. Almost everyone, including businesses, government, expect you to have access to these vast resources; and without access to such things, you essentially are the modern day form of illiterate. Have we not already crossed this threshold? 2020 is now.

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[size=6][i]...your vision / a homunculus on borrowed time Katya Bio: http://eclipsephase.com/comment/46253#comment-46253

Wed, 2014-07-09 14:37

Leng Plateau Leng Plateau's picture

Interesting way to put it

Interesting way to put it otohime1978, but also a great point. We're doing a lot of augmentation now. How about life extension?

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At least with Lovecraft, nobody pretends the gods are nice. And wherever you end up, there is guaranteed to be tentacles.

Wed, 2014-07-09 14:53

otohime1978 otohime1978's picture

Life extension? Hasn't the

Life extension? Hasn't the life expectancy doubled in the past century alone? No longer is dying in our 40's and 50's the norm. This can only improve, I suspect. Although, we could be wrong. But, if we are not, then we have another major issue to tackle. What use is the youth when those you would have replaced are still in position and just as healthy and sharp? There were riots and protests in France over this very issue rather recently: they raised the age of retirement.

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[size=6][i]...your vision / a homunculus on borrowed time Katya Bio: http://eclipsephase.com/comment/46253#comment-46253

Wed, 2014-07-09 15:00

Leng Plateau Leng Plateau's picture

And yet...

And yet, while our averages have been rising (especially thanks to drops in infant mortality) our chances of making even a single century are small.

—

At least with Lovecraft, nobody pretends the gods are nice. And wherever you end up, there is guaranteed to be tentacles.

Wed, 2014-07-09 15:28

Erulastant Erulastant's picture

And? There were times when

And? There were times when you'd be lucky to get to half a century. It's all a matter of perspective.

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You, too, were made by humans. The methods used were just cruder, imprecise. I guess that explains a lot.

Wed, 2014-07-09 16:03

Steel Accord Steel Accord's picture

Optimistic

I think the OP's point has yet to be addressed. Yes, technology is advancing rapidly and our relationship with it has made us live longer and become smarter. Yet we still haven't created a basic strong AGI, uploading is still the stuff of sci-fi, and any augmentations that might be feasible are prohibitively expensive to even test. I think these things will come to pass one day, however, I still have doubts of whether I will live to experience them.

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Your passion is power. Focus it. Your body is a tool. Hone it. Transhummanity is a pantheon. Exalt it!

Wed, 2014-07-09 19:40

Evilnerf

Well, to answer the question

Well, to answer the question more directly. I dont think we will become Transhuman as we currently understand it. Its like how long ago people couldnt imagine how space worked. There wont be a point where we just look around and say, "Yep, now we're transhuman." Itll be more subtle then that. Stuff will happen, people will live and die, and the future will be incomprehensible to us.

Wed, 2014-07-09 21:17

#10

otohime1978 otohime1978's picture

I'd still argue that we

I'd still argue that we already crossed that line when people realised that portable radio technology could do more than make phone calls and it entered the public consciousness as the smart phone. A lot of scifi had the concepts of vast networks and information, but up until the '90s and beyond, the idea that these things would be universally accessible much less from the palm of our hand was simply ludicrous. We've already crossed a few singularities and we never really noticed. Cars, planes, telephones, television and the internet, leaving out atmosphere and stretching our vision across and beyond our solar system. It just sort of happened. Plenty here have pointed this out. It will happen again. The question of when transhumanism will happen will be asked again and again without realising that the idea of what it is to be human has already changed. Yet the things that untrained people can do now in short notice would seem almost alien to someone from 50-60 years ago. Our generation gap within the past 20-30 years is so great that older generations no longer recognize what humanity and navigating the social world has become. It's partially why older generations seem so helpless in ways beyond physical limitations. They simply cannot relate. That, I would submit, is evidence enough that humanity itself has changed significantly.

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[size=6][i]...your vision / a homunculus on borrowed time Katya Bio: http://eclipsephase.com/comment/46253#comment-46253

Fri, 2014-07-11 10:01

#11

Undocking

It depends on whether the

It depends on whether the transhuman state is a stable concept or a threshold between the human and the posthuman. Eclipse Phase places transhuman and transhumanity as a distinct label for the species as a whole, including Flats and other humans who are not transhuman. In this case, I would argue that a successful implementation of radical enhancement where technology is utilized to improve a human's abilities beyond the limits of an unmodified human would be the first step to transhumanity as Eclipse Phase defines it. As for the "we haven't made SAI yet", I'm currently not in the camp that believe humanity can create an SAI with computer technology—however I think bootstrapping the human brain and building a biological SAI is probable. Yes, as Kurtzweil points out, the predicted computing power necessary is quickly approaching—but it is not as dynamic or compact as an organic brain, and there is the question of programming the brain function as well. The EU's current HBP conversation show that even neuroscientists who I would describe as sympathetic to transhumanism see the project as premature. Depending on the political landscape, I think there will be moderate enhancement (where humans are modified to peak human condition) in my lifetime with the chance for radical enhancement. I don't expect a Kurtzweilian singularity though.

Fri, 2014-07-11 10:31

#12

otohime1978 otohime1978's picture

But that is the thing about

But that is the thing about singularities. You don't really see them coming, and after you've crossed the threshold, you often don't realise it until you look back and think about how much stuff has changed.

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[size=6][i]...your vision / a homunculus on borrowed time Katya Bio: http://eclipsephase.com/comment/46253#comment-46253

Sun, 2014-07-13 02:05

#13

Undocking

otohime1978 wrote:But that is

otohime1978 wrote:
But that is the thing about singularities. You don't really see them coming, and after you've crossed the threshold, you often don't realise it until you look back and think about how much stuff has changed.

I definitely agree that technological innovation has changed the way humanity lives. My use of singularity refers specifically to the near religious transcendence caused by an explosion of artificial intelligence predicted by Kurzweil, which I find as likely to occur as the 2012 Mayan predictions or Rapture whenever some zealot adds numbers in the bible together.

Mon, 2014-07-14 05:40

#14

Smokeskin

I don't see strong AI not

I don't see strong AI not happening in my expected lifetime (unless we get hit by an asteroid or have a nuclear war or something like that first). Even if we're not able to match it yet, the human brain is very primitive. Running at 200Hz, transmitting signals at the speed of sound, it's ridiculous. All it has going for it is minaturization, and our machines are going to match that, and then they're going to vastly surpass it in performance, and quickly. Our machines don't seem to be getting that much smarter that fast because going from 1/1,000,000,000 to 1/1,000,000 of our intelligence doesn't make a noticable difference even if it happens in 10 or 20 years. But going from equalling our intelligence and then upgrading capacity and speed 1,000 times, that's going to be noticable. It will make baseline humans completely irrelevant. The value of our work will be zero. Our ability to keep up with AIs in economy, policy, administration, research, in every single arena will be zero. I see three basic classes of scenarios from there: A: Not an extinction event. The AIs and the first humans to go posthuman are friendly and give the rest of humanity the same option. B: Extinction. The AIs end up unfriendly and we're toast. C: Some humans have the means to upgrade to posthumans before baseline humans go extinct. For example posthumans and AIs evolve to the point where baseline humans are regarded as irrelevant species, and that includes morality. The baseline humans don't have the resources for their own upkeep or the procedure needed to go posthuman, and the posthumans and AIs don't think they're worth wasting resources on, neither to keep around nor upgrade. So baseline humans die, like we today let wild animals starve to death if they can't find their own food, or maybe baseline humans are even treated like vermin and outright killed. It affects my life greatly and it is one of the reasons I engage in high-risk economic behavior. Scenario A and B is unaffected by what I do, but scenario C it will most likely take a significant amount of money for me and my family to survive. Unfortunately the financial crisis wiped me out, but I'm not taking a regular job. I'm trying the entrepeneurship route again because that's the only way to get the funds I might need.