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Substrate-independent minds

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I wonder how that came about. I've read about this woman (will try to find the link). As I recall, she has ended up in hospitals in the UK as a result of some of her self-surgeries and implants. Medical doctors won't assist her with these experiments, and it's possible that some doctors and hospital administrators sought to prevent her purchasing anesthetics to prevent her injuring herself further. Which I see as a reasonable thing to do.

Bodybuilding is on this continuum - stories of taking veterinary medications and eating steroid laced grains aren't uncommon although good steroids are readily available and OTC supplements and "pro hormones" are way ahead of what we had in the 90s.

Physiques are different now with aesthetic standards rather than competition being the most common goal - actual strength levels don't compare to twenty years ago.

Professional bodybuilders need lab techs in their corners these days:



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I wonder how that came about. I've read about this woman (will try to find the link). As I recall, she has ended up in hospitals in the UK as a result of some of her self-surgeries and implants. Medical doctors won't assist her with these experiments, and it's possible that some doctors and hospital administrators sought to prevent her purchasing anesthetics to prevent her injuring herself further. Which I see as a reasonable thing to do.


"She wants other people to share her DIY vision. It’s not the full transhumanist idea, it’s not immortality or superpowers — but even living without the gentle sensation of feeling the invisible is a difficult thing to imagine, she says. One of the implants stopped functioning once, and she describes it as like going blind."

I can relate this to the body modification movement ... and as weird as it is it seems a little more human, more understandable and likely ...

Also, it means having the means under your control as opposed to corporate - which I think is a real possibility with high end TxH ... I really doubt Joe Sixpack is going to get a Supersuit or uploaded to endless worlds of wonder in the hive mind ...

And would you entrust your uploaded consciousness to a lab tech making minimum wage? Or to a relative with eyes on an inheritance? ;-)

But DIY like this I can see.

But I still want the technology to conform to me and at the end of the day I want to be able to take it off!

The article above mentions Iron Man as Americas iconic cyborg - human, all too human - and his suit comes off at the end of the day.

However, Tony Stark does have a nuclear power plant in the middle of his chest.

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I can relate this to the body modification movement ... and as weird as it is it seems a little more human, more understandable ...
Also, it means having the means under your control as opposed to corporate

I see the 'body modification movement' as corporate-inspired in the first place. Products to sell from home gym equipment to nutritional supplements (often having negative health effects), sports clothing even for women who don't participate in sports, athletic shoes in ever brighter colors, memberships in franchised spas and work-out clubs, etc. Capitalism relies on advertising to sell lifestyles as well as products everywhere we look, products glamorized by glamorized people in perfect shape, well-coiffed and beautifully dressed, perfect teeth and endless smiles. The message is always 'you-as-you-are are not good enough', downloaded 24/7 to young and impressionable people as well as to older ones.

That wouldn't be so bad if it hadn't led to an epidemic of life-threatening eating disorders in men as well as women, teenage boys, and most acutely adolescent girls, who lose their self-esteem, personal vitality, physical health, capacity for joy, and even their lives in desperate attempts -- anorexia and bulimia -- to become physically
'perfect'. Never satisfied with themselves, these young people also cut and mutilate themselves where others won't notice and pierce themselves where people will notice. I used to think that the gothic kids were healthier since they seemed to act out a protest against the values and lifestyles sold to the culture at large, but they too pierced their bodies, often with long rows of safety pins. I think Leath Anonym was probably a Goth as a teenager. And I think the transhumanism/posthumanism meme has inspired her to go to the lengths she's gone in recent years. I see all the self-destructiveness of the young in our time as one inchoate form of protest or another. What are they protesting? The superficiality, triviality, and heartlessness of the culture they're trying to grow up in.
 
I see the 'body modification movement' as corporate-inspired in the first place. Products to sell from home gym equipment to nutritional supplements (often having negative health effects), sports clothing even for women who don't participate in sports, athletic shoes in ever brighter colors, memberships in franchised spas and work-out clubs, etc. Capitalism relies on advertising to sell lifestyles as well as products everywhere we look, products glamorized by glamorized people in perfect shape, well-coiffed and beautifully dressed, perfect teeth and endless smiles. The message is always 'you-as-you-are are not good enough', downloaded 24/7 to young and impressionable people as well as to older ones.

That wouldn't be so bad if it hadn't led to an epidemic of life-threatening eating disorders in men as well as women, teenage boys, and most acutely adolescent girls, who lose their self-esteem, personal vitality, physical health, capacity for joy, and even their lives in desperate attempts -- anorexia and bulimia -- to become physically
'perfect'. Never satisfied with themselves, these young people also cut and mutilate themselves where others won't notice and pierce themselves where people will notice. I used to think that the gothic kids were healthier since they seemed to act out a protest against the values and lifestyles sold to the culture at large, but they too pierced their bodies, often with long rows of safety pins. I think Leath Anonym was probably a Goth as a teenager. And I think the transhumanism/posthumanism meme has inspired her to go to the lengths she's gone in recent years. I see all the self-destructiveness of the young in our time as one inchoate form of protest or another. What are they protesting? The superficiality, triviality, and heartlessness of the culture they're trying to grow up in.

This is where the question comes in that I posed to @ufology about should we change who we are? As I understand it - we evolved in smaller groups, Dunbar's number is about 150 - and yet we live, in all but the smallest communities, among thousands of others. I'm sure someone in the ThX movements is looking at what social and emotional qualities need to be engineered for a hive mind? Or even to tolerate greater crowding? ... Huxely discussed it in BNW ... or other kinds of scenarios. But those who aren't protesting are rapidly adapting to the qualities of the culture you mention above - so there are two tracks of "evolution" - as I said I understand the protestors better than the passivity of the adapters.
 
I came across an interesting site

. RGBproject by Mauro Ceolin .-. . ..
... there's a book there in Italian and English on a Zoology of Memes ...

We talked about post literacy I think?

Postliterate society - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Literacy: the ability to read and interpret the written word. What is post-literacy? It is the condition of semi-literacy, where most people can read and write to some extent, but where the literate sensibility no longer occupies a central position in culture, society, and politics. Post-literacy occurs when the ability to comprehend the written word decays. If post-literacy is now the ground of society questions arise: what happens to the reader, the writer, and the book in post-literary environment?

What happens to thinking, resistance, and dissent when the ground becomes wordless?
....
A postliterate society might still include people who are aliterate, who know how to read and write but choose not to. Most if not all people would be media literate, multimedia literate, visually literate, and transliterate.

transliterate

Transliteracy (pl. transliteracies) is the ability to understand and communicate—i.e., to be "literate"—across all communications platforms, including sign language, speech, reading, writing, mass media, and social media. The term was coined in 2005 by the Transliteracies Research Project.[1]

It is put forth as a "21st century literacy" similar to media literacy and digital literacy.[2] The term shifts the focus from reading and writing to the communications skills necessary to be successful in modern society.[3] In practice, much research in transliteracy focuses on digital and online reading and how they differ from print literacy.[4]
 
The Archdruid Report
Modern science is extremely vulnerable to such a turn of events. There was a time when the benefits of scientific research and technological development routinely reached the poor as well as the privileged, but that time has long since passed; these days, the benefits of research and development move up the social ladder, while the costs and negative consequences move down.

Nearly all the jobs eliminated by automation, globalization, and the computer revolution, for example, used to hire from the bottom end of the job market.

In the same way, changes in US health care in recent decades have benefited the privileged while subjecting most others to substandard care at prices so high that medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US today.
It’s all very well for the promoters of progress to gabble on about science as the key to humanity’s destiny; the poor know that the destiny thus marketed isn’t for them. To the poor, progress means fewer jobs with lower pay and worse conditions, more surveillance and impersonal violence carried out by governments that show less and less interest in paying even lip service to the concept of civil rights, a rising tide of illnesses caused by environmental degradation and industrial effluents,


and glimpses from afar of an endless stream of lavishly advertised tech-derived trinkets, perks and privileges that they will never have.

Between the poor and any appreciation for modern science stands a wall made of failed schools, defunded libraries, denied opportunities, and the systematic use of science and technology to benefit other people at their expense. Such a wall, it probably bears noting, makes a good surface against which to sharpen oyster shells.

For the meaning of that last sentence, I recommend the entire article.
 
This is very helpful

Outline of transhumanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

particularly

Outline of transhumanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Libertarian transhumanists believe that the principle of self-ownership is the most fundamental idea from which both libertarianism and transhumanism stem. They are rational egoists and ethical egoists who embrace the prospect of using emerging technologies to enhance human capacities, which they believe stems from the self-interested application of reason and will in the context of the individual freedom to achieve a posthuman state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. They extend this rational and ethical egoism to advocate a form of "biolibertarianism".[2]
As strong civil libertarians, libertarian transhumanists hold that any attempt to limit or suppress the asserted right to human enhancement is a violation of civil rights and civil liberties. However, as strong economic libertarians, they also reject proposed public policies of government-regulated and -insured human enhancement technologies, which are advocated by democratic transhumanists, because they fear that any state intervention will steer or limit their choices.[2][4][5]
 
The Politics of Transhumanism

"Transhumanism is an emergent philosophical movement which says that humans can and should become more than human through technological enhancements. Contemporary transhumanism has grown out of white, male, affluent, American Internet culture, and its political perspective has generally been a militant version of the libertarianism typical of that culture. Nonetheless transhumanists are becoming more diverse, with some building a broad liberal democratic philosophic foundation in the World Transhumanist Association. A variety of left futurist trends and projects are discussed as a proto-“democratic transhumanism.” The essay also discusses the reaction of transhumanists to a small group of neo-Nazis who have attempted to attach themselves to the transhumanist movement. For the transhumanist movement to grow and become a serious challenge to their opposites, the bio-Luddites, they will need to distance themselves from their elitist anarcho-capitalist roots and clarify commitments to liberal democratic institutions, values and public policies. By embracing political engagement and the use of government to address equity, safety and efficacy concerns about transhuman technologies, transhumanists are in a better position to attract a larger, broader audience."
 
I'm sure someone in the ThX movements is looking at what social and emotional qualities need to be engineered for a hive mind? Or even to tolerate greater crowding?

If so, I'd like to read an account of their thinking and the kinds of forced 'adaptations' they have in mind. The hive mind is one of the stupidest and deadliest memes pursued by transhumanists and could only be thought to be a good idea by people whose educations have left them with no appreciation of the variety of human ideas proliferated in human cultural history -- and our absolute need for all those perspectives. Fortunately not all individuals involved in CT and AI are so intellectually limited. The hive mind is not even an issue in the best-informed discussion I've come across concerning 'ThX', linked below from Edge. It begins with a 'half-manifesto' by Jaron Lanier {the second half might have been published by now and if so I want to read it} and continues with responses from a variety of experts and thinkers on the major issues raised in the CT and AI fields. Here's the link to this long and very rewarding discussion:

ONE HALF A MANIFESTO | Edge.org


... Huxely discussed it in BNW ... or other kinds of scenarios. But those who aren't protesting are rapidly adapting to the qualities of the culture you mention above - so there are two tracks of "evolution" - as I said I understand the protestors better than the passivity of the adapters.

Right, as you say those who aren't protesting are rapidly -- and uncritically -- adapting to the transhumanist/posthumanist meme. The uncritical believers in ThX seem not to have read Huxley's Brave New World and other classic dystopian novels forecasting the kind of future Kurzweil and a few others Messianic types are attempting to bring about. At the level of mass consumer society, the adaptation to transhumanist memes goes on at a superficial level, buying into ideas of 'self-enhancement' with no glimmer of recognition that the goal of ThX is to dispense with individual selves and the messy market-place of ideas they generate, which has always been our species' saving grace.

The long discussion of Lanier's paper at the Edge link is refreshing because it demonstrates the variety of well-informed critical thinking needed to cope with what's happening in CT/AI/ThX. But very few people will read it, tucked away as it is in an intelligent corner of the internet. And these critical thinkers make no mistake about the present character of the civilization we live in, in which, as Thoreau presciently expressed it, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."
 
With the emergence of cyberculture, the technoutopian meme-plex has found a natural medium, and has been furiously mutating and crossbreeding with political ideologies. One of its recent manifestations has adopted the label “transhumanism,” and within this sparsely populated but broad ideological tent many proto-ideological hybrids are stirring. Much transhumanist proto-politics is distinctly the product of elitist, male, American libertarianism, limiting its ability to respond to concerns behind the growing Luddite movement, such as with the equity and safety of innovations. Committed only to individual liberty, libertarian transhumanists have little interest in building solidarity between “posthumans” and “normals,” or in crafting techno-utopian projects which can inspire broad social movements.
If so, I'd like to read an account of their thinking and the kinds of forced 'adaptations' they have in mind. The hive mind is one of the stupidest and deadliest memes pursued by transhumanists and could only be thought to be a good idea by people whose educations have left them with no appreciation of the variety of human ideas proliferated in human cultural history -- and our absolute need for all those perspectives. Fortunately not all individuals involved in CT and AI are so intellectually limited. The hive mind is not even an issue in the best-informed discussion I've come across concerning 'ThX', linked below from Edge. It begins with a 'half-manifesto' by Jaron Lanier {the second half might have been published by now and if so I want to read it} and continues with responses from a variety of experts and thinkers on the major issues raised in the CT and AI fields. Here's the link to this long and very rewarding discussion:

ONE HALF A MANIFESTO | Edge.org




Right, as you say those who aren't protesting are rapidly -- and uncritically -- adapting to the transhumanist/posthumanist meme. The uncritical believers in ThX seem not to have read Huxley's Brave New World and other classic dystopian novels forecasting the kind of future Kurzweil and a few others Messianic types are attempting to bring about. At the level of mass consumer society, the adaptation to transhumanist memes goes on at a superficial level, buying into ideas of 'self-enhancement' with no glimmer of recognition that the goal of ThX is to dispense with individual selves and the messy market-place of ideas they generate, which has always been our species' saving grace.

The long discussion of Lanier's paper at the Edge link is refreshing because it demonstrates the variety of well-informed critical thinking needed to cope with what's happening in CT/AI/ThX. But very few people will read it, tucked away as it is in an intelligent corner of the internet. And these critical thinkers make no mistake about the present character of the civilization we live in, in which, as Thoreau presciently expressed it, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."

I'll try to read Lanier's article ... reading your post on the fourth wave of humanism ... Thoreau's quote reminds me of Heidegger's technicity.
 
This is perfect ...

Dr Seuss and Dr Suss!

Dr. Seuss - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Theo Geisel" redirects here. For the physicist, see Theo Geisel (physicist).

"Theo Geisel (born 24 August 1948 in Limburg an der Lahn, Hesse) is a German physicist. Geisel is director at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and professor of theoretical physics at the University of Göttingen. His research is primarily concerned with the behavior of complex systems ranging from theoretical investigations in quantum chaos to nonlinear phenomena occurring in the brain."

Oh the places I could go!


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If so, I'd like to read an account of their thinking and the kinds of forced 'adaptations' they have in mind. The hive mind is one of the stupidest and deadliest memes pursued by transhumanists and could only be thought to be a good idea by people whose educations have left them with no appreciation of the variety of human ideas proliferated in human cultural history -- and our absolute need for all those perspectives. Fortunately not all individuals involved in CT and AI are so intellectually limited. The hive mind is not even an issue in the best-informed discussion I've come across concerning 'ThX', linked below from Edge. It begins with a 'half-manifesto' by Jaron Lanier {the second half might have been published by now and if so I want to read it} and continues with responses from a variety of experts and thinkers on the major issues raised in the CT and AI fields. Here's the link to this long and very rewarding discussion:

ONE HALF A MANIFESTO | Edge.org




Right, as you say those who aren't protesting are rapidly -- and uncritically -- adapting to the transhumanist/posthumanist meme. The uncritical believers in ThX seem not to have read Huxley's Brave New World and other classic dystopian novels forecasting the kind of future Kurzweil and a few others Messianic types are attempting to bring about. At the level of mass consumer society, the adaptation to transhumanist memes goes on at a superficial level, buying into ideas of 'self-enhancement' with no glimmer of recognition that the goal of ThX is to dispense with individual selves and the messy market-place of ideas they generate, which has always been our species' saving grace.

The long discussion of Lanier's paper at the Edge link is refreshing because it demonstrates the variety of well-informed critical thinking needed to cope with what's happening in CT/AI/ThX. But very few people will read it, tucked away as it is in an intelligent corner of the internet. And these critical thinkers make no mistake about the present character of the civilization we live in, in which, as Thoreau presciently expressed it, "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind."

From the opening of Lanier's Semifesto ... a very good point about one thing leading to another:

"During the last twenty years a stream of books has gradually informed the larger public about the belief structure of the inner circle of Digerati, starting softly, for instance with Godel, Escher, Bach, and growing more harsh with recent entries such as The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurtzweil.

Recently, public attention has finally been drawn to #6, the astonishing belief in an eschatological cataclysm in our lifetimes, brought about when computers become the ultra-intelligent masters of physical matter and life. So far as I can tell, a large number of my friends and colleagues believe in some version of this immanent doom.

I am quite curious who, among the eminent thinkers who largely accept some version of the first five points, are also comfortable with the sixth idea, the eschatology. In general, I find that technologists, rather than natural scientists, have tended to be vocal about the possibility of a near-term criticality.

**I have no idea, however, what figures like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett make of it. Somehow I can't imagine these elegant theorists speculating about whether nanorobots might take over the planet in twenty years. It seems beneath their dignity.

And yet, the eschatologies of Kurtzweil, Moravec, and Drexler follow

directly and, it would seem, inevitably,

from an understanding of the world that has been most sharply articulated by none other than Dawkins and Dennett.

Do Dawkins, Dennett, and others in their camp see some flaw in logic that insulates their thinking from the eschatological implications? The primary candidate for such a flaw as I see it is that cyber-armageddonists have confused ideal computers with real computers, which behave differently. My position on this point can be evaluated separately from my admittedly provocative positions on the first five points, and I hope it will be."


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Do Dawkins, Dennett, and others in their camp see some flaw in logic that insulates their thinking from the eschatological implications? The primary candidate for such a flaw as I see it is that cyber-armageddonists have confused ideal computers with real computers, which behave differently. My position on this point can be evaluated separately from my admittedly provocative positions on the first five points, and I hope it will be."
What difference do you see between an "ideal computer" and a "real computer", keeping in mind that 100 years ago, if you were to describe the average personal computer to someone, they might very well think it sounded like an "ideal computer" ( assuming they even knew what you were talking about in the first place ), never mind that modern computers extend into the realm of supercomputers, machines so powerful that the operations per-second taking place can barely be comprehended. I wouldn't be surprised to find that predictions of such computers ( if there even were any ) would have seemed beyond science fiction, perhaps even impossible. Yet here they are and we take them for granted on a daily basis.
 
What difference do you see between an "ideal computer" and a "real computer", keeping in mind that 100 years ago, if you were to describe the average personal computer to someone, they might very well think it sounded like an "ideal computer" ( assuming they even knew what you were talking about in the first place ), never mind that modern computers extend into the realm of supercomputers, machines so powerful that the operations per-second taking place can barely be comprehended. I wouldn't be surprised to find that predictions of such computers ( if there even were any ) would have seemed beyond science fiction, perhaps even impossible. Yet here they are and we take them for granted on a daily basis.

Thats a quote from Lanier. Did you read the article?


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I was about to ask the same question Steve just asked. Here again is the context in which Lanier raises this question, provided by Steve:

quoting Lanier: "Recently, public attention has finally been drawn to #6, the astonishing belief in an eschatological cataclysm in our lifetimes, brought about when computers become the ultra-intelligent masters of physical matter and life. So far as I can tell, a large number of my friends and colleagues believe in some version of this immanent doom. I am quite curious who, among the eminent thinkers who largely accept some version of the first five points, are also comfortable with the sixth idea, the eschatology.

continuing: In general, I find that technologists, rather than natural scientists, have tended to be vocal about the possibility of a near-term criticality. I have no idea, however, what figures like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett make of it. Somehow I can't imagine these elegant theorists speculating about whether nanorobots might take over the planet in twenty years. It seems beneath their dignity. And yet, the eschatologies of Kurtzweil, Moravec, and Drexler follow directly and, it would seem, inevitably, from an understanding of the world that has been most sharply articulated by none other than Dawkins and Dennett.

Do Dawkins, Dennett, and others in their camp see some flaw in logic that insulates their thinking from the eschatological implications? The primary candidate for such a flaw as I see it is that cyber-armageddonists have confused ideal computers with real computers, which behave differently."


@ufology, the distinction between what Lanier calls ‘real computers’ and ‘ideal computers’ is detailed in his technical analysis of the inherent difficulties encountered in computer development itself, a subject he is eminently well qualified to analyze. If you read that part of his presentation, it would be interesting to hear how you respond to it. I’d recommend reading the whole presentation however.

 
For the benefit of other readers here who haven't yet read Lanier's Edge presentation, here are the six "component beliefs of cybernetic totalism" identified and discussed by Lanier:

"I hope no one will think I'm equating Cybernetics and what I'm calling Cybernetic Totalism. The distance between recognizing a great metaphor and treating it as the only metaphor is the same as the distance between humble science and dogmatic religion.

Here is a partial roster of the component beliefs of cybernetic totalism:

1) That cybernetic patterns of information provide the ultimate and best way to understand reality.

2) That people are no more than cybernetic patterns.

3) That subjective experience either doesn't exist, or is unimportant because it is some sort of ambient or peripheral effect.

4) That what Darwin described in biology, or something like it, is in fact also the singular, superior description of all creativity and culture.

5) That qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of information systems will be accelerated by Moore's Law.

And finally, the most dramatic:

6) That biology and physics will merge with computer science (becoming biotechnology and nanotechnology), resulting in life and the physical universe becoming mercurial; achieving the supposed nature of computer software. Furthermore, all of this will happen very soon! Since computers are improving so quickly, they will overwhelm all the other cybernetic processes, like people, and will fundamentally change the nature of what's going on in the familiar neighborhood of Earth at some moment when a new "criticality" is achieved -- maybe in about the year 2020. To be a human after that moment will be either impossible or something very different than we now can know. . . ."

ONE HALF A MANIFESTO | Edge.org
 
Of what relevance is that to the question I asked?

?? It's relevant to understanding what Lanier has to contribute to our discussion of CT/AI/ThX, to understand which requires that you read Lanier. We are discussing Lanier's contributions to the issues we've been discussing here for several weeks.
 
Of what relevance is that to the question I asked?

Direct.

The way I read the article Lanier addresses your question throughout the article ...

So, if you said

"Yes, I read the article."

I would say "ok, maybe I misunderstand your question - I thought Lanier addressed your question in his article. Let's take a closer look."

If you said

"No, I didn't read the article."

I would say

"I think Lanier addresses your question throughout the article - why don't you have a look and see?"

So ...

Did you read the article?


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Direct.

The way I read the article Lanier addresses your question throughout the article ...

So, if you said

"Yes, I read the article."

I would say "ok, maybe I misunderstand your question - I thought Lanier addressed your question in his article. Let's take a closer look."

If you said

"No, I didn't read the article."

I would say

"I think Lanier addresses your question throughout the article - why don't you have a look and see?"

So ...

Did you read the article?


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So I take it then that your view of what constitutes an "ideal computer" as opposed to a "real computer" is the same as Lanier's view?
 
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