Let's talk about transhumanism

[Serious Callers Only]

Brain transplants are supposed to be... uh... 'possible' with different challenges than usual.

To wit, the brain is supposed to be antibody neutral, and the problem is the nerves and eyes and brain regulation interfaces and stuff.

[karaddin]

With digitized brain kind of stuff you get into the same issues as with teleportation, if there is a break in the consciousness it's not really "you" that is continuing. For all intents and purposes for everyone else it's you, but it's a perfect replica of your consciousness, and the one that is you has stopped. I'm opposed to that if I'm chasing immortality.

A plausible way to work around this that i have read either theorised or in a Sci-Fi somewhere is very slowly, piece by piece adding on/replacing parts of your brain with machine neurons. Eventually you could get to a point of having the brain purely machine without any break in consciousness which I think would make it still me. Whether you can then transfer that consciousness elsewhere gets a lot trickier.

There was a good talk at Sydney TEDx on Saturday about old age, and how we should be doing way more research into how to stop it. Not necessarily to massively extend lives beyond current life spans, but to remove the physical and mental degeneration/conditions that occur with old age currently. I'll link it when I see it go up on the TED site which probably won't be for a while.

[Spring Bass]

A plausible way to work around this that i have read either theorised or in a Sci-Fi somewhere is very slowly, piece by piece adding on/replacing parts of your brain with machine neurons. Eventually you could get to a point of having the brain purely machine without any break in consciousness which I think would make it still me.

That would be the only sure-fire way of doing it without it being a form of death for the original (or the possibility of multiple "you"'s existing simultaneously). You'd either gradually replace the neurons in your brain, spinal cord, and digestive system with mechanical ones, or with connections to simulated neurons being run on a server - the key factor is that they're interacting with your remaining biological neurons as if they were the originals. Eventually, all of your biological neurons would be replaced, at which point you use the same technology to replace the "input" from your biological body with either mechanical parts or simulated parts (depending on what method you use). At no point would you have cessation of brain activity and/or consciousness, yet you would have changed into an entirely different form over time. It's sort of like how you don't notice that nearly all of the cells in your body get replaced over time.

It also might be possible to do something like running a simulated brain "extension" that's fully integrated with your biologically created mind, so that you're simultaneously thinking with your simulated and biological brain. If you gradually shut down parts of the biological brain after matching and integrating them with simulated "parts", then you could get to the same point. I think - I'm not as sure about whether that one truly avoids cessation of brain activity and consciousness as with the first method.

No idea if any of that is ultimately possible. I doubt it's impossible to simulate neurons or do extremely delicate surgery on them, but actually connecting them to cybernetic/simulated neurons in a way so that your biological brain couldn't tell the difference is a whole other matter.

Whether you can then transfer that consciousness elsewhere gets a lot trickier.

I think you probably could, as long as you didn't create permanent duplicates or terminate the machine/"saved state" of the mechanical/simulated person. Although you might want to create an additional pair of copies in storage so that you could cross-check them for errors.

[karaddin]

That would be the only sure-fire way of doing it without it being a form of death for the original (or the possibility of multiple "you"'s existing simultaneously). You'd either gradually replace the neurons in your brain, spinal cord, and digestive system with mechanical ones

This is my own personal "wait, grain silo's can explode?" moment. We have neurons in the digestive system?!

[Sci-2]

Fast and painless way to better mental arithmetic? Yes, there might actually be a way

In the future, if you want to improve your ability to manipulate numbers in your head, you might just plug yourself in. So say researchers who report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 16 on studies of a harmless form of brain stimulation applied to an area known to be important for math ability.

"With just five days of cognitive training and noninvasive, painless brain stimulation, we were able to bring about long-lasting improvements in cognitive and brain functions," says Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford.

[Sci-2]

eta: formatting

Humans with Amplified Intelligence

"Chemicals are not targeted enough to produce big gains in human cognitive performance. The evidence for the effectiveness of current "brain-enhancing drugs" is extremely sketchy. To achieve real strides will require brain implants with connections to millions of neurons. This will require millions of tiny electrodes, and a control system to synchronize them all. The current state of the art brain-computer interfaces have around 1,000 connections. So, current devices need to be scaled up by more than 1,000 times to get anywhere interesting. Even if you assume exponential improvement, it will be awhile before this is possible — at least 15 to 20 years.

Improvement in IA rests upon progress in nano-manufacturing. Brain-computer interface engineers, like Ed Boyden at MIT, depend upon improvements in manufacturing to build these devices. Manufacturing is the linchpin on which everything else depends. Given that there is very little development of atomically-precise manufacturing technologies, nanoscale self-assembly seems like the most likely route to million-electrode brain-computer interfaces. Nanoscale self-assembly is not atomically precise, but it's precise by the standards of bulk manufacturing and photolithography."

[Phaing]

I reserve the right to regard these trans-humanist things as non-human, rather than super-men.

And I intend to exercise it.

[Sci-2]

I reserve the right to regard these trans-humanist things as non-human, rather than super-men.

And I intend to exercise it.

I don't really see any right you could exercise.

You don't really have the right to directly stop people from receiving augmentation.

If you own a business, you *might* be able to hire non-augmented only...for a while anyway. Though by the time this becomes relevant I expect some major cultural shifts in how such augmentations are perceived.

[Phaing]

I dunno, I guess its a fun idea to play with and all that... but given the situation today, it strikes me as playing with cosmetics while the barbarians are hammering at the gates.

And, if implemented, the gap between the haves and have-nots could, in reality, become permanent and insurmountable.

[Sci-2]

I dunno, I guess its a fun idea to play with and all that... but given the situation today, it strikes me as playing with cosmetics while the barbarians are hammering at the gates.

And, if implemented, the gap between the haves and have-nots could, in reality, become permanent and insurmountable.

Well, I don't think anything is going to stop the implementation of these augmentations.

I suppose I see all this from the flip side - concerns about terrorism are valid but in the long, long, long run will not prevent the achievement of technological progress. It is possible that said progress leads to some sort of apocalypse, but I'm actually confident humanity will get past any dark night and end up in a transhumanist nirvana.

My only objection to the proposals of the Singularity optimists is the time table and the assumption the bumps along the way will be minor.

[Francis Buck]

Well, I don't think anything is going to stop the implementation of these augmentations.

I suppose I see all this from the flip side - concerns about terrorism are valid but in the long, long, long run will not prevent the achievement of technological progress. It is possible that said progress leads to some sort of apocalypse, but I'm actually confident humanity will get past any dark night and end up in a transhumanist nirvana.

My only objection to the proposals of the Singularity optimists is the time table and the assumption the bumps along the way will be minor.

Pretty much my exact feelings on the whole thing. Technology will advance, whether we want it to or not, and regardless of the potential dangers (which there certainly will be). As I've said in other threads, it's better to embrace the tech -- and thus be better prepared for the issues -- then to try to stifle it altogether.

The proposed gap between haves and have-nots is also very difficult to speculate on in this context, because the state of a truly transhuman society could (and, by most definitions, should) be so radically different from what we can imagine now that it may not be an issue at all. When basic human needs are easily met, or even removed entirely, then the needs of society and economy will change along with it. I think the ideas about a future where the majority of valuable products consist of intellectual properties are pretty realistic, especially as things like 3D printers (which are already becoming a reality) become more powerful and practical.

[Phaing]

Well, I don't think anything is going to stop the implementation of these augmentations.

I suppose I see all this from the flip side - concerns about terrorism are valid but in the long, long, long run will not prevent the achievement of technological progress. It is possible that said progress leads to some sort of apocalypse, but I'm actually confident humanity will get past any dark night and end up in a transhumanist nirvana.

My only objection to the proposals of the Singularity optimists is the time table and the assumption the bumps along the way will be minor.

Exactly right, there will be upheavals that slow the process, new discoveries that can help it along, and disasters that stop it in it's tracks.

But, steady progress? Only in the classrooms, presented as a theory.

Terrorism has no real chance of affecting this, terror is just a disease of the skin, a distraction. It is diseases of the heart, like the latest brand of pseudo-Marxism that could take this thing over and turn it into something truly hideous.

As for stopping it, there is economic collapse... hard to turn people into expensive robots when the money isn't there.

Pretty much my exact feelings on the whole thing. Technology will advance, whether we want it to or not, and regardless of the potential dangers (which there certainly will be). As I've said in other threads, it's better to embrace the tech -- and thus be better prepared for the issues -- then to try to stifle it altogether.

The proposed gap between haves and have-nots is also very difficult to speculate on in this context, because the state of a truly transhuman society could (and, by most definitions, should) be so radically different from what we can imagine now that it may not be an issue at all. When basic human needs are easily met, or even removed entirely, then the needs of society and economy will change along with it. I think the ideas about a future where the majority of valuable products consist of intellectual properties are pretty realistic, especially as things like 3D printers (which are already becoming a reality) become more powerful and practical.

Maybe this is how we would get to the Stars, at long last. Robotic craft are already leading the way, perhaps they would be able to withstand the stresses involved in leaving the Solar System and get the job done efficiently.

[Sci-2]

Exactly right, there will be upheavals that slow the process, new discoveries that can help it along, and disasters that stop it in it's tracks.

But, steady progress? Only in the classrooms, presented as a theory.

Terrorism has no real chance of affecting this, terror is just a disease of the skin, a distraction. It is diseases of the heart, like the latest brand of pseudo-Marxism that could take this thing over and turn it into something truly hideous.

As for stopping it, there is economic collapse... hard to turn people into expensive robots when the money isn't there.

Maybe this is how we would get to the Stars, at long last. Robotic craft are already leading the way, perhaps they would be able to withstand the stresses involved in leaving the Solar System and get the job done efficiently.

I expect the progress to be exponential rather than stead[y]. A friend and I were talking about this, and he pointed out that small gains in either AI or IA (intelligence augmentation) could lead to new gains in AI and/or IA, which leads to newer gains and so on.

I'm not sure what you mean by pseudo-Marxist, but I do think it will be a challenge to aspect of the capitalist model over time. It seems to me scarcity of human capital in any area is what drives capitalism today. IA may create a situation where that scarcity is no longer a problem. Throw in AI handling more and more tasks, and you're almost destined for a paradigm shift.

What the shift will initially look like is unclear and depends on lots of things - does AI replace human workers before IA enhances them? Does getting IA at a younger age make you more competitive in the long run? What are the initial costs, and the initial reactions to IA and other transhuman augmentations?

I kind of think IA is better than embryo selection for intelligence personally, though we'll probably end up with both being done at some point.

eta: I think reaching the stars will depend more on the ability to make a functioning warp drive, though IA+AI might help with that:

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive

[Phaing]

I'm not sure what you mean by pseudo-Marxist...

The same old thing, really; a system of Governance based on the assumption that people need to be controlled by the all-knowing Government (for their own good, naturally) and an all-encompassing bureaucracy where individuality is suppressed and group-think is the rule.

Now, I'll ignore any and all political BS that my post generates here, this is in reference to what an AI (or any other per-programed command structure) would or can do to the rest of us.

What the shift will initially look like is unclear and depends on lots of things - does AI replace human workers before IA enhances them? Does getting IA at a younger age make you more competitive in the long run? What are the initial costs, and the initial reactions to IA and other transhuman augmentations?

It certainly appears that all of us soft, weak, squishy biological life-forms would be regarded as obsolete and a drag on the economy before long. How long would the mechanical Fuhrer tolerate our existence, we being a luxury to the State of Steel and electrons?

I kind of think IA is better than embryo selection for intelligence personally, though we'll probably end up with both being done at some point.

Well, embryo selection might not be a bad idea, considering how we seem to be hurtling towards an Idiocracy even faster than that movie predicted...

However, imprinting ourselves into machine-intelligence is a terrible idea.

People generally run out of original ideas when they are still in their 20s, why would we want immortal minds that have nothing new to contribute, and just end up taking up space?

Immortals... the concept is repugnant to me. Society must be undergoing constant evolution to remain viable or even interesting. Why would we want a bunch of old fossilized minds gumming up the works?

[Opisthokont]

With digitized brain kind of stuff you get into the same issues as with teleportation, if there is a break in the consciousness it's not really "you" that is continuing. For all intents and purposes for everyone else it's you, but it's a perfect replica of your consciousness, and the one that is you has stopped. I'm opposed to that if I'm chasing immortality.

But isn't that exactly the same thing that happens in dreamless sleep? Or, for that matter, any other time when you're not conscious. If the digital representation really is good enough to run the consciousness in a way that is indistinguishable from the brain, then a break in consciousness that includes a migration from brain to computer should not be different in principle from a break in consciousness that then continues in the same brain (e.g. sleep).

Also, two very relevant short stories: Learning to be me and Transition dreams by Greg Egan.

[Spring Bass]

In the future, if you want to improve your ability to manipulate numbers in your head, you might just plug yourself in. So say researchers who report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 16 on studies of a harmless form of brain stimulation applied to an area known to be important for math ability.

"With just five days of cognitive training and noninvasive, painless brain stimulation, we were able to bring about long-lasting improvements in cognitive and brain functions," says Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford.

It's interesting stuff, but IIRC the study had a sample size of 19 people. That's not very good for teasing out whether it's an actual improvement or just random chance, which can be huge in small sample sizes (the equivalent of flipping a coin to get heads a dozen times in a row and then saying that the odds of getting a heads is greater than 50%). It's not something we should ignore, but it also means it's tentative until it can be done with a much larger sample size (several hundred people at least).

It also may come at a price. The researchers also found that it came with trade-offs, with one group performing faster on one test focusing on the area stimulated, and slower on the other test - and vice versa. They also had trouble utilizing what they'd learned in tests outside of the ones they'd taken while being stimulated.

And, if implemented, the gap between the haves and have-nots could, in reality, become permanent and insurmountable.

Honestly, we just don't know enough about what form they will take to know for sure how it will actually enhance human capabilities. Especially since there are almost always alternatives that don't require body augmentation and surgery, and don't raise rejection issues (I've raised the example of having a "modified eye" versus wearing Google Glass-like stuff in the past).

Or to put it another way, why bother giving yourself super-mathematical capabilities? Just ask the AI to do it for you. ;)

But isn't that exactly the same thing that happens in dreamless sleep? Or, for that matter, any other time when you're not conscious. If the digital representation really is good enough to run the consciousness in a way that is indistinguishable from the brain, then a break in consciousness that includes a migration from brain to computer should not be different in principle from a break in consciousness that then continues in the same brain (e.g. sleep).

Even in dreamless sleep where you have no perception of the passage of time (like a surgery anesthetic-induced sleep), there's still extensive continuation of brain processes. But the migration would imply a total cessation of that, which is the same as death even if some version of you is created afterwards that has the memories going back.

[Sci-2]

True Skin (via io9)

"Warner Bros. nabbed this slick-as-hell future short centered around augmented human beings with Harry Potter's David Heyman set to produce. Yowza. Stephan Zlotescu the original short director will stay on, as will his True Skin's producer Chris Sewall."

[Cuellar]

I'd argue that the public reaction is probably the BIGGEST issue with any sort of augmentation. Just look at how the whole stem cell debacle crippled stem cell research for nearly a decade. How about GMO crops in Europe? There are also plenty of orthodox religious folks that hold back half the planet, how are they going to let people increase their intelligence?

We already live in world where the haves and have not gap is basically insurmountable (when you compare first world vs subsistence living). If you belong to the bottom 50% of the planet, living on a $1 a day, you have less upward mobility or access to technology than a dog in the US. One would assume the distribution of this technology might follow the same path medicine, vaccines, cars, and computers followed. The question is will the haves help the have nots move up (especially as technology decreases in cost), or will it remain like the world is today and limited effort is undertaken to advance the have nots.

[Francis Buck]

I'd argue that the public reaction is probably the BIGGEST issue with any sort of augmentation. Just look at how the whole stem cell debacle crippled stem cell research for nearly a decade. How about GMO crops in Europe? There are also plenty of orthodox religious folks that hold back half the planet, how are they going to let people increase their intelligence?

We already live in world where the haves and have not gap is basically insurmountable (when you compare first world vs subsistence living). If you belong to the bottom 50% of the planet, living on a $1 a day, you have less upward mobility or access to technology than a dog in the US. One would assume the distribution of this technology might follow the same path medicine, vaccines, cars, and computers followed. The question is will the haves help the have nots move up (especially as technology decreases in cost), or will it remain like the world is today and limited effort is undertaken to advance the have nots.

As stated above, this issues's difficult because of the context. In order for the technology required for transhumanity to even exist, we will inherently have to have advanced so radically (and in so many different fields) that there may not even be "have nots", or at least not in the sense of how we think of them. And that's where the problem lies -- thinking about this stuff would work in our world today. For transhuman technology to be possible, it pretty much requires that the world be a very, very different place socially, economically, ethically, so on and so forth. What are major issues now, in our time, may not even exist by the point transhuman tech comes around.

As to the matter of acceptance...there will certainly be backlash, probably on massive levels. But much like the countless other beneficial advancements that faced backlash throughout history, eventually the rage and fear (mostly) subsides once the results are realized. And with the tech that transhumanism implies...it's a very different situation, virtually unprecedented. We're talking about the possibility of genuine immortality here. It's almost impossible to even conceive what the social ramifications would be if that were truly a reality. Stem cells have little to no effect on the average person. Hell, the average person probably doesn't really know what they are. But immortality? Totally different ballpark.

I actually think intelligence won't be that controversial, mostly because it will probably happen very gradually. By the time we can increase intelligence in any significant fashion, I would presume the blow of augmentation and cybernetics will have been softened quite a bit, likely through its usage in the medical field (replacing limbs, organs, curing diseases, preventative tech like enhanced immune systems, etc.). We already use implant technology to fix curing issues, and no one's really raising much of a stink about it. As the tech becomes more powerful, the social caution of course will rise with it, but again I think this will be mitigated by gradual implementation and acceptance of individual advances over time. It's not like one we're going to wake up and suddenly be able become superhumans.

[delete this account pls]

Some of my best friends are transhumans. My wife is a transhuman