Let's talk about transhumanism

[Weeping Sore]

I'm going to throw out some biological longevities here, speculating that information (genetic or otherwise) could be gleaned from these organisms to extend our own lifespans:

quahog clam: 410 years

giant barrel sponge: 2300 years

hydra: immortal*

*this tiny multicellular freshwater predator regenerates and does not age discernably.

Obviously these are all simpler organisms than Homo sapiens, but is there anything in their make-up that could help us? Should I be drinking quahog clam smoothies daily?

[Sci-2]

Perhaps Universal Health Care can potentially ameliorate the have & have-not divide that transhumanism would seem to inevitably bring about in nations that don't offer such care.

OTOH, one could also make the argument that UHC providing support for these modifications would increase bifurcation of the species due to lowering personal cost for augmentation/alteration. Corporations might even play a large role in pushing people to utilize these services in order to get ahead in the job market.

Seems like a variation of Prisoner's Dilemma, no? At least the major ramifications seem like they're decades away, though it would be nice if humanity managed to properly reflect on the implications of a technology before proliferating its use...

"The superior man thinks of evil that will come and guards against it."
-I-Ching, the Book of Changes

[Sci-2]

Biohacking - the forefront of a new kind of human evolution: Amal Graafstra at TEDxSFU

Ever wished you could unlock doors, turn on your lights, or log into your computer with a simple swipe of your hand? Amal Graafstra does just that as one of the first and most well-known "do-it-yourself" RFID (radio-frequency identification) implantees in the world. In this talk, Amal talks about his journey as a pioneer in RFID implementation and what you should know about biohacking.

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

This thread=fail

[Sci-2]

This thread=fail

?

[Jo498]

I guess I had better things to do, but it amazes me a little that I missed so much of the more crazy ideas of transhumanists in the last 10-12 years. I was somewhat familiar with the nanotech fantasies of Moravec in the mid/late-90ties as well as some of Kurzweil's earlier stuff. I think I even downloaded Bostrom's PhD thesis in 2004 or so, but never read more than the abstract or a few pages , probably because I found it too outlandish (I even sketched a paper where I looked for reasons why the universe=computer analogy was fatally flawed, but it remained a half page sketch or so...)

I am now reading Bostrom's original 2003 simulation paper and can admit that it is not uninteresting to entertain such scenarios and their implications. Still, I remain extremely skeptical.

Because I am very skeptical about the reductionist thesis in the philosophy of mind/consciousness that is one of the major premisses. Since I learned about peak oil I am even more skeptical about the technological optimism/cornucopianism that seems another major premiss. I have the impression that these highly intelligent people spin all kinds of interesting ideas, but their premisses are so naive that I do not understand how rarely doubts are cast on them (which would make most of the exciting SciFi stuff crumble). How can one be so sure that extrapolation from a few decades (or at most about 3 centuries) of technological progress (most of it based on cheap fossil fuels which are about to run out) will work at all? Isn't one of the first rational/methodological things one learns to be extremely wary about such extrapolations? (No, "this time it's different" is not a very plausible response.)

I am reminded of that Einstein anecdote when he supposedly said he did not know with what kind of weapons WW III would be fought, but in WW IV it would be back to sticks and stones. Analoguously, I am tempted to prophesize that I am not sure about the computers of 2040, but in 2100 there will be slide rules at best.

Of course as has been mentioned already, it could well be supercomputers and "enhanced humans" in a few megacities and sticks and stones everywhere else. But I do not think this would be stable.

[Jo498]

o.k., I now read http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html

I am not convinced and I hope this is not only because of the outlandishness of the idea and my lack of fancy. As I said before I am highly doubtful of two important presuppositions and think that the "solution" is that hardly any civilizations ever gets to the technological stage required (and it seems far from obvious whether simulation of consciousness is even possible at such an advanced stage).

Functionalism could be wrong and the technical simulation of consciousness impossible. Even within materialism it could be the case that to get consciousness one had to build/copy a biological brain. I am not sure how this changes the estimations of probabilities, because civilizations with supercomputers/nanotech might also be able to build biological brains. Still, the difficulties implied by this are not easily covered by estimating the brute calculating power of machines. But then the simulation idea seems the old brain in the vat again.

Whatever, if one plays along, I think the argumentation should have far mor radical implications (that might undermine the whole argument in the end).

If we live in a simulation (as simulated kernels of consciousness, not stimulated brains) with a probability of 20 or 90% this should imply radical skepticism about almost everything. Obviously, because we are wrong about some of the most fundamental things we are taking for granted. Why should the "science" within the simulation we apparently discover have anything to do with the real science outside of the simulation? But our "scientific" findings are used to estimate the complexity of the brain and the calculation power of the supercomputers used for running the simulation. Why should I believe the real world science (outside the simulation) is any similar?

It seems impossible to distinguish different epistemic situations within a simulation:

i) I am the only conscious being (although a "simulation"), the rest are simulation artefacts (without consciousness, agency etc.). My stream of consciousness, apparent actions etc. are like an interactive computer game played only by myself.
ii) All beings I regard as conscious (humans, maybe some apes) are conscious simulations and we "really" interact with each other, i.e. exchange information and process most of it consciously (multi-player game with some background features and creatures without consciousness).
iii) Some beings I regard as conscious and interact with are avatars of the simulation-runners.
iv) The simulation-runners are only spectators invisible to us.
v) The simulation has really been running for hundreds or thousands of years and conscious beings "really" (= virtually) experienced e.g. the French Revolution.
vi) The simulation just started 5 minutes ago with all the "memories" of "historical events" in place.
vii) The simulated conscious beings are relatively "autonomous".
viii) The simulation runners frequently mess around with the individual consciousnesses by influencing their "decisions" "changing memories" etc. (note that this would often look like "demonic possession" or mental illness)
ix) The simulation runners really fashioned the simulation after some actual biological species/planet etc., maybe of their humanoid past.
x) The simulation runners just made up some world for fun or experiment.

Furthermore, we get a "theodicee" problem: Why are not all simulated consicousnesses happy? Why is the world so messy when it would have been easy to simulate a perfect world? Why is the world so regular when it would have been as easy to simulate all kinds of magical or miraculous worlds? (Possible answers may be familiar from the traditional theodicee, of course they may be even less plausible here, because the simulation runners have only a few godlike attributes.)
Should I not be afraid to get "terminated" for no particular reason? Why is termination of consciousnesses so often embedded in a plausible "history" (sickness etc.)

There must be something in this for the simulation-runners, so either we are some kind of experiment or a pastime for those advanced beings.

(Is there even an "outside" (or just nested simulations)? If the latter, "simulation" is used in a somewhat strange way, because there is nothing that is simulated.)

Certainly, some of the points above are "traditional" philosophical questions (problem of solipsism, other minds, zombies, Theodicee, willful God etc.), some of which have no easy answer, but it seems that they get even harder, if one presupposes "living" in a simulation. Because a simulation is ex hypothesi about as unconstrained as a willful God whereas an evolved universe is constrained and "holds together" because of common evolution and universal laws of nature.