Originally posted by inimalist
to be fair, I was responding specifically to the charge of expanding mental capcity, brought up several times in the thread.
Right, but others were turning into a microcosm of the thread.
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Anyway, transhumanism refers specifically to human improvement, not all technological advancement, since that would be far too broad to warrant its own term. But there's certainly progress with that as well.
Personally, I would prefer hypofemtotech galactic glaze.
😂 ....nice.
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Also, I'm playing a great game for the 360 right now called Mass Effect. Transhumanism is sort of a fringe endeavor of the game that you can partake in if you choose (mainly to make yourself a better weapon, which is transhumanism's most obvious application, though far from the only one).
In any case, it's handled tactfully, with various groups representing differing philosophies on transhumanism (or trans-species-ism, since it's not just humans). heck, I recently diffused a terrorist cell of enhanced humans who were suffering ill effects from their upgrades and wanted reparations. Fun stuff.
Re: Transhumanism
Originally posted by Digi
These are but the heralds to the envisioned advances: bodies that don't age, genetic splicing before conception to determine a baby's traits, or during life to alter deformities, super-intelligent machines, augmentations that allow us to interface with machines, weaponry, and information.
I don't care about designer babies, because I've already been born. I'm honestly more afraid of how the little people in the big world who want to stop others from having augments. That's human nature, and that is the only thing I'm interested in changing universally, the removal of any need for competition.
That is why cyber-spatial mind-melding would be of more value to me, and necessary before augmentation can be allowed for anyone else.
Even with nanites that can directly reshape molecules and change subordinate person A into superior person B; we need a complete understanding of how all the DnA strands function, the Human Genome Project. We also need to understand consciousness better, we need to understand and predict the ever-evolving patterns of electrical currents within each and every neurotransmitter, to map the entire synaptic neural network - that is the Brain Initiative. The culmination of those two will be prerequisites for human recalibration via nanites.
Potentially this isn't just making a single life form better looking and more capable in life, even replacing aging cells with freshly modified stem cells allows a person to have ever-new organs, it could cure every disease, replace any mutilated part of a body, and make old new. This is the abolition of death.
But in order for any of it to work, we need to no longer be separate entities, separate persona all conflict for one singular dominate personality. Conflict is indistinguishable from stagnation. Cooperation is nothing but submission, there needs to be one personality shared amongst all minds.
inimalist
So, no imagine a set of 3 things that can be activated to different levels. This set is X -> Y -> Z.X is the very basic visual system which determines what each of those boxes is and what colour/size they are. It contains a wealth of information about the world around us, more information than we could ever consciously be aware of. X is comprised of many items, based on how many items you are seeing. Depending on how "active" any particular item at X is, it is more likely to go through Y to Z.
Y is the "bouncer" to the memory system. The bouncer knows what your task is (like, find the large blue square), and because of this, it is able to check the items in vision to see if they are close to it and need attention. More activation of Y leads to [b]less
activation in the attention area Z. This is taken to indicate that the Y region is responsible for kicking out irrelevant information. So, the medium blue square gets in, because it is close to the one you are looking for, but the small red one doesn't.Z is the memory/attention system. It is more active depending on how many items it currently holds. The more active, the more items it holds, the less able it is to select the proper one. So, if you have 3 items in Z, you can compare them very quickly to the one you are looking for, and they will likely all be very close to the target. If you have 16 it will be much longer to compare, and the items are probably less similar.
here we have 3 individual mental capacities that are completely interrelated. One might expand the capacity of X to filter irrelevant information, however, this might prevent task switching (imagine you are doing the task, however you see fire. Y would allow that to Z because it is so important, and fire would be a very active X. Because your Y has such strong stimuli filtering abilities, you are focused on that). Or, if the capacity of things in X was increased, you would be unable to filter them. Z capacity might be good to increase, except it only would increase its capacity for irrelevant items, as the current system is already optimized for filtering. [/B]
Maybe I'm unclear on this. Are you saying that the mind has trouble finding the "right thing" when it takes more in to analyze???
Are you trying to imply that the human brain is too complex to crack?
Or that the human brain could not adapt to a such a substrate-independent mind as a virtual computer chip?
Enter the Brain Initiative, I like to call it "the Human Cognome Project", far more down the line from the Human Genome Project. Perhaps Strong AI would one day be sophisticated enough to crack the human mind by replicating an entire human brain - from the subatomic quark to the the DnA strand to the Neuron to the pre-frontal cortex - in a simulation as real as the real world due to a mathematically perfect operation that operates exactly how it would in the real physical world. Strong AI can make the simulation of the human brain that it is trying to improve, with a completely accurate map of that brain that exists in an new reality, this sim-space.
But such precautions aren't necessary for a global mind-meld or even in making a cat almost as smart as a Dolphin, or in keeping a human being alive and learning for thousands of years. All you need for that are better genes and better DnA created inside modified stem cells, being introduced into one's body to replace said subject's former cells.
Originally posted by Dolos
All you need for that are better genes and better DnA created inside modified stem cells, being introduced into one's body to replace said subject's former cells.
Over and over over an infinitude of times, that is a very plausible form of immortality that I fear is already in use by 13 families of global hacks laughing at our misery and soaking it all up.
All the children being slaughtered in random acts of domestic violence when people are driven to the extremes of self-mutilation, or worse, immolation to protest against their super-tyrannical dictators like the Buddhists in Shri Lanka, or in Kenya a man and his beloved wife being burned or in Russia two men collapsing children's faces into little chunks with a mallet making the children's non-existence face the pieces of which the must struggle to breath through I've put myself into these moments of terror I've had panic such attacks that no one can understand how I feel - how many families fall into terrible tragedy because of personality disorder of the father shooting his daughter and wife, rooming around in the big pen of a house for two days before burning the corpses and killing himself (true story) or families struggling to make measly income a day while they sit there apathetic as perfect beings? All this sickness and death they could end by introducing the proper stem cells into our miserable bodies. My muscles could act with hysteria, hands could crush one of their skulls, driven by unbridled hatred.
@inimalist
Enter the Brain Initiative, I like to call it "the Human Cognome Project", far more down the line from the Human Genome Project. Perhaps Strong AI would one day be sophisticated enough to crack the human mind by replicating an entire human brain - from the subatomic quark to the the DnA strand to the Neuron to the pre-frontal cortex - in a simulation as real as the real world due to a mathematically perfect operation that operates exactly how it would in the real physical world. Strong AI can make the simulation of the human brain that it is trying to improve, with a completely accurate map of that brain that exists in an new reality, this sim-space.
I am aware that the Strong AI's program originally lacks the specifics to rebuild the brain - even if it has the raw computing power to do so - because it has never deconstructed it.
In retaliation I offer a solution that is synonymous with how we might be here today. Currently our supercomputers can recreate, in a simulation, a percentage of an atomic structure that operates precisely like a real life atom would. The quarks can be mathematically reproduced. To recreate a human brain, Strong AI need only formulate a working model of the Big Bang that takes into account for all the forces at play (the unknown forces of dark energy [supergravity anyone] and dark matter [Higgs Boson aka Super-particle/sparticle stuffs]) and punch in this equation and through the simulation expansion of our universe complexity will stack and it will reproduce human evolution and give the Strong AI a complete read out of the humanity's collective consciousness in neuroscience terms. So to figure out a human subject can interpret and find all the proper Xs in Z simutaneously Strong AI has uncovered, through a form of deconstruction that is kind of like watching creation go down, a map of that person's brain down to the very quark already, finding all the X variables will be effortless for Strong AI.
Until you bumped it, all the discussion in this thread was ~5 years old. I'm not sure you're going to find too many willing discussion partners. You came onto the forums a little too late for the heyday of the forums you like to frequent.
Glad you're interested though. I may jump back in sometime, but I generally don't have the time, and I'm also not on the pulse of research like I once was so that my opinions aren't hopelessly dated or outright false.
Originally posted by Digi
Until you bumped it, all the discussion in this thread was ~5 years old. I'm not sure you're going to find too many willing discussion partners. You came onto the forums a little too late for the heyday of the forums you like to frequent.Glad you're interested though. I may jump back in sometime, but I generally don't have the time, and I'm also not on the pulse of research like I once was so that my opinions aren't hopelessly dated or outright false.
I'm happy to find this thread !! 😄
We have a course in University (not really related to my major branch but most of theoretical majors have it ) Type of civilization !! I don't want to get in to details but mostly about how advanced can Smart beings get in our Universe , and it says we have 3 type of civilizations , the first ones are the ones who has mastered their own planet , there is nothing in their planet that can treat them , Natural disasters such as earth quakes and Storms can be controlled by this civilization and they can use any energy source that is in their planet !!! second type civilizations can also control their sun ( or suns ) and mastered it as well !! third type is the immortal one that has mastered the cosmic !!!!!!!! currently we are on the type ZERO !! When we get to type one that's when the humans Goes to another level, we will mix human and robots to develop human capabilities ( Cyborgs ) we will master the genetics , we will use genetic engineering to develop ourselves ( like currently they are working on increasing Breath holding in water ) , they are maybe doing it now who knows but surly that takes human in another level 🙂