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> For me, things will be wrong until we get rid of suffering, illness and death. For me this doesn't make sense. I'm all for alleviating suffering, illness and

> For me, things will be wrong until we get rid of suffering, illness and death. For me this doesn't make sense. I'm all for alleviating suffering, illness and death but can't see how total freedom from those things would be possible, or even desirable. I am aware that something called 'trans-humanism' exists, I'd just be interested to hear if anyone could argue for such a stance with reasonable integrity.

abdullahkhalids 8y ago
Lets flip the desirability question. Imagine we invent fast space travel and go out there and meet a smart alien species. Evolution for these aliens has given them an extremely robust bodies and, say, ten million years ago these aliens stopped dying or getting seriously ill. You say to them, "This is not the way to live. Its a much better life if after 100 years every individual self-destructs because XYZ?" Can you fill that blank? I can't. Edit: also read this https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
- canhascodez 8y ago
  That's a very seductive argument for the individual, but most species do have a finite lifespan, and that in itself is actually an argument for its adaptive benefit. Consider that genetic code could become dated or fragile over long time periods: it's never going to be in the individual's benefit to die, but it's much better in the long term for the species to be adaptable. It's not entirely implausible, but I'm skeptical that this would change in the far future.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    We've escaped the reign of biological evolution millennia ago. Ever since humans figured out how to learn and later write, we've been evolving society and technology orders of magnitude faster than biological evolution could ever hope to work. We are no longer bound by it. And given what's been done over the past couple decades, we're about to take control of our own genetic future as well. We will be able to repair, "update" and adapt our species' genetic makeup as we see fit, and this might actually be a prerequisite knowledge to achieving life extension. So no, I don't think this argument for species holds either.
    - canhascodez 8y ago
      It must be a prerequisite for this kind of hyperbole that the technology it describes does not exist yet. Nothing is infinitely repairable or upgradeable, and neither of those things are ever free.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        > Nothing is infinitely repairable or upgradeable, and neither of those things are ever free. Well yes, there's heat death of the universe that we still have to contend with :P. But beyond that, what you wrote is not a problem. The biology itself works around it - it "repairs" by copying and checksumming, and does so using energy. It's not perfect (this is what enables evolution), but it's perfectable. We already know enough to realize that we can design systems which allow for reducing the probability of incorrectable errors to arbitrarily low amounts - that's practically infinite repairability. No one is saying maintenance is ever going to become free.
        canhascodez 8y ago
        You're focusing on the error rate, which is not actually the concern. You could have a perfectly working VAX in front of you, and it would be essentially a museum piece, because technology has moved on. Suggesting that any physical process is perfectable is...subject to qualification and requiring of strong evidence, shall we say. However, if true, it would still be insufficient.
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        So what is the point? That we won't stay the same, because we'll want to be better? If that's it, then great, that's the goal!
        canhascodez 8y ago
        Better is not universal nor uniformly distributed, therefore evolution occurs, therefore death has adaptive value even in otherwise ideal conditions, and there is no reason to believe in truly ideal conditions even assuming arbitrarily high technology.
  - abdullahkhalids 8y ago
    You seem to be making the naturalistic fallacy in this thread of comments - that which is ought to be. That evolution adapts the species, therefore that is good and any "unnatural" modification of human body is bad. Once evolution created the human species, a species that is smart and can debate ethics, there is no need to depend on evolution to improve either the species or the individual. Technology and our ethics can allows us and guide us to improve. Whether we like it or not, transhumanism is going to come in the next few centuries and then we will be able to systematically improve our bodies and brains as we chose to improve them, not by the random statistical process of evolution by natural selection.
    - canhascodez 8y ago
      No, that's not my argument.
marcus_holmes 8y ago
Iain M Banks' Culture novels do a pretty good job of describing a tech-Utopian society that you'd actually want to live in.

abdullahkhalids 8y ago

Lets flip the desirability question. Imagine we invent fast space travel and go out there and meet a smart alien species. Evolution for these aliens has given them an extremely robust bodies and, say, ten million years ago these aliens stopped dying or getting seriously ill. You say to them, "This is not the way to live. Its a much better life if after 100 years every individual self-destructs because XYZ?" Can you fill that blank? I can't. Edit: also read this https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

canhascodez 8y ago
That's a very seductive argument for the individual, but most species do have a finite lifespan, and that in itself is actually an argument for its adaptive benefit. Consider that genetic code could become dated or fragile over long time periods: it's never going to be in the individual's benefit to die, but it's much better in the long term for the species to be adaptable. It's not entirely implausible, but I'm skeptical that this would change in the far future.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  We've escaped the reign of biological evolution millennia ago. Ever since humans figured out how to learn and later write, we've been evolving society and technology orders of magnitude faster than biological evolution could ever hope to work. We are no longer bound by it. And given what's been done over the past couple decades, we're about to take control of our own genetic future as well. We will be able to repair, "update" and adapt our species' genetic makeup as we see fit, and this might actually be a prerequisite knowledge to achieving life extension. So no, I don't think this argument for species holds either.
  - canhascodez 8y ago
    It must be a prerequisite for this kind of hyperbole that the technology it describes does not exist yet. Nothing is infinitely repairable or upgradeable, and neither of those things are ever free.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      > Nothing is infinitely repairable or upgradeable, and neither of those things are ever free. Well yes, there's heat death of the universe that we still have to contend with :P. But beyond that, what you wrote is not a problem. The biology itself works around it - it "repairs" by copying and checksumming, and does so using energy. It's not perfect (this is what enables evolution), but it's perfectable. We already know enough to realize that we can design systems which allow for reducing the probability of incorrectable errors to arbitrarily low amounts - that's practically infinite repairability. No one is saying maintenance is ever going to become free.
      - canhascodez 8y ago
        You're focusing on the error rate, which is not actually the concern. You could have a perfectly working VAX in front of you, and it would be essentially a museum piece, because technology has moved on. Suggesting that any physical process is perfectable is...subject to qualification and requiring of strong evidence, shall we say. However, if true, it would still be insufficient.
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        So what is the point? That we won't stay the same, because we'll want to be better? If that's it, then great, that's the goal!
        canhascodez 8y ago
        Better is not universal nor uniformly distributed, therefore evolution occurs, therefore death has adaptive value even in otherwise ideal conditions, and there is no reason to believe in truly ideal conditions even assuming arbitrarily high technology.
- abdullahkhalids 8y ago
  You seem to be making the naturalistic fallacy in this thread of comments - that which is ought to be. That evolution adapts the species, therefore that is good and any "unnatural" modification of human body is bad. Once evolution created the human species, a species that is smart and can debate ethics, there is no need to depend on evolution to improve either the species or the individual. Technology and our ethics can allows us and guide us to improve. Whether we like it or not, transhumanism is going to come in the next few centuries and then we will be able to systematically improve our bodies and brains as we chose to improve them, not by the random statistical process of evolution by natural selection.
  - canhascodez 8y ago
    No, that's not my argument.

marcus_holmes 8y ago

Iain M Banks' Culture novels do a pretty good job of describing a tech-Utopian society that you'd actually want to live in.