4 ms·

Transhumanism Is a Dead End (2017)

24 points by onemoresoop 8y ago

microwavecamera 8y ago
Good article and I totally agree. Besides when we look at all our intrepid tech-bro "pioneers" that embrace transhumanism, it begs the obvious question. Would you want to spend eternity with them? I, for one, welcome the sweet release of death. It can't possibly be worse.
- mcguire 8y ago
  "I want to go to hell, where all the interesting people are."
  - vixen99 8y ago
    “Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.” ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
- Dudenoso 8y ago
  Or you could just not interact with the people you don't want to interact with. I don't think any transhuman has a vision of transhumanity where you are physically impossible to suicide or are forced to interact with certain people.
  - microwavecamera 8y ago
    Who else would you be interacting with? You would only exist through our own technology. You would solely exist in a predetermined state of "existence" created by us. How would that be "transhuman"? It's just a lateral form of the experience we create for ourselves now, just without the inconvenience of objective reality and immediate consequence. We don't even understand the state of our own existence. How can we move forward when we don't even know where we are?
dvt 8y ago
Transhumanism is a fairy tale, but I do appreciate the pointed critique of materialism. I always found it odd that the majority of mainstream philosophers are materialists (apart from a few standouts like Chalmers). Even if I wasn't a Christian, I'd find materialism to be absurdly reductive.
- m1el 8y ago
  I would contest "materialism being absurdly reductive" with a quote from Feynman: > I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts. I think that even if science can reduce processes to simple understandable components, this doesn't take away from everyday life. The fact that a book consists of characters doesn't make it worse. The fact that you're simply a specific configuration of atoms* doesn't devalue you as a human being. * or evolution of this configuration in time, but that's a story for another time The fact that your neural system is entirely responsible for your thinking (conscious and unconscious) doesn't make your mind less fascinating.
  - dvt 8y ago
    > The fact that your neural system is entirely responsible for your thinking (conscious and unconscious) doesn't make your mind less fascinating. I think you're attacking a straw man here. I agree that the mind is fascinating whether or not dualism is true. But at the same time, I think that the kind of hand-waving materialists do when faced with qualia, intentionality, and (what appears to be) objective morality is not very convincing.
mcguire 8y ago
"For millennia the majority of the human population has believed that the mind is more than a biological machine, that it extends in some inexplicable way beyond the individual body both in space (ESP) and in time (continued consciousness after death). The scientific evidence for the former can be denied only by those with closed minds;..." I'm not one to dispute that transhumanism is an unspectacular idea, but.... Ok, fine. I have a closed mind. If you can consistently do something clear and visibile that cannot otherwise be done, I'll take you seriously. Until then, I won't. Sorry. Pick me some Powerball numbers or something. Tell me where the hell my old copies of The Fantasy Trip stuff is hiding. Fling Randi James into an ocean. Something.
- zone411 8y ago
  I stopped reading exactly there.
ebg13 8y ago
> Transhumanism is based on a wholly materialistic conception of reality. In effect it says, “What we now understand about the mind and consciousness is all there is to it; there’s nothing left but to fill in the details of how the brain works.” Woops, I detect a straw man being set up! The view in opposition of "we already know everything" is not "woo must be true", but merely "evidence rules". > For millennia the majority of the human population has believed... ...that the sun was pushed across the sky by a great scarab beetle. Oh wait...that isn't what you were going to say? Oh. So maybe believing things doesn't make them true.
- burtonator 8y ago
  > For millennia the majority of the human population has believed... argument from antiquity.
- HNLurker2 8y ago
  But Schopenhauer ideas that come from Plato to Kant which also says "mind is everything" Eastern idea is the valid one. See: the will and representations
delecti 8y ago
At least as far as I managed to stomach, this reeks of "woo". It uses vague wording and suggestion to avoid making concrete supernatural claims, but supernatural premises seem to be the only real arguments it poses against the idea of transhumanism.
age_bronze 8y ago
I always failed to understand what the "consciousness isn't local" can predict. I mean, come on. You either take the egocentric view that you're the only conscious being in the universe, or you realize other humans are similar enough to you that the only conclusion is that they are all similarly conscious. From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all there is. Just look at all the brain malfunctions. You've got people forgetting from dementia, so clearly the brain has most of your memories. You've got people with all sorts of weird phenomena from strokes. Even if you take the most egocentric worldview, you can still drink alcohol and watch and realize how your internal logic and consistency and personality is changed by an external chemical. I can't see any possible conclusion from that other than the fact that this brain really is all you are. Suggesting there's anything non-materialistic in consciousness means there's an aspect of human consciousness that remains immutable under all internal brain malfunctions, under drugs, under different education, under different environment, under different circumstances. I've yet to find a single counterexample.
- skissane 8y ago
  > From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all there is. Just look at all the brain malfunctions. You've got people forgetting from dementia, so clearly the brain has most of your memories. You've got people with all sorts of weird phenomena from strokes. We observe many correlations between the neurological and the mental, and it seems likely that in the years and decades to come we will learn many more. Materialists argue that this is evidence that the mental is a product of the neurological. But what about the idealist alternative, that the neurological is a product of the mental? An observed correlation between two phenomena cannot, by itself, tell us which of the two is more fundamental.
  - etrautmann 8y ago
    What? Each of the provided examples from the parent comment are causal perturbations to the system that establish necessity (although perhaps not sufficiency) beyond a pure correlation. If you lesion a part of the brain, you lose associated "mental" faculties. If you perturb the system via disease or chemicals, you observe a corresponding change in the mental state. This is evidence of a one way interaction beyond correlation.
raws 8y ago
I think the transhumanism that she talks about is very specific in the way that it is one that believes in the capacity to upload consciousness in some sort of computer hardware which wholly differentiate itself from transhumanism that sees more simple improvements like say eyesight repairs through hardware augmentations which is the more realistic one.

24 points by onemoresoop 8y ago

Good article and I totally agree. Besides when we look at all our intrepid tech-bro "pioneers" that embrace transhumanism, it begs the obvious question. Would you want to spend eternity with them? I, for one, welcome the sweet release of death. It can't possibly be worse.

mcguire 8y ago
"I want to go to hell, where all the interesting people are."
- vixen99 8y ago
  “Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.” ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
Dudenoso 8y ago
Or you could just not interact with the people you don't want to interact with. I don't think any transhuman has a vision of transhumanity where you are physically impossible to suicide or are forced to interact with certain people.
- microwavecamera 8y ago
  Who else would you be interacting with? You would only exist through our own technology. You would solely exist in a predetermined state of "existence" created by us. How would that be "transhuman"? It's just a lateral form of the experience we create for ourselves now, just without the inconvenience of objective reality and immediate consequence. We don't even understand the state of our own existence. How can we move forward when we don't even know where we are?

dvt 8y ago

Transhumanism is a fairy tale, but I do appreciate the pointed critique of materialism. I always found it odd that the majority of mainstream philosophers are materialists (apart from a few standouts like Chalmers). Even if I wasn't a Christian, I'd find materialism to be absurdly reductive.

m1el 8y ago
I would contest "materialism being absurdly reductive" with a quote from Feynman: > I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts. I think that even if science can reduce processes to simple understandable components, this doesn't take away from everyday life. The fact that a book consists of characters doesn't make it worse. The fact that you're simply a specific configuration of atoms* doesn't devalue you as a human being. * or evolution of this configuration in time, but that's a story for another time The fact that your neural system is entirely responsible for your thinking (conscious and unconscious) doesn't make your mind less fascinating.
- dvt 8y ago
  > The fact that your neural system is entirely responsible for your thinking (conscious and unconscious) doesn't make your mind less fascinating. I think you're attacking a straw man here. I agree that the mind is fascinating whether or not dualism is true. But at the same time, I think that the kind of hand-waving materialists do when faced with qualia, intentionality, and (what appears to be) objective morality is not very convincing.

mcguire 8y ago

"For millennia the majority of the human population has believed that the mind is more than a biological machine, that it extends in some inexplicable way beyond the individual body both in space (ESP) and in time (continued consciousness after death). The scientific evidence for the former can be denied only by those with closed minds;..." I'm not one to dispute that transhumanism is an unspectacular idea, but.... Ok, fine. I have a closed mind. If you can consistently do something clear and visibile that cannot otherwise be done, I'll take you seriously. Until then, I won't. Sorry. Pick me some Powerball numbers or something. Tell me where the hell my old copies of The Fantasy Trip stuff is hiding. Fling Randi James into an ocean. Something.

zone411 8y ago
I stopped reading exactly there.

ebg13 8y ago

> Transhumanism is based on a wholly materialistic conception of reality. In effect it says, “What we now understand about the mind and consciousness is all there is to it; there’s nothing left but to fill in the details of how the brain works.” Woops, I detect a straw man being set up! The view in opposition of "we already know everything" is not "woo must be true", but merely "evidence rules". > For millennia the majority of the human population has believed... ...that the sun was pushed across the sky by a great scarab beetle. Oh wait...that isn't what you were going to say? Oh. So maybe believing things doesn't make them true.

burtonator 8y ago
> For millennia the majority of the human population has believed... argument from antiquity.
HNLurker2 8y ago
But Schopenhauer ideas that come from Plato to Kant which also says "mind is everything" Eastern idea is the valid one. See: the will and representations

delecti 8y ago

At least as far as I managed to stomach, this reeks of "woo". It uses vague wording and suggestion to avoid making concrete supernatural claims, but supernatural premises seem to be the only real arguments it poses against the idea of transhumanism.

age_bronze 8y ago

I always failed to understand what the "consciousness isn't local" can predict. I mean, come on. You either take the egocentric view that you're the only conscious being in the universe, or you realize other humans are similar enough to you that the only conclusion is that they are all similarly conscious. From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all there is. Just look at all the brain malfunctions. You've got people forgetting from dementia, so clearly the brain has most of your memories. You've got people with all sorts of weird phenomena from strokes. Even if you take the most egocentric worldview, you can still drink alcohol and watch and realize how your internal logic and consistency and personality is changed by an external chemical. I can't see any possible conclusion from that other than the fact that this brain really is all you are. Suggesting there's anything non-materialistic in consciousness means there's an aspect of human consciousness that remains immutable under all internal brain malfunctions, under drugs, under different education, under different environment, under different circumstances. I've yet to find a single counterexample.

skissane 8y ago
> From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all there is. Just look at all the brain malfunctions. You've got people forgetting from dementia, so clearly the brain has most of your memories. You've got people with all sorts of weird phenomena from strokes. We observe many correlations between the neurological and the mental, and it seems likely that in the years and decades to come we will learn many more. Materialists argue that this is evidence that the mental is a product of the neurological. But what about the idealist alternative, that the neurological is a product of the mental? An observed correlation between two phenomena cannot, by itself, tell us which of the two is more fundamental.
- etrautmann 8y ago
  What? Each of the provided examples from the parent comment are causal perturbations to the system that establish necessity (although perhaps not sufficiency) beyond a pure correlation. If you lesion a part of the brain, you lose associated "mental" faculties. If you perturb the system via disease or chemicals, you observe a corresponding change in the mental state. This is evidence of a one way interaction beyond correlation.

raws 8y ago

I think the transhumanism that she talks about is very specific in the way that it is one that believes in the capacity to upload consciousness in some sort of computer hardware which wholly differentiate itself from transhumanism that sees more simple improvements like say eyesight repairs through hardware augmentations which is the more realistic one.