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> I think we can all agree we will become cyborgs, Well, obviously! Who could imagine any other scenarios?! My mom just called me asking if i could replace he

> I think we can all agree we will become cyborgs, Well, obviously! Who could imagine any other scenarios?! My mom just called me asking if i could replace her right foot with a hoverboard. I cant wait until I can no longer feel sunshine or grass. Living forever as a process in a virtual machine... my ancestors could have never dreamt of having such fulfillment.

ewindal 4y ago
You can only feel sunshine and grass because your brain interprets sensory signals from your body. It’s easy to imagine a world where your cyborg body can deliver those same signals. If the sensation is the same, why would you _not_ exhchange your fragile meat sack of a body with a far more versatile mechanical one?
- 20after4 4y ago
  Mechanical devices don't repair themselves. Living bodies do. I think you underestimate the highly optimized and resilient nature of a meat-sack body.
  - ewindal 4y ago
    Perhaps, but imagine no need for surgery, no need for anesthesia, all wounds, illnesses and ailments fixed simply by switching the damaged part, or switching bodies entirely.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    Mechanical devices don't repair themselves. Only because we haven't bothered building any that do. A cynical take would be that it would be bad for the economy.
    - dwaltrip 4y ago
      We don’t yet know how to build self-repairing machines. That’s basically the same as creating new life forms.
      - CamperBob2 4y ago
        Well, creating life forms would require us to create self-reproducing machines, which doesn't seem like the same thing. This will end up in a goalpost-shifting debate where the extent of self-repair capabilities necessary to qualify as "self-repairing" is argued. I'd say that a fault-tolerant system is at least 50% of the way there.
stormfather 4y ago
I think the fact that we will start to augment our bodies is a safe assumption. It's just too useful, and you will need to do it to compete. How will one get by without their AR retinal implants, brain chip and exoskeleton? Sure, it's dehumanizing but do you really think you will reject it? You are talking to me on a computer already... it won't always be external. When you age, you won't feel so sentimental about your teeth and spine anymore... Now, if we let it rob us of sensations is another matter, and I think assuming that it will is the bigger leap. I imagine that in 10k years we will be able to integrate new parts with our nervous system. Think augmentation, not replacement, until the whole of the human body is replaced in form, but not necessarily function, like Theseus' ship, but without changing our experience too much.
rpearl 4y ago
Your fundamental experiences as a human are already augmented by technologies so deeply integrated that our brains have changed to accommodate for them. For example: writing and speech. What makes you think that "cyborg" means "foot replaced with hoverboard" and not things like "memory augmented with curated database" or "though process augmented with numeric-error-free calculation"?
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Speech is not "a technology", it is a natural human ability. Our ability to form thoughts in the form of language and then communicate them (through speech or other ways, such as sign languages) is very likely of the same nature as our ability to see and interpret the world as objects. Note that children do need interaction to learn to speak, but it is not taught to them in the sense that writing is, it is a natural instinct that they need social interaction to exercise (and they of course need to learn a particular firm of speech, i.e. one or more spoken or signed languages). Though such experiments can't be carried out because they would risk being monstrous, it's quite possible that a group of babies growing up together with no spoken or signed interactions from their parents would still create a language of their own.
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    >> technologies so deeply integrated that our brains have changed to accommodate for them. For example: writing and speech. > Speech is not "a technology", it is a natural human ability ... of course need to learn a particular firm of speech, i.e. one or more spoken or signed languages). So change that to "... 'technologies' so deeply integrated that our brains have changed to accommodate for them. For example: writing and language". AIUI, research suggests language has warped our brains.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      I fully agree with writing, but again, language itself is what I was talking about - it's a natural ability, not a technology we developed. Adding to my previous examples, we also know that children can only natively learn particular structures of language, both in terms of grammar and phonology. You couldn't create a completely artificial lagauge and teach it natively to a child, they will be unable to learn the grammar and words, and they will sort of snap it back to a natural grammar and phonology. Another good piece of proof is that you can't teach an animal language, even those that can be taught to use certain tools, or even to create tools of their own. You could probably create a group of chimpanzees that can use bows and arrows, and can share that knowledge from one generation to the next. But you can't teach even a single chimpanzee to use language in the sense that we do, even though every (healthy) human child learns it on their own within the first few years of life.

ewindal 4y ago

You can only feel sunshine and grass because your brain interprets sensory signals from your body. It’s easy to imagine a world where your cyborg body can deliver those same signals. If the sensation is the same, why would you _not_ exhchange your fragile meat sack of a body with a far more versatile mechanical one?

20after4 4y ago
Mechanical devices don't repair themselves. Living bodies do. I think you underestimate the highly optimized and resilient nature of a meat-sack body.
- ewindal 4y ago
  Perhaps, but imagine no need for surgery, no need for anesthesia, all wounds, illnesses and ailments fixed simply by switching the damaged part, or switching bodies entirely.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  Mechanical devices don't repair themselves. Only because we haven't bothered building any that do. A cynical take would be that it would be bad for the economy.
  - dwaltrip 4y ago
    We don’t yet know how to build self-repairing machines. That’s basically the same as creating new life forms.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      Well, creating life forms would require us to create self-reproducing machines, which doesn't seem like the same thing. This will end up in a goalpost-shifting debate where the extent of self-repair capabilities necessary to qualify as "self-repairing" is argued. I'd say that a fault-tolerant system is at least 50% of the way there.

stormfather 4y ago

I think the fact that we will start to augment our bodies is a safe assumption. It's just too useful, and you will need to do it to compete. How will one get by without their AR retinal implants, brain chip and exoskeleton? Sure, it's dehumanizing but do you really think you will reject it? You are talking to me on a computer already... it won't always be external. When you age, you won't feel so sentimental about your teeth and spine anymore... Now, if we let it rob us of sensations is another matter, and I think assuming that it will is the bigger leap. I imagine that in 10k years we will be able to integrate new parts with our nervous system. Think augmentation, not replacement, until the whole of the human body is replaced in form, but not necessarily function, like Theseus' ship, but without changing our experience too much.

rpearl 4y ago

Your fundamental experiences as a human are already augmented by technologies so deeply integrated that our brains have changed to accommodate for them. For example: writing and speech. What makes you think that "cyborg" means "foot replaced with hoverboard" and not things like "memory augmented with curated database" or "though process augmented with numeric-error-free calculation"?

tsimionescu 4y ago
Speech is not "a technology", it is a natural human ability. Our ability to form thoughts in the form of language and then communicate them (through speech or other ways, such as sign languages) is very likely of the same nature as our ability to see and interpret the world as objects. Note that children do need interaction to learn to speak, but it is not taught to them in the sense that writing is, it is a natural instinct that they need social interaction to exercise (and they of course need to learn a particular firm of speech, i.e. one or more spoken or signed languages). Though such experiments can't be carried out because they would risk being monstrous, it's quite possible that a group of babies growing up together with no spoken or signed interactions from their parents would still create a language of their own.
- CRConrad 4y ago
  >> technologies so deeply integrated that our brains have changed to accommodate for them. For example: writing and speech. > Speech is not "a technology", it is a natural human ability ... of course need to learn a particular firm of speech, i.e. one or more spoken or signed languages). So change that to "... 'technologies' so deeply integrated that our brains have changed to accommodate for them. For example: writing and language". AIUI, research suggests language has warped our brains.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    I fully agree with writing, but again, language itself is what I was talking about - it's a natural ability, not a technology we developed. Adding to my previous examples, we also know that children can only natively learn particular structures of language, both in terms of grammar and phonology. You couldn't create a completely artificial lagauge and teach it natively to a child, they will be unable to learn the grammar and words, and they will sort of snap it back to a natural grammar and phonology. Another good piece of proof is that you can't teach an animal language, even those that can be taught to use certain tools, or even to create tools of their own. You could probably create a group of chimpanzees that can use bows and arrows, and can share that knowledge from one generation to the next. But you can't teach even a single chimpanzee to use language in the sense that we do, even though every (healthy) human child learns it on their own within the first few years of life.