Author Topic: Transhumanism  (Read 1704 times)

hubag bohol

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Transhumanism
« on: March 11, 2012, 10:13:32 PM »
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Transhumanism, abbreviated as H+ or h+, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as study the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies. They predict that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".



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hubag bohol

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2012, 10:14:57 PM »
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hubag bohol

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2012, 10:20:29 PM »
Transhumanism: The Most Dangerous Idea?
Why striving to be more than human is human
by Ronald Bailey


"What ideas, if embraced, would pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity?" That question was posed to eight prominent policy intellectuals by the editors of Foreign Policy in its September/October issue (not yet available online). One of the eight savants consulted was Francis Fukuyama, professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, author of Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. His choice for the world's most dangerous idea? Transhumanism.

In his Foreign Policy article, Fukuyama identifies transhumanism as "a strange liberation movement" that wants "nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints." Sounds ominous, no? But wait a minute, isn't human history (and prehistory) all about liberating more and more people from their biological constraints? After all, it's not as though most of us still live in our species' "natural state" as Pleistocene hunter-gatherers.

Human liberation from our biological constraints began when an ancestor first sharpened a stick and used it to kill an animal for food. Further liberation from biological constraints followed with fire, the wheel, domesticating animals, agriculture, metallurgy, city building, textiles, information storage by means of writing, the internal combustion engine, electric power generation, antibiotics, vaccines, transplants, and contraception. In a sense, the goal toward which humanity has been striving for millennia has been to liberate ourselves from more and more of our ancestors' biological constraints.

What is a human capacity anyway? Biologist Richard Dawkins has propounded the notion of an extended phenotype. Genes not only mold the bodies of organisms but also shape their behaviors. Some of those behaviors result in the creation of inanimate objects that help organisms to survive and reproduce, such as beaver dams and bird nests.

Our ancestors had no wings; now we fly. Our ancient forebears could not hear one another over 1,000 miles; now we phone. And our Stone Age progenitors averaged 25 years of life; now we live 75. Thanks to our knack for technological innovation, humanity has by far the largest extended phenotype of all creatures on planet Earth. Nothing could be more natural to human beings than striving to liberate ourselves from biological constraints.

But Fukuyama would undoubtedly respond that Pleistocene hunter-gatherers are still recognizably human, no different in their innate capacities than people living today. What transhumanists seek is very different. They want to go beyond current innate human capacities. They want to change human bodies and brains.

Of course, humans have been deliberately changing their bodies through athletic training and their brains through schooling. Nevertheless, Fukuyama has a point. Can one be so transformed by technology as to be no longer human? "Our good characteristics are intimately connected to our bad ones: If we weren't violent and aggressive, we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves; if we didn't have feelings of exclusivity, we wouldn't be loyal to those close to us; if we never felt jealousy, we would also never feel love," asserts Fukuyama. He seems to be arguing that to be a human being one must possess all of the emotional capacities characteristic of our species. If biotechnological manipulations removed our ability to feel emotions like anger, hate, or violence, we would in some sense not be human beings any more.

Let's say that future genetic engineers discover a gene for suicidal depression, and learn how to suppress the gene, or adjust it. Would fixing it make subsequent generations non-human beings? After all, most people today do not fall into suicidal depressions, and those happy people are no less human than, say, Sylvia Plath.

Depression can already be fixed for many people by means of Prozac or Paxil. Surely, taking serotonin re-uptake inhibitors does not make people other or less than human. Sufferers of depression will tell you that the drugs restore them to their true selves. It seems unreasonable to claim that in order to qualify as human beings, we all must have the capacity to succumb to berserker rage or religious ecstasy.

More at: http://reason.com/archives/2004/08/25/transhumanism-the-most-dangero



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hubag bohol

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #4 on: March 11, 2012, 10:25:24 PM »
...than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln

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hubag bohol

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #5 on: March 11, 2012, 10:27:09 PM »
Although some transhumanists report having religious or spiritual views, they are for the most part atheists, agnostics or secular humanists. A vocal minority of transhumanists, however, follow liberal forms of Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Yoga or have merged their transhumanist ideas with established Western religions such as liberal Christianity or Mormonism. Despite the prevailing secular attitude, some transhumanists pursue hopes traditionally espoused by religions, such as "immortality", while several controversial new religious movements, originating in the late 20th century, have explicitly embraced transhumanist goals of transforming the human condition by applying technology to the alteration of the mind and body, such as Raëlism. However, most thinkers associated with the transhumanist movement focus on the practical goals of using technology to help achieve longer and healthier lives; while speculating that future understanding of neurotheology and the application of neurotechnology will enable humans to gain greater control of altered states of consciousness, which were commonly interpreted as "spiritual experiences", and thus achieve more profound self-knowledge. --Wiki



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hubag bohol

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #6 on: March 11, 2012, 10:29:14 PM »
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hubag bohol

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #7 on: March 11, 2012, 10:31:54 PM »
Transhumanism (or sometimes known as posthumanism) claims that technology can allow humans to transcend biology. While machine enhancements do not turn us into machines (because our own human/biological intelligence is still in charge of the whole organism) due to the exponential growth in processing power we are already moving beyond the "dumb" enhancements and into the age when our non-biological improvements will be a million, billion or trillion times faster and smarter, and indeed will take over our biological intelligence. It is in this way that humanity will hack its biology and change its destiny. That is the view of our future called transhumanism.

More specifically, transhumanists such as Max More, Natasha Vita-More and Ray Kurzweil believe that by merging man and machine via biotechnology, molecular nanotechnologies, and artificial intelligence, one day science will yield humans that have increased cognitive abilities, are physically stronger, emotionally more stable and live forever. This path, they say, will eventually lead to "posthuman" intelligent (augmented) beings far superior to man - a near embodiment of god.

It is this path of evolution starting with biologically dependent organisms, going through mixed-system cyborgenic entities and ultimately ending with non-corporeal augmented intelligent beings which according to transhumanism is "the destiny of intelligence." In Kurzweil's own words:

"It was the fate of bacteria to evolve into a technology-creating species. And it's our destiny now to evolve into the vast intelligence of the Singularity." -- http://www.singularitysymposium.com/



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hubag bohol

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #8 on: March 11, 2012, 10:32:43 PM »
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hubag bohol

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #10 on: March 11, 2012, 11:48:58 PM »
transhumanism?  after plastic surgery, this one?  no thanks.  i'm comfortable enough with my biological constraints and the limits of my imperfect genes.

haaayyy, salamat, kutob ra ko sa ikaduha.  layo kong mahimong kugitang naay pako.


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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #11 on: March 11, 2012, 11:53:52 PM »
Although some transhumanists report having religious or spiritual views, they are for the most part atheists, agnostics or secular humanists.

and yet they want to play GOD?  ::)

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #12 on: March 12, 2012, 12:00:43 AM »


it seems the reproductive organ of adam in the original painting was even diminished by the robotic transhuman hand.  it had been cropped out of the picture.

di na diay mokitoy ang transhuman. ;D

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Lorenzo

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #13 on: March 12, 2012, 04:53:28 AM »
There are some scientists out there who want to be able to find a way to stop the "Death" Gene. :)

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #14 on: March 12, 2012, 05:58:12 AM »
is getting pregnant wihtout sex through artificial insemination a part of this?

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Lorenzo

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #15 on: March 12, 2012, 08:34:50 AM »
It has qualities of transhumanism, Manay, pero i would ascribe artificial insemination as part of the umbrella of genetic therapy.

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #16 on: March 12, 2012, 08:38:08 AM »
Although some transhumanists report having religious or spiritual views, they are for the most part atheists, agnostics or secular humanists. A vocal minority of transhumanists, however, follow liberal forms of Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Yoga or have merged their transhumanist ideas with established Western religions such as liberal Christianity or Mormonism. Despite the prevailing secular attitude, some transhumanists pursue hopes traditionally espoused by religions, such as "immortality", while several controversial new religious movements, originating in the late 20th century, have explicitly embraced transhumanist goals of transforming the human condition by applying technology to the alteration of the mind and body, such as Raëlism. However, most thinkers associated with the transhumanist movement focus on the practical goals of using technology to help achieve longer and healthier lives; while speculating that future understanding of neurotheology and the application of neurotechnology will enable humans to gain greater control of altered states of consciousness, which were commonly interpreted as "spiritual experiences", and thus achieve more profound self-knowledge. --Wiki




Interesting. In regards to pure scientific theory, it is technically possible to attain "immortality". Within our DNA, we have genes that are responsible for aging and death of tissues and cells. These are what we call BAX genes, as well as the Pro-Apoptotic Genes, there are a plethora of these in our genome.

If a person were to repress or inhibit these genes from transcribing and thus prevent them from manifesting the natural course of aging and cellular and tissue death, then, technically, one can live indefinitely.

By there lies the ultimate question: "Do you really want to live forever?"



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Lorenzo

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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #17 on: March 12, 2012, 08:40:47 AM »
One of these pro-apoptotic genes, the BCL-2 gene, is what is responsible for inducing death of tissues when it reaches a certain age. If we were to inhibit or repress the BCL-2 gene, which is found all over our DNA, then we could become immortal.



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Re: Transhumanism
« Reply #18 on: March 12, 2012, 08:43:31 AM »


This is the BCL-2 gene, the gene that is what scientists call the "humanity" gene. This gene, when expressed, sets limitation to our life span.
If this gene is repressed, there would be no limitation to human life. One could live indefinitely with no aging.

The repression of BCL-2 gene = Immortality

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