D
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To each their own, but that would require a very esoteric spiritual belief to validate for consistency. Still, to each their own.
Why The Lack of Majority Transhuman Future Settings?
- Thread starter CarlManvers2019
- Start date
To each their own, but that would require a very esoteric spiritual belief to validate for consistency. Still, to each their own.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
It’s something along the lines of self esteem, if you go around using the body of someone better looking than you and you are complimented about your good looks
Is it YOU who is being complimented or the person whose face you’re wearing?
D
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Me, of course. I don't even hesitate about it. I killed the previous owner fair and square. Gives me quite a great deal of self-esteem, actually.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
You ashamed of your original face? The one you were born with then?
D
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I'm confused about all of this. I thought it was a lark of humour.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
Sorry, I do that at times, but sorta serious, would you changing and/or replacing your looks mean you hated yourself? What does that say on your own self reapect?
D
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No, I don't believe so in the slightest. People may do it for cultural or for personal reasons, it just means they feel a need to comply with those cultural dictates or what have you ... It doesn't mean hatred for what was, but adoration / respect for what is to be.
prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
To opine myself on this one (because it's one I juggled with in earlier years), it depends on where the motivation and impulse comes from? People can have self-destructive and harmful self-images that drive them to change or attempt to change their appearance as a way of getting validation from others that is...incomplete or distorted if they don't have a self-confident or strong enough self-image to avoid harmful obsession over that fact (people obsessively dieting to the point of anorexia, or the people in tabloids who've gone to plastic surgeons a dozen-plus times because the nose just isn't right yet, and that kind of thing), and in those avenues those changes aren't originating from a place of good so they're not very good themselves?
In contrast, someone going into a diet/exercise-regimen with a goal of getting more healthy and looking better (but in a less obsessive, self-destructive manner based on others perceptions but on self-image and self-worth) is doing a good--and I'd be of the opinion that makeup and beauty products, or even cosmetic surgery, can originate from the same place.
Which, to relate back to transhumanism, seems like it'd also be an applicable standard? One could go 'off the deep end' and start replacing everything of their bodies with 'superior' mechanical components based off of a harmful or unhealthy image of themselves and those components that only feeds on itself and is more compromising and dangerous to them. While insisting on 'no artificial parts' always strikes me as a bit too blanket, Luddite, and hypocritical in its insistence when we do all kinds of things to adjust for damaged or inoperative biology already (glasses as an obvious one that aren't the 'artificial limbs for vets' angle that seems to come up usually in this conversation). Is there much of a functional difference between non-integrated parts we use to 'enhance' ourselves or correct failing/failed biological parts? I'd say no. So long as people are either correcting something, or seeking a healthy self-image/ability for themselves in a non-obsessive manner, then it's not objectionable in my eyes.
So my fluffy-headed diatribe essentially amounts to 'Moderation and good vibes, man!'
To roundabout to the actual thread topic...Human failings are a good source of drama and physical description that are more readily envisioned or accepted than robot-eyes and titanium skullcaps or what-have-you. I think a lot of sci-fi defaults to 'standard human' appearance for people just because it's easier to describe/portray and serves to make the robo-eyes and titanium skullcaps and whatnot more distinctive and recognizable when/if they do show up (Terminator saving its evil robot-skeleton images for the climactic conclusion, when prior to such it was just the admittedly stiff-acting Arnold we occaisonally saw using his Terminator-vision(TM)). That said, part of that (especially in movies) was probably driven by special effects which couldn't quite capture it without being 'rubber mask'-y or otherwise unworkable. We might be getting to the point where that changes in movies, and maybe that'll drive more works to put less 'human' appearances in more often? Dunnow...
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
I prefer if they at the very least start with humans having much longer extended lifespans than the mere 100
Vyor
My influence grows!
Ideology yes, religion no. There aren't any higher powers or even any spirituality involved, it's purely based on how humanity has tended towards peace with every technological leap. WW1 and WW2 were only so deadly because of how populations boomed in the industrial era and outside of those... not too many large wars overall. And even those 2 were a massive fluke.
In essence, transhumanism is the idea that art can make us better people applied to technology.
Why do you consider it to be suicide?
I typically bring up pacemakers tbh.
Lanmandragon
Well-known member
The soul leaves the body. Yes I'm aware I can't prove a soul exists. It does in my opinion though.
Vyor
My influence grows!
Does the soul follow the mind in your view?
D
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@Vyor I very much feel that the idea that modern civilization is more peaceful is false, based on cherry-picking and correlation is not causation. In absolute terms the 20th century was the bloodiest in human history by a substantial margin, liquidating close to 200 million people out of a population mean of circa 3 billion.
Lanmandragon
Well-known member
To me mind soul and body are all connected. I don't believe any of the three can survive without each other. Uploading by it's very definition involved removing at least one of the three necessary parts. Does that make sense.
Vyor
My influence grows!
Crime and poverty have cratered since the 19th century. Most of those deaths were caused by a few crazy and charismatic men
Like, we don't have traditional wars anymore. At all. We have localized violence stemming from a few backwards cultures, and when those cultures are gone?
I disagree that the mind and body are connected to such a degree. Otherwise the afterlife wouldn't exist.
CarlManvers2019
Writers Blocked Douchebag
IF they are gone, I expect stuff to occur to somehow keep them around even if it's not even profitable.
Also, we're using less manual labor, if it weren't for automation and an increase in technology, we'd be having lots more workplace accidents, child labor and even slavery.
Perhaps in the future, if Transhumanism or cybernetics and genetic engineering for human beings becomes more of a thing there'd be a lot of Romanticist douchebags fantasising about the "old days" and to quote Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel "go back to the soil"
Nevermind if they can't really stand all the manual labor themselves or that it's real fucking expensive and risky
May even go say, that genetic engineering or cybernetics to make life easier, makes you "less human" because you "don't struggle as much"
I'd question that statement. Ukraine had proper, even if relatively small scale tank battles, and Syria had serious urban warfare with heavy firepower used and Stalingrad like ruins left. Isn't that close enough to traditional wars?
"Hybrid warfare" is the new fancy term to describe this kind of thing.
Also let's not forget the Georgia-Ossetia conflict, which, was a proper (even if small) war between pretty ordinary armed forces.
Umm, localized violence, simmering conflicts and random skirmishing is *the* way in which many, if not most societies had military conflicts through most of history.
And the societies who are having them now don't seem to be in a hurry to disappear or change.
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Lanmandragon
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See I don't believe in an afterlife.
D
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I think someone would have said the same thing in 1910 .... People were no longer lining up to shoot or stab each other in massive encounter battles so clearly war is over, there's just these odd little irregular conflicts like against the Boers. Also those backwards cultures are in areas of the world actively getting worse. Compare Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq in the 60s to today. Compare the USSR in the 60s to Russia and Ukraine today....
Crime is highly definitional. We've decriminalized huge areas of human activity since the 19th century. We've also redefined poverty innumerable times, and we can also define historical poverty with or without land ownership to suit particular agendas.
Anyway, we should take this to a thread in the Athenaeum if you like.