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The Not-Quite-Human Rights Movement
An anonymous reader writes "Yale University hosted a conference on transhumanism which organizers say served to
coalesce transhumanism from a subculture to a 'movement.' They're even sketching out where the role of violence becomes legitimate in the quest to become a cyborg.
But most of the talk was of peaceful integration and continuation of democratic values."
Why did they have to include in the cyborg drawing a nice big flacid cyborg cock?
Visualize the world of wine
If an eternal life was offered to you by replacing all body parts with mechanical ones, would you take them?
I've always wondered why the Borg would refer to Earth as sector 001. Since they're from the Delta quadrant wouldn't they have devised their own map/coordinate system or does everyone use the Federation's?
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Very good points that s20451 made.
I suppose I would qualify as a Cyborg; I am hearing-impaired and have a Cochlear Implant. Social-wise, it's kind of a mixed bag. On one side of the coin, people in general are fascinated by the prospect of restoring hearing that was lost and the very idea of having a biological implant in my head. On the other side, however, the Deaf community generally shuns them as their equivalent of "tools of Satan." I feel that in the decades, even centuries, to come, such divisions will stil exist on this topic. It's unavoidable today and will be unavoidable tomorrow.
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
The technology may exist to make a machine act as if it is self-aware--that it has feelings--but it is nothing more than a system, a chain reaction that takes different turns based on certian rules by which it has been programmed. (This could even include re-writing itself, which really means nothing, because again, it is simply following it's programing.) As a person converts themselves into a "post-human" they are doing nothing more than murdering themselves slowly as they replace parts of their living body with non-living systems.
I believe that this even applies to machines which are wholly organic. The human being is more than just an organic machine because a human is truly self-aware. A human is alive. An organic machine may be "alive" at the cell-level--the individual cells may be alive--but the machine as a whole is not self-aware, it literally nothing more than a machine.
MBK
In "normal" situation a genetically weak person (who for genetical reasons doesnt have a leg, or is blind, weak) will die off... or atleast will be unable to get a mate. With our present "caring" society and the the-tobecome implants will allow them to live a good life and get children... there for gradually weakening the overall genetical base of human-kind. And there is nothing that anyone can do about it.
Also when people start replacing their limbs with their artificial superior counter-parts, some of the brain-cells controlling these limbs will die of (as it is unlikely that these new limbs work EXACTLY the same way normal limbs do). And after a few generations people might not be able to use their natural legs at all. Heart and lungs will also weaken because they dont need to support such a large system anymore.
Okay, you've introduced a massive fallacy here. This demonstrates why people like you need philosophers, since you don't examine your own arguments.
"Humans are animals that had human parents, and no amount of postulation or terminology will make a cat or a machine into a human."
By this argument, nothing whose parents were not human can be human. Ergo there can never be a "first" human, since its parents must have (by definition) not have been human. As such, unless humanity was created, in situo, then there can be no humans. Now, if you're a Creationist, thats fine, but for those of us who believe in Evolution, its absurd.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Intelligent machines will be given the full rights of humans once they demonstrate their abilities and begin flexing their power. Despite the moral underpinnings of our various societies, groups that have been historically excluded have fought, bought, or protested their way into equality.
Who knows how long it will take for computers to be as capable as we are. However, once a computer or group of computers becomes intelligent and wealthy enough to hire a legal team (not to mention a software development team), things are going to get very interesting.
We should not wait for our creations to force this issue. It would be better to have a framework in place before everyone begins to panic (including the intelligent machines).
- JML
"More than the sum of his parts" by Joe Haldeman
In the pre-story splash he said he always wanted to write a "Playboy Story" and was surprised when he had actually written one. His agent didn't like the title, so he suggested, "Tom Swift and His Electric Penis" as an alternative. It was submitted under the original title.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The closest thing to cyborgs at the moment is extreme body modification
There are militants in the deaf community who see hearing restoration as an attempt at genocide.
Seriously.
Any group of people is going to have some wackos at the wrong end of the bell curve, so I'm not really surprised by the existence of this attitude. I'm more or less just happy that these nuts aren't running around poking normal people in the ears with sharp objects in order to expand their numbers.
Took the words right out of my mouth. Personally, I view it as a bit of hypocrisy in that they generally don't shun people with good old hearing aids (They are merely sound amplifiers that go in your ear canal, no surgery needed) and in some cases, it helps almost as much as a cochlear implant (Not always so for some people, it varies with their type of deafness.) But our world is full of hypocrisy to begin with. It's sad but that's my reality and I have to live with it.
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
"We are the deaf race. We are not impaired, this is the way we are and do not need your 'implants.'
"By the way, pass the free education handouts."
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
To be transhuman is to take your life in your own hands and shape yourself (mind or body) to your will. It's body builders, disabled people moving beyond their limitations, people who develop their mind to do incredible things, transsexuals, etc. Transhuman is basically anyone moving beyond what has been given to them by nature. It is really a different mindset, one where you really push yourself to be what you want to be. Over the last few years I've been doing this myself. I'm going thru a sex change; I went from geeky guy to a lesbian techie girl. The process isn't just a shaping of the body, but of the mind also. I examined all the things I hated about myself and have been endeavoring to toss them out and replace them with stuff I wanted.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
The Amish evaluate new technologies continually on the basis of whether they will help to bring familes and communities together, or help to drive them apart. There's currently a big debate over cell phone use. Phones are useful, but Amish don't want to be interrupted during a family meal or a personal conversation. Often, they keep the phone in its own place, away from the house. Then there is less temptation to use it when it isn't necessary, and it doesn't become a distraction.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
The real question is, what is freedom?
This is actually two good questions packed into one. Philosophers and political theorists usually draw a distinction between political freedom and free will. Some, but not all, think you have to have free will in order to qualify for political freedom. Some think the two issues are entirely unrelated.
I would define freedom as being able to do what one wants.
This is not a bad start, but it turns out to be an unsatisfactory definition in several ways. Let's take political freedom first.
Political Freedom
But, of course, freedom is not absolute. If I want to kill someone, I do not have the freedom to do this.
Right, and in general if you want to do something that involves someone else, or someone else's property, then you have to get that person's consent first, otherwise you actions would infringe on his freedom. Indeed, many poltical theorists have thought that political freedom is not so much a matter of being able to do what you want to do, as a matter of being free from interference from others, unless you grant your consent. In other words you are politically free if other people are not allowed to mess around with you, or yours, without your permission.
Given this view of political freedom the question of whether an individual qualifies for freedom depends on whether that individual is capable of consenting. Still many philosophers think that in order to give consent one has to be able to make free choices.
Free Will
I would define freedom as being able to do what one wants.
It turns out that one of the most widely held philosophical views about free will is pretty close to this, but it gets stated a little differently. Compatibilists think that your choice is free just if you made that choice because you wanted to.
Robots have no desires, needs, wants. A robot would only do what a human has programmed it to do.
This is by no means obvious. One view of human desires is that they are just drives that result from eons of evolution. When we do what we want to do, we are just doing what evolution has programed us to do. Even so, it is still what we want, and thus the choices that result are still free. Likewise, even if robots choose only as we programe them to, so long as they doing what they want (and we want) them to do, they are free.
A somewhat more sophisticated view would be that a genuine artificial intelligence would have to be able to think about what it ought to do (i.e. engage in practical or moral reasoning), as well as thinking about strictly factual questions (what philosopher's tend to call theoretical reasoning). If a robot could think about what it ought to want, and modify its own desires accordingly then, when it acted on those self-regulated desires, it would be acting freely.
You have a bunch of academic ethicists etc. who are doing research and writing papers on a possible problem that has not really appeared yet. Why not come up with some practical solutions to existing problems of discrimination, civil rights, etc? If you ask me, it's because it is easy to blue-sky some possible scenarios and get credit for breaking new ground, and also not be held accountable for any demonstrable results from your research. Or is it just me?