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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."
done purposely now to tie in with Terminator 3? :)
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
I was afraid they would discuss something stupid!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Any decent cyborg could simply destroy anyone who disagrees with them, thus ensuring their status as a sentient super being with power over all mankind. No self-respecting super-being would be seen dead in a namby-pamby meeting to talk about rights! Wannabes!
Freedom is irrelevant
Choice is irrelevant
You will escort us to sector 001 where we will begin assimilation of your species. Resistance is futile.
Why did they have to include in the cyborg drawing a nice big flacid cyborg cock?
Visualize the world of wine
What these bioethics departments should be doing is trying to convince people that stem cell research is one of our best chances at curing many diseases. That's a much more important goal than trying to make sure society won't turn away when they see me and my robot walking hand in hand down the street.
Yes, we should be doing stem cell research! (Although, I doubt this will be an unpopular opinion here. Slashdot does attract many scientists, after all.)
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
I think this is quite similar to the Segway, aren't we jumping the gun a bit? Trying to enact legislation before this even becomes widespread?
It is great to discuss this sort of stuff in groups and think about what they could do in the future, but to seriously believe that they would need to make sure laws could handle this before anymore than a handful of people are "cyborgs" (there is only one person that I know of that has actual shit inplanted in his body)?
It seems a little excessive. Maybe as implants begin to become more commonplace (I can't see this happening for at least 15-20 years) we should start thinking about it, but until then, how about we try to enact useful legislation (re-opening our freedoms, ending the corporate stranglehold on consumers, forcing competition in corporate markets, etc).
Yay for timewasters!
Yes - I want to find out if Duke Nukem Forever will come out at some point.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Not until we resolve the issue of rights for other species.
We tend to measure the value of other lifeforms in terms of their genetic closeness to ourselves. All humans share something like 99.9% of their genes... and we already have a hard time fighting for the rights of distant strangers who are in fact members of our large but interbred human family.
Then how about our genetic relations, our sibling and cousin species, from chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utangs out to other primates, then to other mammals, then birds, reptiles, fish, then insects and even down to single-celled organisms, with whom we still share an impressive number of genes. All still much closer to us in any meaningful sense than even the most human-looking cyborb.
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From the article:
From the front page of Slashdot:
It's too late to discuss this - they've already taken over and are using violence to manipulate Slashdot...
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
From the article: "I would say if a creature is both sentient and intelligent, and has a moral sense," ... it is human.
But these are all terms designed specifically to separate the non-human animals from the human ones. Pure circularity. My cat is sentinent, and intelligent. As for her moral sense, if I could identify such a thing in myself, I'm sure I'd ascribe the same motivations to her.
But does that make my cat 'human'? Nope. Human is someone who looks and talks like me and has enough of my genes that we can (if we were of the right ages and genders) fuck like bunnies and make more humans.
Why do philosophers try so hard to identify the unique "humaness" of our species when it's such a simple thing...? Humans are animals that had human parents, and no amount of postulation or terminology will make a cat or a machine into a human.
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Did they decide which operating system to use? And, more importantly, how to make it secure? I'd hate to get a shiny new metalic body, only to have some 14-years old punk hack into it and make me stand on my head while peeing.
They're called "corporations" and they already have equal (or-better) protection under the law. Unfortunately, they don't seem very interested in ethics.
The requested URL
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
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
our new cyborg overloads. But seriously I don't have a problem with this. Maybe in 100 years we can upload our brain to memory along with a coding of our dna. Then we could be sent through space for 1000 years. When you get there grow a new body and upload your brain. Nice. I for one want a super powerful crushing arm.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
In the hippie future you would have to take mosquitos to small claims court.
I can see it now. The defense lawyer Johnny Coakroach says "If it hasn't bit you must acquit."
what's really depressing is how that this transhumanist version of a bionic man sacrifices lots of his human body (presumably some major organs and skeletal muscles) - but the artist can't let go of the damn penis. our cyborg progeny will have a totally artificial endocrine system, but fully-functional man meat.
won't sexual reproduction be passe in this crazy borgified world-gone-mad?
I understand that, in a general sense, we are all cyborgs (glasses, fillings, pacemakers, etc.), but I can't think of any civil rights issues in these cases. So, as soon as someone starts getting oppressed for having their arm replaced with a particle cannon, I'll be the first to march on Washington, holding a big "Particle Guns for Freedom !" sign. Until this technology actually becomes available, though, the cyborg rights people might as well throw their support behind the Tooth Fairy. At least they might get some free teeth out of that one.
>|<*:=
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
Maybe they should worry about shorter-term concepts like social ramifications of bioengineered replacement organs or the social impact of PDAs and smartphones rather than far-fetched technologies such as mind transferrance and sentient* AI.
(* the definition of 'sentience' is still up for debate)
"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.
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
Latin, of course, spawned off the "romance languages": Italian, Spanish, Portugese, French, and Romanian, plus some smaller non-national languages and dialects.
Cow: Beef (Boeuf)
Sheep: Mutton (Mouton)
Pig: Pork (Porc)
Chicken: Poultry (Poulet)
This is also true to a much lesser extent of the Roman invasion of Britain a thousand years earlier or so, but it didn't last nearly as long. So, while English picked up some Latin-derived vocabulary, it is not a Latin-based language structurally any more than Greek, Russian, or any other non-romance language that assimilated some Latin words over time, or that you could say almost any major language in the world today that has assimilated a lot of English vocabulary is "English-based."
Absolutely right. They get together to discuss something like this because it makes them "feel" better. The problem they are focused on is so far down the road that even our great-great-grandchildren won't have to deal with it.
But, I guess the main reason they go ahead and discuss the problem is that, in their minds, they are on the "cutting edge" and thus are superior to the rest of us common folk.
By definition it is very hard for people who are full of shit to realize that they are full of shit.
I know this is going down another road, but..
First, the black thing is no longer about slavery, but because mom and dad were prejudice, and that has rubbed off on the kids (although should be worn down over time or even eradicated). there hasn't been a slave for a long time now...
The fear of cyborgs will be more of a fear of what one does not understand
Linux: Helping nerds look smarter since the late 90s.
dinna call me an 'Anglo' or I'll havta kick yur pur lil' pasty arse!
do we really have to wear clown makeup?
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Sorry, but that's been going on for a long time now. I have astigmatism, and probably would've fallen prey to an unseen foe a few thousand years ago. Cars and motorcycles are preventing the weeding out of those who can't run fast, and just anybody can move a lot of stuff with a fork lift.
>
> And suddenly, it's a movement.
Walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in, say "Shrink -- you can mod any parts you want at Cyberdyne Restaurant" -- and walk out.
You know, if one Slashdotter, just one Slashdotter does it, they may think he's really sick and they won't take him.
And if two Slashdotters do it -- in harmony -- they may think that they're both trollin' and they won't take either of them.
And if THREE Slashdotters do it! Can you imagine three Slashdotters walkin' in, singin' a bar of "Cyberdyne Restaurant" and walkin' out? They might think it's a HACKER CONSPIRACY.
And can you imagine FIFTY Slashdotters a day? I said FIFTY Slashdotters a day -- walkin' in, singin ' a bar of "Cyberdyne Restaruant" and walkin' out? Friends, they may think it's a movement, and that's what it is.
The Cyberdyne Systems T-800 Model 101 Trans-Humanist Movement!
And all you gotta do to join it is to mod me (+1, Funny) the next time the mod points come 'round on the thread view. With feelin'.
You can mod any parts you want at Cyberdyne Restaurant (or be an Alice!)
You can mod any parts you want at Cyberdyne Restaurant
Implants, fuel cells, and neural hacks,
Muscle over bones made outa railroad track,
Oh, you can mod any parts you want at Cyberdyne restaurant...
---
cyborg
A human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices.
---
YOU can be a cyborg. A nontrivial percent 0.3% of the US population can be considered cyborg just because they have pacemakers. I believe they share 99.9%+ (or some stadard deviation of genetic makeup between humans) of your genetic material.
Cyborgs are not machines that look human. You're thinking of androids.
---
android
adj.
Possessing human features.
n.
An automaton that is created from biological materials and resembles a human. Also called humanoid.
---
There indeed is a considerable basis for cyborg rights in that we are all just a mere wire away from being a cyborg. As far as I know being a cyborg doesn't change your rights as far as the law goes. Right now, it doesn't suddenly make one a different species.
This may not be so clear cut in the future however. If you decide to add a large tentacle to your body you might expect to be looked at differently. This is where the issue of rights creeps in. As humans, we may find ourselves genetically homgenous but so varied in capability and appearance that we might be considered different species.
Now that we as humans control our own evolution, it seems all too likely that our species will bifurcate either genetically or otherwise. At that point, the issue of rights/respect for other species will be critical since some of us will be the "other" species.
Well, there already has been a test case of cyborg discrimination. Whether you sympathize with the plight of Prof. Steve Mann at the hands of Air Canada, or think otherwise, the fact is that certain regulations have revealed the potential for discrimination on the basis of technological augmentation of the body.
The specifics of Mann v. Air Canada are not as important as the over-arching issues the case raises. Mann's case cannot be argued on its constitutionality, as there are no constitutional protections against discrimination of cyborgs, or those who are technologically enhanced. However, it was obvious to those of us who saw Mann immediately after the Air Canada incident that the removal of his cyborg accoutrements resulted in significant physical distress. He was unable to maintain balance, properly respond to ambient temperature fluctuations, judge distance for grasping objects, among other physical infirmaties. The symptoms lasted for a little over a month, after which, his body slowly reacclimatized to its non-cyborg state.
The argument cannot be made on the evidence that his wearable computers, and their intrinsic biofeedback mechanisms, were merely fashion accessories or affectations. Because his autonomous body functions had adjusted to Mann's cyborg enhancements, they could rightly be considered part of his (cyborg) biology, necessary to maintain his normal health. In legalese, Mann's cyborg enhancements differed from MP3 players and portable computers "in kind," not merely "in degree." Hence, one could legally consider that Air Canada's security checks should have changed to provide adequate screening without being invasive and destructive. The fact that those with cochlear implants or heart pacemakers are not required to turn off and remove those cyborg enhancements, but Mann was, indicates discrimination.
I am supporting neither Mann nor Air Canada in making these observations. I am pointing out that we already have an important case that raises the issue of the regulatory imposition on those who have technological enhancements to their bodies. The examination of the fundamental issues and the questions they raise is most appropriate to be done now.
That's not really true. Even after your mother goes through menopause, she will still take care of you and help you out in the (evolutionary) interest of maintaining and propagating her genes. Even after she can no longer have children she can still play a role in ensuring the survival of her already born children. And since a person can only help others (their offspring, relatives) if they are healthy enough to help themselves, surely evolution does care about the old man (or woman) who becomes infirm.
Today's geeks are already into sharing in many ways: source, ideas, music, etc. Becoming Borg will just take things to a much higher level.
The one thing I am not so sure about is how Linus fits in as "the queen"...
Grammar's modified a bit more than that, but it's more of an across-the-board simplification than Italicization.
"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!*
What's coming in the next few decades, though, is extensive genetic modification. We have this now as a commercial technology for vegetables. In time it willl work for mammals.
But it won't work very well for a long time, because it takes several lifetimes to debug a new organism. That's why genecists work on fruit flies, with short lifetimes.
Cloning research gives us an example of the debug problems - there are over a hundred cloned animals in the world now. Some of them are healthy, but most of them aren't. And that's just cloning, with zero intentional modification. For cloning, this is just a process problem, and it will be fixed. But for new organisms, there will be design problems. Those will be much tougher to debug.
This will result in many defective organisms, with all the ethical issues that implies. Kill them off and start over? Or what?
At some point, backwards compatibility may be dumped. That happens when a new species (one that won't interbreed) is created. We'll probably have multiple new species, from different vendors. If you thought race and nationalism were a problems, wait until this comes along.
The key point to realize is that making new, improved life is likely to work well before retrofitting the old model does. That technology almost works now, just not very well.
Now, this isn't about us all-powerful humans "bestowing" rights upon other species, any more than the "Vote for Women" movement of the 1920s was about us all-wise males granting those silly girls the chance to play at politics. In reality, it was about us getting over our stupid and baseless preconception that men had some superior capacity to be decision-makers.
In this case, it's about us finally getting over ourselves as a species. We should start recognizing the potential of intelligence in other lifeforms [including artificial ones], and not denying rights to those who wish to improve on their bodies' natural abilities with technology.
That's like saying "why do anything about slavery until we can get rid of this anti-Irish sentiment?" Once our society started dealing with the integration of obviously non-white people, bitching people out for being from the wrong chunk of the British Isles wasn't important anymore.
In the same way, I figure that when we have to start dealing with questions about seriously post- or trans-human people, the questions of skin color will magically evaporate.
Your decision to value other species according to their genetic relationship to your own is utter hogwash, for several reasons. Well, actually only one reason, but there are many variations on the theme.
For example, an octopus is genetically further from us than a chipmunk, and also a great deal more intelligent. There is no reason to value the chipmunk more highly. A dolphin is more genetically dissimilar to us than a howler monkey, but it's clear that they function at a far higher cognitive level.
Next, let's look at people. Imagine two people born to the same parents. One of them is healthy, and functioning normally. The other, because of a drug-induced birth defect, was born with nothing above the brain stem. From a strictly genetic standpoint, these two are nearly identical, but clearly one is capable of full participation in society, and the other is not.
The thing is, genes are nothing but a recipe. In our case, it's a recipe for bipeds with dextrous hands and a brain capable of amazing learning and adaptability. If some other recipe--whether a totally dissimilar genetic code or a metal and plastic manufacturing process--is capable of creating a similar mind, then we cannot deny them rights because ours is the One True Recipe. It's just narrow-minded bigotry.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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.
Great now I'll have to wait even longer to get through airport security as those Cyborgs get screened manually. Crap.
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?
I myself have never bothered putting it in this way - it seems like your average person either gets it by using the word "transsexual", is curious enough to find out more so that you can describe things in better, more accurate terms, or is the type that freaks out no matter how you put it.
Of course, then again, I often don't bother to even mention it to other people anyways, unless it's quite relevant or I feel comfortable to the people it is being mentioned to.
I do wonder if I'd consider being transsexual related to being transhuman at all, other than not accepting the body you were born with as the final word in things. After all, it's just adjusting to a slightly different type of "human", instead of becoming more than human. Would be interesting to see how many TS folk would find the transhumanist points of view to click with them though. Did with me.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."