Would you become transhuman?

[KDude]

fondness for food from gas stations)...

mmm truckstop burritos. don't even hate.

 

[miss fortune]

mmm truckstop burritos. don't even hate.

don't even get me started on my love for pizza from the speedway chain of gas stations... so affordable and delicious

 

[Engineer]

It really depends on what you mean by transhuman. I don't think grafting some neural/optical modifications to your central nervous system really makes for a transhuman. I'd pretty much get augmented in a heartbeat if it was affordable, safe, and didn't mess up my training in any way.
Now, if you're talking about uploading my personality to some substrate somewhere, then no... I'd never do that. Just couldn't handle it. Never dying, not having a body of my own... it'd be too weird and I'd never want to do that ever.

 

[xisnotx]

I really wish I was like 50 years older so I didn't have to take these questions seriously.

As it stands, in 50 years time, I might have to actually answer these questions.

One things for sure, I'm for sure dying. I want to. That whole living forever thing is just not going to happen for me...I'm sorry.

 

[Intricate Mystic]

I might accept an "upgrade" if it took the form of some bodily (prosthetic-type) repair of a body part that wasn't working. I would not want any transhuman changes that affected my brain. I consider my brain, soul, and DNA to be the seat of my humanity and thus would not want them altered. The other issue is that transhumanists seem to view the capabilities of computers and machines as being superior to those of humans. They are in some ways, but they don't have our ability to engage in moral reasoning. Also, human thinking may involve cognitive errors but unlike computers, we are alive.

 

[Coriolis]

It really depends on what you mean by transhuman. I don't think grafting some neural/optical modifications to your central nervous system really makes for a transhuman. I'd pretty much get augmented in a heartbeat if it was affordable, safe, and didn't mess up my training in any way.
Now, if you're talking about uploading my personality to some substrate somewhere, then no... I'd never do that. Just couldn't handle it. Never dying, not having a body of my own... it'd be too weird and I'd never want to do that ever.

Same here. The idea has always intrigued me, and the technology is getting closer and closer to some fairly significant modifications.

 

[skylights]

I wouldn't trust whoever was in charge of maintenance. Software problem? Routed to peon with list of basic questions. Hardware problem? Routed to peon with list of basic questions. Biological problem? Have you dealt with insurance and healthcare lately?

I was just thinking what a bitch it would be if you were trying to chat with someone about your mechanical heart failure and they had such a heavy accent you couldn't really understand them.

I'd like some fiber optics extensions in my hair, though. That'd be fun. Pink one day, blue the next...

 

[Betty Blue]

If you were offered a free opportunity to become transhuman, with the freedom to choose and design the “upgrades” you would like. Would you accept the offer and become transhuman, or stay the same?

If yes, what changes would you like to make to yourself?

Oh yes definately! Wow so many things you could do...umm... i'm presuming we are not being given limits here?
How about transparent skin with electrical wiring instead of veins. I suppose i would keep skin elasticity...but not some ultra botox look... i'm not sure i'd change too much in terms of looking younger/perter etc... i'd be more interested in trying out completely new things... i wouldn't mind being part android part real human.... some computerised mechanisms.
Would be really exciting to be able to press buttons on my wrist to activate lazers and rocket boots... and some kind of mind synch program, allowing me to communicate with persons of my choice (with thier permission of course)... ummm... i could go on and on with this.
I'd also like to have blue hair that stays blue (i'd be happy with green)...so i suppose it may be artifical hair...not fussed about that. Oh and i'd like to be a transformer.
temporary /list

 

[figsfiggyfigs]

I read "translucent".I went "ew..."

 

[Lexicon]

I misread the thread title as, ''Would you become trashhuman?''

..which immediately reminded me of things like, the Garbage Hotel.

As for transhuman, count me in. Give me a new set of lungs, or have some mechanism automatically spray albuterol directly into my bronchial tree so I never even feel an asthma attack coming on. Give me synthetic joints that will never wear out.

I'm not sure what I would change, cognitively. I'm not terribly trusting of all man-made materials, no matter what brilliant mind came up with the systems behind them, so, my brain is the last place I'd want to install something that'd potentially short circuit. Joints, lungs, sure. I can always remedy that, somehow. But not my precious, precious brain.

 

[Society]

ok, this discussion is really brining the iconoclast out of me:

Yeah. It's more convenient than carrying a smartphone with me, and it serves a similar purpose.

what if you could have the exact same affect by wearing glasses, or this:

and control it with exterior neural reading? same way these guys learned how to read vocal chord nerves:
[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyN4ViZ21N0"]like this[/YOUTUBE]

but with a higher scanning resolution for the entire body, controlling a virtual body in the same time your controlling your real life one, without even having to do the same gestures and motions in real life (like they don't need to actually speak). no big decisions, no big surgeries, just all the affects of "a brain implant" on stuff you can get at best-buy?

I would not want any transhuman changes that affected my brain. I consider my brain, soul, and DNA to be the seat of my humanity and thus would not want them altered.

what if there was no alteration? nothing about it that actually made you think like a computer? a perfect representation of the neural connections, fluids, hormones, everything, that makes you think what you think and feel what you feel? our molecules get replaced all the time, so we're really always a copy of who we used to be anyway, this would just be one big swap as apposed to a gradual one.

I'd first get rid of my entire body and replace it with a robot body. It would be smooth and aerodynamic, exceptionally fast and strong but doesnt need to have a face or anything.

why not just have an axoskeleton giving you the same abilities? no big surgery, no big choice but what to wear.

Now, if you're talking about uploading my personality to some substrate somewhere, then no... I'd never do that. Just couldn't handle it. Never dying, not having a body of my own... it'd be too weird and I'd never want to do that ever.

what if you it didn't mean not having a body of your own? considering it would have probably already being neccessery to develop an understanding of the nervious system in order for you to even operate as an uploaded mind in the first place - then there's no reason why they couldn't wire sensors and motors to function on behalf of your nervious system and feel just as real, from heat to touch to sex and if you want even pain. why not rent a body for a vecation in the physical world? or buy one which is customized just for you, perhaps looking and feeling like you did before, so you can go in and out of the system whenever you want? or have multiply bodies to choose from? maybe even synthesizing sperms/eggs from your recorded DNA so you could start a family in the physical world? and who said they have to be human, why not be a humminbird robot for a joy ride? or a dolphin?

Maybe two giant eyes. I would want to be able to "see" in all wavelengths of light, X-ray to radio, (I'l miss out on the gamma waves, thanks.)

if we have the scanning technology to put those on a new robotic body, why not just have it displayed on.. well, glasses or anything else for that matter?

One things for sure, I'm for sure dying. I want to. That whole living forever thing is just not going to happen for me...I'm sorry.

as for death, not only is it an option (deleting yourself - sucide), but you'd actually share the basic vulnerability of the entire human civilization. it won't be that nothing can kill you, its that in order for anything to kill you it would need smash out the infrastructure that maintains you. how about that as a drive? cooperative mortality?

I wouldnt want it, i prefer to be 100% human, even if it had some disadvantages in some situations

what if the disadvantage was that you had absolutely no way of competing for employment or feeding yourself or your family? its likely that some of the uploaded minds are going to be the very people who engineer faster CPUs, an when they do so they will actually be able to increase the speed in which they think and engineer faster CPUs, leading to to an internal feedback loop of increasing processing power (a.k.a. the singularity).

this means that - assuming our physical selfs aren't the fastest possible thinking and feeling mechanisms in the universe - it wouldn't matter if your field is music, art, coding, design, trading in financial asset, acting, or anything in which your main use is your mind, the processing time as a virtual entity could become a hell of a lot faster, and you'd be able to produce a lot more of whatever it is you produce while investing a lot more subjective time in it. they'd also have plenty of more time to figure out how to make cheaper and better robotics for physical labor. not to mention that imorbidity would eventually bring them centuries and millenia of expeirnence in different fields.. can you imagine the resume?

this means it might become impossible for those who don't upload our minds to economically compete. they would be the equivilent of an extremely poor 3rd world country. so what if ulpoading your mind becomes the only way to get a job?

 

[Within]

Of course I would become transhuman. I can think of endless amounts of upgrades that I would have done to myself.

 

[Engineer]

what if you it didn't mean not having a body of your own? considering it would have probably already being neccessery to develop an understanding of the nervious system in order for you to even operate as an uploaded mind in the first place - then there's no reason why they couldn't wire sensors and motors to function on behalf of your nervious system and feel just as real, from heat to touch to sex and if you want even pain. why not rent a body for a vecation in the physical world? or buy one which is customized just for you, perhaps looking and feeling like you did before, so you can go in and out of the system whenever you want? or have multiply bodies to choose from? maybe even synthesizing sperms/eggs from your recorded DNA so you could start a family in the physical world? and who said they have to be human, why not be a humminbird robot for a joy ride? or a dolphin?

And that's exactly why I wouldn't want to do it. I was born a human, I was born in one body, and despite my unique personality, I don't think I would really be "me" without my unique body and its limitations. I am not a hummingbird, I am not a dolphin. I'm a human. It's the way I was born, and it's the way I intend to stay. I enjoy being me. The only reason I might ever upload my personality is if it was in relation to the sort of backup/return systems explored in various military science fiction stories, where Soldier n goes out, is accidentally killed, but uploads his personality back to the server before he passes. Then a clone is thawed from storage, and now Soldier n+1 is back in a body, still the same person.
But even then, how would I know it was actually me in my body and not a program of me? If I died, does a backup program actually preserve "me"? Or is it a completely different (but very similar) individual?

So, again, I would likely never upload, and renting bodies for "fun" is just somehow abhorrent to me. Not to insult anyone who might enjoy that, of course. My opinion is purely subjective. I like augments because it means I could still remain functional after having an arm blown off in combat, and return to the fight better and stronger than before.

 

[JocktheMotie]

But even then, how would I know it was actually me in my body and not a program of me? If I died, does a backup program actually preserve "me"? Or is it a completely different (but very similar) individual?

No difference.

 

[Society]

And that's exactly why I wouldn't want to do it. I was born a human, I was born in one body, and despite my unique personality, I don't think I would really be "me" without my unique body and its limitations. I am not a hummingbird, I am not a dolphin. I'm a human. It's the way I was born, and it's the way I intend to stay. I enjoy being me. The only reason I might ever upload my personality is if it was in relation to the sort of backup/return systems explored in various military science fiction stories, where Soldier n goes out, is accidentally killed, but uploads his personality back to the server before he passes. Then a clone is thawed from storage, and now Soldier n+1 is back in a body, still the same person.

ok, but in this case you'd still be uploaded to a computer and then downloaded into a new body, so, wat if we take out the "new adult body in 10 minutes" factor out of sci-fi, and replace it with the kind of cloning we have in real life - the one where it actually takes 30 years to grow your 30 year old body - would you then choose to just stay inactive for a couple of decades or would you choose to function as an "uploaded mind" to whatever extent you can?

But even then, how would I know it was actually me in my body and not a program of me? If I died, does a backup program actually preserve "me"? Or is it a completely different (but very similar) individual?

..how is that different from real life?

 

[iwakar]

I can't say. Are we to understand that transhuman is defined as humans that integrate (advanced) tools into their biological self? (I've not heard this specific term before: transhuman.) Would this mean tattooing and piercing are considered primitive, aesthetic tool integrations (not scarification, which lacks a fixed foreign presence)? I've had pierced ears since I was five years old for aesthetic purposes. (Arguably to improve my quality of life.) Do I qualify as transhuman already? The definition is as much a part of the question as the possibilities. What I'm comfortable with changing about myself is relevant to my cultural, chronological context. I'll have to think hard on what I'd be willing to change now.

 

[Qlip]

Yes, I would. I'm an experience and a tool junkie. Depending on the trade-offs, I would love to extend my senses and capabilities.

 

[Intricate Mystic]

what if there was no alteration? nothing about it that actually made you think like a computer? a perfect representation of the neural connections, fluids, hormones, everything, that makes you think what you think and feel what you feel? our molecules get replaced all the time, so we're really always a copy of who we used to be anyway, this would just be one big swap as apposed to a gradual one.

If I could swap my current physical self for an exact biological copy that included the neurons and neuronal connections containing all of my current memories and knowledge I might go for that. However, the change would have to include retaining my soul in the new body. If you're talking about an artificial body that mimics these functions, I have doubts that a man-made copy would be a flawless replica of the real thing.

 

[violaine]

I know I already replied... But I can't wait for the day! Please, please don't be an option just after I die. *starts a saving for cyborg fund*

 

[JocktheMotie]

If I could swap my current physical self for an exact biological copy that included the neurons and neuronal connections containing all of my current memories and knowledge I might go for that. However, the change would have to include retaining my soul in the new body.

Not a problem. All transfers will include soul transfers for free.