Transhumanism

[samusaran253]

What do you guys think of transhumanism? I discovered it semi-recently myself and am now a pretty hardcore transhumanist. In layman's terms it's humanity controlling our own destiny and steering the course of human evolution. We do this through augmentations of various kinds, such as mechanical augmentations, nanotechnology, human-AI merging, development of a hive mind, and the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machine. I suspect that we'll see transhumanism really go mainstream in our lifetimes, and we should be relatively young, I suspect most of us will be in our 20s by the time it hits (probably in the 2020s). Here's a video if you want to watch it explaining transhumanism, unfortunately it's biased and the guy who made the video hates transhumanists and is trying to stop the future (and failing at it), but it's the most informative video I could find for teaching non-transhumanists about transhumanism and the video itself isn't all that biased.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e30M3hw3u04

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z8bU41X-EM

[Bek]

Go play Deus Ex (The first one)

[Droopy]

cyberpunk is a genre for you.

check out william gibson if you like to read

[spukrian]

Transhumanism is very fascinating and has admirable goals, but is not without its problems.

Taking control of evolution sounds like a good idea, but then questions start popping up: Who should control it? What direction shoould evolution take? How do we prevent ourselves from becoming to depndent upon technology? What do we do with people who don't want to change? How should we really define what is human and what isn't?

we should be relatively young, I suspect most of us will be in our 20s by the time it hits (probably in the 2020s).

I'm already in my 20s, I will be in my 30s during 2020. Should I feel "relatively old"?

[laser50]

@Spukrian: "How do we prevent ourselves from becoming to depent upon technology"

It already happened. What happens if there is no internet? No communication, no army, No defence, No radars. And more stuff.

[spukrian]

@Spukrian: "How do we prevent ourselves from becoming to depent upon technology"

It already happened. What happens if there is no internet? No communication, no army, No defence, No radars. And more stuff.

Yes, but I'd like to think that we still would actually be able to live, work and eat food in an Internet-less world.

Still, that would be quite an iinteresting scenario.

[hollowleviathan]

http://www.ted.com/talks/harvey_fineberg...ution.html

A leading medical ethicist touches on (sadly, does not go into great detail) this subject. This is also a tangential promotion for ted.com as an excellent source of information and thoughts from the very wise and very smart.