# Transhumanism



## Tyranny (Aug 17, 2013)

So, I was googling ''transhumanism and furries'' because I'm finding it more and more interesting then I came across a six year old thread on the subject on these forums. So I made this thread for us to discuss, don't wanna necropost. I'm interested in hearing opinions and stuff on what would be possible, when it would be, if it'll be acceptable and whatever else like yay or nay on weither you would get modifications. Personally if this happens in my time and I get the chance, which is a really big if, I'd decide to swap my body for an artificial anthro body in the image of my fursona. In this case I'd just tell the doctors to go ahead with it once they tell me the risks and stuff to get used too, I'd just go for it. I could just picture waking up afterwards. I would be beyond excited, I'd totally flip.


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## Saga (Aug 17, 2013)

This topic has been done to death already


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## DrDingo (Aug 17, 2013)

Is this actually a thing? Is it possible with today's science? Regardless, I would always prefer having a human body over an anthropomorphic wild animal. It just makes sense.


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## Sutekh_the_Destroyer (Aug 17, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> So, I was googling ''transhumanism and furries'' because I'm finding it more and more interesting then I came across a six year old thread on the subject on these forums. *So I made this thread for us to discuss, don't wanna necropost.* I'm interested in hearing opinions and stuff on what would be possible, when it would be, if it'll be acceptable and whatever else like yay or nay on weither you would get modifications. Personally if this happens in my time and I get the chance, which is a really big if, I'd decide to swap my body for an artificial anthro body in the image of my fursona. In this case I'd just tell the doctors to go ahead with it once they tell me the risks and stuff to get used too, I'd just go for it. I could just picture waking up afterwards. I would be beyond excited, I'd totally flip.



The rules do say you're allowed to necro a thread so long as it's on-topic.

And FYI, swapping your body for your fursona's? Never gonna happen. Like, ever.


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## Tyranny (Aug 17, 2013)

Really? I thought there was some three year limit thing on necroing. And sorry I didn't realize this had been discussed over and over, like I said that last thread I had seen was six years old so I didn't know of any newer ones. And I know this won't change your opinion but just to clarify I was talking about an artificial body, couldn't it be made to look however you wanted?


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## Kalmor (Aug 17, 2013)

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threa...ce-would-you-become-a-permanent-anthropomorph - This thread is the most relevant, stickied in the den.


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## septango (Aug 17, 2013)

Sutekh_the_Destroyer said:


> The rules do say you're allowed to necro a thread so long as it's on-topic.
> 
> And FYI, swapping your body for your fursona's? Never gonna happen. Like, ever.



i duuno there will always be nuts, take (a personal hero of mine) lepht anonym for example

she has gained quite a bit of attention by making and inserting subdermal devices in her kitchen


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## Tyranny (Aug 17, 2013)

Okay then, I actually mean't for this thread to be more about transhumanism itself, I was just mentioning the fursona bit. But yeah, sorry. Thought I came up with a good idea for a discussion.*sigh*


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## Sutekh_the_Destroyer (Aug 17, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> Really? I thought there was some three year limit thing on necroing. And sorry I didn't realize this had been discussed over and over, like I said that last thread I had seen was six years old so I didn't know of any newer ones. And I know this won't change your opinion but just to clarify I was talking about an artificial body, couldn't it be made to look however you wanted?



I guess in the future it may be possible to create an artificial _human_ body, but an anthro body? I don't have much knowledge in biology and DNA and all that, but I think mixing human DNA with the DNA of an animal and ending up with a decent result is pretty much impossible. But, like I said, I'm not too knowledgeable about that stuff so I dunno.

It'd make a good science fiction story though. It'd sound kinda plausible under that context.


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## septango (Aug 17, 2013)

Sutekh_the_Destroyer said:


> I guess in the future it may be possible to create an artificial _human_ body, but an anthro body? I don't have much knowledge in biology and DNA and all that, but I'm pretty sure mixing human DNA with the DNA of an animal and ending up with a decent result is pretty much impossible.
> 
> It'd make a good science fiction story though. It'd sound kinda plausible under that context.



watch splice, its a bit of a trip


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## Teal (Aug 17, 2013)

But think of all the things you'd have to deal with because you'd be covered in fur.


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## Tyranny (Aug 17, 2013)

I mean't artificial as in cybernetic, no DNA involved. Like a life-like android but with a live brain and cybernetic organs or life support systems for said brain. Think ghost in the shell.


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## Teal (Aug 17, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> I mean't artificial as in cybernetic, no DNA involved. Like a life-like android but with a live brain and cybernetic organs or life support systems for said brain. Think ghost in the shell.


 I'm thinking of the Cybermen from Doctor Who.


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## Sutekh_the_Destroyer (Aug 17, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> I mean't artificial as in cybernetic, no DNA involved. Like a life-like android but with a live brain and cybernetic organs or life support systems for said brain. Think ghost in the shell.



I guess it could work, provided the electronics were sophisticated to a point they allowed the "inhabitant" so to speak to act and move like a human being.

But, like Teal said, the fur would be an issue.


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## Teal (Aug 17, 2013)

Sutekh_the_Destroyer said:


> I guess it could work, provided the electronics were sophisticated to a point they allowed the "inhabitant" so to speak to act and move like a human being.
> 
> But, like Teal said, the fur would be an issue.


 I'd be more worried about not being able to feel anything.


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## septango (Aug 17, 2013)

Teal said:


> I'd be more worried about not being able to feel anything.



I imagine if you are advanced enough to do this, you could possibly use the fur itself as replacement nerve endings


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## Sutekh_the_Destroyer (Aug 17, 2013)

Teal said:


> I'd be more worried about not being able to feel anything.



That... that would be horrible. Just being a brain in a numb, electronic body. 

Just to clarify, would the lack of being able to feel be thanks to the electronics or the fur?


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## Tyranny (Aug 17, 2013)

There already working on prosthetics that will be able to feel.


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## Teal (Aug 17, 2013)

Sutekh_the_Destroyer said:


> That... that would be horrible. Just being a brain in a numb, electronic body.
> 
> Just to clarify, would the lack of being able to feel be thanks to the electronics or the fur?


 The electronics.


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## septango (Aug 17, 2013)

okay then, lets talk about transhumanism in general, would you get implants/augmentations if you could?


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## Tyranny (Aug 17, 2013)

Well like I said I'd like to get a completely cybernetic body or at least as close as possible, a body where I wouldn't have to worry about pain, sickness, age etc. To tell the truth I'd like a more easier to maintain body, not having to eat, food's good and all but I really wish I could go without it. And I'd really like to have two ways of living, physical and virtually. I always had this fun idea of having my brain/mind in some facility remotely controlling the body, so if it's destroyed I'd just have others. And when not in use I would be enjoying simulations of whatever. On the minor side, at least a cybernetic limb or few, preferably detachable, don't ask me why I just like the idea.


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## Teal (Aug 17, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> Well like I said I'd like to get a completely cybernetic body or at least as close as possible, a body where I wouldn't have to worry about pain, sickness, age etc. To tell the truth I'd like a more easier to maintain body, not having to eat, food's good and all but I really wish I could go without it. And I'd really like to have two ways of living, physical and virtually. I always had this fun idea of having my brain/mind in some facility remotely controlling the body, so if it's destroyed I'd just have others. And when not in use I would be enjoying simulations of whatever. On the minor side, at least a cybernetic limb or few, preferably detachable, don't ask me why I just like the idea.


 You'll miss food before long.
Trapped in in electronic body where you'll long to feel something even if it's pain.

Also ever see the movie Surrogates?


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## septango (Aug 17, 2013)

Teal said:


> You'll miss food before long.
> Trapped in in electronic body where you'll long to feel something even if it's pain.
> 
> Also ever see the movie Surrogates?



you could just have implants not to miss those things, or virtualy replicate them


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Aug 17, 2013)

I want to die like everything else.


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## Falaffel (Aug 17, 2013)

septango said:


> you could just have implants not to miss those things, or virtualy replicate them


Or go half and half and keep human organs (excluding heart because mecha-hearts are badass) and only enhance things like vision, legs, arms, processing and intelligence, sense of smell. Hell, why not put a rocket booster in your ass. But keep your inferior digestive system for energy so you can enjoy food.


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## Distorted (Aug 17, 2013)

Am I the only one thinking about Ghost in the Shell right now?


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## septango (Aug 17, 2013)

check this shit- http://discuss.biohack.me/discussion/379/implanted-earphones


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## Tyranny (Aug 17, 2013)

Well I don't, at least not for a very long time. And I said I didn't want to feel pain, not complete numbness, a controlled range of sense of texture, temperature and pressure. And yeah I have the movie, pretty good.


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## septango (Aug 18, 2013)

Falaffel said:


> Or go half and half and keep human organs (excluding heart because mecha-hearts are badass) and only enhance things like vision, legs, arms, processing and intelligence, sense of smell. Hell, why not put a rocket booster in your ass. But keep your inferior digestive system for energy so you can enjoy food.


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## Teal (Aug 18, 2013)

septango said:


> you could just have implants not to miss those things, or virtualy replicate them


 I'm still thinking Cybermen.



Tyranny said:


> Well I don't, at least not for a very long time. And I said I didn't want to feel pain, not complete numbness, a controlled range of sense of texture, temperature and pressure. And yeah I have the movie, pretty good.


 Even if you only felt the nice things eventually you'd hate them and go mad.


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## Tao (Aug 18, 2013)

Wasn't this the basis for Avatar?


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## Khaki (Aug 18, 2013)

Teal said:


> I'm still thinking Cybermen.



How about Daleks with little ears attached to them?

"INSEMINATE!, INSEMINATE!"


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## Teal (Aug 18, 2013)

Khaki said:


> How about Daleks with little ears attached to them?
> 
> "INSEMINATE!, INSEMINATE!"


 D:


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## Khaki (Aug 18, 2013)

Teal said:


> D:



We are the Fur-Borg.

Resistance is Fertile. Prepare to be Inseminated.


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## septango (Aug 18, 2013)

fine, but what about non cerebral augs, like compasses and heath monitors and overlays

I personally would love to have a go go gadget cell phone


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## MPF.C18-UNION.04.249 (Aug 18, 2013)

Transhumanism reminds of the the OverWatch TransHuman Arm from Half Life 2...
But yeah, I don't think this will be possible in a long time. If it was possible, I would want to be changed to a Metro-Police unit rather than an Anthro-animal. For those who have never heard of the Metropolice, my profile picture is of one. Can't be bothered to look for it, here ya go:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com...Npc_metropolice.jpg/150px-Npc_metropolice.jpg
I think they look really cool, and they have this kick-ass thing called a Vo-Coder built into the mask (If you want to know what it does, click this:http://youtu.be/tNVhSLtEpcU). The higher ranks also get artificial organs to replace organic ones. They have hydraulic limb joints, sub-dermal kevlar armour, built in vo-coders fitted to the larynx and even a scanner in their eyes that can detect weapons (guns/knives). But if I couldn't get that, lerk wings, claws, teeth etc. would be pretty cool.


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## PastryOfApathy (Aug 18, 2013)

Why would I want to be a furfag when I could have like robo lungs or robo legs or something. You know something easily concealed helping to alleviate the potential social stigma while still allowing me to enhance whatever.


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## Bambi (Aug 18, 2013)

Awkward moment:

You see the thread title, "Transhumanism" and mistake the OP's name for Tranny, not Tyranny. :/

@Thread: Leaving the human body would suck. Without fate, without end, where would we be? In a better place? Perhaps not.


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## MEEHOO (Aug 18, 2013)

Sutekh_the_Destroyer said:


> And FYI, swapping your body for your fursona's? Never gonna happen. Like, ever.



Thats what some said about flying (airplanes obviously) and space travel both of those things were thought to be impossible but they happened  eventually .I think it could happen but probably not in our lifetime .


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## Sutekh_the_Destroyer (Aug 18, 2013)

MEEHOO said:


> Thats what some said about flying (airplanes obviously) and space travel both of those things were thought to be impossible but they happened  eventually .I think it could happen but probably not in our lifetime .



I posted that when I thought the OP was talking about making actual bodies grown in a lab from stem cells or something, not cybernetic/electronic/robotic bodies. It might be possible but even if they did make anthro robot bodies they would inevitably end up in the uncanny valley, the theory that when we see robots like this we tend to focus on the human-like aspects and find them rather charming, but when we see hyper-realistic robots like this we tend to focus on the non-human aspects and actually find them creepy/unsettling.


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## MEEHOO (Aug 18, 2013)

You have a point there i suppose.


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## Tyranny (Aug 18, 2013)

Another thing that I'd like would be night vision, infrared and such. Artificial telepathy of some kind were I could communicate with others with the same augs from a long distance. And maybe in case of self defence, retractable syringe-like needles with some temporary paralyzing effect. And the artificial telepathy would also be used to turn electronics on/off and control them. And another thing I'd like when my body's not in use and I'm in the simulation is to be able to have a set up of cameras and sensors in and around the facility my mind is located at to see visitors or alert me of intuders.


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## Heliophobic (Aug 18, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> Artificial telepathy of some kind were I could communicate with others with the same augs from a long distance.



... you mean like a phone?


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## Teal (Aug 18, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> Another thing that I'd like would be night vision, infrared and such. Artificial telepathy of some kind were I could communicate with others with the same augs from a long distance. And maybe in case of self defence, retractable syringe-like needles with some temporary paralyzing effect. And the artificial telepathy would also be used to turn electronics on/off and control them. And another thing I'd like when my body's not in use and I'm in the simulation is to be able to have a set up of cameras and sensors in and around the facility my mind is located at to see visitors or alert me of intuders.


1. we already have phones
2. If you're thinking that's a non-lethal weapon then you are wrong, that would kill people 
3. That would be good thing, I could walk into a hospital and start controlling the life support.


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## Tyranny (Aug 18, 2013)

Yes, like a phone, except not by mouth. Entirely mind to mind with no one to hear us. And yeah, nix the needle things. And I'd only be able to control things that I own, not other peoples stuff.


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## septango (Aug 18, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> retractable syringe-like needles with some temporary paralyzing effect. And the artificial



that would not be legal, stun gun fingertips or something, but not needles thats like carrying a razorblade with you everywhere


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## Teal (Aug 18, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> Yes, like a phone, except not by mouth. Entirely mind to mind with no one to hear us. And yeah, nix the needle things. And I'd only be able to control things that I own, not other peoples stuff.


You think that it could not be monitored? 
It's not telepathy with psychic powers, it uses technology and all technology can be cracked.
You act like it'd be impossible to control other people's stuff. 
Just wait till your robot body is hacked. XD


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## Ji-Ji (Aug 18, 2013)

Khaki said:


> How about Daleks with little ears attached to them?
> 
> "INSEMINATE!, INSEMINATE!"



Furry dalek's would be "EJACULATE! EJACULATE! EJACULATE! "


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## Tyranny (Aug 18, 2013)

No one except for the government and the occaisional hacker would be listening in. I should of said it's as private as email, heh. I just mean't the crowd I'm in not needing to hear me chit chat. Oh and could I use the excuse ''Don't blame me I was hacked!'':lol:


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## Teal (Aug 18, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> No one except for the government and the occaisional hacker would be listening in. I should of said it's as private as email, heh. I just mean't the crowd I'm in not needing to hear me chit chat. Oh and could I use the excuse ''Don't blame me I was hacked!'':lol:


 Private as email? :lol:
If you're in a crowd you should be paying attention not calling people.

Also like I said about people hacking your body, what about that?


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## Kitsune Cross (Aug 18, 2013)

I don't think we are going to have that possibility any soon, it would probably be more like something cosmetic, like humans that look like anthros due plastic surgery or something like that.


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## Tyranny (Aug 18, 2013)

What could I do about it? Nothing. There's risks with everything. For all I'd know someone would get there kicks and humiliate me and/or trash my body. I could just imagine ending up in pieces, that's where the not feeling any pain thing comes in handy, and the VR mind upload.


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## Teal (Aug 19, 2013)

I'm telling you that you think not feeling pain is a good thing but it's not.


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## septango (Aug 19, 2013)

oh and that in hand remote thing is a simple body hack, extensive, but simple







1/2- wires that when the tips are touched complete a circit

3- a rubber sheathe to prevent wire-wristbone interaction

4- forgot to erase that (leftover from earlyer feature I cut)

5- circit board (yes bioproofed)

6- wifi/radiowave/whatever output device


result touch your thumb to your fingers to activate whatever that finger is programmed to activate


and good luck not passing out when you try to intall this (yes I know there are other problems)


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Aug 19, 2013)

Teal said:


> I'm telling you that you think not feeling pain is a good thing but it's not.


I picture an entity that experiences neither pain nor death as being totally apathetic to organic life.


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## MPF.C18-UNION.04.249 (Aug 19, 2013)

Teal said:


> I'm telling you that you think not feeling pain is a good thing but it's not.


Right there. Pain tells you when you are alive, and is what causes you not to kill yourself. If you held your hand into a flame without pain, would that REALLY be smart? If you get shot, you would not feel pain, and would bleed out. Poison causing stomach cramps, without pain? You die.


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## Tyranny (Aug 19, 2013)

I'm sure pain can be replaced by some other way of knowing of bodily damage.


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## septango (Aug 19, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> I'm sure pain can be replaced by some other way of knowing of bodily damage.



lets call it.............."pain"


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## Heliophobic (Aug 19, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> I'm sure pain can be replaced by some other way of knowing of bodily damage.



Pain not only warns you of damage, but it makes you WANT to avoid it. That's the whole fucking point.

Oh my god are we actually questioning the practicality of pain right now? Is this actually a thing we're going? Dear lord.


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## Tyranny (Aug 19, 2013)

Well for the most part, it'd be where my brain/mind is actually in another location controlling the body. So if I'm really somewhere else and in no danger then why control a body that sends pain signals when it's pretty much expendable?


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## Neon Poi (Aug 19, 2013)

It would be cool if you could control pain to an extent. Like you suddenly get really bad cramps because your stomach exploded. Okay, great, going to the hospital now, thank you sense of pain! And then you could just turn it off then and there because you got the message. That would be useful.


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## Teal (Aug 19, 2013)

Kit H. Ruppell said:


> I picture an entity that experiences neither pain nor death as being totally apathetic to organic life.


 Indeed.



Tyranny said:


> I'm sure pain can be replaced by some other way of knowing of bodily damage.


 What, something more pleasant? 

Sounds like you just have a problem with pain.

Pain warns us when we're injured, to stop from doing certain things again and to keep us from breaking our bodies. If you kept pulling your finger backwards, but couldn't feel pain to make you stop then why would you stop? And then your finger is broken.




Tyranny said:


> Well for the most part, it'd be where my brain/mind is actually in another location controlling the body. So if I'm really somewhere else and in no danger then why control a body that sends pain signals when it's pretty much expendable?


 Why would you purposely go through bodies like they're nothing?
You wouldn't be able to keep that up because of the cost an then end up with your brain stuck in a jar unable to do anything but scream mentally.


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## Sutekh_the_Destroyer (Aug 19, 2013)

Why would you want to be placed in a robot body just for the sake of it anyway?


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## Tyranny (Aug 19, 2013)

That's a great idea neon poi that would be better. And it's not like I'd purposely damage myself. And I really have no explanation as to why I would like that, I just do.


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## benignBiotic (Aug 20, 2013)

septango said:


> watch splice, its a bit of a trip


That movie was so creepy. If that won't turn you off transhumanism nothing will.

Anyway no.


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## Tyranny (Aug 22, 2013)

I really like splice, I think it would be great if someday they'd make chimeras. If only they would stop shying away from the ''unethical'' like on demand amputation and stuff.


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## Teal (Aug 22, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> I really like splice, I think it would be great if someday they'd make chimeras. If only they would stop shying away from the ''unethical'' like on demand amputation and stuff.


 Yes, let's make a bunch of abominations.


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## Blackberry Polecat (Aug 22, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> I really like splice, I think it would be great if someday they'd make chimeras.



Haha, I thought Splice was creepy and came across as a nerd's wet dream fantasy fanfic. "The nerdy ADRIAN BRODY gets to have secks with the HAWT MUTANT CHICK hurr murr"



Tyranny said:


> If only they would stop shying away from the ''unethical'' like on demand amputation and stuff.



Wat.


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## Hakar Kerarmor (Aug 22, 2013)

Teal said:


> What, something more pleasant?



Like Clippy! That'd be ten times worse than pain.


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## Gryphoneer (Aug 22, 2013)

I liked Deus Ex: Human Revolution, too, but I realize it's just a game.


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## septango (Aug 22, 2013)

Gryphoneer said:


> I liked Deus Ex: Human Revolution, too, but I realize it's just a game.



yeah we are nowhere near to that level of human augmentation, and that may be a good thing

that being said, I do hope wetwere hacking becomes more popular, but most people are too much of a pussy to do it


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## Gryphoneer (Aug 22, 2013)

For me all that sounds like wish-fulfillment fantasies of the IT society generation or tech nerds in general; you don't have to study or do workouts, if you just buy the latest smartpho- err, magic insta-knowledge brain chip and metal muscles and thinness-genes cocktail you can turn yourself into a superman without any effort whatsoever.

Transhumanist tropes have more to do with SF than technoscientific realities.


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## Tyranny (Sep 27, 2013)

I think now I would instead go for a mind upload instead of just having my brain put into a cybernetic body. By way of gradual uploading. That way I wouldn't have to deal with any of my mental illnesses, it'd be like a few error corrections. And I'm sure this'll be possible sometime in the begining of the next century if not sooner. And before people start wondering why I think it's possible that I'd still be around by then, thats due to advances in life extension that are soon to happen.


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## septango (Sep 27, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> I think now I would instead go for a mind upload instead of just having my brain put into a cybernetic body. By way of gradual uploading. That way I wouldn't have to deal with any of my mental illnesses, it'd be like a few error corrections. And I'm sure this'll be possible sometime in the begining of the next century if not sooner. And before people start wondering why I think it's possible that I'd still be around by then, thats due to advances in life extension that are soon to happen.



uuuh just off the top of my head, Im pretty sure a physical brain synapses to digital data conversion would carry any malfunctions over with it


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## Willow (Sep 27, 2013)

septango said:


> uuuh just off the top of my head, Im pretty sure a physical brain synapses to digital data conversion would carry any malfunctions over with it


I was about to say they could probably be corrected through some form of reprogramming but it would probably require knowing the root cause of the problem.


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## Tyranny (Sep 27, 2013)

By then I'm sure they'd know the causes.


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## septango (Sep 27, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> By then I'm sure they'd know the causes.


and fix them without being jacked


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## Teal (Sep 28, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> I think now I would instead go for a mind upload instead of just having my brain put into a cybernetic body. By way of gradual uploading. That way I wouldn't have to deal with any of my mental illnesses, it'd be like a few error corrections. And I'm sure this'll be possible sometime in the begining of the next century if not sooner. And before people start wondering why I think it's possible that I'd still be around by then*, thats due to advances in life extension that are soon to happen*.


Soon to happen eh?
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.

Also what makes you think that any fancy life extending technology would be available to anyone but the extremely rich?


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## Gryphoneer (Sep 28, 2013)

With stem cells and who knows what else avenues of research suppressed by various Christianist sects, don't hold your breath.


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## septango (Sep 28, 2013)

septango said:


> and fix them without being jacked



I would like to point out Im not trying to debunk all this transhumanist stuff, actually Im a huge advocate for transhumanism  BUT Im an advocate for REAL transhumanism and honestly there are many reasons why we wont be inside a computer... prehaps ever

A) the process of doing so would most likely be quite unethical in early stages

B) how generally its frowned upon

C) most importantly, who is to say your body and your consciousness could ever be seperated, after all your thoughts are not actually electric, or digital for that matter but (well okay they ARE but not just) rather quite physical and even atempting to transision would be quite messy 

what we need to do is smaller more practical aplications for human augmentation so that we have a bedwork to build a legitimate science upon


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## Tyranny (Sep 28, 2013)

I'm sure it'll happen, and yes it'll be available to the rich only AT FIRST, but as with other things as compitition between the companies that work with such stuff prices eventually go down. And in early stages they would, as always, work there way up from using animals as test subjects starting off with simple creatures as they move onto more complex creatures until moving onto humans. And I think the reason it's frowned upon is due to misunderstanding and the fact that we don't know enough about the mind as we'd like to think, at least in the case for some, so who's to say the conscience couldn't be seperated when we don't have enough information on it. And there is evidence that thoughts are purely the electrical signals themselves whizzing through our heads and not the pathways they follow through contrary to what a lot of people think today.


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## Teal (Sep 28, 2013)

Tyranny said:


> I'm sure it'll happen, and yes it'll be available to the rich only AT FIRST, but as with other things as compitition between the companies that work with such stuff prices eventually go down. And in early stages they would, as always, work there way up from using animals as test subjects starting off with simple creatures as they move onto more complex creatures until moving onto humans. And I think the reason it's frowned upon is due to misunderstanding and the fact that we don't know enough about the mind as we'd like to think, at least in the case for some, so who's to say the conscience couldn't be seperated when we don't have enough information on it. And there is evidence that thoughts are purely the electrical signals themselves whizzing through our heads and not the pathways they follow through contrary to what a lot of people think today.


 Oh yes because we can judge how the animal is feeling when it's mind is uploaded. We can tell if it's in agony from being separated, in constant fear or being driven mad.

I want to spend my existence as a conscience in a metal box silicone chip unable to ever feel and eventually go insane.
Or have someone drop me into the recycle bin.


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## Reaginicwolf (Sep 29, 2013)

that sounds abit extreme, i rather stay human and hope for a werewolf to bite me. way simplier plus no painful surgery


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## Teal (Sep 29, 2013)

Reaginicwolf said:


> that sounds abit extreme, i rather stay human and hope for a werewolf to bite me. way simplier plus no painful surgery


 Horribly painful uncontrollable transformation, slaughtering everyone nearby... sounds good.


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## AlexInsane (Sep 30, 2013)

Teal said:


> I want to spend my existence as a conscience in a metal box silicone chip unable to ever feel and eventually go insane.
> Or have someone drop me into the recycle bin.



Tre Ghost in the Shell. 

I wouldn't mind being a mind in a tin can. I wouldn't have to eat or sleep or feel pain - I'd just drift gently along, witnessing and yet not heeding, until I finally took no more notice of myself and my selfhood disintegrated entirely .


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## Kitsune Cross (Sep 30, 2013)

Teal said:


> Horribly painful uncontrollable transformation, slaughtering everyone nearby... sounds good.



Looks like a great way of dealing with stress.

Ugh this has been a long month I'm going to fuck up everybody


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Sep 30, 2013)

Teal said:


> Oh yes because we can judge how the animal is feeling when it's mind is uploaded. We can tell if it's in agony from being separated, in constant fear or being driven mad.


 The average 'transhumanist' doesn't seem likely to care about this.


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## Teal (Sep 30, 2013)

Kitsune Cross said:


> Looks like a great way of dealing with stress.
> 
> Ugh this has been a long month I'm going to fuck up everybody


 Congrats you just killed your family, the neighbor's children and now are dead in the street when you got shot.



Kit H. Ruppell said:


> The average 'transhumanist' doesn't seem likely to care about this.


Let all the animals suffer so we can live forever in insanity!


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## Jabberwocky (Sep 30, 2013)

I'd rather stuff myself in an animal suit in 90 degree weather than become an actual anthro.
As much as I love bats, plz leave that to the art.


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## Teal (Sep 30, 2013)

Think of all the extra time it would take to keep yourself clean!


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## septango (Sep 30, 2013)

honestly modern augs are just for people who REEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAALLLLLLLLYYYYYY like party tricks


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## Jabberwocky (Sep 30, 2013)

rather wash sweat off my body than fleas.


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## Teal (Sep 30, 2013)

Batsy said:


> rather wash sweat off my body than fleas.


Lice over my entire body.


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## Kitsune Cross (Oct 1, 2013)

Teal said:


> Congrats you just killed your family, the neighbor's children and now are dead in the street when you got shot.



Yea! Fuck all those people

Somehow I thought it was clear I was joking, so wrong


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## Teal (Oct 1, 2013)

Kitsune Cross said:


> Yea! Fuck all those people
> 
> Somehow I thought it was clear I was joking, so wrong


Wasn't clear at all. :/


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## Misomie (Oct 1, 2013)

I don't really like the idea of not having my own body as I agree that it's what makes you you (some organ transplant patients have reported new habits or feelings after surgery). However, if science ever gave me the option to have a flufgy tail attached (that's completely controllable) and/or outside ear modification (such as wolf/cat ears or something), I think I'd like to get that surgery. I've always wanted a tail and ears would complete the look. :3 (I also wouldn't mind feet surgery to make them more animalistic because I'd rather be barefoot, but that might be a bit more painful/dangerous)


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## Kitsune Cross (Oct 1, 2013)

Teal said:


> Wasn't clear at all. :/



If I actually wanted to randomly kill people shouldn't I be on a mental hospital rather than a forum? -_-


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## Teal (Oct 1, 2013)

Misomie said:


> I don't really like the idea of not having my own body as I agree that it's what makes you you (some organ transplant patients have reported new habits or feelings after surgery). However, if science ever gave me the option to have a flufgy tail attached (that's completely controllable) and/or outside ear modification (such as wolf/cat ears or something), I think I'd like to get that surgery. I've always wanted a tail and ears would complete the look. :3 (I also wouldn't mind feet surgery to make them more animalistic because I'd rather be barefoot, but that might be a bit more painful/dangerous)


 I could image some of things people would want attached to them, and it's not pretty.



Kitsune Cross said:


> If I actually wanted to randomly kill people shouldn't I be on a mental hospital rather than a forum? -_-


You just haven't done it yet. :V


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## Reaginicwolf (Oct 1, 2013)

Teal said:


> Horribly painful uncontrollable transformation, slaughtering everyone nearby... sounds good.


well when you put it that way...yeah that sounds good plus its SUPERNATURAL which means its super


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## Teal (Oct 1, 2013)

Reaginicwolf said:


> well when you put it that way...yeah that sounds good plus its SUPERNATURAL which means its super


I think you don't know what supernatural means.
Not to mention there are a ton of weaknesses you'd have to endure.


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## Reaginicwolf (Oct 1, 2013)

Teal said:


> I think you don't know what supernatural means.
> Not to mention there are a ton of weaknesses you'd have to endure.


i have an idea what supernatural is(basically the uncanny) plus i would not mind the weakness, werewolves are awesome


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## Kitsune Cross (Oct 1, 2013)

It seems too extreme


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## Attaman (Oct 1, 2013)

Kit H. Ruppell said:


> The average 'transhumanist' doesn't seem likely to care about this.


To be fair, this is mostly because the chief concern of a transhumanist tends to be in reducing or outright removing limitations on the human body (chief amongst them, typically, being "I don't ever want to die", hence why "Would a mind-uploaded you still be you?" debates can get outright _hilarious_). Transhumanism does, to a degree, relate to philosophical and mental aspects of what it means to be a human, but it predominantly (at least to most followers) is all about the physical goods. You aren't upgrading yourself into a Post-Human Science Project so as to develop greater empathy for [whatever]. You're upgrading yourself because being able to flip cars unassisted and having no known disease susceptibilities is _awesome_.

Yes, I realize this is comically / offensively summarizing transhumanists (they want to be super post-humans), but it gets the basic message across.


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## Teal (Oct 2, 2013)

Reaginicwolf said:


> i have an idea what supernatural is(basically the uncanny) plus i would not mind the weakness, werewolves are awesome


 Depending on where you are getting the werewolf legends from you will not remember anything nor be able to control yourself in wolf form or for slight control it involves selling your soul to the devil (and he can control you).

Wolf'sbane, silver, chruchbells a certain kind of soil (can't remember what) are fatal or a repellant. There are other things but I can't remember.


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## The young man in the cafe (Oct 2, 2013)

Teal said:


> Depending on where you are getting the werewolf legends from you will not remember anything nor be able to control yourself in wolf form or for slight control it involves selling your soul to the devil (and he can control you).
> 
> Wolf'sbane, silver, chruchbells a certain kind of soil (can't remember what) are fatal or a repellant. There are other things but I can't remember.



Estonian werewolves had it pretty good, no obvious weaknesses in the folklore and they had full control of themselves. But they are "Hounds of God" and many Estonian werewolves claimed to have angelic "commanders" that bossed them around (if you don't see how having an angel for a boss would suck, read the sourcebooks for the old In Nomine RPG). And the whole, fighting the forces of hell in grand battles at least three times a year thing, resulted in them having an average life expectancy of 40.


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## wtfjinx (Oct 2, 2013)

From what I've noted, it seems that the soil that wolf's bane grows in is deadly to a werewolf. So, garden soil I guess.


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## septango (Oct 2, 2013)

funny how transhumanism turned into lycanthropy


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## Tyranny (Mar 30, 2014)

Yes, to everyone's dismay I'm reviving this thread. Anyway I still think it's highly possible uploading and such will happen in my lifetime. I think that once it's available, yes, it will be only where the rich can afford it, but the price will drop eventually to where most can afford it. I have a feeling that at first I'll only be able to get a human android body but that this will buy time for me until people will hopefully warm up more to the idea of morphological freedom where eventually people will be getting bodies that are more ''out there'' so that an android in the image of a sergal wouldn't stand out TOO much. Like I said I think uploading will be possible in my lifetime, just that the type of body I want would take awhile to become mostly acceptable, like in the next few centuries at the most. And I would actually decide to feel pain but only to a certain level and/or the ability to shut it off. Plus a VR simulation that I'd be in occasionally where I'd be able to experience things like eating, sleeping and other...things. I know I wouldn't live forever but still an incredibly long time, until some accident happens, and even if not, all the more better.


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## Duality Jack (Mar 30, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> So, I was googling ''transhumanism and furries'' because I'm finding it more and more interesting then I came across a six year old thread on the subject on these forums. So I made this thread for us to discuss, don't wanna necropost. I'm interested in hearing opinions and stuff on what would be possible, when it would be, if it'll be acceptable and whatever else like yay or nay on weither you would get modifications. Personally if this happens in my time and I get the chance, which is a really big if, I'd decide to swap my body for an artificial anthro body in the image of my fursona. In this case I'd just tell the doctors to go ahead with it once they tell me the risks and stuff to get used too, I'd just go for it. I could just picture waking up afterwards. I would be beyond excited, I'd totally flip.



OOOH OOOH!

Personally I am a huge transhumanist, I am part of several societies and lobby groups associated with it. Personally I put emphasis on cybernetics and human mind uploading, but the community is massively diverse in it's goals. 

Immortality, transcendence of human needs and cognition beyond our organic limits are both things I would adore getting. So much so.


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## Rassah (Mar 31, 2014)

I follow the transhumanist movement very closely, and invest in some technologies related to it. I think if you manage to live for the next 40 to 50 years, you'll be at a point where dying is a choice (unless you are totally creamed in an accident).
The two slightly different patchs we could take are:
1) computers becoming powerful enough to simulate the human brain, at which point we could upload ourselves to such a computer, or more probably augment/replace parts of our brain with such devices. Like we carry calculators around in our hands to make us all math geniuses, we would use these augments as just tools to improve our thought and extend our life. Most recent development for this is a logic gate transistor that "hardens" the longer the switch is in a specific position, mimmicking the way our neuroons can switch between different positions, but harden the more we use it in a specific position, allowing us to memorize whatever it's related to.
OR
2) 3D bioprinters with stem cell tech and nanotech scanners, where little devices will be able to map out parts of our body down to the cellular level, stem cells will be used to grow secific replacement cells with our DNA, and 3D printers would be able to deposit those cells in the exact same configuration. This will obviously be used to replace dying and aging organs, but will probably some day be used to scan and create an exact duplicate of a brain, which we can use as a backup and replace our own. It would need nanotech lovel surgery to reattach all the nerves for it. There has been a whole lot of progress in all three of these fields recently.

As for money, that's probably why it's a good idea to start saving up for this now...


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## Tyranny (Mar 31, 2014)

Yeah, I'd really love to have a much better mind to remember everything, even dreams and old memories. Better and quicker memory capacity, imagination etc. Even have them backed up and copied in case anything happened to me. Also to be in simulations where I could either take part in or just watch whatever events I choose to unfold. Also about life extension methods I hope are eventually developed are medical nanites that keep track of what's going on in our bodies, and like you said the 3D bioprinted organs and such. Not to mention the 2045 initiative, what do you all think about that?


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## Eggdodger (Mar 31, 2014)

Sutekh_the_Destroyer said:


> I guess in the future it may be possible to create an artificial _human_ body, but an anthro body? I don't have much knowledge in biology and DNA and all that, but I think mixing human DNA with the DNA of an animal and ending up with a decent result is pretty much impossible. But, like I said, I'm not too knowledgeable about that stuff so I dunno.
> 
> It'd make a good science fiction story though. It'd sound kinda plausible under that context.





Tyranny said:


> I think it would be great if someday they'd make chimeras.



Wow, this thread has crept into territory I've been researching, myself. Sutekh, you would be interested to know I'm actually developing something very similar to what you're describing.

Anyways, as an aspiring genetic engineer/biotechnician, transhumanism is something I'm going to have to observe very closely over the next several years. I'm interested to see how far it can be taken, but I do agree that some things are best left in moderation. However, it being in our nature to have differing opinions on just how much is too much, "ethics" are going to be the most evident barrier to progress, even moreso than the technological and biological limitations themselves. I feel that, completely unhindered by dogma, this is something we could be seeing by the turn of the century. Of course, things never work out that way, do they?

For the record, I'm more concerned with improving the human genome than cybernetics, which seems to take more heat than the latter subject does, what with the current popularity of prosthetics. I've always been one to think that the vaccine before is better than the treatment after. What if your bones were strong enough to prevent the loss of your leg in the first place? What if your skin was able to stop the bullet before it hit something vital? What if you released pheromones that subliminally made you the most popular person in the room? I believe these are all within the realm of possibility.


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## Kitsune Cross (Mar 31, 2014)

Rassah said:


> I follow the transhumanist movement very closely, and invest in some technologies related to it. I think if you manage to live for the next 40 to 50 years, you'll be at a point where dying is a choice (unless you are totally creamed in an accident).



How healthy I have to be to reach that age hmm, I think by the time 50 years goes medicine would probably improve a lot to be able to extend life a bit more, but I don't think we'll ever get to be immortal, even if we could, over-population would be an issue and immortaly would be only available(in top secret) for politics, ect


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## Duality Jack (Mar 31, 2014)

Kitsune Cross said:


> How healthy I have to be to reach that age hmm, I think by the time 50 years goes medicine would probably improve a lot to be able to extend life a bit more, but I don't think we'll ever get to be immortal, even if we could, over-population would be an issue and immortaly would be only available(in top secret) for politics, ect


We'd become functionally immortal via the uploading of human minds. 
No body, no aging. The issue then becomes maintaining hardware and software.


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## Eggdodger (Mar 31, 2014)

And obviously (hopefully it stays this way) robots can't reproduce. Not even ones (again, very hopefully) that were once human. We'll just have to worry about the human-metahuman social dynamic. I can see it as a potential physical symbol of the disparity of wealth classes.


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## Duality Jack (Mar 31, 2014)

Eggdodger said:


> And obviously (hopefully it stays this way) robots can't reproduce. Not even ones (again, very hopefully) that were once human.


 May be a moot problem, assuming sustainable energy is found, a robot has less of a footprint than a person, and theoretically if one could map out a human mind well enough to upload it, one could use an algorithm to blend two minds, and create a new one at a child-like developmental stage.


> We'll just have to worry about the human-metahuman social dynamic. I can see it as a potential physical symbol of the disparity of wealth classes.


Likely, though it could also be seen as a solution to poverty as well. 
"No more food stamps" etc.


One additional issue is that theoretically the distortion of time with aging is due to the brain using it's first functional point as it's measure for it's internal clock and as it ages, the reference point gets worse and worse leading to slowing of thinking. Those who believe this theory think regardless of where the mind is stored it would reach a near-coma state by the age of 250.


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## Hinalle K. (Mar 31, 2014)

Haha, you guys are sooooo out there.

You future-fawning people sound like a bunch of delusional loonies

Sorry, but you're not gonna become a Power Ranger.


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## Mr. Sparta (Apr 1, 2014)

Becoming a cyborg sounds painful.


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## Duality Jack (Apr 1, 2014)

Mr. Sparta said:


> Becoming a cyborg sounds painful.


Cyborgs feel no pain :I


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## Calemeyr (Apr 1, 2014)

I believe Kurzweil is kooky in thinking the singularity will 100% happen soon, but I do think progression of our species to eventually move beyond an economy of scarcity for basic necessities and extreme resource depletion is something for which we should strive. Maybe the "singularity" should be thought of as a goal (Group mind? Star child? Who knows.), not some nerd rapture BS. 

Also cyborgs are cool. I want me some bionic internet HUD eyes. Google Glass v. 6.0!

People who think transhumanism means "shoot laser beams out of my eyes" and "turn into cloud of nanomachines with no discernable power source" are kooks. But maybe we could have stuff you see in Ghost in the Shell by, say, 2090, maybe even earlier.

And people who think AI will conquer the world: treat them as people with the same rights as you and they won't rebel, dumb shits.

I believe technology can be used to help improve the environment and repair it. I also think it can help the less fortunate. But we must be careful to ensure such new technologies preserve and strengthen democracy, and not encourage extreme wealth inequality where a capitalist money-mover class gets enhanced, while the rest get to eat drywall.

Who knows, maybe in the coming centuries, we'll be doing brain backups at night like we (should) do with computers now. Or maybe we'll be cyborgs. I don't know. Maybe we'll have used the output energy of the sun to power FTL travel. Whatever is coming or not, I'm going into materials science to help improve current technologies for a better tomorrow. Greener energy, faster computers, all that jazz.


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## Taralack (Apr 1, 2014)

Maybe slightly off topic, but I'm hoping the world will become technologically advanced enough to develop the VR technology used in Otherland. Since Facebook bought out Oculus Rift the other day I only hope it's a step in that direction.


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## N30Nphoenix (Apr 1, 2014)

Didn't read whole thread so I don't know if this has been said yet but... Say you would like to have cats eye vision or other advantages such as reflexes and what-not, in my mind all you would have to do to acquire those traits would be first to get some DNA from the animal that has those traits next you would isolate the part of the DNA that provides that trait and plug it in (splice) into your own DNA. Don't know if that's possible yet (most likely is but illegal) or if it makes any sense the way I explained it, but yeah that's my theory. :3


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## Ozriel (Apr 1, 2014)

Mokushi said:


> We'd become functionally immortal via the uploading of human minds.
> No body, no aging. The issue then becomes maintaining hardware and software.



And then we turn into Geth.
Now onto creating Reapers and farm our genetic material. :V


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## Duality Jack (Apr 1, 2014)

Ozriel said:


> And then we turn into Geth.
> Now onto creating Reapers and farm our genetic material. :V


Clouded thought interconnectivity does sound like a logical step towards maximizing unity...

How can you hate someone when you understand them intimately...


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## Antronach (Apr 1, 2014)

Mokushi said:


> Clouded thought interconnectivity does sound like a logical step towards maximizing unity...
> 
> How can you hate someone when you understand them intimately...


Then we can all enjoy each other's sexual fetishes and truly be at peace. Hope you like strawberries. :V


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## Duality Jack (Apr 1, 2014)

Antronach said:


> Then we can all enjoy each other's sexual fetishes and truly be at peace. Hope you like strawberries. :V


That's the crazy thing, theoretically they'd also become _/your/_ fetishes. :V


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## Eggdodger (Apr 1, 2014)

N30Nphoenix said:


> Didn't read whole thread so I don't know if this has been said yet but... Say you would like to have cats eye vision or other advantages such as reflexes and what-not, in my mind all you would have to do to acquire those traits would be first to get some DNA from the animal that has those traits next you would isolate the part of the DNA that provides that trait and plug it in (splice) into your own DNA. Don't know if that's possible yet (most likely is but illegal) or if it makes any sense the way I explained it, but yeah that's my theory. :3



What you're describing would be much easier (and more effective) to do in a newly formed zygote, before cell replication, rather than a preexisting organism. In that sense, all genetic alterations are prevalent throughout every daughter cell of the original zygote. Second, since it is not a somatic augmentation, it could create an entirely new allele, and thus, increased fitness for all of that organism's descendants that exhibit the trait.


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## Duality Jack (Apr 1, 2014)

Eggdodger said:


> What you're describing would be much easier (and more effective) to do in a newly formed zygote, before cell replication, rather than a preexisting organism. In that sense, all genetic alterations are prevalent throughout every daughter cell of the original zygote. Second, since it is not a somatic augmentation, it could create an entirely new allele, and thus, increased fitness for all of that organism's descendants that exhibit the trait.


 Or artificially grown tissue natured in order to prevent rejection grafted to an adult body.


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## Eggdodger (Apr 1, 2014)

Mokushi said:


> Or artificially grown tissue natured in order to prevent rejection grafted to an adult body.



That would certainly work, with today's technology (Thanks, Henrietta Lacks!) for something such as a severe burn, but we're still a ways away from synthesizing single organs to-order. Somatic (post-birth, non-gametic) augmentations also come with the drawback of not being hereditary, but what you describe would suit the needs of trauma victims just fine.


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## N30Nphoenix (Apr 1, 2014)

Eggdodger said:


> What you're describing would be much easier (and more effective) to do in a newly formed zygote, before cell replication, rather than a preexisting organism. In that sense, all genetic alterations are prevalent throughout every daughter cell of the original zygote. Second, since it is not a somatic augmentation, it could create an entirely new allele, and thus, increased fitness for all of that organism's descendants that exhibit the trait.



Yes It would be more effective, but most people would then argue "but what if that's not how that kid wanted to be born?" And the other ethical arguments that people come up with. (You know they will) and that's why modifications in DNA and gene structure in a preexsisting oranism would be more widely accepted by the populous then modifications before birth (although this would be harder to get done in some instances) Of course though you could modify a securely contained Virus to hold the modified DNA and deliver it to your cells via inhaling the virus or injecting it, and if anything does go wrong you could always have a backup sample of your DNA.


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## Duality Jack (Apr 1, 2014)

Eggdodger said:


> That would certainly work, with today's technology (Thanks, Henrietta Lacks!) for something such as a severe burn, but we're still a ways away from synthesizing single organs to-order. Somatic (post-birth, non-gametic) augmentations also come with the drawback of not being hereditary, but what you describe would suit the needs of trauma victims just fine.



Well human augmentation as an elective choice and not a genetic one really does open a lot of doors, as it removes many of the issues of forcing changes on your offspring. Changing your offspring's genetics even to prevent genetic disorders would be resisted by many people. Accusations of playing god and whatnot, while consenting adults changing themselves could easily be argued to be ethical.

Religion being used to define humanity's role can really be a transhumanist's biggest foe as well, as anything that alters the life-span, or changes how humans function could be seen as playing god. Uploading minds and genetically modification both embryonic and in grafted tissue to many would likely cause riots.


N30Nphoenix said:


> Yes It would be more effective, but most people would then argue "but what if that's not how that kid wanted to be born?" And the other ethical arguments that people come up with. (You know they will) and that's why modifications in DNA and gene structure in a preexsisting oranism would be more widely accepted by the populous then modifications before birth (although this would be harder to get done in some instances) Of course though you could modify a securely contained Virus to hold the modified DNA and deliver it to your cells via inhaling the virus or injecting it, and if anything does go wrong you could always have a backup sample of your DNA.


 Altering an adult's DNA does not cause meaningful changes to physical appearance as growth is completed. 

It could in years after the alteration cause changes to organ function and muscle growth and whatnot, but cannot for example, get you cat-eyes or claws or a monkey tail.


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## N30Nphoenix (Apr 1, 2014)

You could just mutate and re-sequence the DNA you currently have while also splicing in some DNA from another organism, and say you made a chemical that sped up DNA and cell replication (which would also allow bodily regeneration perhaps) then age and growth most likely wouldn't matter since the cell that are mutated/modified and carrying the specific DNA would be dominant and everywhere throughout your body changeing it. I'm not really an expert on this as I'm only 14, but this seems like it would work.


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## funky3000 (Apr 2, 2014)

I actually support transhumanism. I've stated to several friends that if I lost an eye in an accident, I would most certainly get a bionic eye and give them a shot. Night vision, being able to see dangerous radiation, maybe even X-ray vision with special types of radiation. As for purposes that are more towards fun than real purposes, it could be like a version of Google Glass or some other overlay technology for social purposes and informative applications. BUT if I decide not to go this route, a glass eye that looks like a blue cat's eye.

Most of my interests revolve around transhumanism in one way or another. One obvious one is furries. Also, I own the Portal series which include GLaDOS, the cores, and probably the turrets. GLaDOS is definitely included in transhumanism, as she is a human uploaded to a robot that controls the whole facility. I'm unsure if the cores are real people or encoded personalities, but their thinking and communication is definitely relatable to a human's. And the turrets, they speak too, but iirc they are just lines in the bot's code that trigger on certain events. So human voice, but unintelligent thought process. I'm willing to bet Minecraft has a little transhumanism in it as well, to the point where I could see Minecraft being a separate port in a digital era of uploading people.

My latest story I'm writing also involves a little transhumanism. The main character dies and comes back in some odd way, being able to become a human or an anthro, but he's not really human at that point so it's transhuman there. Also, the character whom I like to classify as a focal character (not the main character, but the character the story focuses on) is an anthro in a synthetic body, and is so artificial that her creators went to the point of giving her a synthetic spirit. Sounds weird, but trust me when I say it will come together nicely.


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## Tyranny (Apr 4, 2014)

Just something interesting:http://www.futuretimeline.net/


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## Hooky (Apr 4, 2014)

With referance to the idea of cybernetic transhumanism. It would be difficult, inefficient, costly and most certainly advanced. It would also be possible to a degree.


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## Duality Jack (Apr 4, 2014)

N30Nphoenix said:


> You could just mutate and re-sequence the DNA you currently have while also splicing in some DNA from another organism, and say you made a chemical that sped up DNA and cell replication (which would also allow bodily regeneration perhaps) then age and growth most likely wouldn't matter since the cell that are mutated/modified and carrying the specific DNA would be dominant and everywhere throughout your body changeing it. I'm not really an expert on this as I'm only 14, but this seems like it would work.



Speeding cell replication causes cancer, or aging. Depending on how you do it.


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## Gryphoneer (Apr 4, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> Just something interesting:http://www.futuretimeline.net/


More like Manifest Destiny timeline.

Some of those wild dreams are around since the 50s if not longer and they came not an inch closer to fruition. Well, how could they? Pseudoscience that violates multiple laws of physics, biology and engineering cannot come to pass by definition.


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## Eggdodger (Apr 4, 2014)

Jack Arclight said:


> Speeding cell replication causes cancer, or aging. Depending on how you do it.



Telomerase has been a big link to aging since the 1980's, and yes, that does include cell replication. (Look it up-- the internet is a big storehouse for information from reputable sources.) Basically, every chromosome has what are called "telomeres" on the ends of their DNA strands that shorten everytime mitosis occurs. That's right- every single cell division shortens your life. However, the enzyme telomerase can oversee these divisions and help preserve the chromosome tips. In fact, some studies have shown that an influx of telomerase actually can _reverse _the effects of aging. It's a polarizing issue, however; some studies have been able to back up the link between telomerase and aging, and others proclaim that preserving cell growth can actually lead to the cultivation of tumors. Nevertheless, we live in an age of miracles.


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## Duality Jack (Apr 4, 2014)

Eggdodger said:


> Telomerase has been a big link to aging since the 1980's, and yes, that does include cell replication. (Look it up-- the internet is a big storehouse for information from reputable sources.) Basically, every chromosome has what are called "telomeres" on the ends of their DNA strands that shorten everytime mitosis occurs. That's right- every single cell division shortens your life. However, the enzyme telomerase can oversee these divisions and help preserve the chromosome tips. In fact, some studies have shown that an influx of telomerase actually can _reverse _the effects of aging. It's a polarizing issue, however; some studies have been able to back up the link between telomerase and aging, and others proclaim that preserving cell growth can actually lead to the cultivation of tumors. Nevertheless, we live in an age of miracles.


I am aware of the effect, of telomeres, some of the studies have been interesting but the results have been rather polar, as it seems DNA degradation is only one of several factors that lead to aging, along side interactive failures and tissue decay. (wear and damage from use is typical)

The other problem is the faster and more frequent division happens, the more likely flaws will be made. Though seriously, if one plans to change one's genetics on a meaningful level, a 3-5 year period isn't exactly unreasonable. Speeding the division is simply an impatient move.  

Though one could imply that the virally altered DNA could also be less flawed than the genetic code it is replacing, which could hypothetically undue damage as well. Heck hypothetically one could store young DNA and have it artificially reproduced and re-introduced decades later.


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## Eggdodger (Apr 5, 2014)

Oh, right. I'm certainly not encouraging people to take telomerase supplements or accelerate their cell growth. As both are in their fledgling stages, it would be dangerous until proper precautions are discovered to make them safe for practical use. I believe that if something you're doing will reverse the effects of aging, then waiting a while longer will literally cost you nothing more- not even time.


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## Duality Jack (Apr 6, 2014)

Eggdodger said:


> Oh, right. I'm certainly not encouraging people to take telomerase supplements or accelerate their cell growth. As both are in their fledgling stages, it would be dangerous until proper precautions are discovered to make them safe for practical use. I believe that if something you're doing will reverse the effects of aging, then waiting a while longer will literally cost you nothing more- not even time.



Sadly these technologies don't help cognitive decay. Such things seem to be... software.


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## funky3000 (Apr 6, 2014)

Simulating 1 second of brain activity takes almost 83k processors. I'm unsure of the cores or hertz per processor, this was a fairly old article on ExtremeTech and it didn't really give this information. Even then, they couldn't simulate it in real time either. To do a full 1 second cycle with these processors, it took 40 minutes, and the simulation used a petabyte of memory while modeling each synapse individually. I'm sure we'll fix up speeds and drop the number of processors eventually. We have both graphene (which apparently Samsung had a graphene breakthrough) and quantum systems on the way. Graphene will massively increase the speed of calculations, and quantum computing will massively increase the power of each processor. A hybrid of these would probably be the better method to creating an artificial brain. I highly doubt my calculations are right but an equivalent to 83k "normal" processors would be more around 300 quantum processors of the same power. I really don't know if I'm right though, its been months since I've toyed around with binary/quantum equivalence. If it is right that certainly brings it down to a more manageable size, a size that I think would be a viable option and shouldn't be that much different in size from GLaDOS. I usually think of GLaDOS as a pretty iconic view of electronic "people", and imagining the size of 300 processors makes her seem like a realistic size for a computer lifeform. Combining that size of 300 processors with the speed of graphene, and I think we have a realistic artificial brain that matches the speed and power of a real brain.

Or we grow brains in a lab and figure out how to make biological computers. After that figure out how to transfer and copy data, etc.

Here's a scary thought though. What if the artificial brain discussed in that article was aware and "alive", and we just ended up killing a "lifeform" that had no chance and no method to state that it was "alive". *shudders*


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## Calemeyr (Apr 7, 2014)

The problem with Kurzweil's singularity happening in the 2040s is that it relies on Moore's law continuing on its same trajectory, not hitting any speedbumps. A speedbump exists, however. I don't know if it's possible to go below 10 nm for the source-drain distance of transistors with planar silicon without running into serious QM, thermo, and EM problems. The new technology set to replace or augment silicon is still in its infancy. Note that processor speed improvements are slowing down significantly.


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## Duality Jack (Apr 7, 2014)

Calemeyr said:


> The problem with Kurzweil's singularity happening in the 2040s is that it relies on Moore's law continuing on its same trajectory, not hitting any speedbumps. A speedbump exists, however. I don't know if it's possible to go below 10 nm for the source-drain distance of transistors with planar silicon without running into serious QM, thermo, and EM problems. The new technology set to replace or augment silicon is still in its infancy. Note that processor speed improvements are slowing down significantly.


 There are some new non-silicone non-magnetic data storage methods being shown to have some substantial gains, and micro conductive materials are actually showing progress. It really depends on how much people are willing to invest.


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## Gryphoneer (Apr 7, 2014)

Calemeyr said:


> The problem with Kurzweil's singularity happening in the 2040s is that it relies on Moore's law continuing on its same trajectory, not hitting any speedbumps. A speedbump exists, however. I don't know if it's possible to go below 10 nm for the source-drain distance of transistors with planar silicon without running into serious QM, thermo, and EM problems. The new technology set to replace or augment silicon is still in its infancy. Note that processor speed improvements are slowing down significantly.


This, and the tiny problem nobody actually knows how this whole intelligence thing works, so it's highly unlikely you will get a human-like mind if you throw a bunch of processing power together. Not to mention you don't have to be only good with numbers, but acutely creative to create better processors. Therefore the notion of "create AI, let it build better AI, and after a few iterations we get Robot God" is as plausible as eugenics "breed humans like dogs to create a race of Superman clones".


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## Rassah (Apr 8, 2014)

Kitsune Cross said:


> How healthy I have to be to reach that age hmm, I think by the time 50 years goes medicine would probably improve a lot to be able to extend life a bit more, but I don't think we'll ever get to be immortal, even if we could, over-population would be an issue and immortaly would be only available(in top secret) for politics, ect



As levels of affluence increase, reproduction decreases. Population growth in Europe and East Asia are about zero, and in poor developing countries it's pretty high. So I suspect once we reach the level of being able to afford not dying, overpopulation will no longer be an issue. Besides, artificial bodies make space travel much more feasible, so... 



N30Nphoenix said:


> Say you would like to have cats eye vision or other advantages such as reflexes and what-not, in my mind all you would have to do to acquire those traits would be first to get some DNA from the animal that has those traits next you would isolate the part of the DNA that provides that trait and plug it in (splice) into your own DNA.



Any cell that gets such DNA spliced in will be recognized as a cancer or a foreign cell by your body's immune system, and aggressively attacked until that body part is painfully destroyed. Bit of a problem for the foreseeable future... As for changing body parts, and the issue of growing, i'm fairly confident we'll be able to grow whatever we want within a decade or two by just 3D printing it out of individual cells. The detail on printers could easily get fine enough to even do eyes, especially since cells can somewhat reorient themselves into proper positions after placed.

Also, guys, don't confuse ethics with morals. One is more or less objective (is it a person's choice? Is there coersion? Does it cause harm to bystanders?) and the other is based on opinions and inertia ("that's the way it always was" or "my particular god says so). I don't think even bringing a chimera to life is unethical, as long as you grant it the options and life choices that it has a right to based on it's intellectual capacity.



funky3000 said:


> Simulating 1 second of brain activity takes almost 83k processors. I'm unsure of the cores or hertz per processor...



Stimulating is doing it in software, instead of having it run directly on hardware. If instead of those computers using their logic gates and software to simulate synapses, they used the logic gates as synapses themselves, the system would have been able to run MUCH faster. Likely on the order of tens of thousands times faster. The reason simulating brain synapses is a complex problem is because our computers work on a binary computing system, where data is stored and processed as 0s and 1s, and our brains work on a networked relational system and processed based on how the neurons are hooked up. It's the difference between storing a picture of a bear as an image with lines and colors in the shape of a bear (as a computer would), and storing it as a series of neurons that describe brown, fur, claws, teeth, big, carnivorous, forest, salmon, etc, all linked together with varying degree of strengths, coming together to give us an image of a bear in our mind. To simulate a brain properly, we would need to build networks, not flat digital 0 and 1 processors. And we are building processors that can do just that, building tiny networked pathways as small as CPU logic gates, that can harden to memorize certain important descriptors just like our brains can. So the answer to building artificial minds isn't increasingly more powerful and massive computers, but a different and much simpler hardware architecture. Then to upload our brains we would have to "harden" the neurons on our system to make them be in the same network configuration as ours. And once it's up and running and confirming to be working OK, I guess committing suicide...


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## Rassah (Apr 8, 2014)

Calemeyr said:


> The problem with Kurzweil's singularity happening in the 2040s is that it relies on Moore's law continuing on its same trajectory, not hitting any speedbumps.



Our brains exist, so the question of whether it's possible is not a question. The only questions are how it will be done, and when we'll be able to do it.



Gryphoneer said:


> This, and the tiny problem nobody actually knows how this whole intelligence thing works, so it's highly unlikely you will get a human-like mind if you throw a bunch of processing power together. Not to mention you don't have to be only good with numbers, but acutely creative to create better processors. Therefore the notion of "create AI, let it build better AI, and after a few iterations we get Robot God" is as plausible as eugenics "breed humans like dogs to create a race of Superman clones".



Don't project your lack of knowledge and understanding on others. Just because you don't know how intelligence works doesn't mean everyone else doesn't, either. Plenty of people do. Plenty of people understand what is needed to add creativity, and are experimenting with rudimentary AI to teach it to be creative, too. Much of that involves " growing" the AI and teaching it from scratch, rather than programming a set of algorithms and just letting it run.


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## Gryphoneer (Apr 8, 2014)

Rassah said:


> Our brains exist, so the question of whether it's possible is not a question. The only questions are how it will be done, and when we'll be able to do it.


Yeah, that's the traditional last resort of AI disciples. "The brain is no soul-bound magic, therefore it's a piece of cake to recreate it." Slippery slope fallacy at its worst. 



> Don't project your lack of knowledge and understanding on others.


Pot. Meet. Kettle.



> Just because you don't know how intelligence works doesn't mean everyone else doesn't, either.


Yep, Rassah got it _aaaalllllllll _figured out. The techies on his secret, privately-owned seasteading island compound are in the end phase of completing the first superhuman AI according to his designs, which will then bestow immortality upon him by uploading his mind after it transformed Jupiter into one big server made out of computronium with an army of nanobots! _any minute now_



> Plenty of people do.


Except the creme de la creme of the computer and neurosciences, as it turns out.

But hey, what do _those_ eggheads know anyway? They're filthy publically funded peasants, after all, yesterday's news. Surely libertarian and corporate sooper-geniuses will present their grand theory of consciousness and formal verification thereof _any minute now_!

Wake up and smell the motherfucking coffee, transhumanuts, for all the talk of rationality, progressiveness and atheist enlightenment it's plain to see your tenets are nothing but *articles of faith*, and the movement is a New Agey faith-based initiative slash de facto religious cult. It's Scientology, just with computers instead of space aliens.


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## Rassah (Apr 8, 2014)

Gryphoneer said:


> Yeah, that's the traditional last resort of AI disciples. "The brain is no soul-bound magic, therefore it's a piece of cake to recreate it." Slippery slope fallacy at its worst.



How can it be "slippery slope" is the "slope" is simply to the actually existiing brains? It's not some fantasy machine we only imagined; brains actually exist. Thus the "how and when" questions.
Wait, unless you think that inteligence doesn't come from the machinery of the brain, and is given to use by a supeernatural god being or soul or something 




Gryphoneer said:


> Pot. Meet. Kettle.



I wasn't the one generalizing, claiming everyone thinks like I do. You were, by saying "no one knoows this" because you yourself don't know this. It's as idiotic as saying "noo one understands how evolution works, and thus evolution doesn't exist."



Gryphoneer said:


> Yep, Rassah got it _aaaalllllllll _figured out.



I don't. But the psychologists and neuroscientists have, and are learning more every day. That's a different field of study from computer science though, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a disconnect between the two that impeded progress...



Gryphoneer said:


> Except the creme de la creme of the computer and neurosciences, as it turns out.



There's a funny quote in the article:


> The fact is, we have no unifying theory of neuroscience. We donâ€™t know what to build, much less how to build it.[SUP]12[/SUP] As one observer put it, neuroscience appears to be making â€œantiprogressâ€ â€” the more information we acquire, the less we seem to know.[SUP]13[/SUP] Thirty years ago, the estimated number of neurons was between three and ten billion. Nowadays, the estimate is 100 billion. Thirty years ago it was assumed that the brainâ€™s glial cells, which outnumber neurons by nine times, were purely structural and had no other function. In 2004, it was reported that this wasnâ€™t true.[SUP]14
> [/SUP]



Appeal to authority aside (Did you know that 4 out of 5 dentists believe we'll have AI by the end of this decade?  ) the way the observer put it is rather stupidly backwards. When you learn something new about something, you are adding more to your understanding and body of knowledge, i.e. progress, not "antiprogress." I guess we've done an enormous amount of antiprogress in computer science, medicine, and space exploration over the last century 
The rest of the article goes into specifically what I said was the problem: simulations are being done in software, using rather limited logical binary systems. Computers even suck at just simple random numbers. The solution isn't software and simulating synapses on binary logic gate computers, it's in hardware, in which we have only started making progress in the last 5 to 7 years.

There is one MAJOR difference between faith/religion and transhumanism: The former have opinions and beliefs based on fantasies they have read in the past, and do jack shit abot them other than try to force others to believe it. The later have knowledge and understanding of current science and technoology, are working hard as hell to gain even more knowledge, and are actually doing and building things with that knowledge, without giving a crap about what others think. But people like you are assholes that have only one answer to everything: "It's too haaaard! We just shouldn't bother! Waaaaaaaaahhh" Go cry in a corner while the rest of the grownups figure this shit out for you. It's ok, you'll still be able to use whatever they invent, even if you called it silly and stupid your whole life.


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## Jess2449 (Apr 9, 2014)

How much do you bet that some traditionalists who hate the idea of prolonging your life will end up choosing the immortality path with the excuse "I am doing it to spread the message of close mindness and naturalism, It has nothing to do with me fearing death, I swear".
it would be so much fun if we just outlived all such close minded people since their ideologies would die along with them, no arguments and fights required, making transhumanism something really hard to fight in the long run.

whenever digital immortality appears in our life time or not doesn't matter much, we will reach that point sometime.


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## Tyranny (Apr 14, 2014)

About morphological freedom, when do you all think it'll become possible in your opinion? And where does one draw the line, if any. Or over time it becomes more acceptable for more radical possible changes to oneself?


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## Gryphoneer (Apr 23, 2014)

Rassah said:


> How can it be "slippery slope" is the "slope" is simply to the actually existiing brains? It's not some fantasy machine we only imagined; brains actually exist. Thus the "how and when" questions.
> Wait, unless you think that inteligence doesn't come from the machinery of the brain, and is given to use by a supeernatural god being or soul or something


For someone acting cocksure of his own status as some kind of enlightened genius whose intellectual superiority to us lowly Taker Luddite proles in anything from economics to computer science is clear as day, you sure sound like you've got no goddamned clue what slippery slope actually means.

To refresh your memory, the slippery slope fallacy refers to the erroneous way of arguing a specific outcome of a chain is inevitable based on one or a set of facts without watertight logical proof.

That means you have to _demonstrate chain link B follows link A by presenting consistent and strict logical deduction that this is in fact the case_.

Saying "if brains, then godlike AGI" is very much *not* an example of sound, stringent reasoning.

Your argument is full of holes. Even if we know the brain isn't powered by invisible, microscopic angels pushing and pulling levers or fairy dust, this doesn't mean at all AI is at a stone's throw, or even a remote possibility. How could it? Even after decades of extensive neuroscientific research we still have no general theory of thinking, something you may strongly need to draft the blue prints for your super-duper-computer considering intelligence is only expressed by the living world. And that brings us to the point of antiprogress.



> Appeal to authority aside (Did you know that 4 out of 5 dentists believe we'll have AI by the end of this decade?  ) the way the observer put it is rather stupidly backwards. When you learn something new about something, you are adding more to your understanding and body of knowledge, i.e. progress, not "antiprogress."


The continued study of the human brain and our nervous system as a whole (done by _eminent _authorities in the particular fields, i.e. researchers who've earned their authority to judge AI through achievement and knowledge, mind you) has shown time and time again just how AI proponents utterly underestimated the complexity of our biologically incarnated intellect. Instead of _making progress towards_ building an artificial version of the brain through electronics, the relevant sciences made anyone who bothered to listen realize the actual state of affairs, namely that it takes a whole lot more to recreate the immense abilities of the brain than mere processing power. 

So much so that, if viewed dispassionately, scientific progress exposed the idea of an "electronic brain" as nonsensical. That's what the article means by antiprogress.

That's not a new phenomenon among AI circles. As early as 1955 the leading AI disciples (most of whom were even founders of the movement) stated their firm belief a tiny group of but ten could make "significant advance" in teaching computers to be creative, understand human speech, etc. over the course of two months! Now go and look up how much time, manpower, money and scietific/technological breakthroughs it really took to realize only a fraction of these wild dreams...

To come back to your slippery slope mistakes, it should be clear by now there's no way in hell how you or anybody else could construct a sensible progression, a chain, from point A ("brains ain't no magic") to point B ("Google/Eliezer Yudkowsky/whatever will build a computer that can do everything a human brain can") or the even more hyperbolic Transhumanist mainstay, point C ("They gonna build a computer that surpasses the brain in a godlike way! Which will rapture us up into heave- uhm, upload us into cyberspace!") because _brains are fundamentally dissimilar to modern, semiconductor-based information technology_. They have no distinction between software and hardware, they're massively parallel in _every _subsystem, and so on and so forth.




> There is one MAJOR difference between faith/religion and transhumanism: The former have opinions and beliefs based on fantasies they have read in the past, and do jack shit abot them other than try to force others to believe it. The later have knowledge and understanding of current science and technoology, are working hard as hell to gain even more knowledge, and are actually doing and building things with that knowledge, without giving a crap about what others think. But people like you are assholes that have only one answer to everything: "It's too haaaard! We just shouldn't bother! Waaaaaaaaahhh" Go cry in a corner while the rest of the grownups figure this shit out for you. It's ok, you'll still be able to use whatever they invent, even if you called it silly and stupid your whole life.


Not pleased with merely slippery slope, you have to go all-out ad hominem? 

Be that as it may, ignorant assholes like me who obviously have no clue of what they talk about whatsoever won't stop pointing out the quite rich parallels between the Church of Transhumantology's fantasies of transcending human nature and those of, say, the Evangelicals, but maybe you will be more receptive to first-hand examples?

Here a leading transhumanut talks of his private proselytization organization named and styled after a religious order (part of the "Turing Church", no less) and "cyberangels". _QED_.


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## Rassah (Apr 29, 2014)

Unless you believe that thinking is dependent on souls, or some other magical thinking voodoo gibberish, then the only plausible line of thought is that our understanding of the physical realm, as well as our ability to mold it to our specifications, will continue to improve for the foreseeable future. A concept of "it's too hard/too complex" is nonsensical, since at some point our level of technology and skill will intersect with the level of technological complexity we are striving for. It's as simple as that.
I don't have time to explain any more than that, but it should be enough.


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## Astus (Apr 29, 2014)

I once wanted to be a genetic engineer (not to make people into anthros but for other reasons) and after delving into a little bit of college level eukaryotic engineering my brain basically fried. There are so many different factors that express DNA that it is really hard to know what it is you're doing when you are taking genes from other animals and putting them into a human. I think that many years in the future that there will definitely be a way to genetically engineer people for the better, but I won't be the one to do it. The though of harming any other animal for research would destroy me


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## N30Nphoenix (Apr 29, 2014)

Wanna learn how to turn ppl into anthros? Then just ask the internet, NOBODY knows more then the internet!  :V


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## Tyranny (Apr 29, 2014)

Another reason I look forward to transhumanism is once having my mind uploaded to an android, I think it'll be possible to root out certain mental problems by just reprogramming and such. Not only that but exceed our current intelligence, all to one's liking. Not having to spend so much time studying a certain subject and just having that information instantly downloaded into your mind. Physical upgrades such as seeing in different spectrums of light and such. Virtual telepathy to control devices around you, automatic translations of languages, brain interfaced HUDs and thought image display. Having the ability to lesson or shut off pain when it becomes to unbearable. Uploading to a VR simulation, where you could choose what you want to be for that given moment, create different sims, like environments scenarios A.I. and such where you can either take part in or just watch. So much.


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## Rassah (Apr 29, 2014)

Your body, along with its feelings, aches, quirks, sensory imperfections, and hormone imbalance is actually a huge factor in your personality. Being moved to an artificial body is almost guaranteed to turn you into a completely different person...


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## Tyranny (Apr 29, 2014)

My personality sucks anyway XP It'd be change for the better, for me and others.


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## Phoenix-Kat (May 1, 2014)

Nah, I'd rather die and be reborn as an animal. I've seen a you-tube video about trans-humanism that would make you loose sleep for the rest of your life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU1-YFbAifA I posted the link to it just in case you are brave enough to watch it. 31:49 is why Peta and the ALF exist.


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## Tyranny (May 8, 2014)

Personally I don't see that as a problem as I don't think the whole of humanity will become non-biological and I don't think humanity will be wiped out by machines like we did to the neanderthals, I think there can be peace, yet discrimination, fear and such will be a huge issue I still don't see it going that far and being the end for biological sentience on this planet. I don't see transhumanism as some ''nerd rapture BS'' or a solution to all our problems, but still something that I look forward too. And I don't mean to sound unsympathetic but for scientific/technological progress I do think we need to be a little, lets' say...''unethical'' at times.


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## chesse20 (May 8, 2014)

Teal said:


> You'll miss food before long.
> Trapped in in electronic body where you'll long to feel something even if it's pain.
> 
> Also ever see the movie Surrogates?


Yeah I saw that movie and I got really pissed at it because the hero ruined everything humanity has been working for


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## Tyranny (Jun 15, 2014)

I think that when uploading becomes available, anywhere between the 2030's/2060's. It'll start out as biological uploading, from flesh to flesh. Cloning a body and containing it, speeding up the growth process then slowing it down once the body reaches it's 20's where it's mature enough. Then making the body brain dead being kept on life support. Then hook up a person and the body to an advanced computer and transfer said persons mind. Also I think longevity treatments will become available, like stem cell advancements, gene therapy, nanotech and such in the mean time. And as uploading is perfected more and more I think it'll be possible to change your sex of the new cloned body by changing the chromosomes, along with correcting any pathways in the brain, so no unwanted mental conditions. Also cybernetics I think will become more common in some people who are completely healthy due to the limbs, organs and such becoming more efficient even to the point of healing to a certain degree due to nanotech, becoming more and more non-biological until people are uploading their minds to completely non-biological brains becoming more or less transferable AIs. However I don't think even half of our species will become artificial, only a minority of people while the rest stick to biological uploading. Though I'll be apart of that minority due to the fact that it's much easier to make an android sergal instead of a biological one, at least at first, plus I just prefer that anyway. So in short I think I'll be able to skip through bodies until I get the one I want. In the long run I think some people will essentially be AIs with access to sometimes multiple bodies. That and a virtual world, think like a superior full immersion second life where you can be anything. Where one can experience what they cannot anymore like going to a virtual burger joint or whatever.


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## Duality Jack (Jun 15, 2014)

Rassah said:


> Your body, along with its feelings, aches, quirks, sensory imperfections, and hormone imbalance is actually a huge factor in your personality. Being moved to an artificial body is almost guaranteed to turn you into a completely different person...


 Assuming you can transfer consciousness without ending the process do you really care? I don't. A synthetic brain could potentially offer far more power than an organic one.


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## Demensa (Jun 15, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> I think that when uploading becomes available, anywhere between the 2030's/2060's.



I think it'll be significantly longer than that, before we're on that level...
How long? I couldn't even make an estimate.  I think it's one of those things where Hofstadter's law applies:

 "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law."


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## Nekokami (Jun 15, 2014)

I'd rather look like an anthro then be inside the body of one. Mind you, turning into a Zoroark would be pretty fun; even though it's clearly impossible.


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## Torrijos-sama (Jun 15, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> I think that when uploading becomes available, anywhere between the 2030's/2060's. It'll start out as biological uploading, from flesh to flesh. Cloning a body and containing it, speeding up the growth process then slowing it down once the body reaches it's 20's where it's mature enough. Then making the body brain dead being kept on life support. Then hook up a person and the body to an advanced computer and transfer said persons mind. Also I think longevity treatments will become available, like stem cell advancements, gene therapy, nanotech and such in the mean time. And as uploading is perfected more and more I think it'll be possible to change your sex of the new cloned body by changing the chromosomes, along with correcting any pathways in the brain, so no unwanted mental conditions. Also cybernetics I think will become more common in some people who are completely healthy due to the limbs, organs and such becoming more efficient even to the point of healing to a certain degree due to nanotech, becoming more and more non-biological until people are uploading their minds to completely non-biological brains becoming more or less transferable AIs. However I don't think even half of our species will become artificial, only a minority of people while the rest stick to biological uploading. Though I'll be apart of that minority due to the fact that it's much easier to make an android sergal instead of a biological one, at least at first, plus I just prefer that anyway. So in short I think I'll be able to skip through bodies until I get the one I want. In the long run I think some people will essentially be AIs with access to sometimes multiple bodies. That and a virtual world, think like a superior full immersion second life where you can be anything. Where one can experience what they cannot anymore like going to a virtual burger joint or whatever.



I don't think cloning would be cool.


Instead, I have a different idea. I will create a magnum opus of sorts, and start a secret society where members all physically look similar to me, and are raised as students of my life and works, who all work to try to emulate every bit of my behavior, and eventually act as the elected version of me.

What happens is this: 

I die one day. Within a day, the secret society will have held an election, wherein the next "Acting Michael" or whatever would have to be elected by his peers in the "Connor Institute", and walks out, and continues acting as Connor for a period of 10 years, at the end of which, they will retire and continue their old life or work as academic fellows to the Connor Institute. At which time, a new election shall be held and the new person will come to the helm.

And continue that for about 5 centuries.


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## Hikaru Okami (Jun 15, 2014)

Cloning honestly scares me. I hope that humans will never be cloned. 
Now as for looking like my fursona....well I need is ears and a tail and I'm set. 
If we're talking about full on anthro with fur and everything that would be a no. I'll just stick with my dreams. At least I can be a wolf almost every night for a couple of hours and wake up as a human again.


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## Eggdodger (Jun 15, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> I think that when uploading becomes available, anywhere between the 2030's/2060's. It'll start out as biological uploading, from flesh to flesh. Cloning a body and containing it, speeding up the growth process then slowing it down once the body reaches it's 20's where it's mature enough.


Okay, well, being vague is one way of writing science fiction... but proposing a solution is how we make progress and contribute something to society. For example, in this article, it is found that removing all the replication origins in a given Archaea cell not only speeds up growth, but doesn't hinder cell replication at all (instead of happening at the origins, replication simply happens at particular, nondiscriminate sites).


			
				Tyranny said:
			
		

> Then making the body brain dead being kept on life support. Then hook up a person and the body to an advanced computer and transfer said persons mind.


So basically a meat puppet? It would cost quite a bit to keep that thing nutritionally balanced, clean and "alive". I'm not sure of a way to keep the sentient parts of your mind blank yet leave the brain stem functional. "Brain dead" is still as good as dead, especially without your brain stem and surrounding endocrine glands to maintain the rest of your organs.


			
				Tyranny said:
			
		

> Also I think longevity treatments will become available, like stem cell advancements, gene therapy, nanotech and such in the mean time.


This part is actually viable, especially if we learn to harness the power of telomerase without the negative consequences (Cancer prone? Sorry, tumors abound.). Although I question the nanotech bit.


			
				Tyranny said:
			
		

> And as uploading is perfected more and more I think it'll be possible to change your sex of the new cloned body by changing the chromosomes, along with correcting any pathways in the brain, so no unwanted mental conditions.


Whoa, tiger, slow down, there! Sex is inherently gametic (no pun intended), and a change of sex in somatic cells can have... consequences. I'll leave it at that. It would be a very painful process. There's a reason it happens in the womb, is all I'm saying.


			
				Tyranny said:
			
		

> Also cybernetics I think will become more common in some people who are completely healthy due to the limbs, organs and such becoming more efficient even to the point of healing to a certain degree due to nanotech, becoming more and more non-biological until people are uploading their minds to completely non-biological brains becoming more or less transferable AIs.


Okay, the nanotech thing. That's a very, very broad term. I'm assuming you're talking about how it applies to molecular biology. Nanotechnology is just manipulating things on a very small scale. Alright, assuming you have the tools, what are you planning to do on that level?


			
				Tyranny said:
			
		

> However I don't think even half of our species will become artificial, only a minority of people while the rest stick to biological uploading. Though I'll be apart of that minority due to the fact that it's much easier to make an android sergal instead of a biological one, at least at first, plus I just prefer that anyway. So in short I think I'll be able to skip through bodies until I get the one I want. In the long run I think some people will essentially be AIs with access to sometimes multiple bodies. That and a virtual world, think like a superior full immersion second life where you can be anything. Where one can experience what they cannot anymore like going to a virtual burger joint or whatever.



Well, actually, I want to challenge that "robots are easier" bit-- it would actually be simpler to work within a system where we already know our bounds and how everything works. No one's built a convincing AI or robots that walk efficiently (think C-3PO, or Claptrap trying to climb stairs. Even in science fiction, a world of physical ideals and absolutes, it's viewed as silly.) Human-animal chimaeras, however, at this point in time, have been done and done successfully, in the hopes of being able to "farm" usable organs and tissues, not to mention the human genes themselves-- all for the small cost of a human zygote. Pocket change. Hormonal teenagers dispense that stuff like it grows on trees-- but that's another issue.

I should note, however, that science hasn't taken this pursuit to its fullest potential. These animals, while having specific human genes to fit their applications, are not sapient. They can't go on a soliloquy about the injustice of their plight... and science likely won't advance that far until someone without any ethical or legal boundaries can push biological potential to that extreme. It would take a lot of fortunate circumstances for it to even be possible (societally speaking), and a lot of luck for it not to end up horribly. I can see many, many applications for such creatures, though-- although moral concerns about their quality of life would arise, and letting them essentially fuel your industries (thereby driving the economy despite having no rights) would be a grave mistake. Just one little variable, one catalyst, a teensy spark... See, it's always been my belief that our will to fight for the right to make our own choices against tough odds is intrinsically human in nature.


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## Gryphoneer (Jun 16, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> when uploading becomes available, anywhere between the 2030's/2060's


And 60s America was sure it would have nuclear-powered transcontinental planes and a moon base by 2000.

Today's Internet-fixated society and its dreams of cheating death thorugh computers (and private sector moon bases, for that matter) will fare about as well.


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## Hakar Kerarmor (Jun 17, 2014)

And it was also sure there would be only half a dozen computers.


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## Gryphoneer (Jun 17, 2014)

Hakar Kerarmor said:


> And it was also sure there would be only half a dozen computers.


Not at all, actually.

And if you watch ads and archival footage about 60s expos you notice how the Kitchen Of Tomorrow(TM) was fully computerized, like the entire House Of Tomorrow(TM). Anybody remember the "smart fridge" that could tell if its contents were expired and order new ones via the Intertubes? Yeah, now look how many people got those...

The "smart" environment where all our appliances, furniture and just about everything that can be equipped with a chip are networked is nothing but a rehash of the 60s Plastic World future.


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## Eggdodger (Jun 19, 2014)

Gryphoneer said:


> Not at all, actually.
> 
> And if you watch ads and archival footage about 60s expos you notice how the Kitchen Of Tomorrow(TM) was fully computerized, like the entire House Of Tomorrow(TM). Anybody remember the "smart fridge" that could tell if its contents were expired and order new ones via the Intertubes? Yeah, now look how many people got those...
> 
> The "smart" environment where all our appliances, furniture and just about everything that can be equipped with a chip are networked is nothing but a rehash of the 60s Plastic World future.



Besides that, doesn't it just seem a little, um, lazy to have such a home...? Suppose we had a cataclysmic event that destroyed the power grid (or made it impossible to maintain). The people with these devices would be horribly dependent on them. They wouldn't know how to buy groceries, let alone cook them. =p

Personally, I think automating everything is not only just plain silly, but dangerous to our survival as a species. We have to know how to do things ourselves.


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## Nounago (Jun 19, 2014)

Eggdodger said:


> Besides that, doesn't it just seem a little, um, lazy to have such a home...? Suppose we had a cataclysmic event that destroyed the power grid (or made it impossible to maintain). The people with these devices would be horribly dependent on them. They wouldn't know how to buy groceries, let alone cook them. =p
> 
> Personally, I think automating everything is not only just plain silly, but dangerous to our survival as a species. We have to know how to do things ourselves.


I'm not sure about this all.
Actually, you don't need master chef cooking skills to survive. Granted, there are some things (lots of...) you have to know in a non-civilized environment.
Yet who does know them right now? What percentage of the population has any idea about how to clean a fresh fish for eating, let alone fish it? Who knows how to process any kind of grain from the nature to your bread/whatever? Who knows that those freaking nice and sweet fruits will kill you in roughly an hour?
all this skill is already lost  (at least, for societies that would have any access to an advanced living house). You can learn those skills on the side, you don't need to practice them all everyday to know them. 
I don't think there is any more danger about that. Sadly.


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## Tyranny (Jun 25, 2014)

I could be wrong, uploading may not start out biological. Maybe, maybe not. What I'm interested in is when it does happen, non-biological, how would those individuals be treated at first? I have no doubts it'll still be them, that I'll still be myself. I personally would go along with it, even if it were highly controversial which we all know it will be, and just deal with the consequences, so long as I'm alive. Weither they consider me so or not. I just wonder what it will be like, people's reactions and such. Weither you have any rights. What to get used to and how to maintain yourself, getting used to what your not able to do. Whatever the case if and hopefully when I get that chance I'll just sign that dotted line. Whatever the consequences I'll just learn to deal with it. If luck plays out I'll go from one body to the next over the centuries until I finally get the body I want.


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Jun 25, 2014)

The brutal experimentation that would have to go into the development of such ego-stroking technology....


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## Eggdodger (Jun 25, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> I could be wrong, uploading may not start out biological. Maybe, maybe not. What I'm interested in is when it does happen, non-biological, how would those individuals be treated at first? I have no doubts it'll still be them, that I'll still be myself. I personally would go along with it, even if it were highly controversial which we all know it will be, and just deal with the consequences, so long as I'm alive. Weither they consider me so or not. I just wonder what it will be like, people's reactions and such. Weither you have any rights. What to get used to and how to maintain yourself, getting used to what your not able to do. Whatever the case if and hopefully when I get that chance I'll just sign that dotted line. Whatever the consequences I'll just learn to deal with it. If luck plays out I'll go from one body to the next over the centuries until I finally get the body I want.



No technology is perfect from the start. It took a while to develop cars that were good for a few hundred thousand miles, much less cars that had an electric ignition rather than a manual crank. The budding technology will be very faulty and very inefficient. There will be a lot of mistakes, but that is the way of any new technology. If you're still keen on being one of the first to volunteer after hearing this, I'm sorry to say, but that seems plain desperate. You won't just be a consumer in that sense; you would also be a test subject, and you can bet "that dotted line" would legally protect the hands you're putting yourself into from any sort of responsibility should something go wrong. If you have the time to spend at the point synthetic bodies seem viable, I would wait as long as you could if that is what you really want.

 I'm not saying I don't think it could work-- not at all. Don't get that idea. I'm just saying it's such a foreign concept compared to everything else humans have accomplished to this point. With all we know about the universe, science still knows so little about the mind. Psychologists are seen by many as kooks and quacks and all sorts of other mean names for someone you think knows everything about nothing. I'm not sure I hold that same view; my stepmother was a social worker, and she was pretty good at screwing with my head. Not to digress too far, I believe that eventually the endeavor will succeed simply because it hasn't been proven impossible. Give it some time, but don't expect it soon.


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## Torrijos-sama (Jun 25, 2014)

The only problem I have with transhumanism, in all honesty, is that I feel that if it was implemented as being a privilege rather than a right, that it will cause a speciation of man along lines of class and capital ownership. If implemented as a right, or certain medical procedures are considered a standard, and necessary treatment for certain conditions or for increasing quality of life for people while remaining optional would be the best option in its implementation. And to make it mandatory is dumb.


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## Tyranny (Jun 26, 2014)

Oh I don't mean being the first volunteer, I just mean't that if/when it is slowly perfected more and more, I wouldn't hesitate if I was running out of time.


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## Hinalle K. (Jun 26, 2014)

If your brain gets uploaded somewhere, such as an artificial body, how can one be sure it's really the same person and not just a carbon-copy that views itself as the real deal?

You guys are tripping!


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## Tyranny (Jun 26, 2014)

Hinalle K. said:


> If your brain gets uploaded somewhere, such as an artificial body, how can one be sure it's really the same person and not just a carbon-copy that views itself as the real deal?
> 
> You guys are tripping!



Is that your response to everything? I'll try to explain it the best way I can, some people still think thoughts are the patterns the electrical impulses follow and not the impulses themselves. Some research has suggested it's the impulses themselves. One experiment was with a worm called C. Elegans, they figured ''Okay, if this impulse follows that pathway it's thought A, and if it follows the other it's thought B, WRONG, two impulses went along the same pathway, must be the same thought repeated, right? Nope, they did two separate things. So it's not the pathways, it's purely the impulses. Meaning if thoughts are electrical signals, they can be transferred. So, once uploading is achieved it will be the same person. Conscience is nothing more than a collection of impulses that can be transferred. People can argue till their blue in the face, but at the end of the day it's still a fact of life.


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## Kitsune Cross (Jun 26, 2014)

Hinalle K. said:


> If your brain gets uploaded somewhere, such as an artificial body, how can one be sure it's really the same person and not just a carbon-copy that views itself as the real deal?  You guys are tripping!



I had thought of this, when you take a file from a pendrive and transfer it to the computer, is it the same file? I think you are only making a copy of it and erasing the original file, that's what I think might happen with mind upload


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## Hinalle K. (Jun 26, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> Is that your response to everything? I'll try to explain it the best way I can, some people still think thoughts are the patterns the electrical impulses follow and not the impulses themselves. Some research has suggested it's the impulses themselves. One experiment was with a worm called C. Elegans, they figured ''Okay, if this impulse follows that pathway it's thought A, and if it follows the other it's thought B, WRONG, two impulses went along the same pathway, must be the same thought repeated, right? Nope, they did two separate things. So it's not the pathways, it's purely the impulses. Meaning if thoughts are electrical signals, they can be transferred. So, once uploading is achieved it will be the same person. Conscience is nothing more than a collection of impulses that can be transferred. People can argue till their blue in the face, but at the end of the day it's still a fact of life.


You're cuckoo. Drop the sci-fi movies!


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## Ayattar (Jun 26, 2014)

Hinalle K. said:


> If your brain gets uploaded somewhere, such as an artificial body, how can one be sure it's really the same person and not just a carbon-copy that views itself as the real deal?



Hey, no need to worry, it can be done. You just need to replace your brain and nervous system part by part, like, let's say 5% every year. This way there won't be any breaks and you'll simply overwrite yourself on new parts. It will be almost the same as with normal circulation of the atoms. If I remember correctly complete replacement of the atoms in human body takes five years. Does it make you any different? 

I agree though that simple copy-paste ripping human mind on any other medium is a no-no


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## Tyranny (Jun 26, 2014)

Hinalle K. said:


> You're cuckoo. Drop the sci-fi movies!



So, I guess that is your only response...If so please stop because your making my stomach hurt. LMFAO


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## Hinalle K. (Jun 26, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> So, I guess that is your only response...If so please stop because your making my stomach hurt. LMFAO



Your stomach is not the only thing that's malfunctioning, here.

When was the last time you had your brain checked? Mixing reality with fantasy is pretty serious, you know.


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## Tyranny (Jun 26, 2014)

Hinalle K. said:


> Your stomach is not the only thing that's malfunctioning, here.
> 
> When was the last time you had your brain checked? Mixing reality with fantasy is pretty serious, you know.



Today's science fiction, in many cases, can be tomorrow's reality. Just look at tanks, planes, the bomb, space travel etc.

Tanks were once called ''Land Ironclads'' in an H.G. wells book well before their invention.

Before the invention of the plane people laughed at the idea of an aerial bombardment of London then WW2 happened, that WAS fiction until the nazi's came in to play. Plus just one or two years before the first flight, a ballsy journalist in the New York Times said and actually BELIEVED human achieved flight wouldn't happen for -millions- of years. He was quite respected, presumably until the Wright Bros. cost him a job.

 Ever read ''A world set free'' written in 1913? Detailing the atomic bomb in an almost completely correct way. Or what about ''From the earth to the moon''? Sure the idea of a cannon is absurd, yet to think that landing on the moon was once fiction? Yeah, that's looney talk according to you...

You can call me or any one of us crazy, just be prepared for what you might witness in the coming decades.


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Jun 26, 2014)

It's not so much a question of "Can we?" as "Should we?"


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## Tyranny (Jun 26, 2014)

I believe, in my opinion, with caution...absolutely.


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## Hinalle K. (Jun 26, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> Today's science fiction, in many cases, can be tomorrow's reality. Just look at tanks, planes, the bomb, space travel etc.
> 
> Tanks were once called ''Land Ironclads'' in an H.G. wells book well before their invention.
> 
> ...


And people in the past also thought that by the time the 2000's came, we'd have advanced as much as the Jetsons. You're one of them, just replace the Jetsons with some random current sci-fi title.
Pfft, I'll have the last laugh here. We might advance a bit but nothing to the extent of your star-trek fanfictions.
What's next? Lightsabers? Mass effect portals? Hahaha. Give me a break.


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## Tyranny (Jun 26, 2014)

Never said anything about light sabers or worm holes. Uploading, genetic engineering, nanotech i.e. little machines in your body keeping you healthy, better cleaner EFFICIENT energy etc. You act like this will happen all at once. It won't, yet things will surprise you. Technology is advancing quicker and quicker and I have no reason to doubt it'll stop any time soon, Moore's Law. The more out-there it seems doesn't automatically mean it's impossible, just that it'll possibly happen further into the future. But the stuff about uploading and such I believe is going to happen in our life times. We'll just see who has the last laugh. Plus when uploading happens, the phrase ''in our lifetimes'' will mean nothing. You won't have to worry about dying at 89 of colon cancer. As tech advances more steadily, people will start listening more to the optimists.


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## Eggdodger (Jun 26, 2014)

Kit H. Ruppell said:


> It's not so much a question of "Can we?" as "Should we?"



I believe that's simply a matter of personal preference. It's not a gray area for some individuals. If it's what someone really wants to do with their mind, one of the few things you can truly own, who are we to prohibit that? I just hope that they understand the risks involved. As with any "procedure", it will take time to develop well, and even then, not every "professional" lives up to the name. There are bound to be mistakes, but anyone who really wants a synthetic body will have researched and understood the potential consequences.


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## Calemeyr (Jun 26, 2014)

Kit H. Ruppell said:


> It's not so much a question of "Can we?" as "Should we?"


The answer is yes, yes we should. Unless it's immoral.

I'm a transhumanist, but I see it a little different than others. I don't think it should be rushed so some fat nerds in Silicon Valley can live forever. I rather think that the ideas of Transhumanism should be a goal for humanity, progression of our race, our cultures, and our quality of life. Basically, it's the Enlightenment philosophy that modern Americans run away from when they seek their escapist fiction.

This affects my worldview. Everyone should make an attempt to help the world become a better place. No matter how small the effect is. But don't half-ass it, either. This doesn't have to be a paid job, either. Volunteering counts. Standing up for what's right. Helping your fellow humans out and not being a misanthropic prick. These things all help out. Not being so damn selfish is a big part of it. Extreme selfishness is a very bad thing, as it tends to break groups apart. Of course, we don't want a Borg future yet, either. Extreme collectivism leads to stagnation.

One thing that gets me about Star Trek is that despite the huge technical advancements, the people are all natural. I think we may start experimenting with mechanical augmetation within the next few decades, with it taking off significantly in the next century. So everyone would have First Contact Geordie eyes eventually. It would be like Ghost in the Shell. That is, unless the religious fanatics or Ted Kaczynski fanboys get in the way.

Personally, I do not think the singularity should be assiciated with the advent of strong AI. I really don't see a huge tech explosion happening that leads us to paving over the moon in a fortnight. Rather, I think a proper singularity would be wherte humanity may be heading, possibly in a thousand years or so. A group mind. We already show the baby steps of such a thing. The internet and social media in general show our inter-connectedness. This isn't to say we'd be a single mind (is the internet that way?); we'd be constantly connected to one another, we may do mind backups every so often, and death would become irrelevant. Eventually we may become a single individual like in the Forever War. Who knows? But it ain't going to happen in 2045, that's for damn sure. Try 10191 or 802701.

This is of course unless we don't kill ourselves off as a result of modern Republicans being modern Republicans or Democrats believing in new age woo. Or rich people being dickholes. Or dumb escapist Americans hating science because Jeebus McChrist (buy two and get one free!) told them "science bad!".

One thing I see in the future that could happen is inequality with enhancements. This may lead to problems. And the technology in general must not come at the expense of human culture, rights, or freedom. Nor at the expense of the environment. Eventually things may change if we transition away from a capitalist economy to a post scarcity economy (sorry Cato lolbertarians you lose, Ayn Rand lost too). From here on, technological progressivism must be the driving model to keep our civilization constantly improving.

Lastly, I sometimes seee furries talk about this stuff as if it were another escapist vehicle for their misanthropic, pea-brained, dissasociative fantasies. No. Bad. Like all the fedora-equipped neckbeards, you are approaching it the wrong way. This is meant to bring people together, to help one another, not allow you to live out your nerd power fantasies.

For the short version of this spiel: modern antiscience, culturally complacent attitudes are bad. Help your fellow human, don't be an escapist neckbeard, and cool shit is possible in the future if we keep working on things (no, not 2045, Kurzweil). Notice I never talked about nanomachines creating magic, warp drives, psychic ninjas, or "make anthros real". I'm a scientist, not a charlatan. Or whatever. These are my pizza-induced ramblings of a guy who is on the final summer vacation of his life (or at least for several decades).

TL;DR the TL;DR part: Kurzweil is a loon, transhumanism isn't anything too special once you realize the themes are heavy in old sci-fi books. It's just good ol' fashioned scientific optimism and future-speculating mixed with Enlightenment philosophy. Add in your own philosophy to the mix.


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## Hinalle K. (Jun 27, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> Never said anything about light sabers or worm holes. Uploading, genetic engineering, nanotech i.e. little machines in your body keeping you healthy, better cleaner EFFICIENT energy etc. You act like this will happen all at once. It won't, yet things will surprise you. Technology is advancing quicker and quicker and I have no reason to doubt it'll stop any time soon, Moore's Law. The more out-there it seems doesn't automatically mean it's impossible, just that it'll possibly happen further into the future. But the stuff about uploading and such I believe is going to happen in our life times. We'll just see who has the last laugh. Plus when uploading happens, the phrase ''in our lifetimes'' will mean nothing. You won't have to worry about dying at 89 of colon cancer. As tech advances more steadily, people will start listening more to the optimists.


You poor deluded soul. Do you even realize what you type?
Don't you see how ridiculous this all sounds?


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## Gryphoneer (Jun 27, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> Today's science fiction, in many cases, can be tomorrow's reality. Just look at tanks, planes, the bomb, space travel etc.
> 
> Tanks were once called ''Land Ironclads'' in an H.G. wells book well before their invention.
> 
> ...


So, that makes three sci-fi speculations that happened to receive real-life inventions later on that kinda sorta resembled them, but ultimately were very different (Wells nuclear device, for instance, worked not at all like actually existing atomic bombs).

That's an awful track record in light of the millions and billions of SF ideas that perseveringly refuse to materialize or have been found to violate the laws of nature in the course of scientific progress.

Science fiction makes no science policy. How often do we see cranks and conmen attract huge investments from credulous citizens or even government institutions for hokum like cold fusion? Worse, how often do contemporary tech companies use SF loose talk for advertising doublespeak and then go on to successfully divert tax dollars to their R&D divisions, only to give us the same old ultimately mundane electronic gizmo made out of cheap plastic instead of the miracles and wonders they promised? 

The whole modern techno-worship culture is bad for real science and real technical progress. Belief into religious miracles repackaged for the current day (mana from the heavens made possible by nanobots, genies in form of 3D printers, life after death thanks to brain uploading) only leads to precious time, personnel and resources stolen away from true, reality-grounded science.


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## Eggdodger (Jun 27, 2014)

Gryphoneer said:


> So, that makes three sci-fi speculations that happened to receive real-life inventions later on that kinda sorta resembled them, but ultimately were very different (Wells nuclear device, for instance, worked not at all like actually existing atomic bombs).
> 
> That's an awful track record in light of the millions and billions of SF ideas that perseveringly refuse to materialize or have been found to violate the laws of nature in the course of scientific progress.
> 
> Science fiction makes no science policy. How often do we see cranks and conmen attract huge investments from credulous citizens or even government institutions for hokum like cold fusion? Worse, how often do contemporary tech companies use SF loose talk for advertising doublespeak and then go on to successfully divert tax dollars to their R&D divisions, only to give us the same old ultimately mundane electronic gizmo made out of cheap plastic instead of the miracles and wonders they promised?



You bring up some good points, but something about the way you word this bothers me. I like to think that science fiction can be a forerunner if it focuses on things we know already, and then attempts to expand upon the concepts. Science fiction gets people thinking. They wonder, "Could this ever be possible?" Intelligent, capable, hard-working individuals are inspired and seek to find the answer. Even if the original concept is proven incorrect, it still was an important contribution in that it pushed people to find the answer. I believe science fiction is its most effective and beneficial when used in a way that doesn't try to be "cool"; what makes it fascinating to that future scientist is how _feasible_ it seems, like it's just out of arm's reach. I think science fiction should make people reach for that new horizon of possibilities.


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## Crimson Wolf (Jun 27, 2014)

Okay this somewhat weird subject is starting to really really look like a turn for the worse.  I do agree that SOME I repeat SOME scifi ideas are cool and can be implemented but this whole copy paste your brain patters into another brain or hard drive and somehow gaining immortality is absolutely ridiculous and outright dangerous by how a few of you seem to almost worship it.    Even if we developed technology that could somewhat copy those patterns there is no way you could be sure it would really be you.  Hell people I honestly doubt that machine would even do jack squat with said patters, it more than likely wouldn't have the same "drive" that people do behind their thoughts.  The machine more than likely wouldn't think, you would cease to be once you try this transition.  All you are doing is basically a suicide to try to copy/paste your brain patters into something else.

Just because a few cool sci fi movies shows and games have had this idea and are somewhat similar, this kind of idea is completely nonsense.  You seem to have this scary thought process that things like eve online for the way clones and such on it work is a reality that is drawing nearer.  You seem to be confusing reality with fantasy which is not only wrong but highly dangerous.  I do not mean this as a insult what so ever but if you keep down a path that is close to techno worship I would ask you to seek help.


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## Ayattar (Jun 27, 2014)

Hinalle K. said:


> You poor deluded soul. Do you even realize what you type?
> Don't you see how ridiculous this all sounds?



Hey, man I know that you live in a sandpit where water is the biggest miracle, but seriously you should pay a little bit more attention to the newest scientific achievements. Tyrrany won't see those things implemented in real life, but our grangrandgrandchildren? Why not.



Crimson Wolf said:


> Okay this somewhat weird subject is starting  to really really look like a turn for the worse.  I do agree that SOME I  repeat SOME scifi ideas are cool and can be implemented but this whole  copy paste your brain patters into another brain or hard drive and  somehow gaining immortality is absolutely ridiculous and outright  dangerous by how a few of you seem to almost worship it.    Even if we  developed technology that could somewhat copy those patterns there is no  way you could be sure it would really be you.  Hell people I honestly  doubt that machine would even do jack squat with said patters, it more  than likely wouldn't have the same "drive" that people do behind their  thoughts.  The machine more than likely wouldn't think, you would cease  to be once you try this transition.  All you are doing is basically a  suicide to try to copy/paste your brain patters into something  else.



Of course it's possible. I had similar doubts before my friend  enlightened me. The thing is you shouldn't COPY your mind into another  medium, you should change the medium you're in right now bit by bit.



Ayattar said:


> You just  need to replace your brain and nervous  system part by part, like, let's  say 5% every year. This way there  won't be any breaks and you'll simply  overwrite yourself on new parts.  It will be almost the same as with  normal circulation of the atoms. If I  remember correctly complete  replacement of the atoms in human body  takes five years. Does it make  you any different?



The best way would be of course not mechanical transformation but having organic parts of your brain replaced with non-organic on the basis of permeation (like it's happening with atoms) but this won't be possible untill we perfect nanotechnology... sooo, in for sure more than 200 years. And we won't see it, so this debate is pointless.

-dp-


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## Hinalle K. (Jun 27, 2014)

Ayattar said:


> Hey, man I know that you live in a sandpit where water is the biggest miracle, but seriously you should pay a little bit more attention to the newest scientific achievements. Tyrrany won't see those things implemented in real life, but our grangrandgrandchildren? Why not.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That's an immense cop out as expected from a sci-fi loonie.
"You won't live to see it but it will totes happen" 

Uh huh,right. God exists too but you won't see him 'til you're dead.


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## Ayattar (Jun 27, 2014)

Aaaaaaand I don't even read sci-fi much, not to mention watching it or playing games. In fact I'm a historian and thanks to that I saw countless examples of narrow-minded humans like you raising the same arguments through the history.
You know, one day we will have artificial humans. Noooo! Impossible! - boom, robots
You know, one day we will have oxen powered by coal. Noooo! Impossible! - boom, locomotive
You know, one day we will land on the moon. Noooo! Impossible! - boom, Apollo 11
You know, one day we will have laser pistols! Noooo! Impossible! - boom, USRR laser pistols from 1970s'
Et cetera
Thank god not all people are like you, cause if they were we would still be sitting in the caves, using hand axes.

Though I doubt that future discoveries and inventions will look like we imagine them right now (enough to look at robots, locomotives, spaceships and laser pistols when they were invented by the writers and fantasts). What the hell, I'm perfectly sure they won't. Also, we're close to a current technological barrier and untill we go around it (I have few candidates, quantum physics and computers and programmed biology included) we can forget about it - as it's impossible to construct a plane powered by the steam engine.


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## Hinalle K. (Jun 27, 2014)

You can't be sure of that. Get your head out of the clouds.

Trans.Humanism. Immortality. Listen to your own babble, jeez.

Either way, you lose, because you won't live long enough to realize you were wrong. 
Get out of dreamland, it's not too late yet.


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## Ayattar (Jun 27, 2014)

Why not? If a jellyfish can be immortal then why can't I? Oh, wait... Actually I can't. But it's not so bad, finally I'll be usefull, at least as a fertilizer.

Regardless of that I'll pray for your poor technophobic soul to our lord, Jesus Christ in heaven, and his mother Mary the holy virgin


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## Hinalle K. (Jun 27, 2014)

I'm not technophobic.

I'm just not into mixing fantasy with reality, is all. You sci-fi nerds seem to have a hard time with that after playing the latest Halo game.


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## Calemeyr (Jun 27, 2014)

Jetpacks were stuff if science fiction once. Now they are real.

I do not think we will have "immortal" bodies in the future. That's inefficient. I think we'd back up our minds and move on to a better operating platform once a new one comes out. Brain transplants, maybe. That isn't immortality, though, unless you keep on doing it. As for "how do I know its me?" I don't care that much. It has my memories and my thought patterns. I think that is enough. Some parts may be lost. So, work should be done on that, the nature of human consciousness. But I don't think there is a magic soul that exists long with it, if that is what you are getting at. To do a mind upload, you would need to connect the brain to a computer and keep it connected. For transfer, part of the brain needs to go with it. It's the Ship of Theseus problem. Again, we need neuroscientists to look into whether mind uploads, if possible, preserve the consciousness. 

Stop acting like you are an expert about all this. Sure, some people are thinking that this will be the nerd rapture and "this stuff WILL happen in 2045 and I can be truly immortal forever and nerds will rule the world over the jocks!" That's bullshit. It isn't happening any time soon.
But you are acting like you are a part of the cynicism against science and human progress that is hindering our development. You think new tech means new iphone with barely anything new inside. Let people dream dammit! It'll push them to work. Warp drives are still fantasy, but we may have stuff like google glass contacts in the future. Do you work? Do you volunteer to make people's lives better? Do you prefer hard science fiction to fantasy because the former adresses problems in modern society?

If you don't stop being an ass to everyone in this thread for the sake of it I'm going to report you. If this is trolling... -1/10. Try better next time.

I better not see people talking about magic Neo powers, though.


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## Hinalle K. (Jun 27, 2014)

Seriously? I'm a troll for not believing you can "upload" your brain to a machine? Oh, please. Just reading it aloud sounds incredibly silly.

How can people honestly think this is possible? It's not going to happen in your lifetime, and probably never will.

The fact that it couldn't possibly happen in any of out lifetimes is proof enough that I'm the one having the last laugh, here.


And show me what? A new dance style?


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## Crimson Wolf (Jun 27, 2014)

Actually jetpacks are still somewhat not fully functional, you have ones that work off water but anywhere else over land and ur quickly spiraling to your doom xD  And just because you don't believe in a soul doesn't mean you can ignore the fact that once you try this strange crossover of brain meets computer that it will share your same drive, personality or even have your same memories.  This is completely different than say having a discussion about warp or other forms of space flight for the sake of travel and expansion.  This seems more like a foolsgold errand of seeking a scientific philosopher's stone to live forever which is just rather silly lol.  I'm not acting like some expert on all things just voicing my opinion here, and as I said it does seem rather a downward slope for anyone to obsess over near immortality to the point of trying to meld themselves with some tech.  Heck I could love discussing all day and night long why it would be great to finally focus again on space travel and colonizing planets, expanding our knowledge of the galaxy and seeking other life, but going about trying to make yourself and actually believing it is possible to be something almost immortal is just ridiculous and a waste of effort and time, in my opinion.


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## Calemeyr (Jun 27, 2014)

Hinalle K. said:


> Seriously? I'm a troll for not believing you can "upload" your brain to a machine? Oh, please. Just reading it aloud sounds incredibly silly.
> 
> How can people honestly think this is possible? It's not going to happen in your lifetime, and probably never will.
> 
> ...


My lifetime. Hell no. Mind uploads, again, are still speculation. And is the uploaded mind the same person? Research needs to be done to answer that question. If not, then uploading would be impossible unless there was another way.

And don't lump me in with the neckbeard computer programmers who think they understand science. I'm an actual scientist who works (and will work) on micro/nanoelectronics. And I'm saying that the stuff is impossible now, but maybe in the future. It is unscientific to say anything about the matter decisively without further investigation. Immortalitybis pure fiction right now.

Still, it is funny to hear people talk about nanomachines as some magic pixie dust that gives them superpowers. Ok, where do they get the energy to do that? Nano-scale nuclear reactors? Please.


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## Gryphoneer (Jun 27, 2014)

Eggdodger said:


> I believe science fiction is its most effective and beneficial when used in a way that doesn't try to be "cool"; what makes it fascinating to that future scientist is how _feasible_ it seems, like it's just out of arm's reach. I think science fiction should make people reach for that new horizon of possibilities.


The "science fiction is an entry drug for STEM fields" argument doesn't hold much water, IMO. Not only that lots and lots of sci-fi is actually horribly unscientific (as pointed out by a bona fide research scientist) because hack writers like to write outside their area of expertise (bonus points if they don't have any scientific expertise to begin with), but it's also the zookeeper effect. A job advisor once told me how many young women who wanted to go into occupations "something to do with animals" quit their apprenticeships shortly after having to shovel shit; they envisioned animal care jobs as petting hamsters as girls...

A kid watching Star Trek for lasers going _pew-pew_ and spaceships _kapow_ isn't that likely to become an engineer/scientist or even develop interest in the fields considering how rigorous and concentrated your thinking must be to come that far. That's why I think the increasing FX-laden spectacle of purported science shows like Cosmos is a waste of time, if not detrimental to science. What about, you know, innate curiosity about the natural world? How many of the most prominent scientists and thinkers started out finding beauty in the fine structures of blossoms in their gardens or the grand ones of the night sky rather than watching Neil Tyson DeGrasse waxing lyrically about that and that while a so-so animated spaceships flits across the screen? Practically all of them, to be blunt.

The entertainment industry is about to reduce science education/popular science to just another vacuous, constant stream of distraction. Don't you think that runs counter to the cause?



Ayattar said:


> Aaaaaaand I don't even read sci-fi much, not to  mention watching it or playing games. In fact I'm a historian and thanks  to that I saw countless examples of narrow-minded humans like you  raising the same arguments through the history.
> You know, one day we will have artificial humans. Noooo! Impossible! - boom, robots
> You know, one day we will have oxen powered by coal. Noooo! Impossible! - boom, locomotive
> You know, one day we will land on the moon. Noooo! Impossible! - boom, Apollo 11
> You know, one day we will have laser pistols! Noooo! Impossible! - boom, USRR laser pistols from 1970s'


A historian, huh? Shouldn't you know better than to perpetuate historical misinformation and -interpretation?

Lunar expedition skeptics entered a steady decline ever since the first private "rocket clubs" started appearing in the 1920s and rocket science gained ground in academia thanks to Hermann Oberth and associated physicists who laid the foundations and, more importantly, proved the scientific soundness of the concept (keep that one in mind).

If you consider today's electronically articulated mannequins to be "artificial humans", the tech companies' never-ending marketing campaigns succeeded swimmingly in brainwashing you into buying their skewed definition of humanity. The same corrupted definitions that allow them to trumpet their mindless chatbots as "artificial intelligence" and phones you can view pictures of cats with as "smart".

What's next, Columbus was the visionariest visionary ever because he alone figured out the Earth is a sphere? Scholars of the time already knew that across the board, and he in fact believed in a false calculation of its size, which led to his expedition. And then he went on to sell off the natives he encountered into slavery... He actually has much in common with the "visionaries" of today's Internet firms, if I think about it.



Ayattar said:


> Why not? If a jellyfish can be immortal then why can't I?


Yeah, why indeed? Maybe because the human body contrasted to that of jellyfish is a _teeny tiny weemsy wamsy_ bit more complex.



> Regardless of that I'll pray for your poor technophobic soul to our  lord, Jesus Christ in heaven, and his mother Mary the holy virgin :sad:


The last refuge of Church of Transhumantologists in face of skepticism regarding the scientific basis of their beliefs: "You're an anti-tech meanie person!"

So, can you actually present any of those so-called "technophobics" and "anti-technology zealots/fundies/extremists" who want us to "climb back on the trees"? I'm asking because last I looked _every single human being on Earth_ (save for feral children) uses some or another form of technology, be it clothing, cutlery or, it could be argued, language. And I sure don't think feral children chose to reject technology.

The "Luddite" falls into the same category as witches and the Men In Black agents of the Illuminati: made-up threats, boogeymen and straw men.



Calemeyr said:


> Jetpacks were stuff if science fiction once. Now they are real.


...and turned out to be completely unfit to be used as a revolutionary new method of transport. See also the Segway.

Which brings me back to the issue of scientific soundness and engineering feasibility. Rocket flight became a reality because individuals and groups the world over could test Oberth et al.'s theories and replicate their results in experiment, what resulted in the international scientific community forming a positive _consensus_ on their work.

Transhumanism is no consensus science. Transhumanuts and Singularitarians are a small fringe in the scientific landscape, for the simple reasons that (1) the majority of their members and even movement leaders lack academic degrees, (2) that they offer no proof whatsoever for their wild claims like "mathematical theorem X can precisely shape future events, Foundation-style" and (3) most damning, that they are not structured like research groups, but as religious cults very much like Scientology!


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## Crimson Wolf (Jun 27, 2014)

I just want to state the subtle irony here of people valuing science are being offended by creationists for not believing in something that has zero scientific backing and value and wanting to take them on faith for the discoveries of tomorrowland.  XD


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## Calemeyr (Jun 27, 2014)

Oh, singularitarians are morons. They think this stuff will happen now and will happen. "Wills" and "nows" are not hallmarks of good science. Science is about maybes and "need to do more work". And then there's engineering. Is it practical?

I would think immediate brain copying wouldn't preserve the "you", so that method is out. A better method would be gradual replacement/enhancement of the brain with artificial features. It would require maintenance, of course. The question then is: what happens from there? Is the individual immortal? Maybe not. What happens when the cybernetic brain becomes old? Might need to gradually replace that one, too. And perhaps the brain must always retain a organic component of the prefrontal cortex in order to maintain a sense of continuation. So it's all moreso longevity rather than immortality. But this isn't uploading, this is enhancement. Perhaps uploading is impossible when it comes to preserving identity. Maybe an uploaded mind should be seen as a child, not one's self.

Maybe we will work on organic brain "maintenance" (stem cell repair) in the decades to come. No uploading yet.


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## Ayattar (Jun 27, 2014)

Lunar expedition was for the first time described in details in the beggining of XIX century, and no, Verne wasn't the first one. It was done without mentioned scientific basis... and it was wrong. Same with robots. And no, I don't consider them to be intelligent in any way. But I can see them becoming semi-intelligent in less than a century. About earth being a sphere, it was actually proven a long time before (in the antiquity), there was though one little problem - the idea was denied because the concept of gravity was not known. Scholars couldn't accept it because according to their knowledge they'd simply fall, so acknowledging it was delayed in time for as long as it was possible. And Columbus was nothing else than a kamikaze. If you studied this subject you'd know that portugese scholars told him that he will run out of supplies before reaching India.

Then explain to me why is this jellyfish studied so intensively.

Also if you'd read my post thoroughly you would know that actual  inventions don't always look and don't always work like they were  imagined. Most of the things that today are total sci-fi will sooner or later come into existance if there won't be any castrophe on the way of course. They may look different, they may work different, they may not have any practical use, but sooner or later they will be built, sometimes just out of curiosity or being influenced by the nerddom. Just as mentioned jetpack. And laser tanks.


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## Eggdodger (Jun 27, 2014)

Gryphoneer, if you would please. Maybe I misspoke, maybe you misinterpreted. I'll meet you halfway and elaborate. The science fiction that isn't flashy, but faces the problems described within them with practical efficiency, are the ones that inspire people _who will actually do something with their lives_. That is because these masterpieces aren't swamped in Hollywood high-grade FX to make science more exciting and kaboom-y. It can be as subtle as the structure of rose petals in a future botanist's garden. The wonders that don't try to catch your attention, and instead seem grounded within the realm of plausibility are what will fascinate the academically-oriented. It's a figurative form of natural selection, but for careers- the future comic book store owner (sorry to any hobbyists out there) will surround themselves with spaceships with laser cannons that have the uncanny ability to make sound in a vacuum (with accompanying explosions), and the future scientist will want to figure out if that fictional pathogen in the novel they're reading that's killing so many people could potentially become real. The hokum and the feasible both attract their respective advocates. You may have heard of Robin Cook, a science fiction author (specifically in the medical thriller sub-genre) who is-- gasp-- a real physician. That's the kind of science fiction I was referring to. It pains me to hear you haven't been exposing yourself to the good stuff. You haven't lived yet. =[

Also, what's with all the moderator action? Do I want to know?


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## Ayattar (Jun 27, 2014)

Aye. I made a joke about Hinalle that according to mods and Calemyr turned to be racist and offensive (and it was). In response Hinalle made similar joke but it was deleted anyways. You missed great fun ;P

Eggdodger, it's enough to point them towards hard sf genre. Shitton of hard sf authors were physicist IRL.


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## Kitsune Cross (Jun 27, 2014)

Ayattar said:


> Hey, no need to worry, it can be done. You just need to replace your brain and nervous system part by part, like, let's say 5% every year. This way there won't be any breaks and you'll simply overwrite yourself on new parts. It will be almost the same as with normal circulation of the atoms. If I remember correctly complete replacement of the atoms in human body takes five years. Does it make you any different?
> 
> I agree though that simple copy-paste ripping human mind on any other medium is a no-no



This actually makes a lot of sense :O

Anyway, I'll like to share a paradox with you,

Suppose you have a wooden ship, and every month you replace part of the ship until you have completely replaced all of it (this could take  lot of time), then you use all the old wood you took from the ship and build another ship exactly like the other one, which ship is the original ship? The old one completely replaced or the old one made out entirely of the original material?


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## Calemeyr (Jun 29, 2014)

Kitsune Cross said:


> This actually makes a lot of sense :O
> 
> Anyway, I'll like to share a paradox with you,
> 
> Suppose you have a wooden ship, and every month you replace part of the ship until you have completely replaced all of it (this could take  lot of time), then you use all the old wood you took from the ship and build another ship exactly like the other one, which ship is the original ship? The old one completely replaced or the old one made out entirely of the original material?


The gradual continuity means it's the same ship. If the ship is burned down and rebuilt, it's not the same ship. So maybe immediate mind uploading would mean you are a copy, not the original thing.


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## The Wolf (Jul 2, 2014)

I guess I'll dump some tech and science news. It's related. 
Future is bright everyone.


Anti-ageing compound set for human trials after turning clock back for mice
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/20/anti-ageing-human-trials

>Australian  and US researchers hope an anti-ageing compound could be trialled on  humans as early as next year, following a key breakthrough that saw the  ageing process reversed in mice.
>The  study, involving Harvard University and the University of NSW,  discovered a way of restoring the efficiency of cells, completely  reversing the ageing process in muscles.
>Two-year-old  mice were given a compound over a week, moving back the key indicators  of ageing to that of a six-month-old mouse. Researchers said this was  the equivalent of making a 60-year-old person feel like a 20-year-old.


3D Bioprinters Could Make Enhanced, Electricity-Generating 'Superorgans'
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/r...e-enhanced-electricity-generating-superorgans

>Bioprinting  technology is advancing so quickly that some scientists believe 3D  printing an entire artificial human organ is only five to ten years off.  That alone is pretty bonkers, science-wise, and could save many lives.  But why stop there? Once you start talking about manufacturing body  parts, the inevitable lurking question is: Can we go beyond just  mimicking biology to make technologically improved humans? 
>Ibrahim  Ozbolat from the University of Iowa, believes that 3D bioprinting will  pave the road to this posthuman future. "There might be some brand new  organ that doesn't exist in the human body, but it can be transplanted  in the human body to enhance the functionality," 
>In  other words, simply replacing failed organs is thinking small.  Bioprinted enhanced organsâ€”or artificial ones that donâ€™t exist in  natureâ€”can be engineered to perform specific, useful functions, such as  treating disease.
>Enhanced,  â€œsuperorgansâ€ that improve upon nature could open the door to a new era  of personalized medicine. Speaking to HuffPost Live, Ozbolat said  bioprinting could be used to create an organ that can generate  electricity in the human body. An electrogenic organ could power  electronic implants, like pacemakers, without the need for batteries.


A gene that stimulates growth of new brain cells in adults
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/coh-coh060614.php

>Over-expressing  a specific gene could prompt growth in adults of new neurons in the  hippocampus, where learning and memory are regulated, City of Hope  researchers have found.
>The study,  which used an animal model, found that over-expression of the TLX gene  resulted in smart, faster learners that retained information better and  longer.
>Understanding the link  between this gene and the growth of new neurons â€” or neurogenesis â€” is  an important step in developing therapies to address impaired learning  and memory associated with neurodegenerative diseases and aging.
>The new research was published June 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


These Extra Arms Will Turn You Into A Super Cyborg
http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/th...p-you-lift-heavy-objects-like-a-super-cyborg/

>The  arms â€œwatchâ€ what your real arms are doing and, using video analysis,  try to pitch in when needed. The project is sponsored by Boeing and the  company hopes to use the technology, called Supernumerary Robotic Limbs,  to help its workforce in factories and loading docks. The system weighs  ten pounds and attaches to your upper or lower back. The creators,  Baldin Llorens-Bonilla and H. Harry Asada, call the system â€œA Robot on  the Shoulderâ€ and hope to bring it to market soon. 
>Another  system would include arms that can move back and create a sort of pair  of tripod-like legs to help support humans as they lift large objects.  These tools are superior to exoskeletons in that they are much lighter  and wonâ€™t trap the user if they break or run out of battery. These extra  arms are also pretty amazing-looking and, with a bit of plastic  cladding and some cool stickers, I could imagine these on the football  fields of the future, massive men horking giant balls at each other  while smacking each other out of the way with their robotic arms.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkXpldrhRm4


Researchers create miniature human retina in a dish
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/jhm-ruh060914.php

>Johns Hopkins researchers have created a miniature human retina in a dish that can sense light.
>The  work, reported online June 10 in the journal Nature Communications,  â€œadvances opportunities for vision-saving research and may ultimately  lead to technologies that restore vision in people with retinal  diseases,â€ says study leader M. Valeria Canto-Soler, Ph.D., an assistant  professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of  Medicine.
>The achievement emerged  from experiments with human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). While  the system doesnâ€™t yet produce images, it could eventually enable  genetically engineered retinal cell transplants that halt or even  reverse a patientâ€™s march toward blindness, the researchers say.


Scientists work on backing up human brain with computers
http://rt.com/usa/tufts-university-human-brain-headband-837/

>A  new state-of-the-art headband is being developed by Tufts University  scientists that could help facilitate communication between the human  brain and computers.
>The new  technology â€“ currently being crafted at the universityâ€™s Human Computer  Interaction Lab â€“ would be capable of scanning an individualâ€™s brain  activity, determining whether the person is mentally aware enough to  handle the task at hand, fatigued, or even bored with what theyâ€™re  doing.
>If ultimately successful,  computer scientist Robert Jacob and biomedical engineer Sergio Fantini  hope to embed the tech in wearable products, such as Google Glass, and  pave the way towards a future in which humans communicate with computers  through thoughts and not tactile commands.


OpenBCI develops an open source brain-computer interface for the masses
http://neurogadget.com/2013/12/13/openbci-develops-open-source-brain-computer-interface-masses/9166

>A  new low-cost, high-quality, and programmable EEG platform has been  announced by OpenBCI, a team made up of two creative technologists in  Brooklyn NY
>In recent years, a  number of commercial EEG platforms have emerged, introducing the  technology into areas including gaming, cognitive therapy, art, and  fashion, just to name a few.
>OpenBCI  plans to retail their just announced device with the software developer  suite under $300, a price comparable to existing commercial BCI  systems.


'Super' banana to face first human trial
http://phys.org/news/2014-06-super-banana-human-trial.html

>A  super-enriched banana genetically engineered to improve the lives of  millions of people in Africa will soon have its first human trial, which  will test its effect on vitamin A levels, Australian researchers said  Monday.
>The project plans to have  the special banana varietiesâ€”enriched with alpha and beta carotene which  the body converts to vitamin Aâ€”growing in Uganda by 2020.
>The  bananas are now being sent to the United States, and it is expected  that the six-week trial measuring how well they lift vitamin A levels in  humans will begin soon.


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## Hinalle K. (Jul 2, 2014)

I guess I must really be a caveman at heart because all of that sounded like bullshit to me


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## Eggdodger (Jul 2, 2014)

The Wolf said:


> I guess I'll dump some tech and science news. It's related.
> Future is bright everyone.
> [Tons of informational articles]



I love you.


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## Kit H. Ruppell (Jul 2, 2014)

Hinalle K. said:


> I guess I must really be a caveman at heart because all of that sounded like bullshit to me


It's a recipe for global catastrophe,  without* heavy* population control. 
We all know _that's _never going to happen


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## DivinePrince (Jul 12, 2014)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_lycanthropy

See a Psychiatrist. Clinical Lycanthropy is supposed to be a severe delusional disorder- it's a psychotic disorder. It is NOT normal to feel this way.


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## Eggdodger (Jul 12, 2014)

DivinePrince said:


> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_lycanthropy
> 
> See a Psychiatrist. Clinical Lycanthropy is supposed to be a severe delusional disorder- it's a psychotic disorder. It is NOT normal to feel this way.



Who are you talking to?


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## Tyranny (Jul 12, 2014)

Eggdodger said:


> Who are you talking to?



They're responding to Reaginicwolf's comment on rather wanting to be bitten by a werewolf, see page 4 & 5.

Instead of waiting for a non-existent creature to bite them, it's better to just wait and hope for uploading to happen in our lifetimes. Speaking of which, when it comes to anthros, the non-biological approach is MUCH easier IMO. No messing around with combining DNA a certain way and hoping it comes out right. Plus the advantages of an android body and brain, not to say there's disadvantages but pros and cons apply to both. When it does get to that point, prosthetics will have the ability to feel, pain as well. And I'm sure once uploading becomes a reality it'll soon be followed by some sort of VR network, so no missing the sensations of taste and such. And I always thought about this, not seeing it as a problem as I'll explain: EMPs, say if a bomb goes off, if your non-biological your dead, yet it's a quicker death then being poisoned by radioactive fallout. So either way you'd be screwed, just a quicker painless way out.

EDIT: Also what does one think about the possibility of owning multiple bodies, each different, along with the VR upload so as to choose what body you want at any given time. This I mean in the far future, yet like I said I think uploading happening in our lifetimes will act as a stepping stone for further advances.


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## DivinePrince (Jul 12, 2014)

I was actually replying to the actual topic of this thread. 'transhumanism' :/ Wishing in any way to have any sort of non human part attached to you is sign of mental illness.

And the reason why a lot of furries are really gross and creepy.


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## Tyranny (Jul 12, 2014)

DivinePrince said:


> I was actually replying to the actual topic of this thread. 'transhumanism' :/ Wishing in any way to have any sort of non human part attached to you is sign of mental illness.
> 
> And the reason why a lot of furries are really gross and creepy.



Well I must seriously be disturbed then. :V I know of that furry psychological study and I'm what you'd call ''undistorted/unattained'' meaning that I see myself as 100% human yet if I got the chance to I'd become 0%. You do know that they once considered homosexuality a ''mental condition'' before rewriting their books. Now this whole thing about ''species dysmorphia'', I have seriously doubted that I had that, MAYBE a bit. Maybe I'm just in denial cause' I already have my hands full with OCD and aspergers. But if I do, then more power to me. I like that. Very much. Thank you. You know there's so many mental conditions making one wonder which are really ''problematic'' or are really ''conditions'' at all. There's even a ''condition'' where people obsess over that they might have one, going to sites like webMD. If I do, it doesn't change a damn thing. Everything I said here is possible. So weither we are all ''crazy'' or not, is irrelevant. I don't care if someone calls me crazy for not wanting to be a pathetic primate. 

Question for you: What are you even doing on these forums then?


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## DivinePrince (Jul 13, 2014)

I look at porn, because porn is good. Furaffinity unlike da lets you post nasty stuff. Gives me something to fap to.

Sucks to be you. You using mental illness as a way to be cool and edgy, kiddy? It's not.
I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder- Sometimes I dread going to my work every single day, I'm afraid to step foot into the store I work at. But I push through it because I don't want to be a recluse like I was before, and I don't want to have to file for Disability Benefits because I'm too afraid to step out of the house.

You're falling down the cracks and I am fucking GLAD I'm not you.
Have fun. I'd rather be shot to death than live your life. At least when I die, I am useful.

What you feel is not right. You should see a psychiatrist.
Until then- I will wait for you to grow up before I can talk to you seriously.
Have a nice day, kid. Have fun in school!


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## Tyranny (Jul 13, 2014)

DivinePrince said:


> I look at porn, because porn is good. Furaffinity unlike da lets you post nasty stuff. Gives me something to fap to.
> 
> Sucks to be you. You using mental illness as a way to be cool and edgy, kiddy? It's not.
> I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder- Sometimes I dread going to my work every single day, I'm afraid to step foot into the store I work at. But I push through it because I don't want to be a recluse like I was before, and I don't want to have to file for Disability Benefits because I'm too afraid to step out of the house.
> ...



Let me put it this way, what I think your saying with this ''clinical lycanthropy'' is bullshit. Or I should say, I just don't give a damn. I'm not using it to be ''cool or edgy''. If I have it, big fucking deal. You like being insulting don't you. You'd rather be shot than live my life? Your acting like I'm parading down the street saying I have it. I sometimes wondered if I do have it, yet didn't really care much if so. If not wanting to be human is ''crazy'' then I guess I am. And no, I'm not seeing a fucking psyche just for shit like this. Get real. And your right about yourself being useful, as fertilizer.


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## Tyranny (Jul 13, 2014)

People are still trying to understand mental conditions, what they are, what their not. People with gender identity disorder today get sex changes. Species dysmorphia will just be like that in the future, through uploading. I will not be going to some psych for something this trivial in my life, especially since it has positive influences on my outlook on my life. I'm not going to be sitting and listening to some doctor saying I can't become this, that'll never happen, the fuck do they know. It's not there field of science. And like I said trying to get me to not believe is impossible, and even if you could, it'll have negative repercussions, depression, whatever else, I've been through that road and I'm NOT going back. I don't care if they label ''not wanting to be human'' as some problem, fuck going to a shrink. If someone has idea's, beliefs that are ''too far out there'' there automatically a loon/should see a shrink. That is a sickening view that society has. Any religion can be seen as a delusion to some, but the reason people aren't all locked up is it's the majority. Now the oddball personal beliefs one can have, that should be treated with the same respect and not like this.


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## Eggdodger (Jul 13, 2014)

DivinePrince said:


> I was actually replying to the actual topic of this thread. 'transhumanism' :/ Wishing in any way to have any sort of non human part attached to you is sign of mental illness.
> 
> And the reason why a lot of furries are really gross and creepy.



Transhumanism isn't just prosthetics. It's also genetic enhancement (either somatic or gametic), which is the area I'm much more interested in, personally. Also, please cite a source for the last part of that first paragraph, please. I'd like to read up on whether or not that's true. Sounds interesting.

I feel bad for the fact you've met the wrong furries. Hopefully your luck turns around.


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## Tyranny (Jul 16, 2014)

Yeah, anyway sorry to everyone for going off like that. So eggdodger, about the genetic side of this, I'm more into the cybernetics side however I support both, but how would you go about making an anthro or even making someone into one, if they chose, without going into mind uploading and areas about cybernetics in transhumanism? Also about what I posted earlier about having access to multiple bodies further into the future, assuming uploading happens in our lifetimes and we get to see it and other things progress, what does everyone think about that?


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## Eggdodger (Jul 16, 2014)

Tyranny said:


> Yeah, anyway sorry to everyone for going off like that. So eggdodger, about the genetic side of this, I'm more into the cybernetics side however I support both, but how would you go about making an anthro or even making someone into one, if they chose, without going into mind uploading and areas about cybernetics in transhumanism? Also about what I posted earlier about having access to multiple bodies further into the future, assuming uploading happens in our lifetimes and we get to see it and other things progress, what does everyone think about that?



I, personally? Well, I'll start with the "making an anthro" bit. First, you have to analyze the moral implications of what you are doing. Scientific discoveries are often made answering the "Why?", and scientific innovation is made once you know "To what end?". For something to be funded, there has to be a perceived need for your invention or research. That gives the impression that any anthropomorphic animal you were to synthesize would have to either have some sort of unique utility that we can't be accomplished in the present day, or can do something more efficiently. If you're simply bringing life into this world because "Why not?" or "I want to", your options for funding are going to be very limited. Not only that, but once you do get this funding, your investors, whether it be government or a corporation, will expect to get something in return. These creatures will be put through the wringer in some fashion, depending on what you said they would be engineered for. That might be physical labor, it could be the production of something, such as human tissues/organs or materials usable in the production of commercial goods, or even used in warfare. Even then, none of this would happen unless it were either more effective in the long run than conventional methods, or the investor had a personal, non-fiscal stake in the project.

As for changing someone's species... When I word it like that, it doesn't seem as plausible, does it? Something such as that would be much more complicated than starting from scratch. Somatic cell augmentation can't make the sort of changes that gametic or zygotic alterations may. It's a lot like trying to dye a colored t-shirt. Your body's already a certain way, and any attempts to change it are not going to have an immediate effect. You'll have to apply the "dye" repeatedly over a long period of time. Currently, the only methods of genetic enhancement are either hormonal supplements or drugs that deliver DNA to your cells, either via an adenovirus or another specially engineered, beneficial pathogen. The benefit of using an adenovirus is that their DNA is double-stranded, like ours. When they inject their DNA (as virus typically do), it either replaces DNA that was not present, or stops the expression of DNA that was there. That has a variety of applications, but changing your appearance is not one of them, presently. It's currently used in the treatment of disease caused by faulty genetics.

As for having "multiple bodies"... that's not too different from a hive mind mentality, is it? Or... do you mean controlling them one at a time? Personally, I think if you were capable, controlling them all would be much more useful in your day-to-day life. I would imagine a synthetic mind would be able to handle doing many more tasks at once.


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## Tyranny (Jul 16, 2014)

Thanks for that info, and I mean't one body at a time. Like having different bodies, each with there own looks etc. stored somewhere and occasionally uploading back and forth. And the VR sim could be used for having virtual bodies/avatars that you don't have IRL. Like in the future if/when uploading becomes advanced enough and the price is lowered to where it's pretty much an everyday thing for some that chose this option to the point where if I wanted one or two extra bodies, like for example if I had a body in the image of a sergal and wanted a second that was in the image of a female nevrean [ type of bird anthro ]. Here's a link about the multiple bodies thing. http://www.futuretimeline.net/23rdcentury/2200-2249.htm#mind-uploading The VR sim would not only be used to experience things you can't as a machine but also have virtual bodies that you'd be able to experience things with, because even if the prices are lowered dramatically on them I think you'd still only be able to get a couple of few so the rest that one would have would be VR and MUCH cheaper.


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## Tyranny (Jul 28, 2014)

Just some interesting info:

About the C.Elegans worm: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...ploading-part-of-our-evolutionary-future.html 

About Morphological Freedom: http://www.aleph.se/Nada/Texts/MorphologicalFreedom.htm 

Question: About Clinical Lycanthropy, does this mean I'm a therian/otherkin? Because I think in order to be one you have to actually believe your non-human and not just will possibly one day become such.


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