[ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

I agree on all that you say Samantha, and your "human = just a matter
of how you plan to chose to label whatever it is that you become" is a
valid point.
But I could say the same of that toddler who was playing with blocks
so many years ago. I am not him according to every objective criteria
that I can think of, but I am him in some other very real sense.
G.

On 5/6/07, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote:
> > I always had some doubts on "transhumanism" as a marketing buzzword,
> > but I like "posthumanism" even less. The term implies a rejection of
> > our humanity and a desire to become something else.
> >
> > What we want to become is clear to us: we want to remain more or less
> > ourselves but move to much better bodies and much smarter minds. But
> > for our opponents it is easy to construct "posthuman" as eliminating
> > tender and loving humans and replacing them with cold and heartless
> > machines.
> >
> > If and when I will be a computational superintelligence roaming the
> > galactic web, I will still be a human in better shape and with some
> > more toys to play with.
> >
> I don't see how you can say that with such apparent confidence.  You
> most likely will not find a normal human body form at all useful for
> roaming the galactic web and will find it a hindrance for many tasks.
> You are likely to have understood you EP and reworked your psychology to
> be substantially more supporting of your activities which are distinctly
> quite different from what EP was bred by an for.  So psychologically you
> are very unlikely to have much in common with humans.   With a vastly
> increased intelligence including greatly increase concentration upon
> likely many tasks in parallel, perfect memory, vastly improved decision
> processes and access to huge fully integrated stores of information it
> is quite unlikely that you experience of reality including you
> experience of yourself will be at all what we think of as human.
>
> So exactly how will you still be a human?   Is it just a matter of how
> you plan to chose to label whatever it is that you become?
>
> - samantha
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