[ExI] EP, was Margaret Mead controversy

[Darren Greer]

>>It's not genetic programming that concerns me.  I actually don't see
much future for humanity at all as we pass into the singularity.  We
can change to keep up with our intellectual offspring.  The result
would be something we would not recognize as human. <<

I may be naive about this (and usually am) but isn't there a lot of
perception at work here? If what resulted from these changes to 'keep up'
was not recognizably human, wouldn't it be more likely that we would just
redefine what it meant to be physically (and not necessarily biologically)
and mentally human as we evolved (technologically speaking)? So we'd be no
longer biologically human from our current stand-point? The way that a 12th
century Christian or Islamic physician may see a modern man living with the
heart valves of a pig as no longer human because for him that was the seat
of the soul?


It's a matter of degree, I realize. And the possibility of singularity
(which I'm still trying to get a handle on, I admit) makes orderly progress
and stochastic prediction impossible. But one of the things I struggle with
in terms of TH is figuring out this: if the human body is fully fungible as
many seem to believe then can a simple biological definition be useful to
define what it means to be human if you have already have that awareness?
Whether this biological replacement has reached full potential or not? What
defines being human? If it's not biology (and I am presumably no less human
with an artificial  leg than if all my body parts are replaced and my
awareness uploaded and/or reconfigured) then what it is? If I am able to
self modify and expand into places that I can't currently imagine because of
my biological limitations, then is that being non-human? No longer having
those limitations?

And if humanity is simply the sum total of my limitations (beginning with my
mortality) then you can keep that definition anyway. I've never been a great
believer in we are what we can't do. Tell that someone who can't feed their
children, and see how it flies. At its base level, it is unethical: a
philosophy fed by the oppressor to the oppressed to keep the status quo.
 But, and here's the rub, where in the hell do my ethics come from? Not from
my limitations but my desire to breach them, and free others from theirs if
they are unable to do it for themselves.

I am mightily confused about this, and would like to know what others think.
 I think this may actually be transhumanism 101, but I am just now learning
and absorbing enough to ask this question and actually have a shot at
processing the answer. Even assistance in restating the question into
something less confusing would be helpful.

Darren
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