[ExI] transhumanism in fiction

[samantha]

Max More wrote:
> Damien pointed to some interviews with Greg Egan here:
> http://www.gregegan.net/INTERVIEWS/Interviews.html
>
> Some of his anti-(what he thinks is) transhumanism are curious and 
> disappointing:
>
> Egan: I have some quite strong philosophical disagreements with large 
> sections of the transhumanist movement
> I had an email from one transhumanist telling me that it was criminal 
> that every intelligent person in the world wasn't working on 
> uploading, because every significant human problem would be solved 
> once we were immortal software. The blood of all the people who died 
> because uploading didn't come sooner would be on the hands of those 
> who didn't hasten its arrival.

Yes, I have heard this argument.  Or one of several variants at 
different times.  One variation is that the lives of all those trillion 
upon trillions of future beings are in our hands and depend on our 
actions.   And that somehow the rights of these yet to be possibly 
wondrous beings are more important or trump our own concerns by virtue 
of their sheer hypothetical numbers.   Besides, every significant 
problem of human beings will not be overcome by uploading at all.  The 
most significant problems, the one's of internal growth and development 
will certainly remain.  Once transplanted to a different substrate is it 
not that clear most people will even have as much incentive to continue 
to grow and develop as they do now.   No, you can't simply zap them into 
their "all growed up" form.  You have no way to know what that is.   You 
could replace them with a much more together facsimile by your own 
understanding.  But arguably they are no more and never got the 
opportunity to find their way and to keep growing.  
>
> [So, Egan apparently identifies transhumanism with the views of one 
> fanatical person -- or the few who share that view.]
>
> Another transhumanist meme that utterly amazes me is the idea that we 
> ought to be handing the planet over to a benign, super-intelligent AI 
> as quickly as possible.
>
> [Another view that is certainly held by *some* transhumanists, but 
> obviously far from all, and probably a minority.]
>
>
Well, if you show me one such super Friendly AI then I might agree it 
should make most decisions.   But that is not where we are and it is 
very very unlikely such can be created.  The best proposals I have seen 
for how such could be made and should operate are quite unlikely to work 
and are exceedingly dangerous. 


> Many of your stories involve transhuman characters built with 
> incredible, almost magic-like technology. Do you believe this is our 
> future?
>
> I hate the word "transhuman"; it suggests beings who have become 
> something alien and incomprehensible to us.

Well, it may be that human 2.0 is pretty incomprehensible to human 
1.0.   Oh, there will be plenty of similarities but also some quite 
significant differences.  If the intelligence difference is great 
enough, for example, many of the ideas and thoughts of human 2.0 will 
not be comprehensible to 1.0 minds.   Heck, I have met a handful of 
super-geniuses that especially in their most "on" moments are nearly 
impossible for me to comprehend.  How many of us have been in states of 
hyper-functioning where we amazed utterly ever ourselves and felt like 
we were asleep at all other normal times even if our normal state is not 
that comprehensible to many outside our circles?   And that is still 
well within the human 1.0 spectrum.    So I don't see that that 
implication is all that off the mark. 

Emotional structures and such may be much the same?  I am not so sure.  
I hope part of becoming human 2.0 is to understand much more how we tick 
and have greater mastery over our internal states all the way down to 
the brain chemistry level.   

- samantha