If you've ever heard a talk about trans-humanism before, the title was probably entirely in capitals and had some kind of conspiracy theories inside of it. Watch this for some peace of mind (I didn't make it, BTW)
China is doing just this, having collected DNA of the '2,000 smartest people' they have 4,000 scientists working on identifying the alleles associated with intelligence, they intend to use embryso screening to allow the couple to have the smartest child they would have if they had 100 children. They expect a 5-15 point IQ increase every generation.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWqOiA1JsMU
With NAZI Germany (and everything attached to them having a bad stigma) this stuff (eugenics) has become pretty much taboo, every western country ended their eugenics programs, and even now social stigma has made things like stem cell research and genetic engineering illegal in many western countries (including my country new zealand). Furthermore 'ethics' (not that I believe it is ethical to hold back science, which results in huge ammounts of unnecessary suffering) holds back science heavily, everything you do needs to meet some arbitrary ethics code. Then there is the opinion held by many people that such things shouldn't be allowed because there are always people whom won't be able to afford them and that is not 'fair'.
Petty minded people will always try and stand in the way of progress, for instance some people oppose the adoption of nuclear power, in the case of fukishima (and undoubtable more cases in the future) this was catastrophic as older, less safe (design) reactors are not replaced because of political implications. Despite this nuclear power remains the safest form of electricity in terms of deaths per KW/h, yet every year arround 10K (from memory) people every year die from coal power generation in the USA alone, with a much larger number of people getting respitory disorders and becoming sick from it. Another example is golden rice, a genetically modified rice variant that contains caritine which large numbers of people every year die from because all they can afford to eat is rice, greenpeace opposed this on the principle that GM is bad, the cofounder of that organization quit and denounced them as murders being up there in terms of numbers with stalin, mao and palpot.
I think stuff like this is really interesting but there are people *cough* Alex Jones *cough* that seem to like to have the world in the way it was before.
Here's an example of Alex J. in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9RBXlE86Ng
Now, onto the nuclear energy subject, there are people trying to stop progress there as well, but you didn't mention thorium. There ws a forum artcle a little while ago on it. You seem interested in China and they're now using it for their power.
Computer processing power improvements might just level off, it wouldn't be the first time in human history that a period of advances is followed by a period of stagnation.
Trans-humanists never acknowledge that super-longevity of bodies might also cause super-longevity of out-dated ideas. Even today we can see the damage caused by old people in power clinging to ideas that have long outlived their usefulness.
I also have my doubts about keeping human immune-systems updated for hundreds or possibly thousands of years. (micro-organisms are going to keep evolving, they might just evolve the ability to eat you, if you stick around long enough)
How do they plan on making these advances proliferate ?
I hope that I'm just an ignorant naysayer, but somehow this feels contrived.
" Even today we can see the damage caused by old people in power clinging to ideas that have long outlived their usefulness."
And the reality of this life extension and uber race would be the general demotion of everyone else to slave standard and an even furthering of the current elitist society we live in today.
Besides will farts still be funny when everyone has a 180 IQ ? its the kind of everyday mistakes,funnies and eccentricity of folk that make people interesting and build relationships
Would a 200+ IQ EliteTrans-humanoid be 'satisfied' with a ghetto mod on a PC? OR would they pace up and down for hours inventing something instead? Where there is high IQ there is almost always a lack of 'fun', entertainment and warm humor and general down to earth-ness. Would they think laughing was a waste of time and energy?
Would a race of Spok like people further crush the humanity and 'normality' out of everyday life?
These are the many questions id like to know because just about every seriously intelligent person i have met was part autistic, extremely focused and had a very slim grasp of social interaction. Would Empathy drop off the radar?
This doesn't have anything to do with the matter in hand, kindly remove this randomness or I'll make you listen to my sibling play the violin, then you'll be laughing on the other side of your face.
Not everybody will be onboard with trans-humanism, or have access to it. Singularities are impossible. At least I think so, we can get close to perfection, but not quite hit the mark. Our technology will continue to fail at one point or another, just like everything else on this planet.
Most will ignore this option when it becomes available. I think they would. This is extreme, most would rather remain a joe schmoe.
Is this progress? I often have a knee-jerk reaction to transhumanism because it seems like a utopian concept. Not because we don't have the technology (Because we will, and do have it), but because the execution of it will very likely be unreliable.
Technology often represents power. And for 3rd parties to develop a technology representing that power for consumer use seems like a bad idea. Anywho, I'm not in the right state of mind to elaborate on what I mean. Hence the reason I'm only sharing my knee-jerk reaction to it.
It doesn't feel right in my books, I'll analyze why for the next 24 hours.
It looks to me that this will never work without complete overhaul of our society. Our for profit economy is destroying everything. Within next 10-30 years most of the jobs will be taken over by robots and automated systems. Governments will need to supply electrical power, food, housing, education and medical care this mean this industries and many others will need to be nationalized, or we will be facing complete meltdown of our society. The biggest problem by far is population growth; none of this will ever work if we keep multiplying like rabbits.
As for well being, hunter gatherers living today in South America they are not vicious especially in comparison to their up north neighbors. They are very happy they live in equilibrium with surrounding environment they respect it and they respect each other. People are unhappy because they sit on their fat asses pressing buttons all day thinking that if they buy another piece of useless crap it will make them happy but it will not. And that’s what makes people vicious.
Super intelligence yeah let’s all merge with AI. It looks to me that people involved in developing this super AI will have complete control over the world ”we are borg you will be assimilated resistance is futile” and if you resist United States Air force will bomb you.
I've grown up being taught "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" and this is no exception.
The entire time that I watched this I was asking the questions of "What if somebody uses the AI to control you? What if living longer isn't as great as it sounds? What if by controlling births you are preventing an evolution that could be majorly important to the human race?
The problem that we have as humans is that we think we know everything. My first problem with the video is practicly at the introduction where it says we look at today's world and then look into the future and make decisions based upon that information. That very process of "logic" is insane.
Before the internet people would have told you that it was absolutely crazy to think you could get information from anywhere in the world, with no effort. Under the logic of "look at today's world and make the future" we may never have had the creation of the internet. Those people would have been able to control the future, to snuff out ideas and evolutions that may have lead to one of the greatest achievements of mankind to date. I don't think anyone should ever have that power. There needs to be freedom in this world and evolution is the very foundation of that freedom. It is a path that we CAN'T control and that is what makes it beautiful, we end up in places we never thought possible. Without that type of growth and development we would stagnate as a society/civilization.
The world will always be full of dreamers and sceptics. As PLATO said: "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - basically, if you don't do anything yourself, someone else is going to do it for you.
When I was writing the article I tried to as un-biased as possible, so that you got the full story and not the one from a an extremely biased point that demonises everything.