Transhumanism anybody?

[DC]

I just wanted to know people's views on the subject, responses from my classmates have been quite negative, and I don't quite understand why...

For those of you who don't know, Transhumanism is the artificial advancement of the Human condition, either through robotic enhancements or genetic engineering.

[Midas]

I just wanted to know people's views on the subject, responses from my classmates have been quite negative, and I don't quite understand why...

For those of you who don't know, Transhumanism is the artificial advancement of the Human condition, either through robotic enhancements or genetic engineering.

Can't see a problem with it personally. Whilst I know there are a great many objections from both religious leaders (for obvious reasons!) and from many who see that 'tampering with the human body' is either morally wrong (subjective) or wrong in that only a select few will be able to benefit from it (true to an extent), there are a huge many medical benefits to everyone which emerge from all aspects of research into transhumanism in its widest sense.

I admit to being a substantial (albeit anonymous) contributor to the Methuselah Foundation and the Mprize after having met Aubrey de Gray a number of times a few years ago - an absolutely fascinating guy, although somewhat eccentric in some respects - and I'm in total support of all kinds of genetic and other research into the human condition.

[DC]

A common myth about Transhumanist technologies is that only the rich will benefit from them, while expensive to develop, the technologies are relatively cheap to implement, furthermore the variety of them will virtually destroy any copyright restrictions, and the demand is literally endless = extremely competitive market. Obviously, as with all new things, only the wealthy will have access at first, but it should be no longer than ten years before it becomes common among the middle class, and no more than 15 before it's covered by health insurance and is considered commonplace.

[Syph]

A common myth about Transhumanist technologies is that only the rich will benefit from them, while expensive to develop, the technologies are relatively cheap to implement, furthermore the variety of them will virtually destroy any copyright restrictions, and the demand is literally endless = extremely competitive market. Obviously, as with all new things, only the wealthy will have access at first, but it should be no longer than ten years before it becomes common among the middle class, and no more than 15 before it's covered by health insurance and is considered commonplace.

You say it is relatively low cost.

Surely the human cost of such experiments are tremendously high. How will you find willing volunteers without giving them gigantic wads of cash? Use of prisoners in such ways is extremely unethical to say the least.

What technologies would you enjoy seeing on the market? I wish to critique these ideas to see if they are really "beneficial" to humans.

[DC]

Actually I think quite a number of volunteers would be found. For mechanical Transhumanism, it would first develop to help the disables, lose a leg? We'll give you a brand new mechanical one.
For the genetic Transhumanism, of course much experimentation can be carried out on animals, and eventually I believe mice or pigs will be bred with Human organs, so changes to these organs can be monitored. Obviously this is the one that will have the most opposition, but I believe there is a real need to prevent birth defects, especially mental ones that could not be rectified by Mechanical Transhumanism.

[DC]

The technologies available could be extremely varied, as I said, at first it may only be to benefit those disabled, but eventually I believe the wealthy might ask, why can't I get mechanical legs to replace my real ones so I can run without getting tired or jump extremely high? Later (Much later) I believe that the human brain will be augmented with what are essentially hardrives, so instead of a lap-top to do all your computing, one will simply have a visual overlay in controlled by their mind, to do all the things you'd normally do with a computer. Furthermore, you could, theoretically, store memories on this hardrive, so you'd only have to learn something once to remember it. We could cut school times in half, and children would no longer be limited by their ability, everyone would have the same aptitude at almost all subjects, leaving them to explore the ones they want.

I recommend the books by Peter F. Hamilton for a bit of science fiction that strongly incorporates Transhumanism.