Transhumanism

[The Mighty Thesaurus]

@Eggcorns : No one is forcing you to live forever. If you believe that life without death is bleak and meaningless, then you can eventually kill yourself. I just ask that I be allowed to wallow in my nihilistic hell.

[Bluggo]

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that Transhumanism would not imply immortality at all.

Even in the wildest post-singularity scenario, death would still be unavoidable - sure, you'd never age, pretty much every non instantly-lethal damage could be repaired in some way, and you'd even have a gazillion of "backup copies" (although I never saw the point of them: maybe I am subscribing to an outmoded theory of self, but in my opinion a exact copy of me or an upload of my brain would just be a separated individual, and their survival would be of no use to my deceased self), but given an infinite time you'd be bound to fall victim of some strange, extremely improbable incident sooner or later.

By Tithonus' wrinkles, if nothing else managed to get you then cosmological heat death eventually will - if I remember correctly, Asimov wrote a very fun short story about this.

Actually, that's part of what I am not getting about Transhumanism: it seems to me that its central dogma is "cool stuff will happen", and I kind of agree with that - at the very least, I agree that the scenarios it hypothesizes are cool and I believe that they could happen.

But then it goes on and says that augmented humans would be "greater" than humans in some unspecified metaphysical sense, and actually not human anymore: and this sounds like a dangerous foolishness to me.

I mean, not aging anymore? Yes thanks!
Imperviousness to accidental forms of death? Sure!
More brainpower than several modern-day Earths? By Minerva's helmet, yes, I'd love it!

But even if I had all of this and more, I would still be simply a man with shiny, shiny tools, not some kind of post-human entity: maybe my powers would seem "godlike" to your garden variety of modern-day humans, but after all our actual capabilities would probably have seemed godlike to Bob the Cro-Magnon flintknapper.

This is not just semantics: somehow linking personal worth with intelligence, as some forms of Transhumanism seem to suggest, is in my opinion wrong and immoral in the most complete meaning of the word.
All self-conscious creatures are worth the same. I am neither more than a Down kid nor less than Feynman, and an hypothetical post-singularity ubergenius would be precisely as valuable as any of the three of us - in my opinion, to deny this would be simply horrific.

[Yakk]

Now what if 5 conscious beings decided to inhabit the same body?

100?

1 million?

What if one intelligence "ran" 1 billion conscious beings as a "sub process"?

What if they all controlled individual physical bodies, and if the bodies died, so did their thread in the being?

What if they didn't control individual physical bodies, but just virtual ones?

What if they didn't die when their bodies did?

When you say "all conscious beings are equal in value", what are your coins?

[Bluggo]

Now what if 5 conscious beings decided to inhabit the same body?

100?

1 million?

I am not sure why they would want to. But if it were possible and if they did it, I do not see the problem: they would still be 5 different conscious beings, or 100, or 1 million.

What if one intelligence "ran" 1 billion conscious beings as a "sub process"?

If 1 billion beings "shared" brainpower through some kind of distributed system, or if they were implemented as 1 billion independent processes running on the same "hardware", they would still be 1 billion different beings, I think.

What if they all controlled individual physical bodies, and if the bodies died, so did their thread in the being?

What if they didn't control individual physical bodies, but just virtual ones?

What if they didn't die when their bodies did?

When you say "all conscious beings are equal in value", what are your coins?

Well, I still do not see the problem. If they are individual conscious beings, every one counts as one; if it is a single, distributed conscious being then it counts as one. The body does not matter, the physical implementation of the mind does not matter, the nature of the reality they perceive does not matter.

I will not deny that in some cases it may be difficult to decide what is a conscious being and what isn't, but this is already an open problem - singularities, strong AI and new forms of intelligence would change nothing, from this point of view.

For example, how much brain damage is required for a person to stop being a conscious being?
A brain-dead human is clearly not a conscious being, and an healthy, sane individual obviously is, but what about borderline cases?

We have no universally agreed-upon rule, for the moment - and this is why there was so much debate about, say, the Schiavo case, or why we are still arguing about abortion rights.
But still, the concept of consciousness has its uses, and I hope that if people keep discussing they will eventually reach an agreement over a satisfying, verifiable definition of consciousness.

[Insignificant Deifaction]

@EggCorns:

Why do you assume everyone would even want to appear human? Let alone be an idealized version of one?

There are people that want to be raptors.

People that want to look like Cthulhu could be their daddy.

People that want to look like something Cap'n Kirk2.0 slept with.

Etc.

Transhumanism doesn't imply conformity, the only conformity is that everyone is different. Inverse conformity?

[Goplat]

I knew that once I taught my brain to recognize set patterns among the stars, I would never be able to go back to seeing them as an organic, sparkling mass; I'd just see my constellations and the “other” stars.

I'd say that's just yet another flaw in the current human brain; it's not capable of temporarily disabling memories at will (only at random, which really sucks).

[Yakk]

What if one intelligence "ran" 1 billion conscious beings as a "sub process"?

If 1 billion beings "shared" brainpower through some kind of distributed system, or if they were implemented as 1 billion independent processes running on the same "hardware", they would still be 1 billion different beings, I think.

There is one being, built to be really smart.

She's so smart that she has a simulation running that contains 1 billion conscious beings -- beings more than capable of passing the Turing test. She consciously determines the actions of every simulated neuron in these simulated beings -- she just thinks that fast. Sometimes she makes the neurons do something different than they would do under a "raw simulation", because it amuses her.

And if she stops tweaking the neurons of a given person, that person stops. It isn't "automatic", it is the rough equivilent of moving a marionette, or imagining the structure of a bridge. Except this being is imagining the complete thoughts, actions and perceptions of a fully sentient being.

Sometimes she takes a being she imagines and forks it into a few million copies and sees what happens if the being reacts differently, or if the environment appears different. Then she picks one to continue working on, or maybe picks a thousand.

She has been thinking about this game for about 20 seconds, over which the billion beings she is imagining have lived for 50 to 100 generations. In about 10 more seconds, she plans on stopping this flight of fancy and working on an interesting, tricky physics problem. This plan (to think about the billion beings for about 30 seconds) was made before she started the flight of fancy.

...

One could argue that there are more than a few "phase changes" in the nature of intelligence. Life is different than non-life, even really stupid one-celled bacteria. Humans are different than one-celled bacteria -- you are using the term "conscious" to describe this, which is a reasonable term. There are probably multiple such "phase changes" between Humans and non-living crystals.

I propose that there are imaginable phase changes above humans that are larger than the difference between Humans and bacteria. What I described above is a being at least a phase change above Humans, for whom categorizing it with a single Human being is somewhat similar to holding equal value between a Human and a one-celled bacteria -- I mean, they are both alive!

That being I described is less a conscious being than a conscious universe.

And if you can start seeing beings whose mental capacity places them on a different phase of "alive" than a human, then the question is how, when and if?

And my answer is, I dunno.

[Bluggo]

A fascinating scenario, but I still would not think of such a creature as of something qualitatively different from a non-improved human being.

It seems to me that the relation between a typical person of the early 21th century and that being would be similar to the relation between, let's say, the ENIAC and a modern supercomputer: the latter is obviously much more powerful, and can easily simulate a stupidly big number of instances of the former, but essentially both are nothing more than Turing-equivalent universal machines - given enough time and memory space, the ENIAC could theoretically do everything the supercomputer could do.

The relation between non-living matter and living matter and the one between living but unconscious matter and living and self-conscious matter are, I think, of a completely different nature: an amoeba is not just an improved slab of granite, and it does things that would be pointless to ask whether the granite can do.

And analogously, it's not that humans have better philosophical insights than sponges: simply put, sponges have no insights - they eat food, they reproduce, and that's pretty much all their life is about.

I do not exclude the possibility of higher states of being, as different from a human as a human is from a flatworm: after all, the Universe is still young, and evolution will hopefully keep going on.

But, in my opinion, the augmentation of human intelligence by technological means has no hope of achieving such a result: if, as I think could be the case, it will be realizable in a relatively near future, that's an excellent thing and I am all for it - but as I see it, trying to jump higher does not mean that we will eventually learn how to fly.

Then again, maybe I will be proved wrong

[Yakk]

But the same is true of the ENIAC and us, as far as we can tell.

The ENIAC, given enough time and memory space, could run a complete physical simulation of a human being. The time and memory required to do this is ridiculously huge compared to... well, let's just say big, but not big compared to G₆₄.

So should we consider an ENIAC conscious? I'd say no.

...

I suppose if you are a dualist, you wouldn't agree. But then there isn't much point in talking with someone about matters of faith.

[Indon]

@EggCorns:

Why do you assume everyone would even want to appear human? Let alone be an idealized version of one?

There are people that want to be raptors.

People that want to look like Cthulhu could be their daddy.

People that want to look like something Cap'n Kirk2.0 slept with.

Etc.

Transhumanism doesn't imply conformity, the only conformity is that everyone is different. Inverse conformity?

Within a sufficiently technologically advanced culture, how would looking like a raptor or tentacle-thing be any different than wearing a sweater is in this one?

We'd still all be human, as far as they're concerned; we'd still all look human, again as far as they're concerned. We just wouldn't look like humans consider themselves to look now (which would probably be true in a culture without any transhuman events occuring, given sufficient time).

That's largely what I think of transhumanism; we're never going to 'become more' than humanity because humanity is us, and its' definition will tailor itself to us, regardless of the methods we have used and will in the future use to improve ourselves.

And I'm not so sure I need something so complex as a philosophy to tell me that life gets better as technology continues to develop.

[Bluggo]

The ENIAC, given enough time and memory space, could run a complete physical simulation of a human being. The time and memory required to do this is ridiculously huge compared to... well, let's just say big, but not big compared to G64.

OK, but you added something else: you gave the ENIAC an algorithm which simulates faithfully a human being.

I heard good arguments both for and against the existence of such an algorithm, but let's assume that it exists and will eventually be found - personally, I have no strong opinions about this, but I have the feeling that a positive answer is more likely (not to mention, far cooler).

In this case, I am pretty sure that it will have to be a rather complex algorithm, far more elaborated, for example, of the relatively trivial one which maps the instruction set of the ENIAC into the instruction set of a modern computer.

Then one *could* say that the ENIAC, when running this algorithm, is a sentient entity just like a human being, albeit slower; but still it would make no sense to say that any computer, no matter how powerful, is an human-like entity when all it does is running Microsoft Bob

As far as I know, the position alternative to dualism in philosophy of mind states that the human mind is a Turing machine and a rather clever programming: saying that the human mind is a Turing machine and nothing else would be kind of nonsensical, after all.

[Yakk]

Then the intelligence that is manually running 1 billion simulations of human-level intelligences also has something extra: as humans, we don't know how to simulate a human.

My point is, a being who can in a day dream create a reality that is about as complex as the one we inhabit is not merely "conscious", not if you are using "conscious" to mean "has equal value" in any trade-off sense. If you mean "value" in a sense that doesn't allow for tradeoffs, then what exactly do you mean by "the value of all conscious entities is the same"?

[Bluggo]

Then the intelligence that is manually running 1 billion simulations of human-level intelligences also has something extra: as humans, we don't know how to simulate a human.

Well, actually we kinda do - again, the difference is only quantitative.

Humans are singularly skilled at inferring, from obviously insufficient clues and within a reasonable degree of accuracy, what the behaviour of a fellow individual will be: I suppose that the reason is because evolution optimized our brain for the purpose of managing social interactions.

Moreover, a good writer is perfectly able to describe an individual, his thoughts and his reactions under a variety of circumstances in such a realistic way that it would be extremely difficult - if not impossible - to discover whether the resulting piece of literature is a faithful chronicle or just a piece of fiction: after all, people pass the Turing Test by default

The super-intelligence you described would do more or less the same thing, only much faster and better - so better, actually, that her fictional characters would not be fictional at all, but rather some weird kind of parallelized, temporary "split personalities".

Under every aspect, a post-singularity entity like that would be just like a human, only better: in order to belong to a whole new state of being, it would have to be able to do something that humans are not even able to conceive - and not for mere lack of raw processing power, but rather for the same reasons why a potato (or even a computer without a strong AI) is not able to discuss about Plato's Republic, or why a brick is not able to absorb nutrients through the roots.

All the proposals of Transhumanism seem to me to be "more of the same". They do not add anything truly new to the human nature, they just take what is already there and make it better: after all, the mere fact that we can reason about a conscious creature with the ability X implies that such ability is not completely outside of the scope of our imagination, and this is enough to conclude that that creature would belong to our same ontological category.

EDIT: fixed a couple of spelling mistakes.

[Belial]

Of course, but since we can't imagine that level of achievement and faculty, we can just build toward it until we can.

[Gadren]

If any of you are interested, there's a webcomic called Desden Codak which has a lot of transhumanistic themes in it.

[Bluggo]

Of course, but since we can't imagine that level of achievement and faculty, we can just build toward it until we can.

I can somewhat agree with that.

However, if such levels exist and are achievable - and I do not really know that, though I sure hope so - then I really doubt that all we need in order to reach them are a massively improved intelligence and a longer lifespan.

Not that I would dislike these things, of course: but it seems to me that Transhumanism assumes that once we obtain them we will have reached the full human potential and unlocked the next level of existence - and this, I think, is incorrect and actually underestimates humankind.

As I see it, humanity is still in its infancy: we have still much to do, and much to learn, before even starting to think about what the next "phase" will be like.

EDIT: Gadren, I read Dresden Codak - it's one of my favourite webcomics, I only wish it updated more often.

[Indon]

I can certainly agree that future great leaps in our development will be more or less uncomprehendable to us as of now. We've already made advances that were more or less uncomprehendable to people in the past (even changes as recent, and supposedly simple, as computer miniaturization, were largely unforseen until after the fact).

I think the next "phase" isn't long in coming. This one - a civilization more focused around knowledge than raw materials - happened pretty fast, historically speaking. But I don't think that phase will be characterized by super-human robots or genetic retroviral engineering completely restructuring our bodies.

I think the phase will catch us entirely by surprise, lead us to completely revise our culture (again), and in hindsight be completely obvious.

[Yakk]

Then the intelligence that is manually running 1 billion simulations of human-level intelligences also has something extra: as humans, we don't know how to simulate a human.

Well, actually we kinda do - again, the difference is only quantitative.

Humans are singularly skilled at inferring, from obviously insufficient clues and within a reasonable degree of accuracy, what the behaviour of a fellow individual will be: I suppose that the reason is because evolution optimized our brain for the purpose of managing social interactions.

And dogs can understand what people say, the difference is only quantitative.

Heck, a plant owned by someone can "tell" if someone is sufficiently upset, because the person suicides and stops watering them. They wilt in response.

The difference is only quantitative.

Moreover, a good writer is perfectly able to describe an individual, his thoughts and his reactions under a variety of circumstances in such a realistic way that it would be extremely difficult - if not impossible - to discover whether the resulting piece of literature is a faithful chronicle or just a piece of fiction: after all, people pass the Turing Test by default

All writings by people about other people are either ridiculously vague or inaccurate compared to what actually happened.

I'm talking about a being who can describe what a person does so well that the description is actually a sentient being, with feelings, emotions, thoughts and memories. Heck, as I described it, that being could even have biology going on.

I'm talking about creating worlds as real as the one you and I live in as an act of imagination. The beings in it not being able to determine that they are merely figments of another beings imagination, fully as intelligent as we are, who could experiment with the imagined physics and advance entire civilizations within a daydream.

We cannot do this -- we are working on it (see virtual worlds and various shared worlds), but our efforts are about as pitiful as a dog barking is us discussing Plato's Republic.

Both the dog's barks and our discussion are forms of communication. But if you hold that humans are different than dogs in some phase change sense, there is something more going on with our Plato's Republic discussion.

If you hold that dogs and humans are at the same level, then replace dog with an algae who communicate through chemical messages.

On top of that, you have the possibility of creating consciousness who is not tied to a specific physical substrate. For direct communication in a way that is about as profoundly above Plato's Republic as the Republic is about woof, sharing memories or thoughts or patterns of oneself directly. These aren't just "it's talking, only more", unless you are willing to say that we are doing nothing more profound than barking by making the posts in this thread on the internet.

And once again back to the problem of "do these consciousnesses have equal value" -- value implies a measuring stick and trade-offs between them. So would killing a "galaxy-mind" containing, as day-dreams, entire realities populated by billions of billions of intelligences be no worse than killing Bob over there? If one of the many sub-intelligences of the galaxy-mind where to threaten Bob with lethal force, would you be justified in killing the entire galaxy-mind to protect Bob?

...

And no, I don't expect merely "nigh immortality" and "everyone is as smart as the smartest person who has lived to today in any specific subject" would be enough to push oneself to this level. We'd need to figure out how to construct intelligences that are not bound to our substrate and can be expanded. We need to make them enough smarter than ourselves that they can build even smarter versions of themselves. Then let that recurse a few million times.

[apotheosis]

It seems that much of the angst caused by the notion of transhumanism is that after, let's say, a few thousand year's worth of ostensibly moving toward the ideal of removing all our -isms (racism, sexism, classism, etc.) we are on the cusp of introducing a new one, and that anyone who is either left out or opts out of that sparkly future will be at best second-class citizens or at worst exterminated. The history of our species is rife with such occurrences (see Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel for details). If we are prepared, though, we may just be able to sort out all the dangers (or design things such that unexpected dangers are handleable, like the framers of the Constitution seem to have managed) so that everyone can be accommodated. Save for evangelical zealots, of course, with their tendency to be upset about what other people do or don't do.

Also, we must remember that a post-Singularity being does not automatically have increased skill or intelligence, but rather has massively increased capacity. I fully expect to sit in my mechanical body for hours on end and watch clouds, but doubt that I will spend much time in a laboratory. I may be able to upload the mechanics of piano playing, but that doesn't imply that I'll be suddenly able to rival Beethoven. Having a fast brain, or photographic memory, or any atypical advantage does not guarantee inspiration or ability.

[Belial]

Also, we must remember that a post-Singularity being does not automatically have increased skill or intelligence, but rather has massively increased capacity. I fully expect to sit in my mechanical body for hours on end and watch clouds, but doubt that I will spend much time in a laboratory. I may be able to upload the mechanics of piano playing, but that doesn't imply that I'll be suddenly able to rival Beethoven. Having a fast brain, or photographic memory, or any atypical advantage does not guarantee inspiration or ability.

Which is where immortality kicks in. I imagine that if I had all the time in the universe, I probably wouldn't do much with it for the first little while. But after a while, I'd probably go "hey, why not laboratory science? That'll kill a decade or 5 for sure!"

[apotheosis]

But after a while, I'd probably go "hey, why not laboratory science? That'll kill a decade or 5 for sure!"

Exactly. Plus, since your brain will likely still be massively parallel but running on a thousandfold faster substrate, that five decades will be more like half a millennium by today's standards. Also, your options become exponentially (ha!) more exotic: "Say, I think I'll spend a few days swimming around the Atlantic as a shark!" or "I think I'll make Nazca Line drawings of spiders on the Moon using only my foot prints!"

The notion that immortality equals boredom is ludicrous. Again: "Arthur Philip Dent?" Given our creative nature, there will always be things to do and learn, even after we know everything.

[Yakk]

I am against holding someone back because someone else cannot or will not follow.

While Jealousy is a huge part of human motivation and happiness, it doesn't mean I have to agree that kow-towing to it is justified.

[Aluminus]

I'm talking about a being who can describe what a person does so well that the description is actually a sentient being, with feelings, emotions, thoughts and memories. Heck, as I described it, that being could even have biology going on.

What if this being was a computer?
If Transhumanism is about augmenting the human body and mind with technology, where would we know when to draw the line between heap of machine-junk and genuine living being?

Could Transhumanism also be about bringing our technology up to human-level? We would need to work on that before we would be able to say that we have significantly changed what it means to be human. If we could build a computer that was able to simulate a galaxy-mind, and then we decided to put that machine into a human, does that change the human significantly? I mean to say: Is it possible for technology to genuinely change what it means to be human?

Not that I would dislike these things, of course: but it seems to me that Transhumanism assumes that once we obtain them we will have reached the full human potential and unlocked the next level of existence - and this, I think, is incorrect and actually underestimates humankind.

I think that we would have to establish the existence of these "levels" before we attempt to attain them.

[Yakk]

Well, yes, of course -- almost any intelligence on that scale would probably be "built" rather than "grown", although the building might look like growing. Calling it a "computer" is sillier than calling a modern computer an "electricity-powered abacus variant" -- it brings to mind the wrong set of capabilities.

[Systemic]

Humans are nothing but an intersect of quantum mechanics and chemistry (quantum mechanics for self-awareness {I speculate} and chemistry for everything else, and both of them intermingled somewhat inseparably). Transhumanism thus is an attempt to conciously manipulate the chemical interactions and structures in our physical bodies to facilitate a perpetuation of an "optimal" or "superoptimal" chemical base for the quantum-mechanical conciousness. That means that we, as concious beings, could do much more than what we could with our limited base given to us by random chance. I do see how this could lose us of our ability to interact with other conciousnesses in the way we've decided is moral for human society, but then again, morals are a way for humans as such constructs as we are to perpetuate an "optimal" or "superoptimal" way of interacting with each other. I'll post more about this later as I think about it.

[Nath]

Humans are nothing but an intersect of quantum mechanics and chemistry (quantum mechanics for self-awareness {I speculate} and chemistry for everything else, and both of them intermingled somewhat inseparably). Transhumanism thus is an attempt to conciously manipulate the chemical interactions and structures in our physical bodies to facilitate a perpetuation of an "optimal" or "superoptimal" chemical base for the quantum-mechanical conciousness. That means that we, as concious beings, could do much more than what we could with our limited base given to us by random chance. I do see how this could lose us of our ability to interact with other conciousnesses in the way we've decided is moral for human society, but then again, morals are a way for humans as such constructs as we are to perpetuate an "optimal" or "superoptimal" way of interacting with each other. I'll post more about this later as I think about it.

I don't see why quantum mechanics is necessary or sufficient for self-awareness. Why couldn't we be entirely 'chemical base'?

[Belial]

I think that we would have to establish the existence of these "levels" before we attempt to attain them.

I don't think so. We don't, historically, worry about defining the levels of civilization before we build toward them. We just build, and improve, and then look back and go "Huh. Our development seems to have fallen into some stages or something...."

[Systemic]

Humans are nothing but an intersect of quantum mechanics and chemistry (quantum mechanics for self-awareness {I speculate} and chemistry for everything else, and both of them intermingled somewhat inseparably). Transhumanism thus is an attempt to conciously manipulate the chemical interactions and structures in our physical bodies to facilitate a perpetuation of an "optimal" or "superoptimal" chemical base for the quantum-mechanical conciousness. That means that we, as concious beings, could do much more than what we could with our limited base given to us by random chance. I do see how this could lose us of our ability to interact with other conciousnesses in the way we've decided is moral for human society, but then again, morals are a way for humans as such constructs as we are to perpetuate an "optimal" or "superoptimal" way of interacting with each other. I'll post more about this later as I think about it.

I don't see why quantum mechanics is necessary or sufficient for self-awareness. Why couldn't we be entirely 'chemical base'?

I think that the quantum-mechanical part of it has to do with the interaction of the chemical part of ourselves. Like Brownian motion; that's influenced by quantum physics but can involve chemicals.

[Robin S]

Brownian motion has very little to do with quantum physics.

[TheStranger]

I don't see why quantum mechanics is necessary or sufficient for self-awareness. Why couldn't we be entirely 'chemical base'?

There are some interesting theories that indicate that the operation of the human brain may be linked to quantum processes an example (.pdf)

[Yakk]

Humans exist at a scale where we can ignore Quantum processes.

The environment of the brain -- warm and wet -- is very ill-suited to any kind of Quantum information processing. One would expect any entangled states to rapidly collapse before any significant amounts of Quantum information processing to occur in that environment.

Ie, the Brain is the kind of environment in which QM can be abstracted out and turned into a more classical mechanics and you'd end up with pretty much identical predictions.

It would be like, say, expecting tachyons to be part of our thought processing. Tachyons don't interact with normal matter all that much, and there isn't anything in the brain that would be very good for dealing with Tachyons. The Brain doesn't look like anything that would be good at interacting with Tachyons.

Similarly QM. The brain does not look like a Quantum information processing device. It doesn't carefully prevent collapse and preserve entanglement. There are no cold vacuum chambers in our brain. Instead, everything is covered in warm water, which bounces off things and causes "Quantum collapse" willy nilly before any significant amount of material could produce a large entangled state.

Now, we could find out that the hypothalamus is perfectly designed to be a Tachyonic resonator, or that the microtubes in our neurons produce a quantum isolation effect on the vacuum energy contained inside of them: but this is not very likely, and is off in pink unicorn land.

...

To give you an idea, that paper opens up with "microwave resonance of the acupuncture system", and claims implications from medical to religious. It screams "Hi! I'm a pseudo-science quack!"

[Nath]

I don't see why quantum mechanics is necessary or sufficient for self-awareness. Why couldn't we be entirely 'chemical base'?

There are some interesting theories that indicate that the operation of the human brain may be linked to quantum processes an example (.pdf)

I've heard some of these theories, but they all seem rather speculative. I'm not aware of any aspect of human behaviour that can only be explained by quantum mechanics.

[pKp]

I just knew I would find a H+ topic somewhere around here.
Haven't got much to add, but I have recently seen a very old (1998) interview by Kurzweil, where he says something like that :
- Let's imagine we have a technology like MRI, only more powerful, describing the brain's behavior with one-neuron precision.
- Now let's imagine we have sufficiently powerful hardware, with sufficient stocking capacity, to memorize and reproduce those behaviors.
Eventually this would create a copy of a person's mind, but it would function at computer speed, no longer limited by slow ass-chemical mecanisms.
(I must be wrong somewhere, please feel free to tell me where).
Also, Singularity is a reference to black holes, and to the fact that, just like our current model of physics doesn't allow ust to see past black-hole singularities*, our current model of thinking doesn"t allow us even to imagine what would (will ?) be the post-Singularity world. Kind of like asking the first Homo Sapiens to conceptualize, dunno, Slashdot.

*Please note that I have never studied physics, and I probably use that jargon all bad. Apologies to all physics-jargon-nazis.

[apotheosis]

Kind of like asking the first Homo Sapiens to conceptualize, dunno, Slashdot.

I disagree. Remember that the engine that drives Kurzweil's view of the advent of the Singularity is exponential growth of technology, and that we are much further along the time axis--right at the knee of the curve, he says. So, we are indeed better able to imagine all sorts of exotic futures, as a short visit to the sci-fi section of any bookstore will demonstrate. Kurzweil himself spends that last third or so of The Singularity is Near doing that very thing. This is essentially all a futurist does, yes?

The sci-fi reference above leads me to another question: What term would be best to describe this brave new world that has such people in it? What about the people themselves?

It would have to be at least moderately understandable to lay people, reasonably descriptive, and damn catchy. Here is a brief list of terms I have seen mentioned:

The Bitchun Society. I unreservedly despise this term, entertaining source material notwithstanding. Equating all of the hard-won marvels of the future with empty-headed mid-1980s surfers is idiotic and sickening. I suppose we'll all refer to each other as "dude" too. That the initials are BS is also not helpful. Ideal person of the future? Jeff Spicoli.

Transhumanism. This term, as shown in microcosm in this very thread, appears to be a useful shorthand, but I think may also dredge up the notion that post-Singularity humans are more than human. Homo Superior. Our notion of "human" will change, perhaps drastically, but that has happened many times already without resorting to coining new terms. Instead, the definition of "human" has become more inclusive (think 2/3 of a vote, or "barbarians" sacking Rome). The term shouldn't frighten lay people.

H+. While I like that this conjures the H from the periodic table and seems more scientific, it suffers from the same problem as transhumanism. I am still a human even though I wear glasses, and would be with an artificial hip or pacemaker, and will be even after I cross some arbitrary line of "too much" augmentation.

Or is it best to deliberately avoid a label entirely? Neo-Luddites will have a more difficult time working against an unnamed, pervasive opponent than they would if they could just call the entire movement "card-carrying Singularitarians". Oh, I can see the commercials now....

For that matter, is there even a movement? Or is this just life, with people like us in this narrow niche of XKCD fora readers being the only ones compelled to have a label thanks to our years of sci-fi and so on? We retroactively label eras, but then you end up stuck with things like the Modern movement ending 30 years ago and the name-only-makes-sense-in-the-academy Post Modern movement already passing, even though now is still now.

Ugh.

I think I just need to soak this problem in some nice Irish whiskey for a good long while. More as lubricated synapse closings warrant.

[Robin S]

For my part, I dislike placing too much emphasis on a label.

[Belial]

labels are useful shorthand.

[Robin S]

I agree. There's nothing wrong with labels, but I dislike placing too much emphasis on them. For example, it is useful to use "human" as a label, but if the line between humanity and artificial intelligence becomes sufficiently blurred then the label has limited use. Taking an analogy from the "taking teenagers seriously" thread, while one person may clearly be an adolescent and another may be equally clearly an adult, there is no defining boundary between the two (excepting for legal purposes - and so far as I am aware, "adolescence" is not legally defined anyway). So, when a person is at a period in their life when they are in transition between adolescence and adulthood, trying to label them definitively as one or the other becomes a fruitless task.

[apotheosis]

All language is essentially just metaphorical labels though, isn't it? People seem to have a need to label everything, after a fashion, and this new thing is quite possibly the biggest new thing that will ever happen.

In any event, the question was really how we should practically refer to the soon to be rapidly changing nature of humanity. You and I might not need a simplistic label, but nearly the entire balance of humanity does. It would be nice to settle on some term and work it into common use before a marketing zombie gets something asinine to stick to the wall in an ad agency somewhere.

Maybe something arbitrary, like XKCD? Or something subtle, like Future with a capital F? I initiate conversations about this topic often enough to be aggravated that I have to always refer to it as "this possible future" or something equally inelegant. In the aforementioned Doctorow novel^* he offhandedly calls it "the end of scarcity", which works in a broad sense. The TLA is not all that bad either: EOS.

* Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is novella length at best. I've read longer Henry James short stories.

[Indon]

I'd just call it the future.

I don't see how humanity in the future is going to be any different than it has been; we've already experienced radical reengineering of ourselves and our environment, and exponential technological development. What makes this 'singularity' any different than what we've fundamentally been doing for thousands of years now, other than that we'll be better at it?

[The Mighty Thesaurus]

I don't see how humanity in the future is going to be any different than it has been

I rather think that's the point.