Transhumanism: Is A Future Where Men Have Merged With Machines Inevitable?
. I think it explains itself.Transhumanism (uploading into a machine) is the most absurd and dangerous idea ever proposed in history....and it will never work (Thank goodness!). Our minds need normal, worldly experiences to function. Without a normal worldly experience any person will hallucinate and undergo mental dissociation in a few days or at most a week or two. This property is part of the very nature of consciousness itself, and it is not possible to change this. If we think we want something this absurd, we are wrong. This is a more extreme case of the same phenomenon as the rich always feeling like they don't have enough, and the super-rich even being less satisfied with life than the lower middle class. The more technology we have the more we think we don't have enough. We imagine we would be happier in a world which would actually turn out to make us feel even more dissatisfied (or taken to the extreme, mentally disassociated and psychotic) than humans have ever experienced! I think it is should be obvious to any sane person that such a virtual world would be the most miserable thing that could ever be, even if it wouldn't seem that this would be necessarily so. The only way out would be if it acted more or less like the real world. But gosh, we already have the real world, we may as well enjoy it!.
FORTUNATELY, We cannot simulate the whole world using any computational resources that form a subset thereof...To do so would require a classical computer that could surpass the limits of the quantum world in order to simulate it (or else solve the Halting Problem in computing in a way that is not mathematically possible.) This would be so massive as to collapse to a black hole. It is simply impossible to do anything like this, and will always be that way. We have one choice and one choice only: The real world!
"Softer" forms of transhumanism (such as creating a drug, to be taken optionally once a year, that would remove the need to sleep, for instance) have corresponding softer problems associated with them. If bosses, executive directors, and others in positions of abusable power didn't need to sleep, they would expect everyone to work constantly and not take breaks. This is extremely dehumanizing and is worse than the worst slavery that has ever existed. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This will always be so.
I must discuss how to refute what I call an "argument from extrapolation", basically saying that a trend (in technology, society, etc.) has continued for a long time and therefore will (and/or should) continue. Perhaps Ray Kurzweil abuses this type of argument the most, but also a claim that human efforts have always acted to remove natural constraining forces, and therefore should continue to do so, also falls into this category. The rebuttal to this argument is very simple: I once calculated that if the trends over the last 30-40 years in the deadlines for applying to graduate school in the U.S. as a physics student continue unchecked, by the year 2300 everyone will expect applicants to begin writing their Personal Statement while they are still a fetus!! The Romans 1000 years ago could have said that it is obvious based on the trends then existing that by the year 2000, 98% of the world's population will be Catholic - and they would've been DEAD WRONG.
In addition, Much of human effort to this date has focused on getting better fed. However that most certainly does NOT mean most of us would find enjoyable a condition of extreme obesity resulting from the continued pushing forward of this pursuit! Arguments from extrapolation without other reasoning to back them up are JUST PLAIN DUMB.
I have one last thing to say before I finish this. If you still think transhumanism is desirable, please take a cold shower and a long walk in the sun on a beautiful day talking with some good friends about something other than transhumanism. I am reasonably certain that you will enjoy the experience much better than being psychotic and hallucinatory, and YOU KNOW DEEP INSIDE YOU that you like being human. ADMIT IT.
