Trans-humanism

[gamesfanatic04]

What are everyone's thoughts? Also, can it jive with Catholic teaching in any way?

[cmotherofpirl]

how do you define it?

[MichaelF]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' post='1331427' date='Jul 16 2007, 09:14 PM']how do you define it?[/quote]


Yeah, it's a pretty wide category, even using the strict definition.


Could be everything from folks who eagerly await being able to "upload" their consciousness into a digital form (likely impossible, but even if possible, all you get is a program that thinks it's you), to folks who wouldn't mind being able to increase their ability to see in the dark (whether by biological, cybernetic or superglasses).

One of the primary goals is to reduce involuntary suffering. The "Hedonistic Imperative".

As long as the dignity of the human person is respected*, it's not a bad thing. The problems occur when people begin to subscribe to a materialist outlook (essentially the "clothes make the man" philosophy).

There are even those who subscribe to Christian Transhumanism. Many of those are a little to "Teilhard-ish" for my tastes, but some of them are more in line with the Eastern church's outlook on Theosis.

[i]Post[/i]humanism, now.....that's a different story. Lots of the people advocating that are blatant misanthropes, like Hans Moravec. "The world will be better when humans are no longer human", etc. AI Gods, Singularitarianism, and so on.

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism[/url]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthuman_%28human_evolution%29"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthuman_%28human_evolution%29[/url]

It's interesting, but currently academic, as our current "enhancement" technology is just a redirection of therapeutic protocols, and only extends to "tweaks" at best (we can increase EPO output, increase muscle mass, select out known genetic defects, etc). When it works. Not the jumps in capability that the Transhumanists hope for.

Don't expect any real movement on this before, say, 2025 or so.

Iterative change (which is already in effect, due to human breeding habits) is OK. Turning yourself into Man-Bat (or whatever), is not.

Way too many "philosophy" or Compsci types gumming up the dialogue with radical ideas, which serves to egg on the folks who are paranoid about it, while drowning out we Scientists who are trying to tell everyone what is/is not feasible.
The end result is that we now have a bunch of folks ("Bioconservatives", aka neoLuddites), who are mortally certain that this line of research will lead to AI Gods taking over and turning everyone into shrubberies. They argue with people who seem to think [i]being turned into shrubberies by the AI Gods[/i] is a jolly good idea. Meanwhile, actual scientists have to scrape up funding in an environment not condusive to reasoned discourse.

*-which disallows the current SOTA (State Of The Art) genetic protocol (IVF producing multiple zygotes, testing the zygotes for desirable/undesirable traits via PGD, and implanting the acceptable zygotes).

Edited July 17, 2007 by MichaelF