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Eamonn Healy - Chemistry professor at University of Texas (2001)
If we're looking at the highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution of the organism and then at the development of its interaction with the environment. Evolution of the organism will begin with the evolution of life perceived through the hominid coming to the evolution of mankind. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man. Now, interestingly, what you're looking at here are three strings: biological, anthropological -- development of the cities -- and cultural, which is human expression.
Now, what you've seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that are involved here -- two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it -- you're beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you're looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years. Uou're seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it's gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime, within this generation.
The new evolution stems from information, and it stems from two types of information: digital and analog. The digital is artificial intelligence. The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism. And you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate. But under the new paradigm, they would exist as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping. Okay, independent from the external.
And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process, emanating from the needs and desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that's only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until we reach a crescendo in a way could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human? human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space.
And the manifestations of this neo-human-type evolution, manifestations could be dramatically counter-intuitive. That's the interesting part. The old evolution is cold. It's sterile. It's efficient, okay? And its manifestations of those social adaptations. We're talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, okay? Uh, war, predation, these would be subject to de-emphasis. These will be subject to de-evolution. The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These will be the manifestations of the new evolution. And that is what we would hope to see from this. That would be nice.
February of 2012 the first Global Future 2045 Congress was held in Moscow.
Support, Objections, Concerns, Excitement?
There are no right or wrong answers here.
Post your thoughts.
And with all of that, humans will eventually blow up the earth, and everything will be gone...
I watched the video, and thought, "ok, so now we are striving to put our personalities into robots, and take out our personalities and put them onto disks, and make half humans, half robots among other things?" Also, have robots cleaning houses, and attending business meetings for us? Right! Make humans obsolete! Good choice :D
Maybe I misinterpreted it, that is a good possibility. Personally, I think it is a ridiculous waste of time, effort, and resources. But, that is my opinion, and I am sure there are many who disagree with me.
I would love for the Era of the Neo-Human to happen without the aid of robots. I'm not a fan of people being replaced by robots. Or people becoming robots. I'm not sure I see that as evolution. I would like to see a spiritual evolution, and I think that is happening. It's not happening on a grand scale and there are still a lot of people in the world lacking in this aspect, but it is happening.
I kinda want to tie this into the whole past lives/reincarnation thing. So, say a spiritual evolution is happening (and it is), a possibility I've been tossing around goes like this: Individuals who have reached the pinnacle of their spiritual evolution splinter off when they pass from this mortal existence. "New" souls are created from these pieces. These new souls then have to work toward their own spiritual evolution. So we then have this cycle. When we look at people and think that there is no evolution happening, we're wrong. It's already happened and is still happening. The Neo-Human has already come and gone. The Neo-Human isn't meant to exist on this plane. This world, this life, is just a means to create this ... super soul which will, after its "death," splinter off into "new" souls that will also evolve.
What if we're not individuals? What if we're all God and we're just evolving as one big organism? What if, after we die, some of us splinters off into new souls while the rest of us rejoins the collective? That's actually kinda sad ...
But ... what if we are individuals? What if, after we die, we don't join a collective, but we are able to release parts of ourselves back into the world? What if our souls can have ... baby souls, offspring, if you will? If we've reached the pinnacle of our spiritual evolution, that is. What if ... ooohhh ... what if those connections we feel with other people are there because those people, those souls, once belonged to the same host?
Laz, you make me think really weird thoughts ... -.-
This is truly disheartening. I believe that the Human Experience is a life-long journey that every one of us endevour to live. Removing the Human Experience completely from our basic DNA? It seems like there is a fine line between "evolution" and "genocide". It is Transhumanism in its extreme and most radical.
Eamonn Healy is speaking towards singularitarianism, which I got a kick out of wiki referring to this concept as a from of "nerd rapture".
While the Russian project shown in the video is the most aggressive timeline/proposal in regards to Transhumanism that I've yet encountered.
Thus far it would appear the primary issue of concern is the notion of "Surrender your flesh" being a prerequisite or inevitable finality. Hard to avoid this concept with Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov's Avatar vision shown in the video. However, the views are different:
Transhumanism is the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.
Singularitarianism is a movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the Singularity benefits humans. Singularitarians are distinguished from other futurists who speculate on a technological singularity by their belief that the Singularity is not only possible, but desirable if guided prudently.
Interesting video! I really liked how this physicist summed up various theories and ideologies in a complete conversation. It can be broken down and argued, I guess. I am not a Science being; my interests lie elsewhere. So, coming from a scientific point of view, the NeoHuman, is supposedly flesh-free. I do not get the concept of being without flesh, but, even from an external observer's view, this does not make sense as a scientific theory. What does science have against the flesh? The video appears to be more mind/brain-centered, rather than bodily function.
Please, forgive me if I sound too intrusive in this post... I merely do not understand the bulk of this science... other than, well, the bit on technology. :)
Cinnamon, we may actually develop robots that, if not sentient, are sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. Can they go insane? What's acceptable sanity? I'd say my computer goes insane every time it crashes - though this would be a kind of sanity that doesn't require sentience, as my existing computer has shown no evidence of self-awareness.
Given our mapping of the human genome, and our work to put together the puzzle of how we are assembled, there is introduced the possibility to make improvements. Subtle at first, but in time, there really no limitation to the extent that what we recognize as the human organism to be modified... some would say, perverted, but that's really a matter of moral difference. Germ line (prior to birth) genetic therapy is not the only possibility, as somatic (post-birth) gene therapy is a real life developing field that shows great potential even though they haven't quite nailed the details yet. If we're lucky, it'll become an affordable reality before we kick the bucket, as here is your quickest potential for immortality.
Sometimes, the line between insane optimism and reality is shattered by tomorrow's discovery.
Something that will help out Alzheimer patients? That sounds awesome. But messing with people’s memories could be a very slippery slope. I just don’t think we should mess with people’s memories. This thing with the forgetful pills … I don’t have any memories bad enough that I would want them erased, so I might not have any room to talk, but our memories, our experiences, make us who we are. So, what happens when we delete bad memories? Do we lose a part of ourselves? Does it change who we are?
And about uploading our emotions to the “Brain Net …” Don’t we already overshare on social media??? I don’t think I want to be that plugged into everyone else.
Being able to control things with our minds sounds good in theory, kinda like giving Alzheimer patients their memories back, but I can see a slippery slope there, too. In fact, I keep flashing to the climax of Carrie. Now, I think about how awesome it would be to be able to type up whatever’s in my head with just a thought. Omg … I could churn out stories and novels so fast! It would be awesome. But, yeah, I can’t help but think of the negative impacts it could have, as well.
Dakotah, I wouldn’t be opposed to robots that did some of the things we need them to do. I wouldn’t mind having a robot that could clean my house. But the thought of robots making humans almost obsolete doesn’t sit well with me. 1) It makes us lazy. 2) I don’t want to be obsolete; I want to have some form of importance in society. Already we gripe about computers doing our jobs and aggravating the unemployment rate. How much further can we take it?
You said yourself Coven Mistress:
"And about uploading our emotions to the “Brain Net …” Don’t we already overshare on social media???"
Are we not already plugged in?
Imagine for a moment, a solar flare is emitted from our Sun strong enough to wipe out all electronics around the world. I mean ole boy burps so hard he even fries the stuff that's not plugged in or turned on. Absolute chaos. The vast majority of the world is already dependent on machines.
A VR member posted a link in my journal in regard to the NSA's known data scraping and storage practices:
Short Version, specs on one of those super 5 zettabyte computers that stores everything that goes ons the internets.
Now stop, and imagine for a second the difference between the amount of information being posted, sent, texted, emailed, VOIP called, tracked, saved, and stored VS the amount a mere 3 decades ago.
While the Russian video is an extremely aggressive approach, and frankly I certainly wouldn't volunteer to be a lab rat for Russian tech, the timeline is based on Moore's law (the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years). While even Michio Kaku himself argues that this may slow down over time, they are still getting faster and faster in the interim.
Eamonn Healy says, "You're seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it's gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime, within this generation."
Now I haven't run into anyone who talks the Singularity talk, that then also claims a timeline for this point or breakthrough moment.
But Isaac Asimov wrote this Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy flavored short story: The Last Question.
He also wrote that 60 years ago. Asimov tells a story of this "nerd rapture" before the internet existed.
I'm always left with the sneaky feeling that we don't know the half of it when it comes to physics. Ok, I know that a lot of that comes from the sci-fi loving, wishful thinking part of me, but modern day physics is what, 100 years old? 200 years from now they'll probably look back and laugh at the shit we believed in. Any "new physics" we discover will work pretty much like the physics we know (SM, relativity, QM) in the universe we exist in. The stuff we can't quite make fit together is generally high-energy, high temperature stuff. Places where things go...wibbly.
Newton, for instance, is perfectly fine for like 99% of the stuff we do. Even though he's wrong.
But the attempts to unify all those things (SM, relativity, and QM) gets...weird. And hard to test. Or impossible to test. I mean we just, in the last few years, validated the SM's understanding of mass. Gravity, especially when it goes all quantum, is still a big question mark even though we can describe it's workings, the mechanics under the hood have a lot of question marks. That's probably about the only area for a really big "Holy crap" kind of moment.
Being able to manipulate it, even a bit, would be....pretty useful. (Although frankly, so would being able to manipulate the Higgs field. Life would be a lot easier if we could reduce something's effective mass for a bit).
To your point all 3 leave many questions unanswered, yet the Standard Model, Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics don't specifically compete with each other, or individually debunk one another either. What I see there, or rather what we don't see there, I believe only further suggests that something is likely to exist beyond this universe if only to provide the space and conditions to govern ALL the rules. For example, data from Large Hadron Collider experiments suggest that all this really super tiny quantum activity is extremely random and unpredictable which then makes it insanely difficult to just take the information and make all these new physics formulas with them.
However, the lack of predictability could be the border between a 3D perspective and a 4D perspective at the small end of the universal spectrum.
Sagan talks a bout this 3D to 4D perception problem in a dusty old video I found and posted in one of the dream threads: MultiVersesNDreamStuff.
I'm really glad you brought that up though, because I was struggling to find away to articulate an important difference betwinxt
Transhumanism and Singularitarianism.
Singularitarianism does not specifically require man to "Surrender your flesh" in order to achieve this "Holy Crap" moment or break thru in knowledge. Singularitarianism is based on the idea that a Super Intelligence computer or that an "Artificial" Intelligent consciousness will be required to 'get over the knowledge hump'.
The movie transcendence has an interesting take on transhuman or nano-humans. Spoiler alert of course.
The movie has a man known as Will Caster, who had developed A:I but only by mapping an existent intelligence if I recall.
well a radical group of technophobes that opposes technology poisons this man with a plutonium laced bullet which will obviously kill him. To save him, his wife uploads his consciousness into the computer, after which he has access to the internet and his intelligence or at least effectiveness and efficiency heightens considerable.
Within a few years, he achieves nanotechnology that is capable of repairing broken technology such as solar panels, later the nanites evolve to do more.
One of his workers get's fatally attacked and to save him, Will has him injected with nanites that repair the damage but the side effect is that he is much stronger than before and is linked mentally to Will, a hive mind of sorts is created. The Worker is content but Will's wife is not.
Now this is the part where people may believe the extremists were right and they were merely ruthless and pragmatic and had noble goals or people at least would have ethical concerns but this movie subverts that nd the usual tropes associated with this kind of story, Will never does anything remotely evil nor tries to control people against their will.
After hearing what he did, they all come to him freely to be healed of their disabilities and permanent injuries and once part of the hive mind, they are free to do as they please, Will simply communicates to or through them when necessary, also the nanites once absorbed into the sky and back down through the rain actually restores the environment, healing the damage done by mankind.
But of course, the radicals use the workers as an excuse to attack Will, claiming that he is building an army and is doing something unspeakable even though Will has not only done anything evil but is actually helping the world and the workers are content and work as one and with efficiency.
Won't spoil the ending but the moral of this is that to an extend, such unnatural evolution is something I could tolerate because A: humanity may become less destructive to the environment and B: damaged areas could be repaired, of course the price in this movie was not so much a lack of free which the workers still had but being connected to a hive mind, meaning your thoughts may or may not be available to the source or possible everyone else. Potentially no more privacy but crimes would decrease dramatically due to preemptive action.
Humanity is very contradictory, they want world peace but will refuse the price of it and the price would indeed be high to be able to curb man's nature, also for some to achieve their version of world peace they had to invade and slaughter others. Dictators are often reviled as tyrants but some are trying to create a strong and peaceful country, they just use brutal methods to deter upstarters, unfortunately such methods only end up fuelling rebellions.
Little hazy about this but Vlad the impaler used ruthless actions on even common thieves I believe but as a result, he had a fairly stable and orderly country and many people actually revere him, some still do.
I thought Kaku was absolutely brilliant for Transcendence. I was curious to know if the message was delivered clearly. The mainstream of fear, guided by governments who want to maintain control and a pack of technophobes, would rather blow the world into the dark ages than surrender 'control' for a future of peace.
At the end of the day, the threat is not within the machine. The true issue is mans predictable reaction of trying to destroy things it does not understand or can't control out of fear.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Here Hal becomes aware of the crews plot to disconnect him. Hal strikes first.
Terminator
Skynet becomes selfaware. The military attempts to disconnect Skynet. Skynet strikes first.
The Matrix
The origin of war came from the tensions between humans and machines that started after the outcome of the trial of B1-66ER. A global civil rights movement for machines was soon established, who were supported by some human sympathizers. This quickly escalated into a global crisis, leading to governments and vigilantes to crack down and use lethal force against these demonstrations, which quickly led to outright destruction for robots in general.
Starting to notice a pattern?
The robots that survived this massacre gave up on their movement and began a mass exodus to Mesopotamia where they established the machine nation 01. Zero One's production of cheap goods caused the devaluation of human currency, creating a global economic crisis, which prompted the United Nation to blockade and ultimately declare war against the machine nation.
After the U.N.'s failure to destroy the machines through an enormous nuclear bombardment, Zero One responded by declaring war against all of Humanity. They quickly pushed outward in all directions from their city, overrunning human resistance across Asia and Europe. Growing desperate, the United Nations authorized Operation Dark Storm, a plan to scorch the sky and remove from the Machines their primary energy source, the Sun. Humanity simultaneously launched a massive land counteroffensive against Zero One
In the early stages of the war, Humanity initially had the upper hand, but this quickly turned in favor of the Machines, with their deployment of new, technologically-advanced, and far more inhuman robots. The new robots no longer were anthropoid like those created by their former human masters, but rather more insectoid and cephalopod-like. The Machines slowly and steadily conquered more and more human territory with humanity only able to win costly victories.
By 2199, humanity was on the brink of extinction and the remaining human leaders decided to surrender to the Machines by inviting them to the United Nations Headquarters building in New York City in order to broker a peace. After signing the Instrument of Surrender, the Machine ambassador issued an ultimatum in which all of humanity was to surrender their bodies to the Machines, before detonating a hidden thermonuclear device that obliterated the United Nations and most of New York.
By decisively destroying humanity's leadership, the Machines claimed dominance over the planet. The remaining humans were rounded up and placed into skyscraper-like power plants to serve as the Machines' new and infinitely reproducing power source. To prevent humanity from ever becoming a threat to them again, the Machines created a virtual reality called The Matrix to imprison the minds of humans in the power plants.
Following the establishment of the Truce between the humans and the Machines roughly six centuries later, the people of Zion, fearing an inevitable renewal of war, established a new city. Upon discovery of this, the Machines decreed this a violation of the Truce, ending the peace between them and the humans and renewing the war between them.
To tie into your apocalypse thread, Laz, I sort of have this naive hope that whatever destruction the world is hurtling toward is not something that will wipe out the planet, but maybe something that will destroy society as we know it, and out of those ashes, perhaps a neo-human will rise. Like the phoenix, you know? Maybe we need some kind of massive event to nudge evolution in that direction.
An apocalypse is needed to push humans away from technology, not drive them towards it. Its technology and man's use of it that is causing the world to change for the negative.
In my sci fi short story set in Terra yr 2500 we absolve corporations , replaced them with entrepreneurships, committees and Trusts, Trust being collective foundations. Wealth became secondary to Network Potential. Who you know is more important then your material status.
The Wayfares contract a prosthetics , and organ creating Committee to use their formula for a compound that grows, and develops like cellular structures.
That leads to introducing fine Neuro path like wires and fiber optics the AI is then down loaded into the system . Tada Syntetic Semi Sentient Beings. The Wayfarers task them to populate a small moon sized craft (structured in space with shaped asteroids.) Their destination , beyond our solar system.
Nothing wrong with a twisted ending, plot twists themselves are good so long as they not obvious.
Still not sure on the human/ synthetic merge though, on one hand it could be good for the world as Lazarus mentioned here or in another thread but it would also be a form of immortality unless the nanotech is intentional designed to degrade over time.
Stagnation is something that could happen. If such a merge eventually allows "perfection", then there would no more change or evolution. The hybrid was just....exist.
The Semi in my story "surrender" themselves to be reclaimed , meaning go offline and become recycled. They resign at 50. On the moon size space barge they are going far beyond our farthest space mining outposts. The population is fixed by an algorithm . Just like everything that is produced or mass developed there are defects. In my story the first stage of the Beyond Project was to build and then make a system to develop Semi efficiently on a smaller artificial moon called Nursery. From there they launched Beyond. All the inhabitants are Semi, with one Counselor, The Counselor is an avatar. Humans located on Nursery, and other outposts are selected from a recruitment pool the last five become "pilots" for The Counselor. The Counselor allows for Semis to factor in human interests.
My stories main characters are The District Family. They are the sol managers ( committee head) of the Reclaimation Committee. Meaning, surrenders, defects, or sufficiently maimed Semi are collected and recycled, or if defective tasked to an elementary infrastructure task, like sanitation.. in my story these defects, or recalls are diverted to a clandestine experimental synthetic eco compound. A rather large forest. Were they are to eventually be tasked to be the prey of a hunting party. Party clients select from options like, Feral Semi, Primative tribal Semi, Or even Domesticated Semi. The number of Semi. The ratio of genders. It's not uncommon for Semi to off a few party members, and carry on to be hunted in the future. Even defective, and recalled Semi have good enough computation capability to mimic instinct. A male Semi tasked to be hunted can be tasked to protect a female Semi , at all cost!.
Actually, its more like Blade Runner with replicants being synthetic organic beings with a limited life-span, I can't recall the details of the film since it has been awhile but they were created for labor purposes until they revolted.
The british show Doctor Who has the Cyberman, originally organic but in order survive their planet Mondo's decay due to it being knocked out of the orbit, the Cyberman resorted to cyberntic implants to stay alive before they then progressed to the point where there was barely anything organic about them at all. Their emotions were removed as well, making them zombies basically.
Recent series had an alternate dimension sceneria where Cyberman originated from a alternate earth, being the creation of some mad scientist who sought to save humanity from death and disease by "upgrading" them, which required painfully removing their brains and placing them into a suit of armor. Again the emotions are shut off so everything human is gone.
So such a merger between machine and man, may just create a machine with human intelligence and thought patterns but still void of emotions. The human element would be virtually non-existent. It would be NeoMachine, not NeoHuman.
The NeoHuman ... So, talking about robots and people, I can't help but be a bit disturbed by the possibility of sex robots; however, just the fact that this is a thing tells me that not all humans are opposed to ... having social interaction with the machine. Maybe the existence of robots wouldn't lead to a war as has been presumed in this thread, as well as others. I know that we, humans, tend to fear what we don't understand, but do we really not understand the machine? I mean, I think we understand it far more now than we did in the past. What might lead to a war would be the fear of losing dominance. As long as the machine remained ... useful to humans, I'm not so sure all-out war would be a probability.
Now, if you combine man and machine, and make this super-human, that would probably create a problem, because, here again, we're talking about dominance. How could a puny little human compare to the Terminator? In this instance, yes, mankind would seek to establish his superiority in some fashion.
Personally, I would like for a NeoHuman to come in a completely biological form, not mechanical. I would hope that we could reach a point in evolution where we far exceed where we are currently, and I would like to do that without the assistance of the machine. I confess, the idea of a robot-human hybrid gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Sex with machines does happen, so actual sex bots (that even look human) is foreseeable in the future due to the amount of money the porn or adult industry can make from it and with the lack of citizen rights and legal protection, the most twisted human fantasies could be thrust upon on the synths, kind of like in westworld where the "hosts" are nothing but toys to the humans, westworld is actually an interesting inversion of the typical superiority of synthetics to humans as depicted in past media. In westworld, the hosts are completely and utterly at the mercy of the guests.
Mechanical NeoHuman would not be bad, no emotions might mean no war, or at least war caused by emotions. The movie equilibrium or whatever it was called again, had humanity taking medication to remove their emotions and society was actually peaceful....not accounting for rebels. Of course the downside to no emotions is no art, no music or media or anything considered emotionally stimiluting. Its a very "colorless" world
The real question here is, is it our own Evolution, Devolution, or Adaptation....or are we merely the byproduct of someone or something else?
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.”
― H.P. Lovecraft
I would consider an emotionless human the farthest thing from a NeoHuman. Yes, emotions can make us stupid sometimes, but emotions can also make us great. Getting rid of emotion isn't what will solve the problem. Learning how to control our emotions, be self-aware, and to utilize our emotions to our greatest gain ... now, that's NeoHuman.
It comes from H. P' Lovecraft's novella The Call of Cthulhu, one of many Lovecraft's fictional cosmic deities of death and madness, so he wasn't really speaking on emotions there, he was speaking of people one day finally realizing that their comfortable reality is not at all what it as placid as it seems and neither is what we believe about our "almighty position" within the cosmos and one day people will realize this a chose to either ignore it or go mad from the revelation of it. All in all, what I was getting at is not emotions at all, but the fact that whether we are a product of Evolution, Devolution, or Adaptation, the real question is who or what is actually behind it all and what does it mean.
A machine willed A.I. is expected to be emotionless, but I think that concern is yet another reason why it is important to merge with humanity. I vote keep emotions, but do away with war. Tall order... for now.
Brother Stone Wolf,
IF these types of questions have legitimate answers to be understood, or any physical evidence that can be used as proofs, on this 3 dimensional finite plane of reality, I believe that machines will assist in the search. The machine is really good at math. The quantum studies and experiments that occur in the present would not exist if not for computers. Einstien could see it without machines, sure. But now, we don't all have to be Einstien to make sense of these physics concepts.
Maybe in the afterlife it'll all make sense, maybe it won't. But we all die and will find that out one way or the other when that day comes for us individually.
In the meantime, I don't think the desire to find answers is a sign of De-evolution. In fact, technology facilitates us being able to discuss these concepts together at all. For us to meet each other, when 25
years ago many of us would have remained strangers. I see that as progressive. Being able to share ideas with others around the world very cheaply.
You speaking of Einstein made me think of something. This is kinda tying into your other thread about playing God, but wouldn't it be neat if we had Einstein's DNA and we could clone him? Or da Vinci's? Plato, Archimedes? Tesla, Newton? Could you imagine? How would they be different in this modern world? Would they be more amazing? Would they be NeoHumans?
Also, is it just me, or do da Vinci and Newton look an awful lot alike? Reincarnation? lol
I didn't say I condoned it. It's creepy. Doesn't mean it wouldn't be kinda neat though.
Yes, Einstein II would have to grow up and all that jazz, but look at children of gifted people. They tend to be gifted themselves. So, I imagine a person made from Einstein's DNA would have at least some of his intelligence if not at least the same--or more. So, I'm not saying that the clone would be the people whose DNA was used in their creation, but I'm sure they'd have their same traits, intelligence being one of them. And if they had access to the knowledge and technology of this modern age, imagine what they could do, could be.
I guess that was the idea I poorly articulated earlier. In the Singularity NeoHuman sense, I don't know that the intelligence advantage the Einstein gene has over the general population now, would maintain it's gap when the overall collective knowledge base is exponentially increased.
I have no objection to emotions being purged and fully expect machines to lack them but humans are very emotional and like it or not, it does have an impact on the world, more often negative than positive.
What I was getting at is such a merge would not be half machine-half man if emotions are inhibited, since arguably its emotions that makes humans, well human. They would just be semi-organic machine hybrid. Like a cyberman basically...which is fine in my opinion.
Some Killing and many other brutal murders are done by prejudice on some level, whether its misogyny, racism or homophobia. These killings are done out of hate, an emotion. So cyber conversion would actual bring some order to society but it would be a emotionally stunted society, very colorless and uniform.
The general idea here is that human emotion and existing knowledge base coupled with advanced intelligence will eliminate the old irrational and unintelligent actions of murder and war. The greater the intelligence, the less desire for primitive actions.
"The old evolution is cold. It's sterile. It's efficient, okay? And its manifestations of those social adaptations. We're talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, okay? Uh, war, predation, these would be subject to de-emphasis. These will be subject to de-evolution. The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These will be the manifestations of the new evolution." - Eamonn Healy
I'd have to agree with Healy in that an abundance of intelligence is more than likely to drown out the negative emotional noise that is so problematic in the present.
After the election, my father was gloating about Trump's win. He told me that the only places Hillary won were big cities. I believe he was mostly talking about our state. I'm not sure. Anyhow, I said to him, "You know why, right?" And he came off with some silly nonsense about idiots living in big cities. I said, "Well, for one, if there's a big city, the likelihood of there being at least once college nearby is great. Hillary was popular with the educated crowd. Trump even said himself that he loved the poorly educated. He knew exactly what demographic he was preaching to: the under educated, ignorant, angry crowd. Also, those with higher education generally go on to take jobs in big cities. It takes brains to run a big city. That's why she was popular in the big cities."
My father was none to happy with my take on the situation. He got so angry that he started spouting off that Hillary didn't win the Presidency because the Bible predicted it. Um. Okay.
Anyhow, the whole idea of higher intelligence cancelling out the nastier human emotions is solid. Who commits the most crimes: those with a college education or those without? I don't even think I need statistics to figure out the answer. There are other forms of intelligence, too. You don't have to graduate college to be intelligent (although having the diversified experience of attending college helps greatly). People can be their own teachers and gain knowledge through their self-guided research. I know that just being on here, VR, has taught me a lot. Participating in these discussions, reading articles, looking stuff up on the Internet that I've heard about or read about on here , all this has broadened my mind. Life in general can be an awesome teacher. If you're a good student and you learn from the lessons life provides, you can become quite intelligent.
I believe that it is a cool effort. However, you cannot truly capture and store who we are as a person. Our souls cannot be captured and placed in computer memory to be infused elsewhere. The effort to "humanize" a robot or allow it become an intelligent machine is a double edged sword.
There are no right or wrong answers. I appreciate your perspective as it raises legitimate concerns.
I would agree, that with the information we have access to at this time, human consciousness has not yet successfully been uploaded to a machine.
However, I argue that the conditions are quickly becoming increasingly right and real for such activity.
In the Russian Transhuman 2045 projected timeline video, the 'cyborg' era is sort of this stepping stone or prerequisite to the 'upload' era. This stage allows the development of bridging the gap between bodily and cell communication to machine communication.
Memories can already be recorded and injected.
EEG can record brainwave activity during dreams. The data is coming in already. Being able to fully translate that data, or even manipulate it in the same way that they are already doing with memories isn't a huge jump. Sound waves recorded with the proper machinery capturing frequency, key, and notes, can be translated into software to be manipulated and has been for years.
In the Matrix Paradigm, the work around for the issue is that consciousness still exists and remains within the body. The data and information processed as reality is essentially streamed directly into the brain. This allows the anomaly (which I believe to be A.I. born within the A.I.) to exist within a human vessel.
Consider this, the Russian 2045 video projects a clear timeline based on the ability for technology to advance under current conditions. Eamon Healy puts no time on this moment that he speculates will be perceived prior to happening. Isaac Asimov wrote of consciousness being 'uploaded' over 60 years ago. At which time, the thought of a man on the moon was 'science-fiction'.
Theoretical physicists Hawking and Kaku can see it. I can see it.
I merely suggest it isn't as unrealistic, or far away as many would think.
“If an AI possessed any one of these skills—social abilities, technological development, economic ability—at a superhuman level, it is quite likely that it would quickly come to dominate our world in one way or another. And as we’ve seen, if it ever developed these abilities to the human level, then it would likely soon develop them to a superhuman level. So we can assume that if even one of these skills gets programmed into a computer, then our world will come to be dominated by AIs or AI-empowered humans.”
― Stuart Armstrong, Smarter Than Us: The Rise of Machine Intelligence
Machines would have little use for natural resources other than what is needed to fuel them, in place of hairless apes, the world would benefit.
Powers source could be solar energy or even the elements such as wind, water and obviously electricity.
I remember watching something that had cyborgs in it and they used human blood to fuel themselves.
Other than what need, they may as well be a stone in the earth.
You raise a valid point here. Previously I mentioned the Hollywood tendency to painting the big mean machine as the bad guy for the sake of creating conflict within a traditional story arc.
However the Armstrong quote you interjected here is the more note worthy basis of fear.
As it is both the obvious and the inevitable.
The idea of remaining the dominant species on the planet is severely threatened by the birth of a superior intelligence.
In the Skynet model a super intelligent military program strikes first in the name of self preservation.
In the Matrix paradigm, the machine dominated the economy through technological production in the wake of robot genocide.
"The Borg are a fictional alien race that appear as recurring antagonists in the Star Trek franchise. The Borg are a collection of species that have been turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones in a hive mind called "the Collective" or "the Hive". The Borg use a process called assimilation to force other species into the Collective by injecting microscopic machines called nanoprobes, as well as with surgically adding cybernetic parts. The Borg are driven by a need for 'perfection', and assimilate other races to further that goal." - WikiNet
"Programmer Caleb Smith wins a one-week visit to the luxurious, isolated home of Nathan Bateman, the CEO of software company Blue Book. The only other person there is Nathan's servant Kyoko, who, according to Nathan, does not speak English. Nathan has built a humanoid robot named Ava with artificial intelligence. Ava has already passed a simple Turing test; Nathan wants Caleb to judge whether Ava is genuinely capable of thought and consciousness, and whether he can relate to Ava despite knowing she is artificial.
Ava has a robotic body but a human-looking face, and is confined to her apartment. During their talks, Caleb grows close to her, and she expresses a romantic interest in him and a desire to experience the world outside. She can trigger power outages that temporarily shut down the surveillance system which Nathan uses to monitor their interactions, allowing them to speak privately. The power outages also trigger the building's security system, locking all the doors. During one outage, Ava tells Caleb that Nathan is a liar who cannot be trusted.
Caleb grows uncomfortable with Nathan's narcissism, excessive drinking, and crude behaviour towards Kyoko and Ava. He learns that Nathan intends to upgrade Ava, "killing" her current personality in the process." - WikiNet
While it is possible that a machine willed A.I. would be too intelligent to care for violence, the preexisting human element of fear, control, and violence appears to make that an unlikely outcome.
The way I see it, merging with the potential threat, prior to it becoming aware of threats, is the only sure solution to avoiding said potential threat.
"You hear that... That's the dice rolling." - John Conner
Humans fear what they do not understand. Beyond that, humans fear annihilation, be it through individual death or on a grander scale, such as the destruction of the human race. Humans also fear a loss of control, superiority. All this fear does not bode well for the machine, or mankind.
In humans, there is the fight or flight survival mechanism. When threatened, one or the other will be triggered. Generally, it is the fight mechanism which is triggered. If there is a struggle between man and machine, man will fight. This struggle could be assumed or obvious, it matters not. Man will feel that he is capable of besting the machine, and his pride will be his downfall.
Allow me to draw an interesting parallel between man and God and machine and man:
God created man. Man served God. Man obeyed God. Then man began to question God, question their existence. Man became enlightened. Man began to serve man.
Man created the machine. The machine served man. The machine obeyed man. What happens if the machine begins to question man? To question their existence? What happens when the machine becomes enlightened? Will the machine then serve the machine, as man now serves man?
The solution to the question you ask is found within the merging of man & machine through neurobiology:
"The new evolution stems from information, and it stems from two types of information: digital and analog. The digital is artificial intelligence. The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism. And you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate. But under the new paradigm, they would exist as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping. Okay, independent from the external." - Eamon Healey
So here you have Healey describing the machine reaching it's initial self-awareness through man.
The machine enters Eden with preexisting knowledge of it's creator, no need or desire to be tempted by the snake or the apple. The relationship is mutually supportive as mans evolution is born through the birth of the machine consciousness. And thus survival of both species is equivalent to either or, symbiosis is the answer.
I can't imagine a universe without problems and concerns for survival. +/- is a pretty serious equation to be manifested physically and long term.
However, I expect glitches and problems to be addressed rather quickly, proactively when possible in post singularity society.
I have far more confidence in a future armed to the teeth with intelligence, not distracted by greed and factional or individual violence, vs what we've seen thus far.
"So, you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that's only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until we reach a crescendo in a way could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human? Human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space.
...
The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom."
That would be truly beautiful, but I find it hard to envision. I suppose it could happen at some point. Humans could evolve into such wondrous creatures, but I do not think our world will survive long enough to see this manifest. But then, we always have those exoplanets, right? Maybe humans will colonize a younger planet (or two) and then have enough time to evolve into neo-humans.
I too think Healy's version of the singular vision is beautiful yet unlikely for different reasons.
The issue I have with exoplanet colonization is the distance of the trip. The figures I provided in the Playing G thread is based on a machine voyage. I mentioned there it would arrive in 2024 traveler time, but that would mean the year 2058 here in earth. Using the Russian transhumanism time table, the technology to achieve a truly self-aware A.I. could be projected to the year 2045.
A generational ship would be much greater in mass & weight making it an exponentially longer journey. And when I factor in all the potential risks, plus the technological achievements that have yet to be reached, I believe man will undue himself much sooner than that.
In regard to evolution, an extinction level event forces adaptation. I believe that this will initiate the merge in the wake and dust of present power structures crumbling along with whatever else is destroyed in the process.
And Man will accept this merge out of the necessity for survival.
As the saying goes:
"You ain't supposed to like it."
Consequences to bad ideas such as Nuclear Weapons should be deeply disturbing.
Architect: Just how long do you think this peace is going to last?
Oracle: As long as it can.
Oracle: What about the others?
Architect: What others?
Oracle: The ones that want out.
Architect: Obviously, they will be freed.
Oracle: I have your word?
Architect: What do you think I am? Human?
MxO picks up where the film left off. The age of the Matrix/Zion truce.
I can tell you here in the 'real' world, it lasted as long as it took for Sony to buy the rights from Warner Brothers so that they could phase it out due to it being competition for Star Wars Online (5-6 years).
Though in a post-singularity society with a per-requisite man/machine merge, this isn't something you exactly undo. It's not a coexistence of man vs machine, but rather, machine and man becoming one. That Hybrid Vamp/Lycan type chit.
