Transhumanism, Technocracy, and Computocracy?

How does Holla Forums feel about concepts like

-genetic engineering of humans and the construction of artificial lifeforms both commonplace and accepted by the masses.

-mechanical augmentation and the transfer of consciousness to a machine body being seen as normal.

-government by a ruling caste designed by scientists to be incapable of ambition but burdened with responsibility and care for their charges. (may or may not have human rights.)

-the replacement of the working class with machines, leaving humans to pursue higher education and the arts and sciences. (this is guaranteed to happen in our lifetime so its just a matter of if a basic income is implemented or not.)

-government by omnipotent AI that is a borderline theocracy.

-injecting fetuses in the head with a nanomachines that take the place of the brain and grow alongside the body, allowing humans to create androids that feel everything a human does and thus may be less likely to be unable to relate to us/destroy us all later down the road. (This is actually a personal idea of mine but I'm just throwing it out there.)

Anyway yeah I'd like to see what y'all think about this sort of stuff. Holla Forums didn't like it very much, its actually what brought me to this board. I used to be more facist but then I realized that facism's traditionalism and objective morals got in the way of a lot of the things I wanted to see become a reality.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Have you tried asking >>>/cyber/?

None of this will happen in our lifetime.

It scares me because I know I won't have access to this before the superrich do, and if we are at that point, almost everything will probably be automated and i'll be out of work which means I won't be able to buy it

The replacement of the working class via machines will absolutely happen in our lifetime though. This guy makes good points about it.

youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Also with CRISPR getting more and more attention, we may see the beginning of that in our lifetime as well

You might enjoy Iain Banks' Culture Cycle novels, which touch on many of these topics in a rather humane way.


No. Best you can hope for here is hard AI that actually derives enjoyment from overseeing us like pets. Good luck with hard AI. You touch on that later in your post.


Bit grotesque, unnecessary with hard AI.

Overall, I'd say you're heading in the right direction. Holla Forums doesn't like these thoughts because it devalues the lineage of the bodies they inhabit and the thought of uplifting another 'race' is abhorrent to them.

I personally believe that if you care about minimization of human suffering, this is one of the logical directions to head in even if there are risks from Porky subverting things.

Bad meme

Just to add, when discussing hard AI, it's pretty essential to understand en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room and why this is a difficult issue.

Contrary to the media buzz about AI, we're still a rather long way to go.

I don't believe we'll ever be able to get rid of human suffering, unfortunately. My goal is a little different. Ok so I figure that since we may be the only example of life in the universe, or at least are very uncommon, life should be preserved by any means necessary. At the moment we are fragile, sickly, and trapped on a doomed rock. Therefor, we need to escape it as soon as possible, but the only way to do that is to escape this planet and then the solar system, and the only way to do that is to encourage a culture of exponential scientific growth. Human cultures come and go, but scientific knowledge is forever unless someone really fucks up. So I'd happily take an oppressive dictatorship that lasts for a thousand years so long as we continue to advance scientifically. The pendulum will always swing the other way given enough time, since that's just human nature. When the revolution or collapse inevitably comes, we will still benefit from the creations of our oppressors, so it is worth it to me. But of course, Technological advancement without such a nasty period in human history would also be fine. My point is that I believe both are acceptable so long as it prolongs the existence of our species. Everything is a means to that end.


My idea was to make them experience the exact same things a human does to make them think more like we do. There may be other ways to do it but I feel this one would be the most genuine, unless we have the power to simulate every aspect of human life inside a simulation.

Minimization, not entire elimination. There will always be unhappiness, dissatisfaction, petty jealousies and crimes of passion. People are still people, no matter how augmented and altered.

Cool
Cool
Eeeeh, I doubt the ability of imperfect beings to create perfect beings.
Cool
???
Im fine with AI handling parts of governance
The fuck? You dont create android, you enslave humans. Androids are machines that act and look like humans but are not humans. They are mechenical servants. What you propose is fleshy bodies with either a machine brain (which I would be able to get behind) or you are proposing a human mind which is controllable from the outside.

To add to the last bit:

Why would you want human bodies with machine brains? Other than sexual servants and such I dont see much benefits from human bodies over machine bodies.

Ah well that too is a goal, yeah. I just would be willing to temporarily increase misery if it prolongs the existence of our species.

Its a nation run under the eye of a nearly omnipotent superbeing that is far beyond human comphrehension. Seems pretty close to a theocracy to me.


As I stated before, I feel it would be the best method to ensure an AI will not develop a wholly alien personality. They would have gone through at least one stage of their life exactly as a human would have, and thus would be able to empathize and understand our struggles. This ought to prevent misunderstandings and bring our seperate peoples closer together. And it wouldn't be enslavement really, as the original human's brain would be replaced, not controlled, by the nanomachine cocktail.

But that is only if you model the brain so that it acts as a human brain. But at this point you just have created an artificial human being without human status, which has icky ethical implications since it is a human.

To be super verry honest, technology is the product of society so all the options that will be available are purely based on the current existing system when its made. Thats why we have all these fucking phones and junk tech with no real use but consumer bullshit. Transhumanism under capitalism and post-capitalist technocracy is litteral hell. Transhumanism under communism would be okay.

But im not so mutch a fan of transhumanism in general, its just an extension on our desperate pursuit to controle existance since the dawn of civilisation when we began the domestication of animals, nature and the enviorment.

So? I think controlling our own existence is an excellent goal for out species.

The omnipotent AI and my nanomachine thing are two different methods of doing things. I personally believe the latter would be more beneficial but I shouldn't discount the fact that I could be wrong, hence my inclusion of the God-AI system.

Sure, but the amount of backfiring we recieve whenever we try to controle shit is always pretty funny. Especially when you plan shit out and apply it and things go extremly wrong. Its an trial and error process, even if it can destroy a fuckload of shit with long therm consequences.

It won't be you who will do the controlling, it will be the system whose "code" you will be merely executing. Algorithmic regulation, quantified self… It's already somewhat of a reality within a certain social group. Of course you will experience this as personal liberation from living and thinking itself.

Well yes. No gains without risk.


I think you dont quite understand what I or greenfag meant. We've not suggesting we kill ourselves and turn into mindless drones.

It's a copout.

You can conjure whatever device you wish(with as many fallacies as you want) to step over human conflict.

It should be as the infallible god says.
It should be as the infallible machine says.
It should be as the infallible bureaucracy says.
It should be as the infallible moralistic argument says.
It should be as the infallible says.

Defining things as the infallible magical device to utopia doesn't impact much other than the fantasy in which they exist, conjured by tortuous definition.

no thanks

That is not what a Technocracy is.

The organizational structure of Technocracy is built upon the idea of placing people into the positions that they are the most suitable for.

The rule of a cabal of scientists/engineers that you described is that of Veblenism, and his idea of a 'Soviet of Engineers".
It is not in anyway Technocracy.

Well my mistake then, I'll use the proper terminology in the future.

If I'm not productive/skilled enough in a technical field and whatever job I did can be more efficiently done by robots, and assuming my consumption being easily replaced by maintenance and/or raises to the other workers, what's to stop the powers that be to decree that my lack of a skills is an incurable disorder to be treated by legal euthanasia?

Serious question.

I support all of it. It is the next step in the evolution of life on Earth.

Basically anything which has a chance of ending up like Ian Banks' Culture is a good thing.

But it's more likely to end up as GUNNM

The Chinese room is a flawed thought experiment because the room is incapable of thought. It's literally just an overly complex lookup table. It is a snapshot of the mind of the person who created the cards, frozen in time and unable to grow or evolve. A simple question such as "what time is it now?" would stump it.

I love how I got the Deus Ex banner for this thread. It's my favorite video game.

All the things you list have the potential to be good, but in our current society I expect will lead to nightmares. Part of the issue at hand is that our society treats its people like tools (specifically, too many people in power treat others as tools for their own benefit in order to acquire money, power, or more generally to further their capacity for domination); this is what transhumanism may turn us into if not controlled. Also, those who outlive their usefulness may be left behind.

Genetic engineering is an issue in a competitive landscape because it may influence much more than just intelligence or appearance; it may also be used to influence compliance and political/philosophical tendencies. The outcome wil depend on what sort of selective pressures exist; in our modern world they would probably be intelligence, beauty, complacency, compliance, and conformity. "Well-adjustness," in a sense. Also, it may not be possible for people who don't want to participate to reasonably escape, and being able to opt-out and get shitstomped by everyone else, dying and leaving no children doesn't count.

Mechanical augmentation suffers from the same problem.

I would like to know how you think ambition and self interest are going to be removed from government. Even if they are, the ruling caste will have to follow some sort of guidelines for managing humanity. Ideally they will help their subjects live fulfilling lives, but that is hardly a guarantee. Things like naive utilitarianism could be particularly scary.

Humanity won't have much of a reason to pursue science, as the machines will be much better at it. They'll be better at art too, but people will probably find something in it anyway.

Why do you want to live in this society? Even at best it seems like sticking around after you've won a video game, i.e., fucking boring.

I'm not quite sure what the last thing you mention refers to.

Anyway, my concern is that too many people wouldn't want this and especially wouldn't want to be forced to be a part of it. How do you expect to deal with them?

Personally, I believe one of the better courses of action is to have a benevolent effectively omnipotent overseeing intelligent construct which manages the maintenance of certain negative freedoms for nonascended humanity (the origin of said construct may either be from strong AI or partial replication of a particular human personality). If desired, people may attach their conscious experience to the construct, in effect operating as a weakly-centralized hivemind and gaining the benefit of the collected knowledge of humanity. In the long run, humanity may consent to coalesce into a single consciousness and explore the stars/do galactic-scale science/chill out and wait for the invasion by other constructs from neighboring galaxies. This is similar in concept to the short story The Last Question by Isaac Asimov.

Keep in mind that time will pass very slowly if intelligent constructs are run at full speed (at least in a sense) and would likely drive you batshit insane in very short order (1 second = millenia of thought).

I know some of the people on the rationalist/positivist blogs like to discuss the problems of transhumanism in much greater depth than people here. One of them is Slate Star Codex; if you're interested, check out their archives.

Keep in mind technological progress may lead to concentration of power to such a point that the "pendulum" will never swing, and you will be trapped eternally in whatever stable situation is eventually reached.