…and only one week left ’til the formal housewarming party of House Not Found (so named because our apartment number is 404, of course).
You should be there. Really. I mean you.
This last week or so has been an unending series of boxes to be packed, moved, and unpacked, and even with the assistance of a large number of friends, it’s been slow going. Right now, the new place is stacked eyeball high in oxes waiting to be unpacked.
Still, it’s starting to come together. Most of the computers in the computer room have been hung from the ceiling by chain, making the computer room look a bit like a cross between Hellraiser and Resident Evil, the loft bedroom is more or less assembled, and the space is gradually becoming livable.
Which is good.
On the not-so-good side, we’ve received a couple bits of bad financial news in the last week, meaning that we won’t be able to attend DragonCon after all. Disappointing, but we’ll be there next year.
On the good side, merovingian will be in town for the housewarming party next week, and that will be very cool.
Also on the good side, we were able to have lunch with an old friend, Fritz, yesterday, and learned that he too is a transhumanist…who knew? He came up with the best answer yet to the question “If you completely change your body for a totally artificial one, or upload your consciousness into a computer, will you still be recognizably yourself?” His answer: “Who cares? Life is about evolution. If you change, so what?”
And on that note, I’m going to bed.
Oooh, you didn’t expect me to pass that evolution line without comment, did you?
Life is about evolution, sure. But not sudden, individual-level evolution. Life deals with very large scales, in which the existence of any one individual is insignificant. Even the rapid, absolutely catastrophic changes in environment were “rapid” on a scale of hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
If you personally were to completely alter your body, and upload your consciousness into a computer, what would happen to your frame of reference? How would you know what was and was not normal? In your current body, instinctive and muscular responses provide you with a few millions of years’ worth of trial and error on a massive scale. True, these might not be the best-adapted reflexes to our current environment, but they work. They’ve been tested and re-tested billions of times by now. Can you say that the same will be done with every human-manufactured process and component that goes into your new electro-mechanical body? And when (not if, when) something goes wrong, will you even know?
I recall a wonderful SF story about genetic engineering. It’s told from the perspective of a “normal” (or “neanderthal,” as the other kids call her) girl. She’s stuck at the lowest possible social rung until the other kids in her batch, all engineered to be smarter, disease-resistant, physically fit, talented, etc., start dying due to an error in the design.
The connection I’m trying to make is human impatience. Even without cutting any corners, even with good engineering practices, no one is going to produce an artificial body and mind and then let them run through simulations for a few decades. Not when there are throngs of customers — some of them old and fearing death — clamouring at the door. Imagine how happy these no doubt powerful and wealthy individuals will be when their bodies suddenly fail, even if the failures are rare and individual rather than en masse ones.
It all sounds too much like yet another quick fix, like a way to circumvent things that really should be allowed to grow at their own pace.
Transhumanism is all good and nice in theory, until humans enter the equation and fuck it all up. I’m of the opinion that for this to work we first need to change the humans.
Oooh, you didn’t expect me to pass that evolution line without comment, did you?
Life is about evolution, sure. But not sudden, individual-level evolution. Life deals with very large scales, in which the existence of any one individual is insignificant. Even the rapid, absolutely catastrophic changes in environment were “rapid” on a scale of hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
If you personally were to completely alter your body, and upload your consciousness into a computer, what would happen to your frame of reference? How would you know what was and was not normal? In your current body, instinctive and muscular responses provide you with a few millions of years’ worth of trial and error on a massive scale. True, these might not be the best-adapted reflexes to our current environment, but they work. They’ve been tested and re-tested billions of times by now. Can you say that the same will be done with every human-manufactured process and component that goes into your new electro-mechanical body? And when (not if, when) something goes wrong, will you even know?
I recall a wonderful SF story about genetic engineering. It’s told from the perspective of a “normal” (or “neanderthal,” as the other kids call her) girl. She’s stuck at the lowest possible social rung until the other kids in her batch, all engineered to be smarter, disease-resistant, physically fit, talented, etc., start dying due to an error in the design.
The connection I’m trying to make is human impatience. Even without cutting any corners, even with good engineering practices, no one is going to produce an artificial body and mind and then let them run through simulations for a few decades. Not when there are throngs of customers — some of them old and fearing death — clamouring at the door. Imagine how happy these no doubt powerful and wealthy individuals will be when their bodies suddenly fail, even if the failures are rare and individual rather than en masse ones.
It all sounds too much like yet another quick fix, like a way to circumvent things that really should be allowed to grow at their own pace.
Transhumanism is all good and nice in theory, until humans enter the equation and fuck it all up. I’m of the opinion that for this to work we first need to change the humans.
Best name for a household, ever.
Best name for a household, ever.