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Posthumanism ala ATEO


LS

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In response to a conversation in chat, here's a topic for Raor, and others, to discuss in his old style. This is sort of a mutual challenge between me and Raor, but others are welcome to comment as well.

 

What are your views on posthumanism, which is, broadly speaking, the upgrading of humanity to be more than human?

 

I'm specifically interested the psychological aspects of it. Certainly there's physical posthumanism, with genetically altered or mechanically enhanced bodies that don't age or are generally safer/better in other ways, but what about posthuman consciousness? Is such a thing desirable? If so, along what axes? Purely intellectual? If so, how is intellect delineated from emotional, physical, and social elements of consciousness?

 

Basically how, if at all, should humans attempt to enhance themselves mentally/emotionally/socially in the future? "How" can include both "towards what goals along which axes" and "by what methods," but of course I'm much more interested in the former since the latter is technological speculation while the former is philosophical. Should "human nature," to whatever extent it exists, be altered if possible, and if so in what ways? e.g.,should people be made more/less violent? Loving? Ambitious? Curious? Obedient? Emotional? Altruistic? etc.

 

Obviously these are abstract concepts and as such not simple switches that can be adjusted. Hence my interest primarily in GOALS ALONG AXES rather than METHODS. Assume that technology allows adjustment of the average X value of future generations of humanity, and qualitatively discuss which way it should be moved, why, and, to the extent possible in a qualitative discussion, to what extent. Define X as whatever you want; any of those things I mentioned above, defined in any way you please, or another thing.

 

Should noncognitive, savantlike abilities be encouraged? At what point do these, or any other potential modifications to human nature, make one inhuman in a negative sense?

 

What if progress along one axis necessitates sacrifice along another? Again, think of autistic savants as an example. Which axes are most important to progress along, and which could be sacrificed?

 

In Pokemon terms(lol), nature and EV the aggregate human psyche.

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In response to a conversation in chat, here's a topic for Raor, and others, to discuss in his old style. This is sort of a mutual challenge between me and Raor, but others are welcome to comment as well.

 

What are your views on posthumanism, which is, broadly speaking, the upgrading of humanity to be more than human?

 

Basically, I think it's generally alittle dreamy, head in clouds type stuff. But, it speaks to some very real eventualities in the crossroads between our natural state and evolution and our technological development and parting from the natural road of evolution. There's a lot of things we already see that could be honestly called posthumanism, physically. I like the concept in general, I'm definitely pro-upgrades to our species. But there's definitely a lot of, religion is dead, type fallout into posthumanism as sort of a tech-science replacement. That is possibly to me, the most interesting aspect to look at in a meta-sense.

 

I'm specifically interested the psychological aspects of it. Certainly there's physical posthumanism, with genetically altered or mechanically enhanced bodies that don't age or are generally safer/better in other ways, but what about posthuman consciousness? Is such a thing desirable? If so, along what axes? Purely intellectual? If so, how is intellect delineated from emotional, physical, and social elements of consciousness?

 

Posthuman consciousness, is basically "how we gonna live forever, since God/heaven ain't real", but there's certainly room to postulate even the most basic-bitch Kurzweil level sort of selfish thinking. It's to me entirely plausible that we'll be able to put a human 'mind' in a 'vat' for an indefinite period of time. Desirable to the individual, certainly. Desirable to the group, in this case species, probably less so; since I tend to have a onwards and upwards mentality and see our species' natural inclining to hold onto the past as rather dumb. But I won't knock a desire to not lose or throw away achieved wisdom, and I certainly think exceptional people and exceptional minds would be worth preserving for posterity if nothing else, but largely for their innate value.

 

Basically how, if at all, should humans attempt to enhance themselves mentally/emotionally/socially in the future? "How" can include both "towards what goals along which axes" and "by what methods," but of course I'm much more interested in the former since the latter is technological speculation while the former is philosophical. Should "human nature," to whatever extent it exists, be altered if possible, and if so in what ways? e.g.,should people be made more/less violent? Loving? Ambitious? Curious? Obedient? Emotional? Altruistic? etc.

 

I think the primary goal is to become both less like what we are now, but also more like what we see as best in ourselves. Getting rid of the sort of instinctual and you could even say vestigial elements of our psyches as fairly fast-evolved apes, I think Christopher Hitchens put it like "Evolution has meant that our prefrontal loves are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by a committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder." and I agree wholesale with that sentiment. Our "best" would include elements of our thinking that both recognize this nature, and it's implications, but don't dismiss it out of hand because of the less than nice air it puts on the human experiment. I'll be terse on the how stuff, and say I think the whole "computers is the end all be all" is short-sighted and a bit naive; I'll probably rant on this later. We absolutely should alter our natures, and it's absolutely possible. I think the best way is to give up the notion that biological/technological are not all that apart. We are, realistically, thinking-computers based on self-replicating chains of not really engineered polymers (((DNA))). I feel that a posthumanist ideal of like nanotechnology supplanting the gears of DNA with something a bit more straight forward and built on functionality, and without the ill grace of natural evolution, is best. I think those listed elements is going to have to get it's own, to be posted later, in depth answer; not as individual ticks but kind of as a whole.

 

Obviously these are abstract concepts and as such not simple switches that can be adjusted. Hence my interest primarily in GOALS ALONG AXES rather than METHODS. Assume that technology allows adjustment of the average X value of future generations of humanity, and qualitatively discuss which way it should be moved, why, and, to the extent possible in a qualitative discussion, to what extent. Define X as whatever you want; any of those things I mentioned above, defined in any way you please, or another thing.

 

Should noncognitive, savantlike abilities be encouraged? At what point do these, or any other potential modifications to human nature, make one inhuman in a negative sense?

 

What if progress along one axis necessitates sacrifice along another? Again, think of autistic savants as an example. Which axes are most important to progress along, and which could be sacrificed?

 

In Pokemon terms(lol), nature and EV the aggregate human psyche.

 

I'll hit this up another time, because it kinda blends into the end of the above red paragraph. But I appreciate the analogy, it's a good one.

 

This is my initial, off the cuff set of answers, I will follow with some more in depth stuff.

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I wanted to bring up something most ppl aren't going to get even if they were in chat when me and LS were talking about, that is Posthumanism and language.

 

I your desire to not see language and thereby communication atomized (LS), but I don't think a more 'clear' speaking language is necessarily going to do that. I was thinking to myself, man I wonder if people who come from cultures that speak tonal languages like Vietnamese or Japanese have this odd discussions on language. Where words might be spelled differently, but enunciated with the same sounds just with different inflections or tones. But that also made me think about how internet culture, which is still almost entirely written, has sort of a reverse style of language. It's rather hard to give emphasis and inflection in text without being an over-actor. Caps or bold are no supplement to raising your voice to varying degrees, likewise italics or underlining don't replace various ways we can emphasize words in spoken English.

 

Language being more like legos than painting, is to me a good thing. Because it allows deconstruction and reconstruction. You can build all sorts of things with legos, but you can also treat it with modularity. You can find bits and pieces you like and apply them in your own language. You could self-edit by looking at your own stuff and finding parts you don't like. The notion of, language should be more like painting; is kind of idealistic. Because you can't separate out a single color from a painting and still have any of the original meaning. Not to mention to anyone who checks out art, interpretation is literally the name of the game. I don't think what person A says should be subjective to person B, I mean it's going to be to some extent. But the object of the game, when it comes to posthumanist language/communication, would be to minimize that A->B subjectivity. It can obviously speak on subjective matters, like how good a sandwich was, or how gay nohan's bus tours are, but the individual components of language really stop functioning if we try and give up objectivity because "feels".

 

That clearly comes into my very strong opposition to postmodern thinking. Which despite being a fan of, sort of, yourself; you readily know and admit it's full of the most batshit crazy people who can frankly be a cancer on civilization and general progress at large. The realm of science has immeasurable value to mankind, probably beyond the scope of basically any thing else you can block as a 'thing'. And that value would decrease tremendously if we for one reason or another adopted a paradigm of communication that lacked those lego like qualities you seem to not be too big on. You could, technically speaking, paint physics papers; but everyone would walk away with different equations in their heads; and development in technical fields would grind to a halt as people can't accurately articulate concepts, ideas, models.

 

If I cannot clearly impress upon you, ideas like, if you do A-B-C-D it will probably kill or maim you. But instead have to rely on some expression of, "bruh dis bad vibes mang", the chances of you doing those things goes up exponentially. That's why children are quite dangerous to themselves, they get the general concept of danger/harm/etc.. but you can't tell a kid "don't jump in the gorilla enclosure, they're dangerous animals" and expect him to follow instruction. First of all because kids immediately like to do whatever you tell them not to. But also because their minds do not grasp those words or the meta-meaning of that string of words, in the same way an adult does. And imagine some postmodern 'expression' heavy parent telling their 5 yr old that jumping into the gorilla enclosure is "oppressive", that kid is gonna be like "yeah whateva nigga" and hop in the enclosure. These postmodern meta-"expressions" are largely just flat out bullshit wank designed to create a world model where reality doesn't have to be conformed to. You can convince anyone of anything, if reality is basically dismissed off hand as pointless.

 

It's literally an exogen tier move. LOL reality doesn't matter because all we know is sensory data input (vat bruh) so we can only operate on a "model" of the world we see ourselves in, not actually partake in it. That's technically true, but it's also fucking retarded. We evolved in this world, to move thru it accurate. If we don't perceive things like lions, starvation, volcanoes, etc.. for what they are; we die. And that element of evolution has been supremely successful in humans. People don't seem to understand the value of our ability to think in abstract and construct/deconstruct/evaluate "models" of-whatever, in our heads. We can't think of anything of which we don't ready know on some level. But if I know say, a blender is dangerous to my hand. I can probably assume that, a lawnmower which has a more powerful engine and large spinning metal blade, is at least as dangerous; and that I could probably just remember that spinning bits of sharp metal are not where I want to stick parts of my body. This applies to so many things people do, accurately and inaccurately, it's hard to like communicate it's depth; or at least, that's how I feel.

 

:nyasu:

 

We're never going to hit a Platonic ideal, exogen is exogen. But we can always like to achieve such an ideal, and find things of value whether we do or do not do. To me anyone who wants to postulate a postmodern system of language, is going to have to provide for me why it's more useful than our relatively lego-like systems of language. Because I'm gonna go ahead and say they can't, but also because of the larger social-cultural-political motivations of postmodernists; they like that it's not bound to notion that there's a reality, and can basically postulate as true, whatever the fuck it likes. If you were stuck on a plane, by yourself, with a bomb; and the plane itself on auto-pilot (Exorcet); and you could call me or postmodernist feminist genderqueer woman of transcolor experience. I'm willing to bet the farm you'd ring me for how to disarm a bomb, I'll even go so far as to say we both have detailed information and instructions of how to disarm the bomb. That's practical value. I don't deny being a "rationalist" but I think I'm much more a pragmatist, although the two sort of go hand in hand. Most practical/useful ways of going about a problem, or thinking about it, are going to be pretty close to rational.

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The fact that you're consistently talking about this in terms of usefulness certainly creates an impression of your being a philosophical pragmatist, yeah. But of course, everyone is a pragmatist, it's just that people define usefulness differently because they have different goals and ideals. Is it still useful to stay "alive" without consciousness? Without emotion? Without memory? etc

 

I actually agree with your assessment of linguistic lego vs linguistic paint, in that the latter is mostly impossible and not nearly as important pragmatically. I'm not so much suggesting that lego be replaced by paint though; my objection to rationality, logics, and models is not that they're used, but that most people are unable to ever stop using them, and in some cases unable to even recognize their existence at all, because close to 100% of our communication and education takes place with them. I'd really like to see a linguistics of paint developed for aesthetic rather than survival reasons, to facilitate extra-model communication to whatever small extent that is physically possible. Although admittedly I can't imagine how this would be different from the arts we currently have, the point is that I'm asking for supplementation rather than replacement. The thing I'd like to see replaced is the idea that there is no possible or desirable supplementation of an atomized, logical language, because extra-logical, extra-model thought and communication either don't exist or are irrelevant to identity. To me they're the most relevant part of identity.

 

I have no innate problem with logics existing. I just wish that people would recognize them for the tools that they are, and stop thinking of them as part of their hands.

Edited by LS
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The fact that you're consistently talking about this in terms of usefulness certainly creates an impression of your being a philosophical pragmatist, yeah. But of course, everyone is a pragmatist, it's just that people define usefulness differently because they have different goals and ideals. Is it still useful to stay "alive" without consciousness? Without emotion? Without memory? etc

 

Probably not, but that's because most metrics of usefulness is how much they improve one's life experience. If you're just a warm body, kinda meaningless having the wifi password or not. I have to assume this is something you understand because of your thinking that 2 yr olds can be killed without it being so much as a problem a point a heavily disagree with. But I also remember when you were talking about potential doesn't count. Do you still think sleeping people can be killed? (As a total side tangent/I wanna know what you think on that now)

 

I actually agree with your assessment of linguistic lego vs linguistic paint, in that the latter is mostly impossible and not nearly as important pragmatically. I'm not so much suggesting that lego be replaced by paint though; my objection to rationality, logics, and models is not that they're used, but that most people are unable to ever stop using them, and in some cases unable to even recognize their existence at all, because close to 100% of our communication and education takes place with them. I'd really like to see a linguistics of paint developed for aesthetic rather than survival reasons, to facilitate extra-model communication to whatever small extent that is physically possible. Although admittedly I can't imagine how this would be different from the arts we currently have, the point is that I'm asking for supplementation rather than replacement. The thing I'd like to see replaced is the idea that there is no possible or desirable supplementation of an atomized, logical language, because extra-logical, extra-model thought and communication either don't exist or are irrelevant to identity. To me they're the most relevant part of identity.

 

Most people are dumb, so you're gonna just have to deal with it, always. Although adding to our language to better portrait non-logical models and stuff, wouldn't be bad. It's just they tend to piggy-back regular language which creates really daffy concepts in the minds of people who aren't formally introduced to these models for what they are. Not only that, most of them are shit. I think anyone who needs to express themselves as anything more than "I'm Raor" has a serious lack of character innate to themselves, and feels guilt-tripped about more mainstream identifications. That's more of a stab at postmodernism. I've seen ppl that can't stop using "logic" but they also tend to be using shit-tier logic. That's why I really stopped tipping my fedora, I couldn't stand all the ass clowns who think they understand the argumentation, but just parrot what they hear like those they rail against. I think any further discussion of this language topic would be better off if we picked, or rather you picked, a particular area in which these extra-logical language would be applied.

 

I have no innate problem with logics existing. I just wish that people would recognize them for the tools that they are, and stop thinking of them as part of their hands.

 

People in general are shit. People in general shouldn't be allowed to vote let alone voice an opinion as tho it mattered on some topics. I want to be optimistic about people, I really do. But I frankly think most of the world is closer to fated than exogen, and closer to exogen than you or I. Bleak perhaps, but the pragmatic value of not letting your assumption someone is intelligent come back to bite you in the ass pays off readily.

 

blah blah more to come later, probably tomorrow mid-tanks

 

Aight, I'm gonna ramble on about changing for X, when it comes to human nature. Today's X is gonna be psycho-sexual stuff, nothing too specific, just the whole shebang.

 

I think it would be amazing if we could basically tone down the primate brain when it comes to 'muh deek' type behavior. Like nobody should have to rape someone out of sexual frustration, prison or otherwise, shit's not that srs bruh. But it would also vastly improve interpersonal work environments, particularly where of age sexually compatible persons work. Internet porn basically cause rape rates in the US to fall 80% in 15 years, which is a terrifying statistic to think about. Not because wimin aint' bean raep, but that 80% of rapes could have been prevented if some low-intelligence guy had some porn to jack his shit to. That is the nature of our species however. I think NOVA or some other science-y channel did this big ass special about time, and said if we compressed the history of the universe, big bang until now, human existence would take up the last 3 seconds or something. We are but mere generations from being nothing more than our cousins or less, from a metric of social sophistication.

 

This would also inherently implied to the opposite sex. Women are most competitive with other women. Reducing the general ape-brain addiction for sex and babies, would mean women could maybe calm down a little bit about shoes, purses, etc.. and be less materialistic; as that is an evolutionary sex-selective trait. Women are biologically programmed by evolution to see men who are 'successful' in no real particular terms; as attractive. There's literally countless non-academic, and a bunch of academic studies that p much show this. You can show women a Viv and be like 'he poor' and he'll be an 8-9/10, or LS but mention you got (((Zuckerberg))) tier money and all of a sudden 10/10. I am going to interject this TED talk because it's somewhat related. It has to do with our evolved sense of aesthetics, but I think in context to what I'm talking about, and going to keep talking about; it's germane.

 

 

Without making this just a tl;dr -> mankind can't think when he/she is horny. Even tho that's really what it is. I do not want to throw under the bus the whole concept of 'be fruitful and multiply' that rings true in many cultures as well as our biology. I think in any sort of long-view meta-posthumanist sense, we shouldn't be looking to tame human population. I do think we currently have a bit of a population crisis, but that is largely because of where populations are exploding relative to human development and the ability to utilize resources efficiently. That is to basically say Western-led foreign and food aid in Africa is propping up a population boom that is wholesale unsustainable. But if we're going to 'survive' as a species beyond our planet, which is sort of the first hurdle of posthumanism long-term; we're gonna have to get over any notion of keeping our numbers down. The universe is catastrophically large, and eventually breeding new humans could literally be a full time job; what a life. Although technology might supplant the need, I am on sort of a nutty philosophical level, against hardcore reliance on technology.

 

Our species near hypersexual nature, constant obsession on both the physical act of sex, and the sort of social/cultural process of achieving it; are kind of problematic. Mostly, if not entirely, in how it complicates and poisons interpersonal relations. As "fascist" as it might sound, if you have a work crew of all heterosexual males; they will generally speaking have a pleasant working environment among themselves than say an office with mixed sexes and sexual orientations. Granted that last one is generally going to be further complicated by cultural concepts about right/wrong, blah blah blah. But even with all, progressively thinking individuals, the sexual competition therein will make things more tense then they could be under a different set of circumstances.

 

I won't even pretend I understand enough to really dig at the deeper psychological traits and anomalies in humans when it comes to sexual identity, sexual expression, and sexual preferences. I'll just say, it's all degenerate, and take the ez out. I might do it later tho, it'd be a great thing to do if I still drank alcohol, but I don't.

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I'm gonna take an aside here on another element. When it comes to aspects of human nature, particular the emotional aspect. I think posthumanism's general borrowing from postmodernism is extremely shitty. But that's because of postmodernism's rejection of reality in place of feels.

 

@ 6:07

 

"And so all of these can be done. But they're not going to be done as long as third parties think that the purpose of the educational system is to make them (educators and advocates) feel good about themselves."

- Thomas Sowell

 

We could dissect the whole 'common core' movement based on Tom Sowell's above quote. And then look at it from the lens of people 'doing good' or 'making progress' more out of a selfish desire for self-verification; which in alt-right circles is coequally known as 'virtue signalling'.

 

Common core is objectively a shit idea. However, comma space, it's subjective purpose is to make education equal to all people. I really can't say I understand the 'philosophical' diatribe as to how they justify this accurate. But my take away is if we make education as retarded and daffy as common core does, everyone will more or less achieve equally, and we (((educators and advocates))) :nyasu: can feel good about ourselves. Not only can we feel good about ourselves, we can be ridiculously smug about it, and say anyone who doesn't like our ideas hates children, equality, and teachers; and they're also racist primitives.

 

Posthumanism ought to look to kill off this aspect of human nature. It probably extends to a lot more things than even I'm thinking of as I write this; which are quite a few. But the whole holier-than-thou self-gratification, self-feeding individual and group narcissism, and general I'm better than you because your ideas are bad culture. It exists on both sides of the spectrum, but I will have to say that it's FAR more prevalent on the left. Despite the MSM's depiction that the alt-right is just the new face of neo-nazism, KKK, white nationalism, etc.. it's really not. It does share elements, but that's because to say anything remotely critical of the postmodern agenda has started to become like converting to Judaism in 1937 in Berlin.

 

You won't see anywhere on fringe left websites articles or podcasts where people consider the arguments or positions of the alt-right. It's simply, they're racists and bad, and we need to stop them because feels/white guilt. Meanwhile just the other day I listened to an alt-right podcast where they discussed the very real medical nature of transsexualism and whole gender-blender universe. And there were some definite /pol/-tier jabs and memeposts. They were largely speaking from a position of 'we shouldn't let this happen, because it's destructive to the individuals doing it'. It wasn't a 'we have to stop them because they're evil' type discussion. The concern was that otherwise normal children where being subjected to basically a conflated 'condition' out of a combo of virtue-signalling (LOOK HOW TOLERANT I AM, GET ON MY LEVEL PEGGY, MY SON IS A GIRL) and the medical/psychological profession being loaded up with a bunch of degenerates like John Money who basically led the charge with David Reimer's case. That the psychological community to this day treats as a success, despite the fact it destroyed his life and family.

 

The podcast in question, in case you were interested.

 

Also serious warning the case of David Reimer is seriously sick fuck tier shit. John Money was an early apologist for pedophilia and, I assume you thought I was joking when I said it some time ago, but we're already seeing the wheels turning on 'normalizing' pedophilia in the same way as transsexualism has pretty much already been done.

Edited by Turd Ferguson
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