Transhumanist Literature

ITT we discuss the quintessential books on ascending beyond biology. I've just got done reading pic related and was wondering if anyone else had opinions, especially if you've read both this and Godel Escher Bach since Douglas Hofstadter has been openly critical of Ray Kurzweil's take on the future. Has reading any transhumanism literature given you hope for the future or has it all been stamped out with pessimism from the critics? Which author has given the most compelling version of how transhumanism will play out?

Hi, fren. Do psychedelics, kill your ego and you'll find the future is just sad for it, for the ego. Also, understand that ego is just a model of the interface you use to deal with phenomena.

>>7377 just what philosophy would this line of thinking fall under?

>ascending beyond biology You don't need books for that -- only a rope and a place to hang yourself from.

Transhumanism is the end of humanity. Literally and figuratively. The exciting part is we'll no longer be considered homosapiens, instead being our own built species. The not so exciting part is the new species will largely consist of body snatcher borgs. Think about the situation with technology now. Almost all hardware is closed, and that which is not is often considerably underpowered and inconvenient. Almost all software again the same with license/IP rights, and that which is otherwise is difficult for normal people and often has lesser feature sets. Every piece of hardware and software is vulnerable, and nobody is capable of understanding what goes into it all intimately, so we have to rely on trust. In all cases, our technology is compromised and vulnerable to outside influence in many significant ways. There is an obvious discrepency between those with a lot of capital in what technological power and utilization is capable. Sure, there's supercomputers, AI, those sort of things that come immediately to mind. But Lainons, it's about to go deep, especially if we're talking about state actors... of which is to be combined with corporations; stakeholder capitalism, which if you're any good with definitions and euphanisms, you can just call fascism. The deep part? We're talking covert IoT devices, satellite tech, biosensors on skin and implanted, medicines of which alter the genome, organisms that can act as reactive chemical and pharmaceutical factories with bio-transistors i/o and interconnectivity, energy based weapons and social control/condition systems, technology-assisted cradle to the grave gamification of behavior, dissociation of what is biological and synthetic to the largest extremes -- both physically and psychologically. Many of the above technologies will be available to the public, yes, but in highly controlled and exploitative fashions in which will, as has been the intention of worldwide elites for almost a century, completely capture and control the autonomy of every single individual. Even today you can rarely find a person not dependent on technology, this so called singularity will naturally lead to very extreme gulfs as those that assimilate will be granted the gifts of said technology -- extended intelligence, awareness, ability, and adaptivity far beyond what is currently humanly possible... and they'll all be literal fuarrrking NPCs. In other words, the singularity is marketing for a future of total technocratic control. Feel free to ask for sources if you think anything I'm saying is outlandish. In the meantime, this is a decent primer to point you in the right direction for further research, at least if you want to become a void-black pilled neoluddite: https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/02/investigative-reports/technocracy-the-operating-system-for-the-new-international-rules-based-order-1/

>>7392 >Think about the situation with technology now. Almost all hardware is closed, and that which is not is often considerably underpowered and inconvenient. Almost all software again the same with license/IP rights, and that which is otherwise is difficult for normal people and often has lesser feature sets. Every piece of hardware and software is vulnerable, and nobody is capable of understanding what goes into it all intimately, so we have to rely on trust. In all cases, our technology is compromised and vulnerable to outside influence in many significant ways. Wrong. The OpenBSD project releases features faster than Microsoft. >But Lainons, This is where I start to feel uncomfortable. >stakeholder capitalism, which if you're any good with definitions and euphemisms, you can just call fascism. No. Anyway, you don't have any litterature to back that claim, but I definitely agree with its spirit: capitalist social media are grooming young people. Please start a blog to learn to give value to, and to hierarchize information. You won't start by writing good stuff and it's ok, nobody does. I've skimmed through the rest of your post and it seems to build upon these claims so I assume it's brittle. >Late stage capitalism is weird capitalism: https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/17/shareholder-socialism/#asset-manager-capitalism >20 reasons why you should start a blog in 2022: https://www.productiveblogging.com/reasons-you-should-start-a-blog/

>>7379 That manga was so strange, it holds a special place in my heart and it was funny as fuarrrk. >Back to the topic I really started intensely studying transhumanism when I read about the Openworm project. It made me question the entire nature of life and what it means to be a living organism. I am actually having a hard time remembering any specific transhumanist books, but I feel like it tends to be a rarer form of Sci-Fi. I think a more common theme is post-humanism out of all the books I have read..

>>7593 >Openworm Incase you aren't already aware, openworm has made extremely little progress on what seems like the easiest project of its type. The goal of the openworm project is to create a full simulated organism based on a particular type of worm, C. Elegans, ideally be able to transfer its 'mind' and place it in a simulated environment where it can run around and do worm things. The worm is a tiny little creature about a milimeter long, with a nervous system of 302 neurons. It is a very well studied 'model organism' and seems like an ideal entry level choice for this sort of project. Its gotten some interest about the topic of 'uploading', such a simple brain should make this a simple task, but it hasn't happened. A full map of neurons is one thing, apparently a detailed understanding of what each neuron does, and what 'weights' it has on its connexions to the others, is quite another. Not a single worm has been 'uploaded', no clear path exists towards the uploading of a worm. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mHqQxwKuzZS69CXX5/whole-brain-emulation-no-progress-on-c-elgans-after-10-years

>>7392 I don't think reliance on technology, even to the cybernetic extent, is derivative of the control structures at large. Control structures are reliant on technology. So it's exactly the opposite of the overplayed dystopian thematics. And vulnerability isn't typically inherant to those control structures either. There are some cases with extremely broad application, but generally speaking a plutocracy approaching fascism is fairly overt; Facebook and Google don't rely on spooky back doors or security flaws to control opinions. People are actually just too dumb to know what to believe. So the shepherd tends his flock. And that's part of transhumanism, really, like A Brave New World. But much closer to Transmetropolitan. Because there will always be ghettos, religious outliers, and schizophrenics afraid the IME in their wristwatch is controlling their brain. But when you start thinking that's the reason we invented timekeeping, you're proof of concept for older technologies like the nightstick.

>>7587 What a conflicting response. I appreciate the suggestion to blog, yet you had to go and dismiss the rest of the post you left unaddressed. Well fair enough, it wouldn't be Lainchan without some claim of intellectual superiority. :) OpenBSD I would categorize as esoteric for normal people, underpowered for scope of use, and inconvenient. Pretty damn secure too, but not impossible with enough motivation. Stakeholder capitalism is very much communist for the corporations and money movers that play along with it, but eats those same that go against it, and becomes a new form of governance as it fundamentally marries government and corporations (fascism). I will provide literature if you feel it necessary, but I just want to put this post out for now. I appreciate the article as well and will get to a full read soon, it's definitely a good piece. >>7596 I like your post, but I think you misinterpreted my own. Indeed the application of technology is not so overt, at least when it comes to introducing it into consensus. It's banal, invisible, marketed benefits, with consequences not well understood to the common man exploited. The vulnerability is the ad on the webpage, etc... you see where I'm going. To be a participant in society, perhaps even to survive, the majority of us rely on technology that is actively harming our autonomy, freedom, and increasingly our livelihood. The balance of power, which is nearly nonexistent for the reliant users, is modulated by the priorities of the owners and distributors. Priorities, which as far as I'm concerned, has anything but our best interests in mind... hence borg humanity. I hope you're right in thinking it'll be a messy stratification... I'll look forward wandering the ghettos tripping on accela. Again I will link sources for first reply if requested, but I don't want this thread to be about my opinions, nor am I motivated to participate to that extent.

>>7373 So, the path that lie before us are: >Psy We somehow find a greater way to interact with the world than by the form, we ascend over matter and become pure energy, maybe even fusioning all the energies of mankind to take our place among the other wills of the universal wired Very unlikely given that a program can't run without hardware. >Eugenism 200 IQ Ubermench engineered to be perfect in every way and who will live 500 years, opening the way to new societies, new progress and making past humans look like homo habilis in comparison. Very unlikeley since Charlie Chapin is dead. >Augs We start changing our birthpart for better, artificals ones. There is only decay in flesh anyway. We become so alien to our biological nature that even or brain get augmented and we become a glorified borg. Say, if we changed every part of a man, but only one at a time, would it still be the same man? Would it be a man? Not so unlikely. >Revolt of the machine The autoreplicant artificial wipe all biological lifeform, develop technology beyond what we can imagine and colonize the entire galaxy. In trillions of years, they will still be there, harvesting the gravity waves of blackholes as they orbit each others. I do hope it will happen, but it won't. >Idiocraty As stupid people make more kids, humanity devolve in simple minded glorified monkeys who can barely keep things going. Soon enough, we won't even be able to understand that we are becoming idiots. It already started. It's winning.

Has any one read "The Culture" series? It's trans-humanist literature as a function of being post-scarcity literature, supposedly. I've been meaning to start it but haven't gotten there.