Where do we go from here? Kurzweil's Cyborgs vs. Taleb's Antifragility

[PaleoPhil]

Where do we go from here, embrace Kurzweil's future in which human beings try to transform into immortal cyborgs, or try to re-humanize ourselves by adopting a way of thinking and acting that embraces antifragility? I think the answer is obvious, but what do you think?

Ray Kurzweil in 30 Nov 2010 Time Magazine interview: "Ultimately we're going to recreate the full powers of human intelligence in a machine. By my reckoning we're about 20 years away from that threshold. .... By the time we get to the 2040s, say 2045 we'll be able to multiply human intelligence a billion fold. That will be a profound change that's singular in nature so we use this term [of singularity]. It will be a profound transformation, but it really is what human beings are all about. Human beings transcend our limitations. We make ourselves stronger, we make ourselves smarter with our tools, and that's really what the singularity will do."

(N)anotechnology, for example nanorobots, little blood-cell-sized devices like our white blood cells, but nonbiological and more capable, they'll keep us healthy from inside and that'll give us ... more time. Eventually we'll be able to ... access the information in our brains that makes us who we are. (U)ltimately we'll be able to greatly extend human longevity. The sky's the limit.

Kurzweil in The Sun, 24 Sep 2009: "If we want to go into virtual-reality mode, nanobots will shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will become commonplace. And in our daily lives, hologram like figures will pop in our brain to explain what is happening. So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs."

Nassim Taleb, in Antifragility: <<was just reading in John Gray’s wonderful The Immortalization Commission about attempts to use science, in a post-religious world, to achieve immortality. I felt some deep disgust—-as would any ancient do--at the  efforts  of  the  “singularity thinkers (such as Ray [Kurzweil]) who believe in humans’ potential to live forever. It is the same kind of deep internal disgust that takes hold of me when I see a rich eighty-two year old man surrounded with “babes”, twenty-something mistresses (often Russian or Ukrainian). I am not here to live forever, as a sick animal [nor, presumably, as a cyborg]. I am here to die a heroic death for the sake of the [tribe*], produce offspring (and prepare them for life and provide for them), or eventually, books. Then say goodbye, have a nice funeral in St Sergius (Mar Sarkis) in Amioun, and, as the French say, “place aux autres”, leave room for others>>

*Note: I replaced a controversial, loaded term liable to distract from Taleb's main points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BUYbEgOZt4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3bu_7Bfatg

[TylerDurden]

Taleb has a point. Then again, genuine immortality worldwide would inevitably lead to a  truly massive reduction in the birth-rate as people could put off having children forever. This, in combination with wars/suicides etc., might eventually lead to a reduction in the world's population, which would be of use.


I reckon Kurzweil's notions are absurd re the idea that humans could benefit by becoming cyborgs. If the technology is at all possible, then pure AIs would be the only real beneficiaries as they would not be subject to human limitations of any kind.

[KD]

I have to admit, I'm not a huge book reader (although I do enjoy audiobooks). I have for whatever reasons read some of Kurzweil's books in print. Of course ANYONE can speculate about the future, but this guy has an intelligence and record for doing so that is pretty ironclad. I have no reason to doubt that if humanity can continue to live long into the future that regardless of date this stuff can/will indeed happen. I don't think he does a very good job of articulating things where his idea of benefit is very appealing IMO but then again he seems to be more interested in how the facts will lay out and then later interpreting them as 'good'.

What I really dislike about Kurzweil is if his predictions are right in terms of the time-frame (which they were in the past with internet and surrounding technology) is that there is no real Blade Runner/Star Trek like future.  Seems there's like a few years of cybernetics and then the singularity stuff which I can only interpret as too radically different from what I want to participate in if not scary. Maybe i'll be wrong or won't have a choice anyway so its not worth thinking about too much.

It doesn't seem like the medical community has such a great record of reversing illnesses and stuff the way they do, but it does seem they do get better at creating artificial organs and repairing and regenerating tissues at the micro level and patching up other physical things. Once they get into the very small - nano it seems they might finally have their solutions for combating the larger problems that way. It seems pretty plausible to me that at some point people will be able to extend their life through such things..whether there will be huge debts and trade-offs like today I do not know. Definitely a larger divide between the natural folks and the more machine like people can be expected as time goes on..I mean there already is...

I think an interesting related note to diet today is that I think he himself consumes like 200 vitamin pills a day and a few other things that have already 'reversed his ageing process 20 years' or something. 

[PaleoPhil]

Good grief, you're right, KD. Thanks for that.

Kurzweil does not believe in half measures. He takes 180 to 210 vitamin and mineral supplements a day, so many that he doesn't have time to organize them all himself. So he's hired a pill wrangler, who takes them out of their bottles and sorts them into daily doses, which he carries everywhere in plastic bags. Kurzweil also spends one day a week at a medical clinic, receiving intravenous longevity treatments. The reason for his focus on optimal health should be obvious: If the singularity is going to render humans immortal by the middle of this century, it would be a shame to die in the interim. http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/16-04/ff_kurzweil?currentPage=all

Errm, apparently there's not much need for nutrient-rich raw natural whole foods when you can take 200 pills a day and intravenous longevity treatments, according to Kurzweil. Once he's fully cyborg/machine, I guess he won't need any foods at all at that point, just oil, grease, metals, silicon, minerals, plastic and toxic gunk to maintenance his robot body and provide replacement parts. He'd better stockpile a bunch if he's going to live forever though, because the Chinese are grabbing a lot of it. He'd better get super good at defenses against hackers too, to protect his main "brain" database and his backups.

KD, if you do one more book or audiobook in your life, I recommend The Black Swan, or possibly even better, the upcoming Antifragility (or whatever the title ends up being). For people who are completely unfamiliar with our hunter-gatherer ancestry and have difficulty with heavy reading like The Black Swan, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn might be a better choice.

[KD]

Good grief, you're right, KD. Thanks for that.

Kurzweil does not believe in half measures. He takes 180 to 210 vitamin and mineral supplements a day, so many that he doesn't have time to organize them all himself. So he's hired a pill wrangler, who takes them out of their bottles and sorts them into daily doses, which he carries everywhere in plastic bags. Kurzweil also spends one day a week at a medical clinic, receiving intravenous longevity treatments. The reason for his focus on optimal health should be obvious: If the singularity is going to render humans immortal by the middle of this century, it would be a shame to die in the interim. http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/16-04/ff_kurzweil?currentPage=all

Errm, apparently there's not much need for nutrient-rich raw natural whole foods when you can take 200 pills a day and intravenous longevity treatments, according to Kurzweil. Once he's fully cyborg/machine, I guess he won't need any foods at all at that point, just oil, grease, metals, silicon, minerals, plastic and toxic gunk to maintenance his robot body and provide replacement parts. He'd better stockpile a bunch if he's going to live forever though, because the Chinese are grabbing a lot of it. He'd better get super good at defenses against hackers too, to protect his main "brain" database and his backups.

KD, if you do one more book or audiobook in your life, I recommend The Black Swan, or possibly even better, the upcoming Antifragility (or whatever the title ends up being). For people who are completely unfamiliar with our hunter-gatherer ancestry and have difficulty with heavy reading like The Black Swan, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn might be a better choice.

yeah, i'm a big Daniel Quinn fan, thats another book i've read in print.

I think with the singularity there are no longer any bodies in need of oiling..everyone just gets downloaded into a virtual space where everything is possible...

TD might appreciate this, One of the more interesting (and somewhat related) audiobooks I got in the past year is the newer Dune series (particularly Machine Crusade) by Herbert's son Brian. I was skeptical at first but they are actually super intricate and rich books. Its a story before the ban on techology or whatever and earth was still recently in the picture. Basically it has these immortal humans in bio formed space-shuttles call sci-mechs(sp?) that serve a computer overlord. It splices this with the back story of the Fremen on Dune. It's probably not as great literature as the original books  of course ( and runs a little more like Star Wars)but it's just awesome sci-fi.

[sabertooth]

There is a real thought provoking science fiction movie called Dark city

Its is surreal on many levels.

An ancient race has hijacked a group of humans and switches their minds around in order to find what makes them unique. The race is dieing and need a human soul in order to imprint itself upon.

No matter how sophisticated machines will become I still doubt that the human soul is something to be replicated digitally.

In the movie
The ancient race race has built a ship in which machines that amplify their collective will to create whatever world they desire, but they are a sickened collectivist cult that has no soul. They use their ability to tune to their subjects in the dark and manipulate their minds, only there are some humans who don't fall completely for the spell, and one man outright resist their efforts to imprint him with the mind of the killer, and he learns to tune his mind to control their machines and in an epic battle with the help of the mad scientist he is able to break free from the strangers hold and forge his own destiny. Perhaps these machines will be built one day and those who operate them will have the ability to live forever, but without the presents of a human soul the endeavor will be as pathetic as those strangers in the movie.

Its a bit weird but I think its cool. Just listen to the intro and you can see why it comes to mind in consideration of the topic. The power of the human mind and the ability of one man to take control of his own destiny are central themes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7qZYRHfFQs

[TylerDurden]

The trouble with Dark City and Brian Herbert's Dune prequels and sequels is that they borrow the old, highly unrealistic, Campbellian notion that "of course "  humans would be so much more intelligent/adaptable  than either aliens or AIs. This results in rather weak story-telling, IMO, and is highly unlikely. I mean, AIs have an infinite advantage over humans in that they would have no biological limitations whatsoever re further evolution. I don't think we'll ever manage to download personalities onto the Internet or whatever, without the result being insanity as being human is inextricably tied to biological imperatives.

[PaleoPhil]

I suspect you're right about being human being inextricably linked to biology, Tyler. If humans do evolve into AIs, the result will probably be something other than what we consider human.

Other relevant concerns were raised in this blog, from which I've provided an excerpt (one interesting thing is that the futurists, who seem to be advocates of postmodern dystopia, already have a semi-insulting name for the humans who don't fully evolve into virtual beings/programs--Mostly Original Substrate Humans, who of course are expected to become second-class citizens seen as primitives):

A View From The Bottom Of The MOSH Pit
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2006
http://musingsfromthehinterland.blogspot.com/2006/02/view-from-bottom-of-mosh-pit.html

….there are a group of futurists, more rather than fewer, who postulate a point in the relatively near future, where acceleration of technological advances reaches the point where we humans can no longer predict the future. At that point, which they call "The Singularity," humanity and technology will merge and a new form of "life" will ultimately appear. They call this life "posthuman."

The "posthuman" existence will, of course, be a utopia. As one of the authors puts it, "the sooner we master these technologies, the sooner we will conquer aging and death and all the evils that humankind has been heir to." (Emphasis mine) Further, this posthuman life form will have intelligence far exceeding our own, thanks to miracles of computer wizardry.

"By the time machines make a case for themselves in a convincing way and have all the subtle cues indicative of emotional reaction, there won't be a clear distinction between machine and human."

Of course, anyone who might have a contrary philosophical view about the nature of Man and our purpose in the Universe is dismissed ad hominem as a "Luddite". Indeed, those of us with a cosmology which acknowledges the transcendent, which causes us to seek truths outside the realm of the purely physical, are simply irrational dolts. ....

[sabertooth]

I agree that AIs may have some scientifically indisputable advantage and the Idea that the an ordinary human could ever stand up to such incredible forces may be far fetched, but I am still a romantic at heart and believe that the human spirit is something that will never tolerate being trapped within some kind of technological matrix, no mater how appealing it may seem to the futurist of today..

Perhaps with cybernetic technology there would be ways to preserve a part of humanity within the machines, but I have an other notion that once mankind is removed from the struggles of his own ignorance and no longer has to accept personal limitations, then whatever spirit that is left will become sterile. Kind of like what you see happening with the strangers in the movie, or what the creators of star trek envisioned in the Borg.

 Resistance is futile, and yet the Enterprise with its human operators seems to always finds some intangible way to escape being assimilated.

Not to mention the incredible feat that it would take to preserve cybernetics human against epigenetic deterioration, I am not saying that its impossible, only that , The Ideal visions of the post humanist may be in reality a complete monstrosity. There is always that one unforeseeable factor that requires the human spirit, unhindered, to overcome.

Of course in the star trek episode the Humans did use their android to create a computer puzzle that totally destroyed the Borg. This is the point I see within dark city, that the human can take control of the machines without being controlled by them.

If a unaltered human can take control of the machines, then he could use his will to use them to fabricate whatever he dreams, but I don't think the cyborgs and computers have this Survivors Will nor will they have any dreams to make true. So even if you call it a new form of life , that doesn't mean that those mechanical beings will truly live, even if they do one day replace all of us.They will end up like the strangers in dark city, wondering through cyberspace looking for their lost soul for eternity.

Perhaps that's a bit of a stretch but it sums up my basic sentiment.

[KD]

or what the creators of star trek envisioned in the Borg.

 Resistance is futile, and yet the Enterprise with its human operators seems to always finds some intangible way to escape being assimilated.

well..yeah... script writers

---

There was alot of comparison of Inception to Dark City. I tend to think Christopher Nolan really has a handle on how to articulate some pretty heavy concepts in rather subliminal ways shown early on in Memento which is kind of a parable about memes and acquired knowledge in general. To me Inception was sort of about the kind of madness around the mind and technology when these are out of proportion. I don't know if it was about singularity exactly but there was some pretty amazing illustrations of some of these kinds of concepts. The Age of Spiritual Machines (which is not Kurzweil's most recent book and was written around 2000) describes in absolute minute detail on how alot of this stuff takes place. There is actually no scientific argument for suggesting it can't happen, only science that suggests its not only possible but inevitable unless there is some kind of major shut down of such research and Moore's law computing power or extinction of much of the human race.

[PaleoPhil]

I think with the singularity there are no longer any bodies in need of oiling..everyone just gets downloaded into a virtual space where everything is possible...

Presumably this "virtual space" has some sort of infrastructure and/or energy source, yes? If so, my bet is that it requires some sort of synthetic material somewhere, at least during a transitional stage, especially if he's going to achieve his virtual immortality within 20-25 years. Notice how he doesn't talk about the actual stuff that will be needed to make the virtual world and virtual people and instead focuses on abstract utopian notions to tap people's imaginations? He would make a good circus barker. "Step right up folks to get your own virtual body in a virtual world where there are no more bearded ladies or elephant men! That's right, you can be as attractive and svelte or pleasingly plump as you like. Lots and lots of options. The skies' the limit!"

They will end up like the strangers in dark city, wondering through cyberspace looking for their lost soul for eternity.

Good analogy.

[KD]

Presumably this "virtual space" has some sort of infrastructure and/or energy source, yes? If so, my bet is that it requires some sort of synthetic material somewhere, at least during a transitional stage, especially if he's going to achieve his virtual immortality within 20-25 years. Notice how he doesn't talk about the actual stuff that will be needed to make the virtual world and virtual people and instead focuses on abstract utopian notions to tap people's imaginations? He would make a good circus barker. "Step right up folks to get your own virtual body in a virtual world where there are no more bearded ladies or elephant men! That's right, you can be as attractive and svelte or pleasingly plump as you like. Lots and lots of options. The skies' the limit!"
Good analogy.

no

have you read The Age of Spiritual Machines? the books are INCREDIBLY detailed with this stuff including a timeline down to each year. I haven't read them in years but they are not outlined like one would think as pure hypothesis but like manuals on how to repair a VCR..super specific. In this future there is no mainframe or computers made out of metal and plastic or physical stuff like that.

In the years in between, sure like today they need time and raw resources to cultivate new technologies. With the singularity they aren't talking about AI and virtual reality in any shape or form that science fiction has predicted (like I said making no blade runner or even holodeck/replicator type technologies which are like baby stuff to this). They are literally talking without exaggeration a capability of the mind and mastery of reality "trillions of times more powerful". Transcending ideas like death, and possibly even earth/universe etc..so its something more like psychic powers in Scanners or aliens in Superman times a trillion than The Matrix. If The Matrix existed..it would represent like one tiny section of this new reality which would be multifacted.

So you have an intelligence that far exceeds human brain power which  increases exponentially and then you simultaneously have a technology thats able to transform molecules at the very tiniest level. there isn't a big computer that people choose to plug into or not. Its not like there is some wizard of oz machine that can be disconnected. the actually physical matter and makeup of everything known as reality changes. the very landscape of the planet and the universe is re-created in some way that is fairly impossible for a current human to understand, because they are talking about something a trillion times greater than current human intelligence.

Its actually the science and not the uh..non science which says this is all possible, which is why theres already countless organizations and major corporations participating in discussions surrounding the nature of singularity and the possible ways to control or alter or prevent it from happening.

[PaleoPhil]

have you read The Age of Spiritual Machines? the books are INCREDIBLY detailed with this stuff including a timeline down to each year.

It's commendable that he goes into more detail in the books, so that we can learn what plans he and the other futurists and the corporate and government sponsors of their general vision have for us. I've only skimmed a little of that book and one of his other books (and quit after it became too much of a downer) and read some articles by or about him and interviews of him now and then over the years. Since most of what I've read and seen him say has been rather disconcerting, I find it disheartening that he has been reported as being very accurate in his predictions because my hope, perhaps a futile one, is that many of them will not come true.

"How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in't!"
</irony>

I was hoping that someone would present some more input on Kurzweil's views and I thank you for doing so, KD.

[KD]

I became incredibly depressed after reading the first book which was right after a lot of the 9/11 stuff which I saw with my own eyes. Its pretty easy to feel helpless from both types of things, particularly when one really doesn't know WHAT to believe.

I seemed to have developed a "Que Sera, Sera " attitude with some of this stuff. I find it interesting to think about and I do think he's a brilliant person who deserves my attention whether I particularly like the ideas or feel comfortable with them. I don't ascribe to any typical religious belief (although technically i'm a Unitarian) but part of me does believe that humanity has some kind of destiny and that much of the things that happen have some sort of purpose even when they are extremely negative. Of course part of that purpose may be in people getting very angry and shifting the inevitability of such things I guess.

I think we are kind of in an in between state with alot of this anyway. if one takes a huge step back at the technologies and things we have today..its pretty psychedelic. The only thing is is that the forms and things people use them for makes them seem normal..almost old-hat...and in a way its sort of boring to me how we live amongst so much advanced stuff..just kind of spoiled. Since we already have all the crappy pollution and residue of this stuff part of me does anticipate how we can change the way we think do things on some other level of experience....that is if we aren't going to destroy everything and try to take back the planet with pollution sucking mushrooms or something.

[PaleoPhil]

I don't ascribe to any typical religious belief (although technically i'm a Unitarian)

That's similar to my own tendencies. I'm not a Unitarian, but my father's favorite aunt was one (she was apparently a splendid individual) and I went to a Unitarian service once a couple of years ago. It didn't feel quite like home in part because the main leader is a promoter of vegetarianism, but it wasn't far off either.

...and in a way its sort of boring to me how we live amongst so much advanced stuff..

I've noticed that the more advanced something is, the shorter its lifespan tends to be and the more prone to obsolence and ending up in a garbage dump.

[sabertooth]

I would like to expand on kurzweil's topic of bio engendering and genetic manipulation, with a little of my own vision.

I think all the futuristic pondering can never fathom the possibility of a complete and harmonious union of Artificial intelligence and biological engineering. I am speaking in regards to the Fifth element, or the supreme being, which is a life form that has been designed by artificial intelligence, using humanoid DNA as the template, but with a degree of complex addendum's being added into it that would give such a being superhuman intelligence and ability's.

Once the power of computers reaches a certain level I do believe its possible to begin to completely unlock the power of the genetic code and even begin to design the supreme being. There are literally no limits to what could be accomplished by using super computers to fabricate a genetic code that could produce a living being with unlimited potentials, and then with the use of nano technology they could construct such a living creature.

It wouldn't be a cyborg, it would be a totally organic creation that could be programed genetically into whatever form the computers could draft. The only question is that, who would be the artist(or android) that gets to chose which prototypes of the supreme being get the OK for mass production.

If the cyborg trans-humanist take control of the world before this point is reached then I doubt the supreme being will have much chance for being given a life of liberty, but If free humanity can survive up
to the peak of the singularity, then perhaps there may be a more human element present that could artfully conduct the creation and utilization of such a being.

[sabertooth]

That's similar to my own tendencies. I'm not a Unitarian, but my father's favorite aunt was one (she was apparently a splendid individual) and I went to a Unitarian service once a couple of years ago. It didn't feel quite like home in part because the main leader is a promoter of vegetarianism, but it wasn't far off either.

I have adopted a Unitarian way of thinking,

It does seem like there are a lot of Vegans at my church, but they are so accepting that I don't feel the need to judge them so harshly although many of them don't know what to think about having a raw carnivore in their midst.

[PaleoPhil]

Yes, I generally prefer judgment over judging.

[KD]

The way I see it, as science/technology advances, we will inevitably gain access to such technologies. In the case of those societies who frown on having female children, if they do reduce the number of girl children, that actually only benefits their societies since they(India, the Middle-East and China in particular) have too high a birth-rate already and need to reduce that in order to maintain a higher standard of living.

Now, people have argued that it is immoral to decide what physical or mental characteristics  child should have.  This idea has been rather conclusively debunked:-

http://web.archive.org/web/20060208032306/http://www.reason.com/rb/rb082504.shtml

I mean, either we are just animals who do not manipulate ourselves or the environment, in which case we should just go back to living in the trees without technology, or we should go onward and choose what genes our children have.  In the case of abortion, I doubt it would be necessary if technology improved. For example, it might be possible, eventually, to redesign an embryo, mid-term,  to be female or male instead, rather than aborting it, or redesigning its future muscles to allow it to adapt to a high-gravity environment, or adding gills allowing it to survive in an underwater environment.... etc.

It should be obvious that I am a transhumanist and a science fiction aficionado.

I thought this would be interesting to discuss further (nerd-off) here. Although I am freaked out by many above repercussions as anyone,  I have to agree with the above on principle, and I would be curious how other people feel.  I often think more about health/diet as to how it can be a tool to 'be around' and healthy/robust when other people might be more dependent on technology, but part of this is wanting to witness those things and have experiences beyond the current 'limbo' of the moment, not returning to the past just because some things of the past are more workable or sustainable.  I'm not personally that interested in going the ways of the Amish or the tribesmen...unless its some kind of hybrid of old and new lessons and values.

Anyway, discuss.

[Dorothy]

KD - thanks for bumping the discussion.

I have sensed (known it was coming) much of the future being discussed since I was a child and have been frightened of it from before it even started -- and especially watching it come to fruition piece by piece. I am not a sci-fi fan - these were all simple old intuition and visions. I have been terrified of someone putting a machine in my brain since before computers or nanobots were thought of. I have seen much of it and what Wurzeil predicts is on the way ...... and I hope I don't have to witness it or be subject to it.

The problem is that as a whole we are still children spiritually and morally.  The more power we have the more we use it to control and to destroy. Greed, will to power and the inability to see the whole or where it might lead makes these new advancements massively dangerous to us. If we were more advanced in the primary more humane sense - cared more about each other and our planet, these things could become useful. But with tyranny so commonplace and Big Brother the one who will be wielding the use and power of these "advances" I am just as frightened now as I was a young child.

If we start to manipulate the next generation I cannot see it coming out any better than what we have done in manipulating each other and the environment and other species. We do not have the maturity to manipulate (especially on such a scale) in a way that won't be catastrophic - let alone wisely. .

We simply are not ready. The singularity first has to be spiritual (for the lack of a better word) before it is physical or the singularity might be more like what a "singularity" technically is -- the center of a black hole from which nothing returns.

[TylerDurden]

Natural selection works despite the fact that 99 percent of all mutations are usually  harmful and lead to extinction. So, one would only need a very few people manipulating their DNA etc. correctly for life to go on as before, albeit  at a much faster rate.

Though I have read somewhere that genetic engineering could only improve humans by at most 100%. Any further improvements would require becoming a cyborg etc.

[KD]

We simply are not ready. The singularity first has to be spiritual (for the lack of a better word) before it is physical or the singularity might be more like what a "singularity" technically is -- the center of a black hole from which nothing returns.

The actual singularity 'thing' is one of those things my mind says is bad because I can't comprehend it as pleasant or needed, but they say its inevitable so whether that is true or not I don't pay it alot of mind. I thought this thread might be a good area for a more general discussion of things less...singular.

Given the option - as if it actually exists - I personally wouldn't throw a monkey wrench into the technological progress to keep things in the status quo or return to a simpler time. It could be this will happen to some degree, at least temporarily, just due to the economics of things - and this could have good consequences for people in a sense 're-humanizing' themselves and their resources.  At the same time I don't see technological experimentation as inherently bad and agree it seems part of our 'nature' . The -f-ups included, exploitations, and lessons learned to be entirely human which means never destined for the status quo or sticking with what 'works'.

Suspect..or possibly way dangerous..yes! which is why It seems smarter to be able to eschew alot of technologies if one can that relate to one's basic needs. Not be dependent on the man....machine.

[Dorothy]

Yes KD - going back to a simpler, more sustainable times and ways appeals to me on so many levels too. We've become divorced from so many of our primary human "needs" (at least as I see it) - like basic nutrition, sunlight and deep human communal ties (even the nuclear family is breaking apart), that to think about playing God with the species when we are already so unbalanced in our decisions is putting the cart miles in front of the horse imho. We have enough power to have created a massive kill-off of species world-wide and for the males of many species now to be mutated to the point where reproduction is waning (we could add ad nauseum to how we have f-cked things up for our planet and our health and happiness) so what criteria are we using to make the decision that we can do any better than nature? Why do people think that more complicated and controlled is necessarily going to add more value?

Take the top 3 causes of death for instance. 1. Preventable medical mistakes. 2. Cancer. 3. Heart disease. Most people could avoid all these just by simply eating a natural diet. Instead we use outrageously complicated treatments and procedures which just cause for more pain and sorrow. Greed and the desire for power runs it all. Greed and a desire for power will also run genetic engineering and already is (can we say "Monsanto everyone?). People generally will buy into anything if it's flashy and someone who they think is in authority says it - but I don't buy the flashy "live forever and have infinite intelligence" commercial - just like I don't believe that breakfast cereal filled with sugar is good for children. It's just too unnatural. 

[billy4184]

My Dad always says that until capitalism has been wiped off the face of the earth we will never be able to make anything great of humanity, and I tend to agree.

If genetic engineering is carried out, it will inevitably be for a profitable end, not necessarily a good or healthy one. I don't see why it would not be very profitable for some people, for example, to genetically engineer compliant and weak-willed people, if ways of doing it were discovered.

The thing I'm not sure about is: Are the flaws of human nature (which are not always flaws in all situations) so integral to our being that we will never be able to turn around and see them clearly, or control them enough that we could safely `play God' without fear?

[PaleoPhil]

The actual singularity 'thing' is one of those things my mind says is bad because I can't comprehend it as pleasant or needed, but they say its inevitable so whether that is true or not I don't pay it alot of mind. ....

 It seems smarter to be able to eschew alot of technologies if one can that relate to one's basic needs. Not be dependent on the man....machine.

It's nice to find someone else who doesn't buy into the utopian lies of the modernist progressives, aka robot people. All that is new is not necessarily improved.

Of course, they won't be able to resist retaliating and will try to paint you as an unreconstructed savage. The fact that you welcome the best of the new as well as the old probably won't mollify them. The slightest questioning of "progress" will get you labeled barbarian, and they'll likely require instead blind obedience. They want serfs, not original thinkers. In their nerdy minds nature is evil, needing of purification, and technology is the end-all, be-all. Think of it, they actually long to shed what's left of their humanness to become robots!

It's the same inanity that claims that pasteurized dairy is light-years-better than raw fermented dairy and that cooking beats raw any day; devoid of evidence, buttressed only by fanatical devotion to the sterile brave new world of Big Brother and His robotic sheeple.