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Over on rpg.net there's a Traveller thread going on which has included a bunch of transhumanist debate, of sorts. Some people saying the tech assumptions of Traveller are ridiculously retro and out of date, and others sniping at the transhumanism trend, full of fantasy and wish-fulfillment, no more realistic than Traveller and already dying to be replaced by the Mundane SF trend. Which strikes me as nutty.
Traveller: completely jury-rigged FTL system, human-equivalent aliens, and a side dish of psionics.
Transhumanism: well, what is it really? First I'd like to dump the Singularity as a concept non-conducive to communication; Vinge himself meant a bunch of different things by it, sharing a core of "superhuman intelligence will make things weird", and as used the word's only gotten more fractured, with a lot of people using it as "spontaneous nano-upload of everybody".
A better touchstone is GURPS Transhuman Space, I think, a setting which involves increasingly extended lifespans (through a suite of medical interventions I think, not a pill of nano-machines), various genetically engineered humans and animals, AIs, and 'ghosts' -- uploads of human brains. Plus, lots of SPAAACE. Apart from anything explicitly about intelligence boosting (which might break a game setting) I think that's nearly a clean sweep of transhumanist tropes. The suite of concepts could be abstracted as "superb control over life, mind, and matter, with an emphasis on life and mind."
The endstate could be idealized as "eternally youthful supergeniuses who can shape their environment at will, sculpt life, not have to work much, and go anywhere they want." Put that way, it sounds rather wish-fulillmenty, Big Rock Candy Mountain for techies.
Thing is, it's not pulled out of the aether. If you step back and posit superb control over life and mind, eternally youthful supergeniuses seems like a reasonable expectation. The brain is supposed to be a material process, largely information processing and action coordination, which can be understood, modified, improved, and duplicated -- which gives you AI, geniuses, and uploads. People don't die because Atropos cut their thread, they die because of entropy piling up in their cells and organs, because specific organs or processes fail. If the damage can be reversed, or the organ replaced by a new one, aging can be reversed or sidestepped.
To avoid this I think you have to postulate either that we don't get the understanding of life and mind, which seems counter to current trends, or that we do but using the knowledge is unavoidably difficult and expensive. Which is possible, but it's certainly not obvious that it'll be the case, any more than pocket-sized camera-phones which can reach around the world or palmtop computers or sequencing the human genome in surprising time were too complicated to pull off.
As for wish-fulfillment -- well, Iain Banks replied "yes, it is, that's exactly what technology is for." But one might want to look at our society, one where most children don't die, where people can go into their thirties without having someone they know die, where the vast majority of people aren't involved in food production, where life expectancy for all goes up to 80, where we can summon excellent music or video with the touch of a button, have cheaply illuminated nights without smoke, and have comfortable homes even in hot humid areas. That's over the top wish fulfillment fantasy to most of the human race, not even getting into the cars which move at multiple times a horse's speed and don't have to be fed every day, or the laundry machines, or the birth control pills...
One trope I didn't mention was nanotech. I've heard Transhuman Space is restrained in using it. At any rate, I view it as a means, not a goal. The goal is superb control over life etc.; Drexlerian nanotech is one envisioned implementation, with extra appeal for autarchic fantasies by libertarians not content with ordering products off the web from robot factories, paid for by their social democratic matter and energy allowance. An abused magic wand, yes, but not actually necessary for the grand vision!
Along the way, I had a couple of posts about Bujold and transhumanism. And a brief note on how we're living transhumanism -- or what would be the build up to it if it's going to happen.
Traveller: completely jury-rigged FTL system, human-equivalent aliens, and a side dish of psionics.
Transhumanism: well, what is it really? First I'd like to dump the Singularity as a concept non-conducive to communication; Vinge himself meant a bunch of different things by it, sharing a core of "superhuman intelligence will make things weird", and as used the word's only gotten more fractured, with a lot of people using it as "spontaneous nano-upload of everybody".
A better touchstone is GURPS Transhuman Space, I think, a setting which involves increasingly extended lifespans (through a suite of medical interventions I think, not a pill of nano-machines), various genetically engineered humans and animals, AIs, and 'ghosts' -- uploads of human brains. Plus, lots of SPAAACE. Apart from anything explicitly about intelligence boosting (which might break a game setting) I think that's nearly a clean sweep of transhumanist tropes. The suite of concepts could be abstracted as "superb control over life, mind, and matter, with an emphasis on life and mind."
The endstate could be idealized as "eternally youthful supergeniuses who can shape their environment at will, sculpt life, not have to work much, and go anywhere they want." Put that way, it sounds rather wish-fulillmenty, Big Rock Candy Mountain for techies.
Thing is, it's not pulled out of the aether. If you step back and posit superb control over life and mind, eternally youthful supergeniuses seems like a reasonable expectation. The brain is supposed to be a material process, largely information processing and action coordination, which can be understood, modified, improved, and duplicated -- which gives you AI, geniuses, and uploads. People don't die because Atropos cut their thread, they die because of entropy piling up in their cells and organs, because specific organs or processes fail. If the damage can be reversed, or the organ replaced by a new one, aging can be reversed or sidestepped.
To avoid this I think you have to postulate either that we don't get the understanding of life and mind, which seems counter to current trends, or that we do but using the knowledge is unavoidably difficult and expensive. Which is possible, but it's certainly not obvious that it'll be the case, any more than pocket-sized camera-phones which can reach around the world or palmtop computers or sequencing the human genome in surprising time were too complicated to pull off.
As for wish-fulfillment -- well, Iain Banks replied "yes, it is, that's exactly what technology is for." But one might want to look at our society, one where most children don't die, where people can go into their thirties without having someone they know die, where the vast majority of people aren't involved in food production, where life expectancy for all goes up to 80, where we can summon excellent music or video with the touch of a button, have cheaply illuminated nights without smoke, and have comfortable homes even in hot humid areas. That's over the top wish fulfillment fantasy to most of the human race, not even getting into the cars which move at multiple times a horse's speed and don't have to be fed every day, or the laundry machines, or the birth control pills...
One trope I didn't mention was nanotech. I've heard Transhuman Space is restrained in using it. At any rate, I view it as a means, not a goal. The goal is superb control over life etc.; Drexlerian nanotech is one envisioned implementation, with extra appeal for autarchic fantasies by libertarians not content with ordering products off the web from robot factories, paid for by their social democratic matter and energy allowance. An abused magic wand, yes, but not actually necessary for the grand vision!
Along the way, I had a couple of posts about Bujold and transhumanism. And a brief note on how we're living transhumanism -- or what would be the build up to it if it's going to happen.
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Date: 2007-08-15 00:40 (UTC)From: