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mattyrm wrote:Our brains make us human. If you argue its our physical form, then are horribly disfigured or deformed people less human?

What about the mentally disabled?

Fukuyama's like Bill Kristol, a smart guy who just ends up being wrong when it comes to the big issues. Well, wrong isn't the best word... I mean he certainly isn't right - maybe 'wrongheaded'?

I actually agree with him on all kinds of smaller, immediate issues, but when he starts talking about things in a global sense he starts bringing in a greater worldview that results in a whole lot of nonsense. The End of History really was a very strange idea, not only because things really didn't work out that way, but because he assumed that national economic and political liberalism really was some kind of ideal end state. It may be the best we've managed to develop right now, but it strikes me as very small, and very limiting to assume that given all the advances we'll make in the next hundred years, that it might be the best kind of government we'll ever devise.

I haven't read Our Post Human Future, but I think a similar assumption is presenting itself. Now, I agree that we need to be very careful about the changes we might make to ourselves, but to argue it is inherently bad because we might threaten our liberal states? That's a claim that can only be made if you assume we can only lose by changing our systems of government, which is only true if liberalism is the absolute best possible state of government.

sebster wrote:Fukuyama's like Bill Kristol, a smart guy who just ends up being wrong when it comes to the big issues. Well, wrong isn't the best word... I mean he certainly isn't right - maybe 'wrongheaded'?

I actually agree with him on all kinds of smaller, immediate issues, but when he starts talking about things in a global sense he starts bringing in a greater worldview that results in a whole lot of nonsense. The End of History really was a very strange idea, not only because things really didn't work out that way, but because he assumed that national economic and political liberalism really was some kind of ideal end state. It may be the best we've managed to develop right now, but it strikes me as very small, and very limiting to assume that given all the advances we'll make in the next hundred years, that it might be the best kind of government we'll ever devise.

As often as we agree, this may be the first time we have completely agreed. Fukyama is far, far too obsessed with Waltz to ever reach, what I would consider, correct deductions.

sebster wrote:
I haven't read Our Post Human Future, but I think a similar assumption is presenting itself. Now, I agree that we need to be very careful about the changes we might make to ourselves, but to argue it is inherently bad because we might threaten our liberal states? That's a claim that can only be made if you assume we can only lose by changing our systems of government, which is only true if liberalism is the absolute best possible state of government.

Yep, despite a willingness to admit his wrongness, Fukuyama is not very imaginative.

mattyrm wrote:Our brains make us human. If you argue its our physical form, then are horribly disfigured or deformed people less human?

Screw that man, soon as the technology becomes available I want a robot spanking arm.

There is no thing that makes us human. There is only the human experience.


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Guitardian wrote:Having not read it, I have to say I am, and have been for a long time, very conflicted about the idea of human alteration. The movie "gattaca" paints a pretty bleak view of it.

I found Gattaca a fascinating movie because it doesn't paint an explicitly negative view of genetic engineering. It remains fairly neutral on that issue, instead it makes the fairly romantic notion that people might become stronger and smarter from genetic adaptation, but it would be a mistake to assume that simply have the better genes makes someone more capable of achieving. There is no gene for the human spirit, and that is what drives our achievements.

I think it's a wonderful notion, albeit one with fairly practical limits. While the people in Gattaca are engineered, they remain fundamentally human - they're not eight limbed humans with two dual processing brains. If we ever allowed that stage of development then all the pluckiness and drive would only get the average human so far.

I think moral/technological advancement is the new evolution, and in a way, the end of real biological evolution. Were it not for medical technology and compassion, all of the inferior traits like mental retardation, paulsy, muscular dystrophy, heck even near-sightedness; They all would have been bred out by now.

Not really, no. Many of those problems are biological, but not genetic in origin (an problem in the womb for example). Others don't exhibit or affect survival until later in life, when the person is already likely to have bred.

Think about it, we've had the technology and resources to correct most of those things for a century or less, yet the problems have persisted for thousands of years.

The animal world favors the big and strong and healthy.

In general it favours the big and the strong and the healthy more than we do, but not exclusively. Pack loyalty and social organisation exists in the animal kingdom too.


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dogma wrote:Yep, despite a willingness to admit his wrongness, Fukuyama is not very imaginative.

Yeah, if nothing else Fukuyama deserves a lot of credit for backing out of the neocon movement before it was cool to do so.

Thing is, it wasn't so much that Fukuyama ever really changed his ideas, as much as neoconservatism became something entirely different to what he had been saying. In the wake of that there would have been a terrific opportunity for him to reassess his views, but he didn't do that.

In political science theory, that's basically how it goes. Waltz still, 30 years later, defends his neorealist position.

It isn't like philosophy, unfortunately.

I mean, I imagine that I'll be all up on my D-brane theory in 20 years. Its just the reality of getting paid in academy land.

dogma wrote:

mattyrm wrote:Our brains make us human. If you argue its our physical form, then are horribly disfigured or deformed people less human?

What about the mentally disabled?

I will preface this with saying that everyone is crazy in one way or another. Just some people are able to function while others are a lost cause. I don't want to sound cruel but there's really no way around it. My girlfriend worked at a 'facility' for the mentally disabled 'individuals' for a long time. She has stories of 'individuals' (they have to refer to them as that) throwing poo at her, groping her, punching her, and she is legally not allowed to violently fend them off by swinging back without being blacklisted, fined, fired, and going to jail. The facility she worked at had about 5 staff for every 'individual' and that's just the minders to make sure they aren't trying to eat a light bulb or something when nobody is watching.

What a waste of resources. People who could otherwise be productive and forward moving are instead babysitting a lump of brain damage in a 300 pound body who will never be rehabilitated, never be productive, never be self sufficient, and be a constant problem. We are all drains on society in some way, but most of us are capable of contributing back in some way, hence society can exist. I know it sounds ugly and cruel, but I think triage is a good analogy to the way our culture attempts to deal with the terminally incapable. Nobody wants to leave the wounded soldier behind to die, but if the resources could be better used for people who do have the capacity to use them, like for instance a less wounded soldier who might actually make it, instead of one who is mortally wounded and going to die no matter what you do... wouldn't they be better used towards that purpose? Sane people have a more difficult time finding a job and managing their own affairs than the mentally ill, who can just live in lala land and all the sane people just have to yoke the burden. A slowed person has an easier time getting a job as a greeter at walmart than a high school kid, because quotas do that on a larger level than a single man's need to work an honest job, if you can get incentives to hire the handicapped instead.

I have had to work with one of these pity cases and I seriously just wished he would just stand there and do nothing than try to 'help' in the kitchen. Yeah having a coworker made my job more difficult. Not only do I have to be responsible for the whole kitchen, I also have to babysit, before the short bus thankfully came and picked him up after 3 hours of making a big mess and needing constant supervision. So yeah, what about the mentally handicapped? Is it really beneficial to society to give them their opportunity to feel like they are accomplishing something when it is obvious that they are just a pain in everyone stuck dealing with them's ass? Actually I think it is. It gives us a feeling of benevolence and tolerance and of rising above our selfishness when we coddle the unfortunate who are at no fault for their station in life.

Well, 'crazy' isn't a medical definition, but, as you said, 'crazy' influences our decisions and therefor all our decisions.

That said, there are clearly 'crazy' people (even if they are merely wildly different people) and we should identify them for sequester and help, or sequester or help.

Yeah dogma you can't say that someone who has downs syndrome isn't human either obviously, but as usual you are trying to have a sensible chat and I was merely trying to get a masturbation based quip in!

What makes us human? I'm not a man who cares for philosophy, so I will simply say our classification biologically. A heavily augmented person who was born a human is still a human. Like space marines!

Unless they don't drink Scotch Whiskey!

sebster wrote:
I haven't read Our Post Human Future, but I think a similar assumption is presenting itself. Now, I agree that we need to be very careful about the changes we might make to ourselves, but to argue it is inherently bad because we might threaten our liberal states? That's a claim that can only be made if you assume we can only lose by changing our systems of government, which is only true if liberalism is the absolute best possible state of government.

well I think one of his points about biotech and liberal democracy was that biotech would become a new battleground for class warfare. The law is supposed to gauruntee equality of opportunity; but when certain parts of society become so affluent that they can accrue a mass of advantages not available to the rest of society, then equality of opportunity stops looking like a fundamental human right and starts looking like a bad joke, whence the liberal argument for the redistribution of wealth. Part of what Fukuyama is going to say in that book is that biotech can give people the kind of entrenched, permanent advantages that make equality before the law meaningless. At that point the state will have to either prohibit that kind of research all together (fukuyama's choice) or give up any pretense to liberal democracy. I think he's basically right about that.... whether or not the abandonment of liberal democracy is a bad thing depends on what the alternatives are. AF


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sebster wrote:

Guitardian wrote:Having not read it, I have to say I am, and have been for a long time, very conflicted about the idea of human alteration. The movie "gattaca" paints a pretty bleak view of it.

I found Gattaca a fascinating movie because it doesn't paint an explicitly negative view of genetic engineering. It remains fairly neutral on that issue, instead it makes the fairly romantic notion that people might become stronger and smarter from genetic adaptation, but it would be a mistake to assume that simply have the better genes makes someone more capable of achieving. There is no gene for the human spirit, and that is what drives our achievements.

I felt that movie argued for its premise by assuming it. The author (Gore Vidal IIRC) thinks genetic determinism isnt just wrong but entirely false; he's assuming the opposite of what the rest of the society he depicts assumes. So the guy that no one gives a chance can get to the moon, the guy with impeccable genetics turns out to be a murderer in one case and a degenerate in the other. But what if its true? He doesnt seem to have even considered that possibility. If it was true then there would be a permanent underclass of geneticly inferior people; descrimination against them would be a matter of course. I think its worth looking at what the implications might be if genetic determinism has any truth to it at all. I thought it was a good movie in terms of the story it told but it didnt argue very effectively for its point. AF

I thought being human is what made us human.

can we look forward to any more gems of insight today....Ahtman?

AbaddonFidelis wrote:can we look forward to any more gems of insight today....Ahtman?

I imagine.

Ahtman wrote:I thought being human is what made us human.

Terrible show. I disown humanity!

mattyrm wrote:

Screw that man, soon as the technology becomes available I want a robot --- arm.

I cant beleive that your current hands arent big enough, so that only leaves, er 'precision tooling'?

Are we talking about the kind of SF technology like life extension/rejuvenation, enhanced brain implanted computers, and genetic engineering for the above?

In the modern world we see the children of the rich and well off achieving better life outcomes than the poor -- there is no secret that this is because well-off people can simply purchase superior education and health.

In fact, in the UK, the advantages of being a middle-class child may outweigh the disadvantages of being stupid. It is acknowledged that an expensive school can cram you through to university, where sadly your results may well collapse compared to those of lower class children who succeeded by sheer ability and determination.

I would think Fukuyama is right to the extent that such things will initially be the preserve of the rich, but entrenchment will not be possible in the long term since the underclass will rise up and massacre the modified superior in order to avoid enslavement or extinction. Or maybe the benefits will be spread more widely and social collapse will be averted.

BTW, more or less on topic (re Gattaca, etc) the current trend of thinking in the nature/nurture debate is that genetics are less important than people though for the development of a lot of advanced mental

I have seen the future and it will be.

Kilkrazy wrote:I would think Fukuyama is right to the extent that such things will initially be the preserve of the rich, but entrenchment will not be possible in the long term since the underclass will rise up and massacre the modified superior in order to avoid enslavement or extinction.

That seems very unlikely. The underclass simply does not "rise up", even against regular humans who treat them like gak, the middle and upper-middle class does. The poor might follow them, but they don't lead. The possible exception being the rare occurrences where the poor are starving/being randomly killed/whatever, and will rise up simply because they have nothing left to lose.

A race of super-intelligent, super-wealthy, super-strong, super-charismatic, information-age overlords would be able to hold the lower classes in their place nigh-indefinitely, if they desired to do so. Not that they necessarily would, they may consider being surrounded by a bunch of weak idiots annoying. Or they may fear another group of supermen, and want better allies. Or they may fear a revolution spurred by particularly ambitious quasi-supermen, and thus leave advancement relatively open. Or so on and so forth. I don't think the two-tiered society would actually exist for very long, minus a number of holdouts against the technology, of course.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:well I think one of his points about biotech and liberal democracy was that biotech would become a new battleground for class warfare. The law is supposed to gauruntee equality of opportunity; but when certain parts of society become so affluent that they can accrue a mass of advantages not available to the rest of society, then equality of opportunity stops looking like a fundamental human right and starts looking like a bad joke, whence the liberal argument for the redistribution of wealth.

Equality of opportunity is a nice-sounding buzzword, but it's never been the reality of things. Some people are smart, some are dumb, some are good looking, some are ugly, some are strong, some are sick, even before the circumstances of their childhood come into play. We've never really had "equality of opportunity", and for true "equality of opportunity" to be realized would require a degree of homogeneity amongst the population that would render society completely unlike anything we've seen before.

Part of what Fukuyama is going to say in that book is that biotech can give people the kind of entrenched, permanent advantages that make equality before the law meaningless. At that point the state will have to either prohibit that kind of research all together (fukuyama's choice) or give up any pretense to liberal democracy. I think he's basically right about that.... whether or not the abandonment of liberal democracy is a bad thing depends on what the alternatives are.

When you take the idea of "equality of opportunity" out of the equation, I can envision a liberal democracy working between two classes of people who have very different abilities. Equality before the law (from a judicial standpoint and so forth) isn't necessarily something the supermen would be concerned with, as equality before the law is supposed to give each person what they're due, rather than actually give out equal results, and the supermen will probably be due a lot more than the lower class on account of being so ridiculously intelligent and charismatic and so forth. Democracy may be called into question, but it may not be. It largely depends on how much influence the supermen are able to have over the government/electorate with democracy intact.

One thing that seems certain to me is that the ability to have children will be more strictly regulated in this futuristic society. In fact, I would predict that this would occur even if society was otherwise becoming increasingly liberal. Already we have serious issues about what to do with children born to unfit parents and so forth, when children who could be genetically engineered to be "the ultimate assassin" or whatever come into play I think people are going to start demanding some say in who becomes a part of their nation. (Immigration would be reformed too, of course.)

Orkeosaurus wrote:A race of super-intelligent, super-wealthy, super-strong, super-charismatic, information-age overlords would be able to hold the lower classes in their place nigh-indefinitely, if they desired to do so. Not that they necessarily would, they may consider being surrounded by a bunch of weak idiots annoying. Or they may fear another group of supermen, and want better allies. Or they may fear a revolution spurred by particularly ambitious quasi-supermen, and thus leave advancement relatively open. Or so on and so forth. I don't think the two-tiered society would actually exist for very long, minus a number of holdouts against the technology, of course.

I don't know man, we tossed this guy and others out in the Euginics wars of the 90's.

I personally think well will have to bioengineer ourselves to survive. Otherwise, our otherwise comfortable lifestlye will cause us to devolve. An example of this can be found with many speices of birds in Newzeland. With no preadtors around the birds didnt need thier use of flight and subiquently lost the abillity to do so. When westaners colonised the islands they brought cats, and dogs, and other animals that found the birds easy prey.

nickmund wrote:I personally think well will have to bioengineer ourselves to survive. Otherwise, our otherwise comfortable lifestlye will cause us to devolve. An example of this can be found with many speices of birds in Newzeland. With no preadtors around the birds didnt need thier use of flight and subiquently lost the abillity to do so. When westaners colonised the islands they brought cats, and dogs, and other animals that found the birds easy prey.

I've never found bioengineering all that attractive of an option, personally. On a small scale, sure, where you're doing a few basic tweaks to weed out defects and increase a few basic traits. On the macro scale, however, uploading is my preferred brand of transhumanism, what with the immortality and the ease of upgrading ones self.

I want to transform into a truck.

Doesn't everyone?

Laughing Man wrote:

nickmund wrote:I personally think well will have to bioengineer ourselves to survive. Otherwise, our otherwise comfortable lifestlye will cause us to devolve. An example of this can be found with many speices of birds in Newzeland. With no preadtors around the birds didnt need thier use of flight and subiquently lost the abillity to do so. When westaners colonised the islands they brought cats, and dogs, and other animals that found the birds easy prey.

I've never found bioengineering all that attractive of an option, personally. On a small scale, sure, where you're doing a few basic tweaks to weed out defects and increase a few basic traits. On the macro scale, however, uploading is my preferred brand of transhumanism, what with the immortality and the ease of upgrading ones self.

I'm all for machine implants as well, i just think it would be easier to controll a bio-engineerd implant, as we are well on the cusp of being able to manipulate the human genome. Once humanity knows how to controll DNA with such precision, we can create what ever biological creature that could possibly exist (on Earth) people might creat harmfull substances for warfare and such, but IMHO if humanity can survive another 150 years then we will survive the rest of time, technology will be so great that society will have moved on from war, other planets will have been colonised, in the solar system at leat, we will have unlimited energy as nuclear fusion reactors are already up and running(for 30 seconds at time though). We will have the ability to divert disasters like ateroids, Im not sure about solar flares though, or gamma ray bursts.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

AbaddonFidelis wrote:well I think one of his points about biotech and liberal democracy was that biotech would become a new battleground for class warfare. The law is supposed to gauruntee equality of opportunity; but when certain parts of society become so affluent that they can accrue a mass of advantages not available to the rest of society, then equality of opportunity stops looking like a fundamental human right and starts looking like a bad joke, whence the liberal argument for the redistribution of wealth.

Equality of opportunity is a nice-sounding buzzword, but it's never been the reality of things. Some people are smart, some are dumb, some are good looking, some are ugly, some are strong, some are sick, even before the circumstances of their childhood come into play. We've never really had "equality of opportunity", and for true "equality of opportunity" to be realized would require a degree of homogeneity amongst the population that would render society completely unlike anything we've seen before.

well I would argue that its more than a buzzword. Its an ideal on which our entire legal system is based. Equality of opportunity is not equality of outcome. It just means that we all have a basically fair shake at getting the things we want out of life. Obviously we dont have equality of opportunity in an absolute sense, but we have more equality of opportunity in the 20th century than existed in, say, the 16th. Its an ideal worth pursuing. I think its achievable within certain parameters.

orkeosaurus wrote:

abaddonfidelis wrote:Part of what Fukuyama is going to say in that book is that biotech can give people the kind of entrenched, permanent advantages that make equality before the law meaningless. At that point the state will have to either prohibit that kind of research all together (fukuyama's choice) or give up any pretense to liberal democracy. I think he's basically right about that.... whether or not the abandonment of liberal democracy is a bad thing depends on what the alternatives are.

When you take the idea of "equality of opportunity" out of the equation, I can envision a liberal democracy working between two classes of people who have very different abilities. Equality before the law (from a judicial standpoint and so forth) isn't necessarily something the supermen would be concerned with, as equality before the law is supposed to give each person what they're due, rather than actually give out equal results, and the supermen will probably be due a lot more than the lower class on account of being so ridiculously intelligent and charismatic and so forth. Democracy may be called into question, but it may not be. It largely depends on how much influence the supermen are able to have over the government/electorate with democracy intact.

that's more or less what the southern lawyers said when they argued the case for segregation before the supreme court in brown v board of education. that the two classes of society - the over and the under class - were seperate but equal (before the law.) I dont think a just society is possible on that basis without radically redefining the concept.

orkeosaurus wrote:
One thing that seems certain to me is that the ability to have children will be more strictly regulated in this futuristic society. In fact, I would predict that this would occur even if society was otherwise becoming increasingly liberal. Already we have serious issues about what to do with children born to unfit parents and so forth, when children who could be genetically engineered to be "the ultimate assassin" or whatever come into play I think people are going to start demanding some say in who becomes a part of their nation. (Immigration would be reformed too, of course.)

I hope so. I wish it would happen right now. there are too many people on the planet. as far as pre-disposing unborn children to certain types of careers..... yeesh. it seems an inevitable outcome of genetic tampering before birth but it would also involve exactly the kind of tinkering with human nature that fukuyama is so dead set against. I have to agree with him that if such a thing can be done, it should not be done. what kind of paintings would an artist make who had been predisposed to be an artist from birth? just from a cultural stand point.... the ramifications would be endless. in politics it would probably be a blessing. in science I dont know if we need to move any faster than we already do. most people have a hard enough time keeping up with the rate of change as it is. interesting to think about though.

AbaddonFidelis wrote:well I would argue that its more than a buzzword. Its an ideal on which our entire legal system is based. Equality of opportunity is not equality of outcome. It just means that we all have a basically fair shake at getting the things we want out of life. Obviously we dont have equality of opportunity in an absolute sense, but we have more equality of opportunity in the 20th century than existed in, say, the 16th. Its an ideal worth pursuing. I think its achievable within certain parameters.

But we're not talking about a reformation of the legal system, necessarily, we're talking about a reformation of our biological condition, which is quite a bit different. Our legal system isn't based on the presumption that all people are equally intelligent, equally capable, and so forth. To the contrary, it's set up to resolve conflicts, which usually require differences to be present in those bringing their cases to the legal/political field.

I do think that equality before the law is an ideal worth pursuing, at least unless pretty drastic changes come about, but if equality of opportunity is under threat from some people simply being far superior in ability to others, then we're no longer concerning ourselves with the purely legal implications of the idea.

It's common to say that equality of opportunity is not equality of outcome; if this is true then we need to be able to identify some sort of third factor, a variable that causes differentiation between the outcome of two people's lives when they were afforded equal opportunity. But what is this factor? An obvious one would be differences in ability, in character, in physical attributes, in sort the differences between individuals. This sounds good, but means that the supermen and the regulars probably do have equal opportunity. And further, this definition requires a line to be made between where advantages are "personal" and where they are the result of differences in "opportunity". For instance, which is a trust fund worth millions of dollars, given to you on your 18th birthday by your billionaire father? Which is a good college education, payed for by your parents? Which is a good education at a private high school? Which is having a strong sense of determination, instilled upon you by your parents at a young age? Which is having good nutrition in the womb? Which is being descended from a long line of intelligent people? Which is just being a capable person, from what appears to be pure chance? It's a continuum at best, and there's no difference at all at worst.

You could attempt to make a division based on whether benefits are intentionally conveyed or merely conveyed by circumstance, but this would be difficult to do, and I'm not sure I see the reason for making this distinction in the first place. Why would stumbling upon pirate treasure make you more worthy of wealth than having a rich uncle who really likes you?

You could make an argument based on some concept of "free will". This may even work, if you believe in, say, an eternal soul that exists independently from your randomly assigned form. However, if you don't believe in this sort of dualism, I don't see how this would work. If you are merely what you appear to be - a brain, attached to a body, created by evolution, genetics, childhood, and so forth - then I don't see how you could purposefully act out of accordance with yourself (as you define purpose). Even if you could, I don't see why actions that were, essentially, random, and done without relation to your personality, your character, and so forth would deserve exceptional rewards. If anything, I think they would be less deserving of reward, on account of this reward going to something unrelated to the action (the individual).

I may have been too quick to simply label equality of opportunity a "feel-good buzzword", but I think there are some serious problems with trying to get a coherent definition of it. Hell, you can see that pretty clearly when conservatives and liberals argue over what the concept entails.

that's more or less what the southern lawyers said when they argued the case for segregation before the supreme court in brown v board of education. that the two classes of society - the over and the under class - were seperate but equal (before the law.) I dont think a just society is possible on that basis without radically redefining the concept.

Hmm, I think you misunderstand me. What I'm saying isn't that the supermen and the regular humans would "separate but equal", but rather that even if there was no legal distinction between them at all, the supermen wouldn't necessarily mind. For instance, if a court has convened to determine who was right in a particular case, and the court did its job, it would be more likely to favor the superman simply because he's more likely to actually be right, on account of being smarter. And the superman will have an easier time convincing the court to rule in hi favor if he's especially good looking, articulate, insightful with regard to the jury's/judge's mindset, and so forth. In other words, equality before the law isn't equality of legal outcome, even now.

del'Vhar wrote:From what I remember from my very basic understanding of human psychology, wouldn't removing our capacity for hatred also have a strong possibility to remove our capacity for love? I seem to recall opposite emotions being essentially different ends of the same scale, though that may be something I simply imagined.

I think its not a question of psychology so much a physiology. The capacity to get angry and be scared is key to the ability to hate, and anger and fear are physiological reactions. Neurochemicals, hormones, blood sugar levels, all kinds of physiological factors involved in emotions.

If it was possible to just eliminate the hormonal whatbits (neuroscience is not my thing) that caused "bad" emotions, then people would still be able to feel love. But it still sounds like scary "turn everyone into Eloi" stuff to me. Brave new worlds and all that.

If it was all emotions...I don't think a person could function without some emotions. I don't think you could make basic decisions, and that you'd be paralyzed by interaction with the world.

Yeah, even if we posit that emotion and intellect are fundamentally disconnected, which seems really unlikely given some of the new work on Neural Workspace Theory, then we still have to acknowledge the role that emotions have in acting as on the fly determiners of judgment.

Generally we don't make daily decisions by undertaking some kind of cost benefit calculation. Instead, we default to our feelings about a matter; potentially as established by calculations we have undertaken earlier. Heuristics, in other words

It would seem that at least some form of ability to assign value (i.e. to have wants, goals, desires, and so forth) would be necessary to result in a person taking any actions. Otherwise they would have no more reason to do anything than they would nothing, and they'd probably die of thirst.

Now, I suppose you could ask whether emotions are necessary to having a sense of value. Most people wouldn't really consider thirst or pain to be an emotion, I don't think.

Before any of this occurs (genetic engineering) I'd bet my bottom dollar that we will be well accustomed to cybernetic modifications. CM's, at least in my opinion, would work very well. I have reservations about the feasibility of genetic enhancements, if for no reason besides the massive complications involved in such an endeavor.

Genetic modifications, ESPECIALLY when speaking of some sort of general upgrade to a 'superhuman' status, are incredibly complicated concepts. So complicated that I would need to take several classes to speak confidently on the matter. Creating an entirely new life-form in a lab, and one which will be functioning to the point where they would be capable of creating separate social structures from their 'lesser cousins'. My head is spinning because of the numerous problems with this concept. I am not convinced it is possible.

Anyway. I don't think genetic modification is immoral; just as I don't consider the possibilities so endless as many would suggest. An extra arm? Yeah, I would guess that is entirely possible. A bigger brain? Sure, why not? Longer fingers and the capability to accept cybernetic alterations more readily? Yep, that sounds possible. Now, all of them? Dunno bout' that one, sounds pretty goddamn tricky. Especially if you want the outcome to produce something that resembles a Space Marine.

Focusing on specific alterations seems the most reasonable possibility, given the infinite factors involved in such a drastic level of alteration. Mutants if you will. Not superhumans, just a significantly diverse set of upgrades, such as the most common example of extra arms exemplifies. I see many problems with that example, as the amount of alteration is awe-inspiring. A new type of spine? The complications involved in such a modification are mind-boggling. It does not seem unreasonable to increase strength and possibly intelligence at the same time; I doubt the possibility that the outcome would in any way resemble 'super-people'. They might to some, but it is not a far-flung idea to assume that modifications will have inherent limits.

Give me an external brain, a sidekick. I'm fething set.

Good day gentlemen; I'm off to draw schematics of everything I see, with the use of my extra brain.
This little bugger can send me information at a range of up to 5 miles. I can literally watch myself walk while I take readings of the surrounding space. The future is badass.

Orkeosaurus wrote:I want to transform into a truck.

I concur.