"The relationship between generations would no longer be that of ancestors to successors, but instead one of manufacturers to products. If one generation has the effective technological power to shape its successors, then the triumph of humans over nature turns out to mean the triumph of one (present) group of humans over all other (future) groups of humans."
I love this piece. It gets right to the root of the gender industry (business): "Gender rights" are really just the gestational phase of AI rights. When people finally understand this, perhaps they will stop arguing about sex role stereotypes (as if governments, the most powerful banks, corporations and law firms in the world would care about the bodily distress of a minuscule part of the population), and they will engage the real threat these techno fascists present.
People often tell me, "but they'll never succeed." I keep telling them, it doesn't matter. What matters is the havoc they wreak in the meantime. The many billions of dollars going into these modern eugenics projects could feed the global poor. The animal torture and use of vital planet resources, going toward the obliteration of our species as we know it, is nothing short of insanity.
This is an extremely old fantasy, back to at least Plato’s cave.
Vast portions of consciousness are subverbal, interconnected with body sensory and regulatory systems. Consciousness presents itself as operating like a camera and microphones. It is isn’t, it is an active hallucination which uses sensory inputs to error correct constantly, by measuring the gap between the figment and the sensory inputs and adjusting the figment until the gap is small to zero for areas of attention.
It’s not recording, there is no mechanism in the brain to “record”, because of that there isn’t really a thing which can be copied.
That’s the fatal flaw. It’s a very large nonlinear system worn “hidden variables” with no known way of accessing them, and I suspect no known mathematical way to reverse engineer them.
From that comes the essential failure in the trans human project. The premise of “the matrix” doesn’t work beyond movies.
We can’t move faster than the speed of light, you can’t go backwards in time, you can’t know the position and momentum of a particle, heat never flows from cold to hot, and you can’t create an accurate copy of a nonlinear system from its output.
It’s one of my absolute favorite tropes, it perpetually haunts human imagination, from Frankenstein to Star Trek (“Redjak,” “Spock’s Brain”), reincarnation to human demonic possession (virtually every culture), AI and Gilligan’s Island, Metropolis and Poe’s Case of M. Valdemar, Villier’s D’Isle Adam and “The Future Eve”, Pygmalian and The Golem, Bran the Blessed’s head and Celtic “cult of the head, to Annabelle.
The brain evolved to predict reality by encoding an abstraction, and constantly adjusting it with sensory inputs. The difference between encoding and sensory inputs is the error signal which drives actions, not unlike a thermostat measuring the difference between set point and temperature and using that to drive a heating or cooling. Capturing the mechanism independent of senses is a thermostat without a thermometer.
CS Lewis's "That Hideous Strength" manages to combine two versions of the trope: a disembodied head with preserved brain, that turns out to be a vector for demonic possession.
This reinforces my sense that society increasingly resembles ancient Egypt.
Instead of pharaohs buried with their bling in pyramids, we will have oligarchs "downloading" themselves into digital thingamabobs to achieve "immortality."
Reminds me of the disembodied "brains in the Star Trek episode.
Dylan: "Inside the museums infinity goes up on trial/voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while"
I only ever got as far as a BA in philosophy, but my focus was on theory of mind.
Rothblatt is a fucking idiot. What HE is proposing is something like cloning a personality. The real person remains DEAD while you’re talking to some other being, if it’s organic, or a simulation, if it’s digital. He likely doesn’t realize this because he himself LACKS a theory of mind. In other words,duder has zero empathy and doesn’t “feel” other people like most of us do. He’s apparently an aspie and HUGELY narcissistic, so no wonder.
To HIM, it’ll seem like the exact same person. The elaborate robot fuck doll he made for his wife’s information to go into won’t contain her. She’ll be gone.
Nope, I’m not claiming the existence of a soul. I’m saying your wife’s twin is not your wife, and the wetware the mind runs on actually does matter.
"At most you would get a kind of digital replica of a real human being, a zombie without self-awareness." Or an AI-like simulacrum of intelligence. Of course, it would all be "to the satisfaction of psychiatrists" who are already incapable even of recognising that the transsexualist transhumanists are barking mad.
"The relationship between generations would no longer be that of ancestors to successors, but instead one of manufacturers to products. If one generation has the effective technological power to shape its successors, then the triumph of humans over nature turns out to mean the triumph of one (present) group of humans over all other (future) groups of humans."
I love this piece. It gets right to the root of the gender industry (business): "Gender rights" are really just the gestational phase of AI rights. When people finally understand this, perhaps they will stop arguing about sex role stereotypes (as if governments, the most powerful banks, corporations and law firms in the world would care about the bodily distress of a minuscule part of the population), and they will engage the real threat these techno fascists present.
People often tell me, "but they'll never succeed." I keep telling them, it doesn't matter. What matters is the havoc they wreak in the meantime. The many billions of dollars going into these modern eugenics projects could feed the global poor. The animal torture and use of vital planet resources, going toward the obliteration of our species as we know it, is nothing short of insanity.
Bravo, Timothy!
Stay human.
This is an extremely old fantasy, back to at least Plato’s cave.
Vast portions of consciousness are subverbal, interconnected with body sensory and regulatory systems. Consciousness presents itself as operating like a camera and microphones. It is isn’t, it is an active hallucination which uses sensory inputs to error correct constantly, by measuring the gap between the figment and the sensory inputs and adjusting the figment until the gap is small to zero for areas of attention.
It’s not recording, there is no mechanism in the brain to “record”, because of that there isn’t really a thing which can be copied.
That’s the fatal flaw. It’s a very large nonlinear system worn “hidden variables” with no known way of accessing them, and I suspect no known mathematical way to reverse engineer them.
From that comes the essential failure in the trans human project. The premise of “the matrix” doesn’t work beyond movies.
We can’t move faster than the speed of light, you can’t go backwards in time, you can’t know the position and momentum of a particle, heat never flows from cold to hot, and you can’t create an accurate copy of a nonlinear system from its output.
Thank you for a really interesting response.
It’s one of my absolute favorite tropes, it perpetually haunts human imagination, from Frankenstein to Star Trek (“Redjak,” “Spock’s Brain”), reincarnation to human demonic possession (virtually every culture), AI and Gilligan’s Island, Metropolis and Poe’s Case of M. Valdemar, Villier’s D’Isle Adam and “The Future Eve”, Pygmalian and The Golem, Bran the Blessed’s head and Celtic “cult of the head, to Annabelle.
The brain evolved to predict reality by encoding an abstraction, and constantly adjusting it with sensory inputs. The difference between encoding and sensory inputs is the error signal which drives actions, not unlike a thermostat measuring the difference between set point and temperature and using that to drive a heating or cooling. Capturing the mechanism independent of senses is a thermostat without a thermometer.
CS Lewis's "That Hideous Strength" manages to combine two versions of the trope: a disembodied head with preserved brain, that turns out to be a vector for demonic possession.
This reinforces my sense that society increasingly resembles ancient Egypt.
Instead of pharaohs buried with their bling in pyramids, we will have oligarchs "downloading" themselves into digital thingamabobs to achieve "immortality."
Reminds me of the disembodied "brains in the Star Trek episode.
Dylan: "Inside the museums infinity goes up on trial/voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while"
Thank goodness for computer bugs and software obsolescence that will serve as the digital equivalents of our flesh and blood human disease and death.
I only ever got as far as a BA in philosophy, but my focus was on theory of mind.
Rothblatt is a fucking idiot. What HE is proposing is something like cloning a personality. The real person remains DEAD while you’re talking to some other being, if it’s organic, or a simulation, if it’s digital. He likely doesn’t realize this because he himself LACKS a theory of mind. In other words,duder has zero empathy and doesn’t “feel” other people like most of us do. He’s apparently an aspie and HUGELY narcissistic, so no wonder.
To HIM, it’ll seem like the exact same person. The elaborate robot fuck doll he made for his wife’s information to go into won’t contain her. She’ll be gone.
Nope, I’m not claiming the existence of a soul. I’m saying your wife’s twin is not your wife, and the wetware the mind runs on actually does matter.
Transhumanists are pussies who are afraid of death
"At most you would get a kind of digital replica of a real human being, a zombie without self-awareness." Or an AI-like simulacrum of intelligence. Of course, it would all be "to the satisfaction of psychiatrists" who are already incapable even of recognising that the transsexualist transhumanists are barking mad.