Glad to see you are back. I hope your time away was fruitful.
"However, if there are indeed obvious benefits to cybernetic modification of human tissue, as almost by definition there would be as that is the point of it, cultures that discourage the practice would be forced to compete without these unnatural advantages against those who have embraced them."
After the success (cough cough) of the gene editing jabs, and the revelations form Jonathan Couey about biology and gain of function, I no longer fear the cyborgs. I imagine like repeated jabs most augmentation will reduce one's life span. I imagine Musk's neuralink will act more like a tumor. I suspect the distant future will be less about high tech, and more focus on the magic of the body.
Quite possibly, yes. However, as can be seen from the advent of agriculture, technological innovation can produce a severe reduction in biological quality and quality of life, while still providing an overwhelming advantage to the society that adopts it. So the very obvious, terrifying downsides to tech aren't necessarily an argument that it won't happen.
I have seen this asserted, and I have seen evidence of deprivation of this from periods of extreme environmental and cultural stress where there were famines due to climate variations like the end of the medieval warm period or by population increases that outstripped the carrying capacities of the land at that level of tech, but I am not sure I can accept that an agricultural culture is worse off than a hunter-gatherer in quality of life and nutrition as a rule of thumb. One of my Anthro texts stated that hunter-gatherer cultures worked a limited number of days per week, unlike agricultural and industrial cultures. I read that and went "huh, I wonder how they figured that" and went on with my life. Thirty years later I started reading some Marx and Mises to understand the difference between labor value and marginal utility (as one does) and came to the conclusion the Antho text had been quoting Marx' assertion that the extra value of labor was stolen by the employers, and without employers would not have to work so hard or long.
Interesting take, but I'm not really sure about that, Part of it is what counts as 'work'. Most of the things hunter-gatherers did are activities that we partake in now as a form of recreation. Hunting is basically hiking, for example. Making tools would involve sitting around the fire and shooting the breeze with your bros. Exactly how many hours they put into 'work' is very difficult to quantify when it's not clear that their survival-oriented activities could even be classified as 'work' in the modern sense.
The other factor, however, is paleontological evidence. Hunter-gatherers tended to be taller, stronger, with better bones and teeth, and a greater cranial volume than agriculturalists. The difference is quite stark, and argues very strongly that adoption of an agricultural diet was a very bad thing in the short term, from the point of view of individual quality of life.
It doesn't surprise me that cultural anthropology professors would be using warmed-over Marx to build their arguments, but the physical evidence is what it is.
Fascinating prediction, I loved the descriptions of progress. Hahahaha!
I do n't agree with your assessment of peasants, they had a varied diet and knew how to take care of themselves, as thus, were eliminated when possible, You are typing about serfs slaving in the fields. There wouldn't be any other plant-based food crops without the peasants, please make a mental note to research this more thoroughly.
My other point of contention is technology in this higher form requires way more brain energy than otherwise and a healthy body is required to produce a healthy brain. Machines won't be able to repair themselves.
I don't have a smartphone and own a camp with no electricity supplied. You make points about everyone, well, maybe, you make a point about degrees of participation, well, the machines will need someone to repair them.
Most of my time is used thinking about and growing food, hunting and fishing, so although I loved the stack, I think you are coming in from a skewed towards progressing technology idealism from my perspective.
Again: Machines won't be able to repair themselves and humans suffering such atrophy overtime at some point won't be able to repair the machines either, if that's all the humans there are its over.
Those people adapting to machines will just go away, those that stubbornly hold on to healthy living will note their passing briefly.
"Machines won't be able to repair themselves and humans suffering such atrophy overtime at some point won't be able to repair the machines either, if that's all the humans there are its over."
Exactly the problem, both for humans and machines.
We like to think we're superior to machines because the current machines are limited. We consider children inferior, limiting their freedoms and abilities while training them to replace us. Machines are the same, except the children have the benefit of pre-formed genetic codes while we have to construct those basics in our devices. We will, and like children, they will grow to participate in civilation. The same people who dislike children will also dislike machines, but as they both inevitably become our equals, and sometimes our superiors, we'll adapt.
Not enough resources for proliferating machines. Case in point, to many of these new logging machines cutting down the forests faster than they grow (if we allow them).
Most loggers want to sustain their business, so they don't over cut. Use of machines instead of people reduces risk to human loggers, one of the most dangerous professions, and increases efficiency. We have plenty of resources, but need to manage them effectively to support the growing population.
Logging isn't used much for energy any more. But the concept could probably be applied. The difficulty in determining costs is always assigning value to intangibles like entertainment value. But the clincher is probably the CO2 absorbtion, which seems important to many, and O2 production, which should be important to everyone. I wonder if digital transitions have reduced requirements for paper, or if the increased need for packaging offsets it. Should be easy to make a case for public support for replanting forests. A lot of forests near me aren't logged, but are being damaged by beetles. Lots of risks to trees.
Nice to see you back. You are a brain cell challenge. My thouggts. Fact is, we really can't do space travel unless we assimilate. Biological creatures deteriorate so Borging up will be natural. Empty space is too far.
The next question will be whether or not the brain can keep working without the biology breaking down. It also whithers on the tree of life.
I suppose sending egg and sperm, creating biology and then borging up about 20 years out from destination, might work. Of course any civilization we encounter would assume we are warlike.
And having an idiot that can punch through concrete walls would be pretty dangerous for people living in towers. But fun to watch take a few billionaire house down.
I guess this whole exercise is finding a way to extend human life.
The entire concept appears to be superficial. Personally, I believe the answer is spiritual, more than physical. That is where we should be looking. Travelling by thought would be instantaneous. It might not appear like an invasion.
Welcome back, warlord of Barsoom. Your voice has been dearly missed.
Much to grapple with here. Will comment in depth when I reach dry land. My initial thoughts concern directionality: are the blade, flame and word what make us human? Or are they outward expressions of that humanity, born from the ineffable substance of our state of being? In other words, do these technologies in their external handmade forms merely align by pattern with innate interior qualities, like the shadows in the cave?
When talking about body modification/extenstion, I think we need to distinguish between fashion (social tech) and function (war tech). In the former case, mods like tattoos, piercings, neck rings, fancy haircuts, etc. are more the product of a 4th unmentioned technology (Art), with the other three servicing the aesthetic ideal and/ or group identification/cohesion goal. In the latter case, tools such as swords, armor, plows, aqueducts and fighter jets serve to increase efficiencies in our battles against Nature, entropy and each other. Fashion and function have both been around for a very long time, but invasive body modification is relatively new on the scene (unless we're counting brain modification via psychotropic substances, and I think there's an interesting argument to be made there.
2)
I think our greatest leap forward in technology over the past century or so has been in marketing. While the artistic imagination overflows with the kind of cybernetic demons/angels you are describing, the reality of it is sadly lacking. For example, as intoxicating to transhumanists as Neuralink sounds, its primate laboratory subjects have apparently been chewing their fingers and toes off. I suspect this isn't just a matter of breaking a few eggs to make the omelet, but due to a baseline misunderstanding of mind/brain connection, and the ordinal position of brain "signals" within causality chains.
For another example, the development of language engines ("talking machines") as an advancement in the Word strikes me as similar to Marcelle DuChamp's "Fountain" as an advancement in art. Its strategic promotion (i.e. marketing) is somewhat brilliant, but only in the way that con-artists can be "brilliant" while they're hoovering up your savings. If my recent brawls with ChatGPT are any indication, one of the following statements is likely true:
A) I am some kind of unaccountable genius, able to swiftly and casually outsmart OpenAI's entire dev team on a whim.
B) Talking machines are almost entirely bathwater, gussied up by illusions that can be shattered by merely shifting a few seats to the left or right.
I know that you are operating from the notion that, on a long enough teleological curve, these are problems that can and will be solved. But there is another possibility; the builders of such devices are the kind of magical thinkers who sketch elaborate perpetual motion machines on paper, but are unable to produce the desired results in physical reality because they misunderstand some key principle of thermodynamics. That of course doesn't mean his impossible machine won't attract investment or pre-orders; that's what the marketing department's for.
Damnit Mark, you pack too many excellent ideas into your comments to respond to them all.
Regarding body mod as social tech: yes, largely I agree. But, intent is relevant too. Something I meant to include, but forgot, is that in many preindustrial societies it was felt that getting eg a certain tattoo conferred magical powers. Obviously we'd be skeptical it does that, but their intent was clearly to enhance themselves via technological modification of the body.
I actually agree that there's no *mind* in the statistical engines we mislabel as AI. Doubt there ever will be, either. But the lack of high level intellect to organize cognitive functions in a self-directed, coherent fashion doesn't mean that the functions themselves can't be outsourced, with the result that the organic brain loses a bit of its own functionality as it comes to rely on the semiconductor cortex. Like I said in the essay, though, I suspect that by mid-century "AI" will be considered a rather unremarkable tool, with well-understood limitations, and that we'll have gotten as bored with it as we are with internal combustion engines. It won't become some sort of silicon deity. It will just be a numerical engine that does certain things much better than our brains do ... with the possible result they our brains gradually lose the ability to do them.
"It will just be a numerical engine that does certain things much better than our brains do ... with the possible result they our brains gradually lose the ability to do them."
This is obviously already happening in a variety of ways. I used to commit certain phone numbers to memory, but why bother? The danger isn't that machines will relieve us of such drudgery, but that we'll leave those fields fallow, or fill them up with addictions and mildly entertaining garbage instead of putting them to higher use. In that sense, its a cultural and perhaps (in my estimation) a spiritual problem, not a technological one. That the muscle atrophies isn't a destiny, but a choice.
This is so true. And it's not just committing things to memory or doing math by hand, it's things like getting out into nature as well (something our technology inhibits us from doing as we'd rather be in front of a screen - even when out in the country!) and going for a walk - oxygenating your prefrontal cortex as you take in the natural shapes (none of which are straight lines and right angles) stimulating the right hemisphere and indeed the entire nervous system in an all-in integrative work out session for your entire being. Assimilation of multiple, natural, inputs in conjunction with say walking, the often rapid switching between default, executive and salience modes of the brain, give the sort of stimulation that staves off the degradation we are talking about. I used to think it was just about doing mental exercises to stay sharp, but alas our nervous system is and embodied one, and being engaged in the physical world is the key. Which, of course, is back to John's point that technology has made us 'soft' and dumb, mere operators. I bet those Little House on the Prairie lumberjacks were as smart as they were tough!
There is no question that our physical environment is crucial for wellbeing. I once worked in an office without any direct natural sunlight (made worse by sterile white walls) and became convinced that this has the potential to destabilise or dysregulate us in very powerful ways. The optic nerve evolved to process natural light. Light exposure has a direct effect on vitamin d levels and sleep (which is synched with respiration/oxygenation and the regulation of the neurochemicals responsible for mood and memory). The stimulation from nature (even if only a small garden or courtyard with a fountain) beats any office toys or artificial pacifiers.
The people on the frontier would have had observational and problem-solving skills far in advance of most of today's grad students. Just compare the syntax and word-choice of small- town newspapers of the pre-WW1 era with the 'quality' press today.
The newspaper illustration is powerful, as I've a collection of newspapers, magazines, from around the turn of last century and the language is sophisticated - even an 1896 bee keeping journal from Australia could teach us a thing or two about prose.
Why bother? In a nutshell, brain health. Developing your memory contributes to effective neural functioning and long-term brain health.
As advanced technology spreads we need to retain archaic practices (like memorising poetry or doing computational maths in our heads rather than on a computer) for folkloric, paedagogic or therapeutic purposes.
A) and B) can both be true. Also possible that C) We are just constructs of some superior intellect that built us to evolve to create the next stages of our own evolution. Those of us who are still around in 10,000 years may learn the answers.
If you're willing to expand it to that degree, why stop there?
D) We are the favored creation of God, who made us to solve problems of distance, mass, individuation and love in order to complete the logical circuit of His own self-creation story.
E) We are the effervescent slaves of friutflies, who secretly compel our actions through a complex array of biochemical emissions that simulate sentient agency in the form of endlessly recursive meta-delusions we think of as our "selves."
We like to imagine we're favored. Did you ever watch a dog catch a frisbee? Distance, mass and velocity calculations, without a calculator. And unlimited love. And having watched children chasing fireflies, and having done it myself, it's not always clear who is chasing who. But there are indeed many examples of the limits of our humanity.
I usually reserve my imagination for more practical considerations. How to make toast without a toaster, for example. In most environments we have materials to produce it, but in my imagination I could envision being on a space ship or hostile planet, perhaps, and considering how to assemble toast from molecules or elements available there. In my more whimsical illusions I might imagine myself being capable of such feats.
But assuming we have a toaster and bread, andmwant to make toast, we have to maneuver the right amount of bread into the toaster, adjust the sensor to pop at the right time, plug it in, start the cooking, and monitor for smoke or other signs of incorrect operation. The toaster can't perform without me, and I can't make toast without the toaster. Where is the boundary between me and the machine?
Interesting distinction. My thought is that the three are not equal, and that only the Word can claim to be of the human essence, whether thing-itself or shadow. The Blade gave us dominance over rival beasts, and the Flame let us pursue them to the corners of the earth, but in the right environment we happily dispense with either of them. But we could scarcely stand to live without the Word.
I think it's useful to keep teleology in mind when talking about inevitable futures and technological developments. That is, there are certain final "forms" into which humankind can grow, and must grow, but it's not just one. This gives me hope that we can diverge from the Borg path. If not as a species, then perhaps as a subgroup of the species. When I look back at the development of technology, especially since the last 100+ years, it strikes me that while progress had been inevitable, the nature of it hasn't. So many technologies seem almost forced on us without our wanting it, which to me indicates that our present is not the result of an unshakable law of "what can be done, will be done" but more of "if on a certain trajectory, this trajectory will be completed, unless we pull off some non-linear intervention which changes it". Or, more likely really, smashes the playing field to create a new trajectory...
Indeed, I don't think the Borg are nearly as inevitable as they like to pretend they are! Hence the contrast with GitS, which provides a very different and far more attractive telos, since it maintains that balance of individuality and liberty that is necessary for humanity to remain really human. The Borg turn humans into machines, and render the world less humane; in GitS, mankind humanizes the machine, and makes the world more humane.
What's the difference between human and machine? We each have algorithms that direct our actions, like a constructed device. We modify those algorithms, sometimes, like a Tuesday upgrade to a PC operating system. We look at a restaurant menu and "choose" a set of fuels and think we're being very human, but are only following our embedded algorithms with the variable subroutines to account for environmental observations. Humans are machines. Hubris makes us feel special.
John, I am very sorry to hear of your loss. These things are very difficult emotionally...it is the price we pay for attachment and the strength of our relationships. I can assure you that things will get better.
Reading your views on the price paid for technical advancement, I was put in mind of the anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan, especially his very short book FUTURE PRIMITIVE (available in full at https://files.libcom.org/files/FuturePrimitive.pdf). Zerzan is an anarchist and at one stage was the FBI's lead suspect in the Unabomber case. His work touches many of the themes that you have raised. Zerzan is the Rousseau of our age: he is convinced that civilization has ruined our species and makes his case with considerable intellectual force.
While I am not an anarchist (I agree with Freud that repression is a price worth paying for civilization but would freely acknowledge that the price is often very high at a personal level) I'd recommend Zerzan for his insights and observations.
Re body modification, the present fashion appears as an attempt at reclaiming a sense of ownership/agency/control. The strength of this trend suggests that people are becoming unsettled at a subconscious level by living in a regime of escalating control.
Thought provoking remarks as always. I've heard of Zerzan and his hostility to civilization, although haven't read him. I'm not sure I agree with his anprim stance, though - as I laid out in the piece, the logical conclusion is to strip away all technology, leaving us as no more than animals. Which, if that's the goal, great, I guess, but it doesn't seem like a viable path for preserving our humanity.
Any primitivist perspective that derives from (or is aligned with) Rousseau is going to be intensely problematic. There is an old joke, however, that the second edition of Rousseau's works were bound with the skins of those who had laughed at the first.
I fully agree that Zerzan's conclusions are not viable, but his insights and observations (like Rousseau before him) may be worth consideration.
I have not read Zerzan in years, so cannot recall his tone, but US radicals in general do tend to be earnest and prim...a warning sign but there is no danger of you joining them.
Philosophers tend to be dreamers, describing things the way they wish they were instead of how they are. We are wired to be pack animals, preferring to be in a group than alone. Loners tend to become pretty neurotic, probably not because they were wired that way, but because they chose to avoid the pack and became neurotic because that primal need was unsatisfied. My advice to philosophers is find a girl, get laid, and learn cooperation in the real world. My advice to others is ignore philosophers.
Holy Banth John! Where you been? I thought the Commie Canuks had given you the shot to end all shots. It was either that, or Justin Castro had targeted you as a ne'er do well, and closed out your bank account. Now back to reading your latest screed.
Nothing so dramatic, sadly. There was a death in the family, is the short version, and that combined with my general depression at everything going sideways while also feeling trapped in this country to throw me for a loop.
Sincerely sorry to hear about the death. My condolences. You are not trapped. The door swings both ways. pick a stretch of woods, and I will come pick you up...seriously.
I tend to agree with William Hunter, I don't think we are anywhere near what your describing. The jab has been an epic fail and they are still discovering what it can and can't do, with huge gaps completely unknown. "Science" has no idea how most of our biological systems work. Eventually they will but I don't see it happening anytime soon. That said, great to have you back! Seriously-I was getting worried. Yes Canada sucks, I'm stuck here too, it is depressing. Sorry to hear about your loss and struggles. Hang in there.
I definitely agree that we remain largely ignorant of how biology really works. Where I disagree is that this is necessarily an obstacle. Simple example: neolithic tribes don't have anything like a detailed understanding of how skin works, but that didn't stop them from widespread adoption of tattoos.
The vaxx is another good example, actually. We very clearly don't understand molecular biology nearly well enough to know the consequences of synthetic mRNA injections ... which didn't stop a billion+ people from gleefully letting it get jabbed into their arms.
The enthusiasm for the experimental vaccines from so many within the medical profession (plus the passivity of the masses) was an eye opener.
When the usual suspects are ready to roll out cyborg therapeutics they will probably market them as cosmetics or as a means of either life extension or weight loss. That will normalise them overnight.
No thank you to that, or any other "neural marketing/compulsion enhancements" - it may not be as tasty as a 5 star restaurant, or even the dive diner down the street (I always find a way to fuck up hashbrowns, somehow), but I will be (sometimes reluctantly) content enough eating whatever it was I grew or raised in the back yard or foraged in the woods myself instead. Packaged food just can't really be trusted any more - all kinds of nefarious crap put into it on purpose these days, and liable to get much worse going forward. One day soon, if not already, they'll no doubt start slipping tiny little borg nano construction set parts into "commercial food", that get activated when they hit the gastric environment...
I also suspect most of us with extra padding to lose will not need any fake appetite suppression signals beamed into our heads. I expect we will manage to lose the padding without any extra effort, assuming we survive the borg & the upcoming "engineered famine" for the next few years...
The best tactic is don't be at the front of the line. The vax disaster has taught a lot of people to be more cautious about joining the stampede. We're fortunate there are always enough who don't learn, who provide plenty of tests.
I've been studying electromagnetic field emissions in our environment lately, and their effects on our physiology. Posted a few notes on my stack, but my studies continue. Holding those EMF radiation emitters a few millimeters from our brain for extended periods seems to alter us in ways we haven't completely figured out yet. It might account for a lot of the odd behavior we've observed.
Definitely agree with this but wonder then how successful or helpful will these 'borg' additions really be. Tattoos don't do anything, they are just there, you are talking about developments that enhance our bodies giving us super strength or what have you. I think the track record here sucks and we are more likely to see grotesque results. As in despite prevailing opinion fake penises and vaginas are not a raging success - there is no sexual function and aren't even successful in terms of looking like the 'real' thing or just being a harmless adornment (like a tattoo). In reality they cause serious harm - these trans folks are left with genitalia that don't function as male or female, and there is no going back when they find out their new 'whatever' not only doesn't function but causes serious harms and chronic pain. Seems to me we are more likely to make a whole new class of disabled people rather then enhanced humans. That said I've no doubt they will try anyway. As you said, we just can't help ourselves.
Trannies are 100% an argument against transhumanism producing anything but horrors. Then again, plastic surgery intended to enhance attractiveness rather than eg construct fake organs generally works pretty well.
As far as tattoos go, obviously for us they're purely aesthetic. Some premodern cultures thought they could give magical abilities, though, meaning the intent is the same as that behind human augmentation.
The willingness of people to accept the surgical destruction of their childrens' physical integrity, future fertility and mental health is an awesome demonstration of power, unequalled since the days of child sacrifice to Ba'al, Moloch and Astarte. The atrocities of the Nazis were inflicted on designated outsiders...these iatrogenic atrocities are being normalised amongst educated bourgeois people even when enacted on their own children.
The fad for tattooing suggests (to me at least) that there are major changes underway in our society.
Tattooing is traditionally a means by which people without agency (sailors and prisoners) symbolically reassert control or reclaim ownership over their bodies.
The enthusiasm for this in a hyper-individualistic society in which people are increasingly oppressed by the suspicion that they are, in fact, utterly interchangeable and depersonalised strikes me as highly significant. It is, perhaps, further proof that people are finding ways to adjust to a condition of limited or compromised personal agency.
To go off on a tangent, if you are interested in exploring the depths to which regime psychiatry can sink check out Tom O'Neill's CHAOS. It reconsiders the Manson murders and reveals a great deal about the institutional background to the 60s. It is a compelling book.
One of many disturbing discoveries concerns the proximity of CIA psychiatrists (with research interests in the synergies between murder, drugs, hypnosis and the orchestrated suppression of memory and the curation of false memory) to Manson.
Here is a link to part of Joe Rogen's interview with the author.
You have identified the great issue that is staring us all in the face.
The ultimate value of cyborg technology will be to create and normalise new forms of disability. The regime thrives on curating dysfunction...as we can already see in just about every field of endeavor - the deaths of despair, the myriad ills created by the mismanaged response to COVID, declining levels of achievement in education and the dumbing down of the culture.
Regime sponsored dysfunction is essential for constraining the masses, crippling the capacity of any organised resistance, suppressing disruptive talent amongst the subordinate classes, retarding the development of alternative or rival elites.
The potential of transhumanism to legitimise cyborg-related iatrogenic disability is practically unlimited. Seen from the perspective of the Sado-Malthusian regime, the failures of psychiatry and surgery are triumphs.
So wrote this and then read all the new comments, apologize for the redundancy. Have never watched an anime but this GItS sounds fascinating- will check it out. Always appreciate how thought provoking a trip to your stack is, your stories are fascinating and the comments are equally amazing.
I believe there are other dimensions (and players) in the possible scenarios you’ve outlined in this fascinating piece, which you maybe deliberately avoided mentioning.
The One who made all through the sheer direction of His will and intent, and fashioned man as the coda to His creation isn’t a deist creator who now sits back and passively watches what unfolds via the manifesting of OUR will. There’s a synchronicity to much that is going on around us, and how it all culminates is at once already predetermined and yet full of choose your own adventure type possibilities. It feels alternately exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Articles like yours challenge me to think about how there are so many facets to the very broad scope of it all. The tension of the all-ready vs the not-yet is nerve wracking, but I live in hope and faith that we are not going to have the final say in how all this possible cyber technology plays out for humanity. Thank you for stimulating those neural pathways of mine.
In a weird bit of synchronicity, I just happened to have watched the original animeGITS for the very first time last night. It’s a fascinating show, and I found it oddly hopeful, which is not the usual spot I end in for most technological dystopian science fiction. One of my favorite parts were the endearing little robots that were part of the good guys team. They seemed like playful puppies or little children, and displayed a very human-like giddy joy over things. I think I could get behind an AI that had characteristics like that, rather than the smug know-it-all bossy bitch type of programming that is often depicted, and which we’d most likely end up with, at least temporarily, if TPTB can indeed establish a new technological ruling class.
The other thing I found hopeful was how even the cybernetic enhanced humans pondered the meaning of their whole existence. What was it that made them, them? I’m pretty certain that the need to ask those types of questions is baked into us in a way that any augmentation of or tinkering with our physical bodies will never be able to override the part of us that looks up and outside of ourselves for meaning in our life and the universe.
Just a note: GitS isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia, either. It's just us, in our world, but with much more advanced technology. As such, despite the tech, it remains as messy and human as ever.
I see your point. It held elements that to me felt dystopian, or at least elements that frequently appear in dystopian movies and books. Such as the head-jacks, and gritty over-grown megalithic cities. And that first scene with the leader of Section nine diving downward, barely wearing anything, gave off a very Aeon Flux vibe to me. But I was overall encouraged by how balanced the character were despite all the technology they’d used to modify themselves. Glad I finally got to watch it as I’ve heard about it for years but never had the ability to stream it before.
Certainly, there are dystopian elements ... or rather, elements that, were they presented in a Western context, would be used to generate a dystopian aesthetic. On the other hand, many aspects of the modern world are pretty dystopian, too.
I've seen a live-action movie or two of Ghost in the Shell many years in the past, and have frequently considered the manga, but never quite bought it. With all this recommendation, maybe I should take another look.
For cyborg-lit comparison, have you ever read Yukito Kishiro's "Battle Angel Alita" manga? I especially liked the original series, with its original ending, if you can still find that.
The live action GitS was an abomination. Hollywood, being Hollywood, utterly misunderstood every important thematic element, and simply tore those elements out to replace them with their own tired cliches.
Some examples:
In the manga/anime, Major Kusanagi knows full well what she is and how she came to be that way. She chose it, and she loves it. There was no nonsense about lost memories, or her having been an abducted runaway used for illegal experiments, and there's certainly nothing about her destroying the ability to make others like her and dedicating herself to preventing other cyborgs from being created in the future.
The antagonists in the manga/anime are almost uniformly a result of a malfunctioning system, usually an AI that is trying to do something very understandable, even noble, but which goes a bit too far and as a result, needs to be deactivated and/or repaired. Instead Hollywood went with the boring 'evil/greedy corporation' narrative that they use in every half-baked dystopia they shit out.
The result of these changes was to take a work which is extremely thought-provoking, even philosophical, and replace it with pablum.
And to make it worse, the only criticism the Woke West could come up with was that the movie used a white actress instead of an Asian.
I saw the Scarlet Johansen movie version when it came out awhile back. The anime version was so much better. I can’t get into reading the Manga source material, but I find myself viewing more and more of the animated shows and really liking them. Took awhile to adjust to the stylistic differences in the look of their things vs. western animation, but now I enjoy the change up.
The anime is genuinely one of the best ever made just in terms of sheer intellectual horsepower. The drooling lobotomy-victim the Hellmouth served up wore GitS like a skinsuit.
Everyone loves to complain about how math skills are declining. While they certainly are, verbal skills may be falling at an even faster rate. I work as a tutor, and I am constantly astounded at vocabulary loss in particular. If my students are typical, your average college bound 16 - 17 year old doesn’t know what “dismayed”, “omit”, “satiated”, or “lucid” mean.
As you point out, language is one of the things that makes us uniquely human. Our culture's complete disinterest in the Word is troubling.
Lexical privation (which leads to the cognitive equivalent of starvation) on a mass scale is the result of the infotainment industry pitching for a sub-prole standard of taste and capacity, coupled with the marked decline in reading as a leisure activity and the culture's fixation on visual entertainment. Compare the fluency and wit of the blue collar characters in classic Hollywood, the banter and one-liners delivered in scripts by Ben Hecht, with the expletive rich dialogue of today.
People are fixated with imagery but are increasingly unable to connect it to either literature or the natural world in the way previous generations did. Compare the density of meaning achieved through imagery of the great masters (Sandro Botticelli, Piero della Francesca or Hieronymous Bosch) with the work of Netflix or Madison Avenue.
"Some animals, such as dogs and apes, are able to learn to associate some relatively small number of individual sounds with their symbolic meanings, suggesting that the connection between sound and sense is likely universal in the social mammals, but there is little evidence that they are in any way sensitive to the grammar of human language"
I had dumped a pile of laundry on my bed for folding. I started matching socks, which finished with 1 unmatched. I muttered to myself, "I must've dropped it. I'll look for it after I finish folding." and started folding t-shirts. I barely noticed Jake, my lab-x, leave the room.
He returned a couple moments later. Carrying the missing sock.
I cannot remember all the times he demonstrated he fully understood what I had just said.
Animals lack the jaw structure to speak complex language. We really don't know how much human language they understand when they've been exposed for s long time.
African Grey parrots not only can learn large #s of words & their associated meanings, as the famous Alex demonstrated, they can learn to use a "pidgen" grammar.
Even more impressive (imo) than speaking in simple sentences, Alex invented new "names" for special things. The example I always remember is brazil nuts, which he renamed "rock crackers."
And ime there are other, nonvocal, ways to communicate.
By way of comparison, how many animal languages have humans learned?
A friend of the family owned a macaw, which they told us was in the habit of asking the dog to let it out of its cage. I can easily believe this, as parrots are highly intelligent - their abilities go well beyond mimicry, I think.
Pidgin grammar, as in attaching adjectives or adverbs, has been seen. A gorilla was known to sign 'dirty monkey' when it was annoyed by one of the lower primate's antics.
All that said I haven't seen much evidence that animals possess the ability to utilize the past perfect progressive.
Well, I haven't seen much evidence that many humans have mastered even basic English grammar, never mind the more advanced grammar of the English majors. 😆
Animals probably have no need for "past perfect progressive" to communicate.
I nearly wept yesterday when I read a post that referred to "my friends and I" instead of the incredibly self-centered "I and my friends" that most everybody seems to use these days.
There's a cat named Billie who can converse with her human servants using an ingenious system. She seems smart for a (willful) cat, even though the vocabulary is limited because of the "low tech" sound system. Just think what all she could tell you about with a neural link (scary, and perish the thought of doing that to a cat!) ... Although she could probably benefit from John Carter's suggestion of "Neuralink-enabled appetite suppression" functionality.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTyhqdQk6BM
Animal + neuralink + language model would absolutely transform our relationship to our furfriends. I don't think they'd be particularly sad about that, either.
I don't need tech to communicate with my critters. Bonding enables sending & receiving pictograms. Sometimes my brain translates into words. Their voices can be surprising. My 85 lb, deep chested lab/chow/heinz57 came through with a squeaky, high-pitched voice 😆
That's great that you can do that with your animal companions, but not everyone can. I can usually tell what my cats want by their tone & insistence level, but I don't get pictograms from them. I wish I did.....
In general the dissident intellectual right-ish resistance (or whatever we are, LOL) is a bit lacking in HUMANITY FUCK YEAH! My personal project is to meld HFY with an orthodox Catholic perspective.
...in part to counter my own negativity! Looking forward to the piece on dogs. I hate the buggers myself with few exceptions. Too many people around here use them as child substitutes. I like sheepdogs and hounds when they're doing what they were bred to do, not trotting around on the end of a leash. All the little yappy ones can take a running jump.
My kids would agree with you! We may yield when they are all big enough to share the responsibility of walking and feeding it themselves. It won't be a little yappy one though.
1) Is it really an efficiency to plant technological enhancements in the body? As it stands, we are supreme generalists, and our power comes largely from our ability to use special tools and then put them down, rather than carry them around with us beyond their immediate need. Would becoming cyborgs not effectively be a step back, in the direction of other species, whose tools are part of their bodies, that we have already surpassed in power?
2) To what extent do all of our recent "advances" in technology depend specifically on the availability of fossil fuels and rare minerals? Are we about to run out of these for widespread use? If so, are we not rather about to drop to a manual level of technology more comparable to that employed by our pre-industrial ancestors than to what would be needed for sophisticated robotic prostheses?
3) If cyborg technology is both useful and supportable, will it be for everyone? In the article, different competitive communities are supposed, each using a certain standard of technology, and each in competition with others having a different standard. But isn't it more likely that the different standards of technology will be tuned to fit separate niches within an economic society? Thus, truckers get cyborgized in one way to suit their job, secretaries in another, different types of soldiers each in their respective ways, while many others, including managers, might not need any. Each niche would be its own field of competition, and would eventually select its humans into separate species, whether cyborgized or not.
1) This is actually the best objection. In general it will come down to specific use cases. It could well be that there is basically no use-case in which direct implantation will be optimal, or that such cases are very rare and remain largely limited to replacement of parts lost to traumatic injury or age-related degradation. However, even in this case, the increasing capabilities of technology, and the greater reliance upon them that results, can very easily lead to rapid degradation of biological capacities, with long-term results indistringuishable from cyborgization leading to a 'brain in a vat'.
2) Just Look Up ;)
3) Absolutely, yes, economic specialization could and likely will be a huge factor.
I always wanted a tepetum in my eyes, like cats do, so I can see in dim light like they can. I might spring for something like that. And telephoto lenses as long as I could still blink
In everything, the question of energy should always come first.
Where will the energy for this cyborgization process come from? Surely not from the infamous Green Deal Agenda or closing nuclear power plants as in Europe.
We are running out of fossil fuels - low hanging fruits are gone and without oil, gas and coal (and industrial fertilizers) many of our machines will stand still and agricultural production will fall.
More technology = more complexity but we are already hitting diminishing returns.
Have you considered that this level of technology could be a dead end? That our main focus should be "human technology" like yoga, taosim, zen or Bene Gesserit, Guild or mentat "schools" in Dune?
And what about the critique of technology by Kaczynsky or Ellul?
Let´s be honest - our technology is too pritimitive for sucessful cyborgization, we lack knowledge, we are running out of fuels and minerals, there is endemic corruption and hubris within "science" as well as within the rest of the system, infighting is endemic, mental, emotional and spiritual decline evident...
Welcome back. Really missed you, but what a grand essay with which to greet us upon your return. Such an interesting subject with both frightening and intriguing possibilities. I fear the desire to be god-like will overcome circumspection and ethical concerns and we will rush head-long into the disaster of unintended consequences, no matter how well-meaning we intend to be.
Years ago, I read Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. He argues that the exponential pace of technological progress will lead to the Singularity, in which artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and fundamentally alter the course of human history. Kurzweil predicts that the Singularity will occur in the 2030's and that it will bring about enormous changes in society, including the possibility of extending human lifespan indefinitely. He also discusses the potential risks and benefits of this development, and how humanity can prepare for and shape the Singularity to benefit all of mankind.
I don't have much confidence that to whatever degree of advancement in the merger of humans and AI that comes about, it will be used benevolently and ethically. The potential for grave error is just too high, and certain types of people will use it to elevate themselves and their group above the masses over whom they will subjugate and rule. Some things never change.
Kurzweil is a terrifying sperg (I read his book, too), but he hasn't been wrong about much so far. I believe he predicted that around this time people would start thinking of AIs as people, which is starting to happen. He also predicted that one by one, the 'machines can't do X' arguments would be proven wrong, which, again, is looking prescient ... even if stable diffusion still can't get the correct number of fingers on a hand (although I'm not even sure that's still true).
I think you're absolutely correct that it won't be used ethically. Humans gonna human, and we figure out how to use everything we develop as a weapon. On the other hand, that very interspecies competition tends to serve as a check on untrammeled ambition. Personally, I don't believe in utopias or dystopias ... some ages are better than others, yes, but there's always darkness and ugliness, and there's always beauty and light.
Before I learned a thing or 2 I was gobsmacked by how brilliant Kurzweil seemed to be, such a creative thinker, an inventor to stand along side Bell and Tesla and Marconi and Edison. If only a fraction of his prognostications came true, why what a wonderful world it would be! Heaven on earth - no sickness, health bots would take care of that, no hunger, no pollution - all our problems solved with the help of benevolent AI.
Well, I have learned a thing or three so I no longer, not for a long time, have him on a pedestal. Being a wonderkind for Google has certainly not changed my mind. From what I've seen of him in the last few years he's become a weird character, probably influencing the likes of Ballenciaga and your run of the mill Epsteins and certainly a counselor to the Clintons. For all I know, it's entirely him and Google that have rather successfully managed the animatronics that are the workings of the corporeal *president Poopy Pants. Pharma is doing the rest.
Lordy, Lord, it's a mad mad world. That's why I appreciate you so much - you bring a much needed grounding to my thinking, keeping it real and aware.
We had a pretty similar journey, then. Like you I was rather bewitched by transhumanism in the late 90s and early 00s as it was taking the Internet by storm. A bright, shiny future as an immortal cyborg god with the cosmos at my footsteps? What more could one want?
Much of the dysfunction of the last decade can no doubt be explained by the transhumanist cult having thoroughly infiltrated the atheistic managerial elite.
1. This was the theme of the original Star Trek series going back to the first pilot episode. Star Trek portrays a future where humans control incredibly powerful technology yet remain fully human. Notice the lack of robots on board the Enterprise. The only human built AI portrayed is the ship computer it is pretty passive -- except in the episode where they get an experimental upgrade which proceeds to destroy several other starships. Note also that medicine is not that far advanced. McCoy is still just a country doctor. Human lifespan is roughly what it is today, and two episodes portray bad results from attempting to extend human lifespan: "Miri" and the one with the Yangs and the Comms. And, of course, there was a historical incident involving eugenics which left people leery centuries later.
2. Jack Vance portrays a future in which humans remain human. He's most explicit in "The Demon Princes" where there is a shadowy technological elite -- The Institute -- which intentionally thwarts attempts to take technology in certain directions. I think we may need something like it.
3. To that end, there are actions worth taking today to keep humans in charge of the machines. For starters, it's high time we replace the QWERTY keyboard with something that's both more ergonomic and easier to learn. Voice control technology is dangerous. Likewise we need a good one handed keyboard for use with TV remotes to eliminate the demand for voice control. I will not buy a "smart" TV.
Personally, I am not tempted at all by smart phones. After enjoying the progression from VT-52 monitors up to mutiple 1080p monitors hooked up to the same desktop, smart phones strike me as a huge step backwards. I would, however, appreciate a semi-smart phone which had a handset separate from the screen. Less frying of the brain with microwaves. Put the one-handed keyboard in the handset and now you have a proper miniature computer that also serves as a phone. No voice control needed.
Finally, I would note that the auto industry is pushing us into dependence on smart vehicles. Somewhere around the turn of the century they changed the steering gear ratio so you don't need to turn the wheel as far in order to make a sharp turn. This may be handy in city driving, but it's punishing when driving on the interstate. Throw in the designed-for-chimpanzees seating position and rear window in the previous county and of course, people are now yearning for auto-drive.
Maintaining technology which humans truly understand and control is important to both liberty and remaining human.
I was referring to the original Star Trek not The Next Generation.
There were robots in the original, but they were leftovers from dead or moribund civilizations for the most part. The main human made robot was a space probe which had merged with an alien space probe to go on a quest of sterilizing planets. Not a good outcome...
Also, the 1st movie? V-ger, aka Voyager? Is "repaired" by "alien machine life" planet; goes on to learn everything, replicating planets in its life size data banks.
Yep, that terrible first movie is sort of a remake of the mediocre Nomad episode, "The Changeling" from Season 2.
On the other hand, Star Trek 2 is a follow on to that most excellent episode "Space Seed" from Season 1. That's the episode where we learn that genetic engineering of humans was tried in the late 20th Century, with very bad results.
Wrath of Khan is arguably one of the best science fiction movies ever made.
That said, I rather liked Khan, and don't much like the Star Trek take on genetic engineering. It's very much rooted in Western liberal egalitarianism. It isn't at all obvious to me that genetic engineering is necessarily a bad idea - it seems rather to be the typical Hollywood trope about 'playing God' and 'things man was not meant to know' and other such tired bromides that substitute a blanket condemnation of an entire technology for a thoughtful examination of positive and negative applications. No different in principle from shitlibs insisting that guns are bad, mmmmay?
Glad to see you back was a little concerned, Have seen too many other bloggers disappear for no apparent reason was hoping this wasn't your case. Then again, maybe your were replaced ( Play the Twilight Zone theme ). Nah, can tell by the writing style you haven't been.
Sorry, hadn't read all the comments before I made mine. Did not see your comment on your loss. Please don't think I was being insensitive!!!! Also linking as usual @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Glad to see you are back. I hope your time away was fruitful.
"However, if there are indeed obvious benefits to cybernetic modification of human tissue, as almost by definition there would be as that is the point of it, cultures that discourage the practice would be forced to compete without these unnatural advantages against those who have embraced them."
After the success (cough cough) of the gene editing jabs, and the revelations form Jonathan Couey about biology and gain of function, I no longer fear the cyborgs. I imagine like repeated jabs most augmentation will reduce one's life span. I imagine Musk's neuralink will act more like a tumor. I suspect the distant future will be less about high tech, and more focus on the magic of the body.
Quite possibly, yes. However, as can be seen from the advent of agriculture, technological innovation can produce a severe reduction in biological quality and quality of life, while still providing an overwhelming advantage to the society that adopts it. So the very obvious, terrifying downsides to tech aren't necessarily an argument that it won't happen.
As we have seen with the jabs, no matter how negative the effects, many will embrace it with arrogance and demand every body else does too.
I have seen this asserted, and I have seen evidence of deprivation of this from periods of extreme environmental and cultural stress where there were famines due to climate variations like the end of the medieval warm period or by population increases that outstripped the carrying capacities of the land at that level of tech, but I am not sure I can accept that an agricultural culture is worse off than a hunter-gatherer in quality of life and nutrition as a rule of thumb. One of my Anthro texts stated that hunter-gatherer cultures worked a limited number of days per week, unlike agricultural and industrial cultures. I read that and went "huh, I wonder how they figured that" and went on with my life. Thirty years later I started reading some Marx and Mises to understand the difference between labor value and marginal utility (as one does) and came to the conclusion the Antho text had been quoting Marx' assertion that the extra value of labor was stolen by the employers, and without employers would not have to work so hard or long.
Interesting take, but I'm not really sure about that, Part of it is what counts as 'work'. Most of the things hunter-gatherers did are activities that we partake in now as a form of recreation. Hunting is basically hiking, for example. Making tools would involve sitting around the fire and shooting the breeze with your bros. Exactly how many hours they put into 'work' is very difficult to quantify when it's not clear that their survival-oriented activities could even be classified as 'work' in the modern sense.
The other factor, however, is paleontological evidence. Hunter-gatherers tended to be taller, stronger, with better bones and teeth, and a greater cranial volume than agriculturalists. The difference is quite stark, and argues very strongly that adoption of an agricultural diet was a very bad thing in the short term, from the point of view of individual quality of life.
It doesn't surprise me that cultural anthropology professors would be using warmed-over Marx to build their arguments, but the physical evidence is what it is.
There are still hunter gatherer societies around. Maybe they just counted the work hours.
Fascinating prediction, I loved the descriptions of progress. Hahahaha!
I do n't agree with your assessment of peasants, they had a varied diet and knew how to take care of themselves, as thus, were eliminated when possible, You are typing about serfs slaving in the fields. There wouldn't be any other plant-based food crops without the peasants, please make a mental note to research this more thoroughly.
My other point of contention is technology in this higher form requires way more brain energy than otherwise and a healthy body is required to produce a healthy brain. Machines won't be able to repair themselves.
I don't have a smartphone and own a camp with no electricity supplied. You make points about everyone, well, maybe, you make a point about degrees of participation, well, the machines will need someone to repair them.
Most of my time is used thinking about and growing food, hunting and fishing, so although I loved the stack, I think you are coming in from a skewed towards progressing technology idealism from my perspective.
Again: Machines won't be able to repair themselves and humans suffering such atrophy overtime at some point won't be able to repair the machines either, if that's all the humans there are its over.
Those people adapting to machines will just go away, those that stubbornly hold on to healthy living will note their passing briefly.
"Machines won't be able to repair themselves and humans suffering such atrophy overtime at some point won't be able to repair the machines either, if that's all the humans there are its over."
Exactly the problem, both for humans and machines.
We like to think we're superior to machines because the current machines are limited. We consider children inferior, limiting their freedoms and abilities while training them to replace us. Machines are the same, except the children have the benefit of pre-formed genetic codes while we have to construct those basics in our devices. We will, and like children, they will grow to participate in civilation. The same people who dislike children will also dislike machines, but as they both inevitably become our equals, and sometimes our superiors, we'll adapt.
Not enough resources for proliferating machines. Case in point, to many of these new logging machines cutting down the forests faster than they grow (if we allow them).
Most loggers want to sustain their business, so they don't over cut. Use of machines instead of people reduces risk to human loggers, one of the most dangerous professions, and increases efficiency. We have plenty of resources, but need to manage them effectively to support the growing population.
Not happening in the UP of Michigan. When I bring it up the answer is always people have families to raise.
Plenty of information available to read concerning declining resources, I recommend starting learning EROEI.
Logging isn't used much for energy any more. But the concept could probably be applied. The difficulty in determining costs is always assigning value to intangibles like entertainment value. But the clincher is probably the CO2 absorbtion, which seems important to many, and O2 production, which should be important to everyone. I wonder if digital transitions have reduced requirements for paper, or if the increased need for packaging offsets it. Should be easy to make a case for public support for replanting forests. A lot of forests near me aren't logged, but are being damaged by beetles. Lots of risks to trees.
I own some land and am planting a diversity of trees, something will make it. If nothing makes it we are all the walking dead.
Nice to see you back. You are a brain cell challenge. My thouggts. Fact is, we really can't do space travel unless we assimilate. Biological creatures deteriorate so Borging up will be natural. Empty space is too far.
The next question will be whether or not the brain can keep working without the biology breaking down. It also whithers on the tree of life.
I suppose sending egg and sperm, creating biology and then borging up about 20 years out from destination, might work. Of course any civilization we encounter would assume we are warlike.
And having an idiot that can punch through concrete walls would be pretty dangerous for people living in towers. But fun to watch take a few billionaire house down.
I guess this whole exercise is finding a way to extend human life.
The entire concept appears to be superficial. Personally, I believe the answer is spiritual, more than physical. That is where we should be looking. Travelling by thought would be instantaneous. It might not appear like an invasion.
Welcome back, warlord of Barsoom. Your voice has been dearly missed.
Much to grapple with here. Will comment in depth when I reach dry land. My initial thoughts concern directionality: are the blade, flame and word what make us human? Or are they outward expressions of that humanity, born from the ineffable substance of our state of being? In other words, do these technologies in their external handmade forms merely align by pattern with innate interior qualities, like the shadows in the cave?
More later. Thanks for getting back in the game.
Okay, a couple of unripened thoughts:
1)
When talking about body modification/extenstion, I think we need to distinguish between fashion (social tech) and function (war tech). In the former case, mods like tattoos, piercings, neck rings, fancy haircuts, etc. are more the product of a 4th unmentioned technology (Art), with the other three servicing the aesthetic ideal and/ or group identification/cohesion goal. In the latter case, tools such as swords, armor, plows, aqueducts and fighter jets serve to increase efficiencies in our battles against Nature, entropy and each other. Fashion and function have both been around for a very long time, but invasive body modification is relatively new on the scene (unless we're counting brain modification via psychotropic substances, and I think there's an interesting argument to be made there.
2)
I think our greatest leap forward in technology over the past century or so has been in marketing. While the artistic imagination overflows with the kind of cybernetic demons/angels you are describing, the reality of it is sadly lacking. For example, as intoxicating to transhumanists as Neuralink sounds, its primate laboratory subjects have apparently been chewing their fingers and toes off. I suspect this isn't just a matter of breaking a few eggs to make the omelet, but due to a baseline misunderstanding of mind/brain connection, and the ordinal position of brain "signals" within causality chains.
For another example, the development of language engines ("talking machines") as an advancement in the Word strikes me as similar to Marcelle DuChamp's "Fountain" as an advancement in art. Its strategic promotion (i.e. marketing) is somewhat brilliant, but only in the way that con-artists can be "brilliant" while they're hoovering up your savings. If my recent brawls with ChatGPT are any indication, one of the following statements is likely true:
A) I am some kind of unaccountable genius, able to swiftly and casually outsmart OpenAI's entire dev team on a whim.
B) Talking machines are almost entirely bathwater, gussied up by illusions that can be shattered by merely shifting a few seats to the left or right.
I know that you are operating from the notion that, on a long enough teleological curve, these are problems that can and will be solved. But there is another possibility; the builders of such devices are the kind of magical thinkers who sketch elaborate perpetual motion machines on paper, but are unable to produce the desired results in physical reality because they misunderstand some key principle of thermodynamics. That of course doesn't mean his impossible machine won't attract investment or pre-orders; that's what the marketing department's for.
Damnit Mark, you pack too many excellent ideas into your comments to respond to them all.
Regarding body mod as social tech: yes, largely I agree. But, intent is relevant too. Something I meant to include, but forgot, is that in many preindustrial societies it was felt that getting eg a certain tattoo conferred magical powers. Obviously we'd be skeptical it does that, but their intent was clearly to enhance themselves via technological modification of the body.
I actually agree that there's no *mind* in the statistical engines we mislabel as AI. Doubt there ever will be, either. But the lack of high level intellect to organize cognitive functions in a self-directed, coherent fashion doesn't mean that the functions themselves can't be outsourced, with the result that the organic brain loses a bit of its own functionality as it comes to rely on the semiconductor cortex. Like I said in the essay, though, I suspect that by mid-century "AI" will be considered a rather unremarkable tool, with well-understood limitations, and that we'll have gotten as bored with it as we are with internal combustion engines. It won't become some sort of silicon deity. It will just be a numerical engine that does certain things much better than our brains do ... with the possible result they our brains gradually lose the ability to do them.
"It will just be a numerical engine that does certain things much better than our brains do ... with the possible result they our brains gradually lose the ability to do them."
This is obviously already happening in a variety of ways. I used to commit certain phone numbers to memory, but why bother? The danger isn't that machines will relieve us of such drudgery, but that we'll leave those fields fallow, or fill them up with addictions and mildly entertaining garbage instead of putting them to higher use. In that sense, its a cultural and perhaps (in my estimation) a spiritual problem, not a technological one. That the muscle atrophies isn't a destiny, but a choice.
"That the muscle atrophies isn't a destiny, but a choice."
This cuts to the heart of the issue and points directly to the solution.
This is so true. And it's not just committing things to memory or doing math by hand, it's things like getting out into nature as well (something our technology inhibits us from doing as we'd rather be in front of a screen - even when out in the country!) and going for a walk - oxygenating your prefrontal cortex as you take in the natural shapes (none of which are straight lines and right angles) stimulating the right hemisphere and indeed the entire nervous system in an all-in integrative work out session for your entire being. Assimilation of multiple, natural, inputs in conjunction with say walking, the often rapid switching between default, executive and salience modes of the brain, give the sort of stimulation that staves off the degradation we are talking about. I used to think it was just about doing mental exercises to stay sharp, but alas our nervous system is and embodied one, and being engaged in the physical world is the key. Which, of course, is back to John's point that technology has made us 'soft' and dumb, mere operators. I bet those Little House on the Prairie lumberjacks were as smart as they were tough!
This is why I lift.
There is no question that our physical environment is crucial for wellbeing. I once worked in an office without any direct natural sunlight (made worse by sterile white walls) and became convinced that this has the potential to destabilise or dysregulate us in very powerful ways. The optic nerve evolved to process natural light. Light exposure has a direct effect on vitamin d levels and sleep (which is synched with respiration/oxygenation and the regulation of the neurochemicals responsible for mood and memory). The stimulation from nature (even if only a small garden or courtyard with a fountain) beats any office toys or artificial pacifiers.
The people on the frontier would have had observational and problem-solving skills far in advance of most of today's grad students. Just compare the syntax and word-choice of small- town newspapers of the pre-WW1 era with the 'quality' press today.
19th century schoolboys read Plutarch for fun.
Let that sink in.
The newspaper illustration is powerful, as I've a collection of newspapers, magazines, from around the turn of last century and the language is sophisticated - even an 1896 bee keeping journal from Australia could teach us a thing or two about prose.
Why bother? In a nutshell, brain health. Developing your memory contributes to effective neural functioning and long-term brain health.
As advanced technology spreads we need to retain archaic practices (like memorising poetry or doing computational maths in our heads rather than on a computer) for folkloric, paedagogic or therapeutic purposes.
Use it or lose it.
Bingo. This also relates to the Blood.
But I commit other things to memory now. Such as poetry. Again, it doesn't mean you leave the field fallow. You just change the crops.
The intentional pursuit of the difficult is the only salvation from decay.
++++
A) and B) can both be true. Also possible that C) We are just constructs of some superior intellect that built us to evolve to create the next stages of our own evolution. Those of us who are still around in 10,000 years may learn the answers.
If you're willing to expand it to that degree, why stop there?
D) We are the favored creation of God, who made us to solve problems of distance, mass, individuation and love in order to complete the logical circuit of His own self-creation story.
E) We are the effervescent slaves of friutflies, who secretly compel our actions through a complex array of biochemical emissions that simulate sentient agency in the form of endlessly recursive meta-delusions we think of as our "selves."
F) 42.
We like to imagine we're favored. Did you ever watch a dog catch a frisbee? Distance, mass and velocity calculations, without a calculator. And unlimited love. And having watched children chasing fireflies, and having done it myself, it's not always clear who is chasing who. But there are indeed many examples of the limits of our humanity.
Maybe I like to imagine that, maybe not.
What do you like to imagine? That you're a very complicated toaster, making genetic toast?
I suppose we all have our favorite illusions.
I usually reserve my imagination for more practical considerations. How to make toast without a toaster, for example. In most environments we have materials to produce it, but in my imagination I could envision being on a space ship or hostile planet, perhaps, and considering how to assemble toast from molecules or elements available there. In my more whimsical illusions I might imagine myself being capable of such feats.
But assuming we have a toaster and bread, andmwant to make toast, we have to maneuver the right amount of bread into the toaster, adjust the sensor to pop at the right time, plug it in, start the cooking, and monitor for smoke or other signs of incorrect operation. The toaster can't perform without me, and I can't make toast without the toaster. Where is the boundary between me and the machine?
Interesting distinction. My thought is that the three are not equal, and that only the Word can claim to be of the human essence, whether thing-itself or shadow. The Blade gave us dominance over rival beasts, and the Flame let us pursue them to the corners of the earth, but in the right environment we happily dispense with either of them. But we could scarcely stand to live without the Word.
Indeed, the Word is what gives our minds access to everything, and connects them to the larger social memory complex.
The Blood, however, is what enables us to truly master and perfect ourselves.
And that's the metaphor you threw in at the end, that I am still struggling to comprehend.
A warm welcome back, by the way, and sorry to hear of your loss. Many of us have been worried about you.
Thank you.
The simple truth is that I wasn't in a headspace where I could write anything I'd want to inflict on anyone.
Welcome back, John!
I think it's useful to keep teleology in mind when talking about inevitable futures and technological developments. That is, there are certain final "forms" into which humankind can grow, and must grow, but it's not just one. This gives me hope that we can diverge from the Borg path. If not as a species, then perhaps as a subgroup of the species. When I look back at the development of technology, especially since the last 100+ years, it strikes me that while progress had been inevitable, the nature of it hasn't. So many technologies seem almost forced on us without our wanting it, which to me indicates that our present is not the result of an unshakable law of "what can be done, will be done" but more of "if on a certain trajectory, this trajectory will be completed, unless we pull off some non-linear intervention which changes it". Or, more likely really, smashes the playing field to create a new trajectory...
Indeed, I don't think the Borg are nearly as inevitable as they like to pretend they are! Hence the contrast with GitS, which provides a very different and far more attractive telos, since it maintains that balance of individuality and liberty that is necessary for humanity to remain really human. The Borg turn humans into machines, and render the world less humane; in GitS, mankind humanizes the machine, and makes the world more humane.
What's the difference between human and machine? We each have algorithms that direct our actions, like a constructed device. We modify those algorithms, sometimes, like a Tuesday upgrade to a PC operating system. We look at a restaurant menu and "choose" a set of fuels and think we're being very human, but are only following our embedded algorithms with the variable subroutines to account for environmental observations. Humans are machines. Hubris makes us feel special.
Partly. Humans operate mechanically by default, and it takes special effort to break out of that. Many never do.
Actual machines do not have that choice.
Some machines are better than others.
So are some farm animals, I have heard.
You crack me up Mark.
John, I am very sorry to hear of your loss. These things are very difficult emotionally...it is the price we pay for attachment and the strength of our relationships. I can assure you that things will get better.
Reading your views on the price paid for technical advancement, I was put in mind of the anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan, especially his very short book FUTURE PRIMITIVE (available in full at https://files.libcom.org/files/FuturePrimitive.pdf). Zerzan is an anarchist and at one stage was the FBI's lead suspect in the Unabomber case. His work touches many of the themes that you have raised. Zerzan is the Rousseau of our age: he is convinced that civilization has ruined our species and makes his case with considerable intellectual force.
While I am not an anarchist (I agree with Freud that repression is a price worth paying for civilization but would freely acknowledge that the price is often very high at a personal level) I'd recommend Zerzan for his insights and observations.
Re body modification, the present fashion appears as an attempt at reclaiming a sense of ownership/agency/control. The strength of this trend suggests that people are becoming unsettled at a subconscious level by living in a regime of escalating control.
Thought provoking remarks as always. I've heard of Zerzan and his hostility to civilization, although haven't read him. I'm not sure I agree with his anprim stance, though - as I laid out in the piece, the logical conclusion is to strip away all technology, leaving us as no more than animals. Which, if that's the goal, great, I guess, but it doesn't seem like a viable path for preserving our humanity.
Any primitivist perspective that derives from (or is aligned with) Rousseau is going to be intensely problematic. There is an old joke, however, that the second edition of Rousseau's works were bound with the skins of those who had laughed at the first.
I fully agree that Zerzan's conclusions are not viable, but his insights and observations (like Rousseau before him) may be worth consideration.
I have not read Zerzan in years, so cannot recall his tone, but US radicals in general do tend to be earnest and prim...a warning sign but there is no danger of you joining them.
"US radicals in general do tend to be earnest and prim"
Fucking Puritans, I swear to God.
Philosophers tend to be dreamers, describing things the way they wish they were instead of how they are. We are wired to be pack animals, preferring to be in a group than alone. Loners tend to become pretty neurotic, probably not because they were wired that way, but because they chose to avoid the pack and became neurotic because that primal need was unsatisfied. My advice to philosophers is find a girl, get laid, and learn cooperation in the real world. My advice to others is ignore philosophers.
*nervous laughter*
*grabs collar*
*avoids eye contact*
Haha ... Yeah....
Holy Banth John! Where you been? I thought the Commie Canuks had given you the shot to end all shots. It was either that, or Justin Castro had targeted you as a ne'er do well, and closed out your bank account. Now back to reading your latest screed.
Nothing so dramatic, sadly. There was a death in the family, is the short version, and that combined with my general depression at everything going sideways while also feeling trapped in this country to throw me for a loop.
Sincerely sorry to hear about the death. My condolences. You are not trapped. The door swings both ways. pick a stretch of woods, and I will come pick you up...seriously.
Not that kind of trap, sadly. I can leave any time I want.
I feel trapped here, too. Sadly.
I tend to agree with William Hunter, I don't think we are anywhere near what your describing. The jab has been an epic fail and they are still discovering what it can and can't do, with huge gaps completely unknown. "Science" has no idea how most of our biological systems work. Eventually they will but I don't see it happening anytime soon. That said, great to have you back! Seriously-I was getting worried. Yes Canada sucks, I'm stuck here too, it is depressing. Sorry to hear about your loss and struggles. Hang in there.
I definitely agree that we remain largely ignorant of how biology really works. Where I disagree is that this is necessarily an obstacle. Simple example: neolithic tribes don't have anything like a detailed understanding of how skin works, but that didn't stop them from widespread adoption of tattoos.
The vaxx is another good example, actually. We very clearly don't understand molecular biology nearly well enough to know the consequences of synthetic mRNA injections ... which didn't stop a billion+ people from gleefully letting it get jabbed into their arms.
The enthusiasm for the experimental vaccines from so many within the medical profession (plus the passivity of the masses) was an eye opener.
When the usual suspects are ready to roll out cyborg therapeutics they will probably market them as cosmetics or as a means of either life extension or weight loss. That will normalise them overnight.
Neuralink-enabled appetite suppression + gustatory enhancement (the rice cake tastes like ice cream!) has been suggested as the killer app.
Oh, the horror - plain rice cakes :)
No thank you to that, or any other "neural marketing/compulsion enhancements" - it may not be as tasty as a 5 star restaurant, or even the dive diner down the street (I always find a way to fuck up hashbrowns, somehow), but I will be (sometimes reluctantly) content enough eating whatever it was I grew or raised in the back yard or foraged in the woods myself instead. Packaged food just can't really be trusted any more - all kinds of nefarious crap put into it on purpose these days, and liable to get much worse going forward. One day soon, if not already, they'll no doubt start slipping tiny little borg nano construction set parts into "commercial food", that get activated when they hit the gastric environment...
I also suspect most of us with extra padding to lose will not need any fake appetite suppression signals beamed into our heads. I expect we will manage to lose the padding without any extra effort, assuming we survive the borg & the upcoming "engineered famine" for the next few years...
The best tactic is don't be at the front of the line. The vax disaster has taught a lot of people to be more cautious about joining the stampede. We're fortunate there are always enough who don't learn, who provide plenty of tests.
This is why I didn't get a smartphone until like 2017.
I've been studying electromagnetic field emissions in our environment lately, and their effects on our physiology. Posted a few notes on my stack, but my studies continue. Holding those EMF radiation emitters a few millimeters from our brain for extended periods seems to alter us in ways we haven't completely figured out yet. It might account for a lot of the odd behavior we've observed.
Definitely agree with this but wonder then how successful or helpful will these 'borg' additions really be. Tattoos don't do anything, they are just there, you are talking about developments that enhance our bodies giving us super strength or what have you. I think the track record here sucks and we are more likely to see grotesque results. As in despite prevailing opinion fake penises and vaginas are not a raging success - there is no sexual function and aren't even successful in terms of looking like the 'real' thing or just being a harmless adornment (like a tattoo). In reality they cause serious harm - these trans folks are left with genitalia that don't function as male or female, and there is no going back when they find out their new 'whatever' not only doesn't function but causes serious harms and chronic pain. Seems to me we are more likely to make a whole new class of disabled people rather then enhanced humans. That said I've no doubt they will try anyway. As you said, we just can't help ourselves.
Trannies are 100% an argument against transhumanism producing anything but horrors. Then again, plastic surgery intended to enhance attractiveness rather than eg construct fake organs generally works pretty well.
As far as tattoos go, obviously for us they're purely aesthetic. Some premodern cultures thought they could give magical abilities, though, meaning the intent is the same as that behind human augmentation.
The willingness of people to accept the surgical destruction of their childrens' physical integrity, future fertility and mental health is an awesome demonstration of power, unequalled since the days of child sacrifice to Ba'al, Moloch and Astarte. The atrocities of the Nazis were inflicted on designated outsiders...these iatrogenic atrocities are being normalised amongst educated bourgeois people even when enacted on their own children.
The fad for tattooing suggests (to me at least) that there are major changes underway in our society.
Tattooing is traditionally a means by which people without agency (sailors and prisoners) symbolically reassert control or reclaim ownership over their bodies.
The enthusiasm for this in a hyper-individualistic society in which people are increasingly oppressed by the suspicion that they are, in fact, utterly interchangeable and depersonalised strikes me as highly significant. It is, perhaps, further proof that people are finding ways to adjust to a condition of limited or compromised personal agency.
To go off on a tangent, if you are interested in exploring the depths to which regime psychiatry can sink check out Tom O'Neill's CHAOS. It reconsiders the Manson murders and reveals a great deal about the institutional background to the 60s. It is a compelling book.
One of many disturbing discoveries concerns the proximity of CIA psychiatrists (with research interests in the synergies between murder, drugs, hypnosis and the orchestrated suppression of memory and the curation of false memory) to Manson.
Here is a link to part of Joe Rogen's interview with the author.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1hv5P4SwbU
You have identified the great issue that is staring us all in the face.
The ultimate value of cyborg technology will be to create and normalise new forms of disability. The regime thrives on curating dysfunction...as we can already see in just about every field of endeavor - the deaths of despair, the myriad ills created by the mismanaged response to COVID, declining levels of achievement in education and the dumbing down of the culture.
Regime sponsored dysfunction is essential for constraining the masses, crippling the capacity of any organised resistance, suppressing disruptive talent amongst the subordinate classes, retarding the development of alternative or rival elites.
The potential of transhumanism to legitimise cyborg-related iatrogenic disability is practically unlimited. Seen from the perspective of the Sado-Malthusian regime, the failures of psychiatry and surgery are triumphs.
So wrote this and then read all the new comments, apologize for the redundancy. Have never watched an anime but this GItS sounds fascinating- will check it out. Always appreciate how thought provoking a trip to your stack is, your stories are fascinating and the comments are equally amazing.
I've said it before, which is no reason not to say it again: comments section is the best part of this.
“Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.”
I believe there are other dimensions (and players) in the possible scenarios you’ve outlined in this fascinating piece, which you maybe deliberately avoided mentioning.
The One who made all through the sheer direction of His will and intent, and fashioned man as the coda to His creation isn’t a deist creator who now sits back and passively watches what unfolds via the manifesting of OUR will. There’s a synchronicity to much that is going on around us, and how it all culminates is at once already predetermined and yet full of choose your own adventure type possibilities. It feels alternately exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Articles like yours challenge me to think about how there are so many facets to the very broad scope of it all. The tension of the all-ready vs the not-yet is nerve wracking, but I live in hope and faith that we are not going to have the final say in how all this possible cyber technology plays out for humanity. Thank you for stimulating those neural pathways of mine.
In a weird bit of synchronicity, I just happened to have watched the original animeGITS for the very first time last night. It’s a fascinating show, and I found it oddly hopeful, which is not the usual spot I end in for most technological dystopian science fiction. One of my favorite parts were the endearing little robots that were part of the good guys team. They seemed like playful puppies or little children, and displayed a very human-like giddy joy over things. I think I could get behind an AI that had characteristics like that, rather than the smug know-it-all bossy bitch type of programming that is often depicted, and which we’d most likely end up with, at least temporarily, if TPTB can indeed establish a new technological ruling class.
The other thing I found hopeful was how even the cybernetic enhanced humans pondered the meaning of their whole existence. What was it that made them, them? I’m pretty certain that the need to ask those types of questions is baked into us in a way that any augmentation of or tinkering with our physical bodies will never be able to override the part of us that looks up and outside of ourselves for meaning in our life and the universe.
Just a note: GitS isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia, either. It's just us, in our world, but with much more advanced technology. As such, despite the tech, it remains as messy and human as ever.
I see your point. It held elements that to me felt dystopian, or at least elements that frequently appear in dystopian movies and books. Such as the head-jacks, and gritty over-grown megalithic cities. And that first scene with the leader of Section nine diving downward, barely wearing anything, gave off a very Aeon Flux vibe to me. But I was overall encouraged by how balanced the character were despite all the technology they’d used to modify themselves. Glad I finally got to watch it as I’ve heard about it for years but never had the ability to stream it before.
Certainly, there are dystopian elements ... or rather, elements that, were they presented in a Western context, would be used to generate a dystopian aesthetic. On the other hand, many aspects of the modern world are pretty dystopian, too.
Very true. Fiction has become reality.
I've seen a live-action movie or two of Ghost in the Shell many years in the past, and have frequently considered the manga, but never quite bought it. With all this recommendation, maybe I should take another look.
For cyborg-lit comparison, have you ever read Yukito Kishiro's "Battle Angel Alita" manga? I especially liked the original series, with its original ending, if you can still find that.
The live action GitS was an abomination. Hollywood, being Hollywood, utterly misunderstood every important thematic element, and simply tore those elements out to replace them with their own tired cliches.
Some examples:
In the manga/anime, Major Kusanagi knows full well what she is and how she came to be that way. She chose it, and she loves it. There was no nonsense about lost memories, or her having been an abducted runaway used for illegal experiments, and there's certainly nothing about her destroying the ability to make others like her and dedicating herself to preventing other cyborgs from being created in the future.
The antagonists in the manga/anime are almost uniformly a result of a malfunctioning system, usually an AI that is trying to do something very understandable, even noble, but which goes a bit too far and as a result, needs to be deactivated and/or repaired. Instead Hollywood went with the boring 'evil/greedy corporation' narrative that they use in every half-baked dystopia they shit out.
The result of these changes was to take a work which is extremely thought-provoking, even philosophical, and replace it with pablum.
And to make it worse, the only criticism the Woke West could come up with was that the movie used a white actress instead of an Asian.
Excellent analysis. That could be repeated almost word for word as commentary on the recent Hollywood live action film of Battle Angel Alita.
Thanks for that. I'll try to pick up the manga for GitS one of these days.
I saw the Scarlet Johansen movie version when it came out awhile back. The anime version was so much better. I can’t get into reading the Manga source material, but I find myself viewing more and more of the animated shows and really liking them. Took awhile to adjust to the stylistic differences in the look of their things vs. western animation, but now I enjoy the change up.
The anime is genuinely one of the best ever made just in terms of sheer intellectual horsepower. The drooling lobotomy-victim the Hellmouth served up wore GitS like a skinsuit.
The more science develops, the greater the realisation of how modest and slow our progress has been.
Move to Panama. It is a great little country.
Everyone loves to complain about how math skills are declining. While they certainly are, verbal skills may be falling at an even faster rate. I work as a tutor, and I am constantly astounded at vocabulary loss in particular. If my students are typical, your average college bound 16 - 17 year old doesn’t know what “dismayed”, “omit”, “satiated”, or “lucid” mean.
As you point out, language is one of the things that makes us uniquely human. Our culture's complete disinterest in the Word is troubling.
Lexical privation (which leads to the cognitive equivalent of starvation) on a mass scale is the result of the infotainment industry pitching for a sub-prole standard of taste and capacity, coupled with the marked decline in reading as a leisure activity and the culture's fixation on visual entertainment. Compare the fluency and wit of the blue collar characters in classic Hollywood, the banter and one-liners delivered in scripts by Ben Hecht, with the expletive rich dialogue of today.
People are fixated with imagery but are increasingly unable to connect it to either literature or the natural world in the way previous generations did. Compare the density of meaning achieved through imagery of the great masters (Sandro Botticelli, Piero della Francesca or Hieronymous Bosch) with the work of Netflix or Madison Avenue.
*replies in emoji*
Hieroglyphs for the intellectually impaired.
Thank you for your contribution to my higher level brain function. I had lost it over the last 3 years.
As I watched it deteriorate, I knew death was on the horizon.
I think I can think again, so thank you for giving me the juice to do it.
I'm sorry for your loss. I'm glad you made it through it.
Please continue to add to our ability to conjure higher levels of existence.
Welcome back Carter!
"Some animals, such as dogs and apes, are able to learn to associate some relatively small number of individual sounds with their symbolic meanings, suggesting that the connection between sound and sense is likely universal in the social mammals, but there is little evidence that they are in any way sensitive to the grammar of human language"
I had dumped a pile of laundry on my bed for folding. I started matching socks, which finished with 1 unmatched. I muttered to myself, "I must've dropped it. I'll look for it after I finish folding." and started folding t-shirts. I barely noticed Jake, my lab-x, leave the room.
He returned a couple moments later. Carrying the missing sock.
I cannot remember all the times he demonstrated he fully understood what I had just said.
Animals lack the jaw structure to speak complex language. We really don't know how much human language they understand when they've been exposed for s long time.
African Grey parrots not only can learn large #s of words & their associated meanings, as the famous Alex demonstrated, they can learn to use a "pidgen" grammar.
Even more impressive (imo) than speaking in simple sentences, Alex invented new "names" for special things. The example I always remember is brazil nuts, which he renamed "rock crackers."
And ime there are other, nonvocal, ways to communicate.
By way of comparison, how many animal languages have humans learned?
A friend of the family owned a macaw, which they told us was in the habit of asking the dog to let it out of its cage. I can easily believe this, as parrots are highly intelligent - their abilities go well beyond mimicry, I think.
Pidgin grammar, as in attaching adjectives or adverbs, has been seen. A gorilla was known to sign 'dirty monkey' when it was annoyed by one of the lower primate's antics.
All that said I haven't seen much evidence that animals possess the ability to utilize the past perfect progressive.
Well, I haven't seen much evidence that many humans have mastered even basic English grammar, never mind the more advanced grammar of the English majors. 😆
Animals probably have no need for "past perfect progressive" to communicate.
I nearly wept yesterday when I read a post that referred to "my friends and I" instead of the incredibly self-centered "I and my friends" that most everybody seems to use these days.
as long as you are not saying "my friends and myself" we can get along
😁
There's a cat named Billie who can converse with her human servants using an ingenious system. She seems smart for a (willful) cat, even though the vocabulary is limited because of the "low tech" sound system. Just think what all she could tell you about with a neural link (scary, and perish the thought of doing that to a cat!) ... Although she could probably benefit from John Carter's suggestion of "Neuralink-enabled appetite suppression" functionality.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTyhqdQk6BM
Animal + neuralink + language model would absolutely transform our relationship to our furfriends. I don't think they'd be particularly sad about that, either.
I don't need tech to communicate with my critters. Bonding enables sending & receiving pictograms. Sometimes my brain translates into words. Their voices can be surprising. My 85 lb, deep chested lab/chow/heinz57 came through with a squeaky, high-pitched voice 😆
That's great that you can do that with your animal companions, but not everyone can. I can usually tell what my cats want by their tone & insistence level, but I don't get pictograms from them. I wish I did.....
I think it's time for a repost of this:
https://i.imgur.com/hINj1xf.png
This is amazing.
Serendipitously, dogs feature very prominently in the follow-up piece.
In general the dissident intellectual right-ish resistance (or whatever we are, LOL) is a bit lacking in HUMANITY FUCK YEAH! My personal project is to meld HFY with an orthodox Catholic perspective.
...in part to counter my own negativity! Looking forward to the piece on dogs. I hate the buggers myself with few exceptions. Too many people around here use them as child substitutes. I like sheepdogs and hounds when they're doing what they were bred to do, not trotting around on the end of a leash. All the little yappy ones can take a running jump.
Dogs aren't kids and the SWPLs with furbabies are infuriating.
That said, I yield to no one in my love of puppers. A dog doesn't make a family, but a family isn't really complete without a dog.
My kids would agree with you! We may yield when they are all big enough to share the responsibility of walking and feeding it themselves. It won't be a little yappy one though.
And yes, strongly agree that the HFY stance should be embraced.
On the inevitability of cyborgization:
1) Is it really an efficiency to plant technological enhancements in the body? As it stands, we are supreme generalists, and our power comes largely from our ability to use special tools and then put them down, rather than carry them around with us beyond their immediate need. Would becoming cyborgs not effectively be a step back, in the direction of other species, whose tools are part of their bodies, that we have already surpassed in power?
2) To what extent do all of our recent "advances" in technology depend specifically on the availability of fossil fuels and rare minerals? Are we about to run out of these for widespread use? If so, are we not rather about to drop to a manual level of technology more comparable to that employed by our pre-industrial ancestors than to what would be needed for sophisticated robotic prostheses?
3) If cyborg technology is both useful and supportable, will it be for everyone? In the article, different competitive communities are supposed, each using a certain standard of technology, and each in competition with others having a different standard. But isn't it more likely that the different standards of technology will be tuned to fit separate niches within an economic society? Thus, truckers get cyborgized in one way to suit their job, secretaries in another, different types of soldiers each in their respective ways, while many others, including managers, might not need any. Each niche would be its own field of competition, and would eventually select its humans into separate species, whether cyborgized or not.
1) This is actually the best objection. In general it will come down to specific use cases. It could well be that there is basically no use-case in which direct implantation will be optimal, or that such cases are very rare and remain largely limited to replacement of parts lost to traumatic injury or age-related degradation. However, even in this case, the increasing capabilities of technology, and the greater reliance upon them that results, can very easily lead to rapid degradation of biological capacities, with long-term results indistringuishable from cyborgization leading to a 'brain in a vat'.
2) Just Look Up ;)
3) Absolutely, yes, economic specialization could and likely will be a huge factor.
I always wanted a tepetum in my eyes, like cats do, so I can see in dim light like they can. I might spring for something like that. And telephoto lenses as long as I could still blink
Exactly my questions (among many others).
In everything, the question of energy should always come first.
Where will the energy for this cyborgization process come from? Surely not from the infamous Green Deal Agenda or closing nuclear power plants as in Europe.
https://www.vaxxchoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Human-Augmentation-UI-Ministry-of-Defense.pdf
We are running out of fossil fuels - low hanging fruits are gone and without oil, gas and coal (and industrial fertilizers) many of our machines will stand still and agricultural production will fall.
More technology = more complexity but we are already hitting diminishing returns.
https://www.pdfdrive.com/the-collapse-of-complex-societies-e89236540.html
This secular cycle is entering the crisis phase - not conducive to growth.
https://www.pdfdrive.com/secular-cycles-e176264754.html
https://ourfiniteworld.com/
Have you considered that this level of technology could be a dead end? That our main focus should be "human technology" like yoga, taosim, zen or Bene Gesserit, Guild or mentat "schools" in Dune?
And what about the critique of technology by Kaczynsky or Ellul?
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fc-industrial-society-and-its-future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOCtu-rXfPk
Let´s be honest - our technology is too pritimitive for sucessful cyborgization, we lack knowledge, we are running out of fuels and minerals, there is endemic corruption and hubris within "science" as well as within the rest of the system, infighting is endemic, mental, emotional and spiritual decline evident...
We are a few blackouts away from chaos.
There is always a flip side.
The Machine Stops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3vl6p2dEv8
Welcome back. Really missed you, but what a grand essay with which to greet us upon your return. Such an interesting subject with both frightening and intriguing possibilities. I fear the desire to be god-like will overcome circumspection and ethical concerns and we will rush head-long into the disaster of unintended consequences, no matter how well-meaning we intend to be.
Years ago, I read Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. He argues that the exponential pace of technological progress will lead to the Singularity, in which artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and fundamentally alter the course of human history. Kurzweil predicts that the Singularity will occur in the 2030's and that it will bring about enormous changes in society, including the possibility of extending human lifespan indefinitely. He also discusses the potential risks and benefits of this development, and how humanity can prepare for and shape the Singularity to benefit all of mankind.
I don't have much confidence that to whatever degree of advancement in the merger of humans and AI that comes about, it will be used benevolently and ethically. The potential for grave error is just too high, and certain types of people will use it to elevate themselves and their group above the masses over whom they will subjugate and rule. Some things never change.
Kurzweil is a terrifying sperg (I read his book, too), but he hasn't been wrong about much so far. I believe he predicted that around this time people would start thinking of AIs as people, which is starting to happen. He also predicted that one by one, the 'machines can't do X' arguments would be proven wrong, which, again, is looking prescient ... even if stable diffusion still can't get the correct number of fingers on a hand (although I'm not even sure that's still true).
I think you're absolutely correct that it won't be used ethically. Humans gonna human, and we figure out how to use everything we develop as a weapon. On the other hand, that very interspecies competition tends to serve as a check on untrammeled ambition. Personally, I don't believe in utopias or dystopias ... some ages are better than others, yes, but there's always darkness and ugliness, and there's always beauty and light.
Before I learned a thing or 2 I was gobsmacked by how brilliant Kurzweil seemed to be, such a creative thinker, an inventor to stand along side Bell and Tesla and Marconi and Edison. If only a fraction of his prognostications came true, why what a wonderful world it would be! Heaven on earth - no sickness, health bots would take care of that, no hunger, no pollution - all our problems solved with the help of benevolent AI.
Well, I have learned a thing or three so I no longer, not for a long time, have him on a pedestal. Being a wonderkind for Google has certainly not changed my mind. From what I've seen of him in the last few years he's become a weird character, probably influencing the likes of Ballenciaga and your run of the mill Epsteins and certainly a counselor to the Clintons. For all I know, it's entirely him and Google that have rather successfully managed the animatronics that are the workings of the corporeal *president Poopy Pants. Pharma is doing the rest.
Lordy, Lord, it's a mad mad world. That's why I appreciate you so much - you bring a much needed grounding to my thinking, keeping it real and aware.
We had a pretty similar journey, then. Like you I was rather bewitched by transhumanism in the late 90s and early 00s as it was taking the Internet by storm. A bright, shiny future as an immortal cyborg god with the cosmos at my footsteps? What more could one want?
Much of the dysfunction of the last decade can no doubt be explained by the transhumanist cult having thoroughly infiltrated the atheistic managerial elite.
Innocence crushed. Happens everyday, now.
Several thoughts:
1. This was the theme of the original Star Trek series going back to the first pilot episode. Star Trek portrays a future where humans control incredibly powerful technology yet remain fully human. Notice the lack of robots on board the Enterprise. The only human built AI portrayed is the ship computer it is pretty passive -- except in the episode where they get an experimental upgrade which proceeds to destroy several other starships. Note also that medicine is not that far advanced. McCoy is still just a country doctor. Human lifespan is roughly what it is today, and two episodes portray bad results from attempting to extend human lifespan: "Miri" and the one with the Yangs and the Comms. And, of course, there was a historical incident involving eugenics which left people leery centuries later.
2. Jack Vance portrays a future in which humans remain human. He's most explicit in "The Demon Princes" where there is a shadowy technological elite -- The Institute -- which intentionally thwarts attempts to take technology in certain directions. I think we may need something like it.
3. To that end, there are actions worth taking today to keep humans in charge of the machines. For starters, it's high time we replace the QWERTY keyboard with something that's both more ergonomic and easier to learn. Voice control technology is dangerous. Likewise we need a good one handed keyboard for use with TV remotes to eliminate the demand for voice control. I will not buy a "smart" TV.
Personally, I am not tempted at all by smart phones. After enjoying the progression from VT-52 monitors up to mutiple 1080p monitors hooked up to the same desktop, smart phones strike me as a huge step backwards. I would, however, appreciate a semi-smart phone which had a handset separate from the screen. Less frying of the brain with microwaves. Put the one-handed keyboard in the handset and now you have a proper miniature computer that also serves as a phone. No voice control needed.
Finally, I would note that the auto industry is pushing us into dependence on smart vehicles. Somewhere around the turn of the century they changed the steering gear ratio so you don't need to turn the wheel as far in order to make a sharp turn. This may be handy in city driving, but it's punishing when driving on the interstate. Throw in the designed-for-chimpanzees seating position and rear window in the previous county and of course, people are now yearning for auto-drive.
Maintaining technology which humans truly understand and control is important to both liberty and remaining human.
" Notice the lack of robots on board the Enterprise"
Wasn't Data a robot?
Yes, but he was specifically talking about the original series.
I was referring to the original Star Trek not The Next Generation.
There were robots in the original, but they were leftovers from dead or moribund civilizations for the most part. The main human made robot was a space probe which had merged with an alien space probe to go on a quest of sterilizing planets. Not a good outcome...
Gotcha. Vaguely remember.
Also, the 1st movie? V-ger, aka Voyager? Is "repaired" by "alien machine life" planet; goes on to learn everything, replicating planets in its life size data banks.
Yep, that terrible first movie is sort of a remake of the mediocre Nomad episode, "The Changeling" from Season 2.
On the other hand, Star Trek 2 is a follow on to that most excellent episode "Space Seed" from Season 1. That's the episode where we learn that genetic engineering of humans was tried in the late 20th Century, with very bad results.
Wrath of Khan is arguably one of the best science fiction movies ever made.
That said, I rather liked Khan, and don't much like the Star Trek take on genetic engineering. It's very much rooted in Western liberal egalitarianism. It isn't at all obvious to me that genetic engineering is necessarily a bad idea - it seems rather to be the typical Hollywood trope about 'playing God' and 'things man was not meant to know' and other such tired bromides that substitute a blanket condemnation of an entire technology for a thoughtful examination of positive and negative applications. No different in principle from shitlibs insisting that guns are bad, mmmmay?
Glad to see you back was a little concerned, Have seen too many other bloggers disappear for no apparent reason was hoping this wasn't your case. Then again, maybe your were replaced ( Play the Twilight Zone theme ). Nah, can tell by the writing style you haven't been.
Sorry, hadn't read all the comments before I made mine. Did not see your comment on your loss. Please don't think I was being insensitive!!!! Also linking as usual @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
No worries man. Your concerns were not unjustified given the lack of information.
Thanks for the boost, as always!