Transhumanism: How do we know?

[Steel Accord]

I mean, how many other times have people looked into the future and predicted wild technological innovation, only for reality to slap them in the face and had them an iphone?

How do we know our vision of transhuman tech isn't anymore quaint than the fifties thinking the seventies would have flying cars?

[stevebowers]

It almost certainly is. We are exploring the possibilities in OA, quite often without choosing between them; we can do this because we are describing a very large scenario, where almost anything that is physically possible is tried out, somewhere. The reality of the future is likely to be very different, both in scale and scope; but some. or many, of the developments that will affect humanity will be even stranger than anything we can come up with.

I've been writing amateur scifi since the Seventies; in those days I was writing about the Starlark spaceship, and a lot of the technology I imagined then is fairly similar to the tech used in the current version. One major difference is that the Starlark originally launched in 2065, rather than 2614. Like the current version, it was powered by antimatter, but there is no way we'd ever accumulate that much antimatter by 2065.

I remember imagining something like a laptop to contain the AI character Fred Hoyle, but at that time I assumed that laptop computers would be sentient, and that the Internet would connect to a big sentient mainframe somewhere. Instead we've got Google, a non-sentient but highly competent system, which is quite remarkable enough.

[Rynn]

Pretty much what Steve said. OA isn't a prediction, it's science fiction and it's undoubtedly wrong. There are people in the world that think transhumanism is an accurate prediction of the future, I think it's one of a few interesting possibilities but when anyone starts seriously attempting to predict the future I tend to smile and back away slowly.

[Drashner1]

I mean, how many other times have people looked into the future and predicted wild technological innovation, only for reality to slap them in the face and had them an iphone?

How do we know our vision of transhuman tech isn't anymore quaint than the fifties thinking the seventies would have flying cars?

Three things here:

First, Transhumanism is actually more of a philosophical or social movement/mindset then an attempt to accurately predict exactly how the future will turn out. There are certain techs that current transhumanist thinking is widely associated with and interested in, but that's not the same as saying: This is exactly what will happen. For more on this see HERE.

Second, virtually every discussion about the development of possible future technologies (and I've been reading them since I was in HS, and like to think I've had a pretty broad exposure to the subject) speaks in terms of what WILL happen and/or paints verbal pictures of what a world employing that particular tech would look like. I would suggest that this has less to do with the authors seriously thinking that this is how the future will actually turn out and more to do with:

a) making the subject interesting to the reader (who is typically a layman). Humans respond better to narratives than to dry technical treatise.

b) building enthusiasm for the idea so that people will actually want it to happen and will perhaps work toward/support work toward the sort of world depicted (which is generally described as being rather more pleasant in various ways than the 'current' world.

I actually find it somewhat bizarre that anyone could seriously think that a book talking about the future was actually aiming to make 100% accurate predictions.

Finally, why do you think that an iphone isn't an astounding piece of futuristic technology? As an interesting exercise, I would suggest that anyone who thinks that our current world is disappointingly mundane in the technology department take some time to find out what the world was like only 100 years ago. 100 years is a trivial amount of time even by human historical standards and falls (increasingly) within the scope of a single human lifetime, at least in the advanced Western countries.

In 1915, much of the technology we take for granted (and most especially things like iphones, their supporting infrastructure, and the related technologies) didn't even exist. Often it didn't even have a theoretical basis yet. From the plastics and alloys that make up the case to the computer circuitry, to the very concept of cell towers and satellite communications, most of what goes into an iphone would range from being beyond the comprehension of the best engineers of the day to seeming downright magical.

Consider that accurate weather prediction and all the other things we get from satellites didn't exist. That spaceflight was a wild eyed gleam in the eye of authors like Jules Verne. That the internet wasn't even a concept. That while anesthesia and antisepsis were known, and X-ray machines were cutting edge tech, things like organ transplants, MRIs, and much of the rest of our medical science didn't exist even as concepts yet.

And travel around the planet was vastly slower and less comfortable. TV didn't exist yet. etc.

We are discovering planets around other stars, routinely cross entire oceans in less than a day, have magic windows that let us view things happening thousands of km away and things that have happened in the past, and think nothing of drawing on vast stores of information from little boxes that we carry in a pocket (literally days of music at the touch of a finger). And yet we complain that our world is just so mundane and not at all futuristic.

Humans have a way of adapting to things and also new discoveries are often less exciting when you live though tthem.

Somthing to think about.

Todd

[rom65536]

How do we know our vision of transhuman tech isn't anymore quaint than the fifties thinking the seventies would have flying cars?

A flying car is both a terrible airplane and a really flimsy car. It takes all the dangers of a car and multiplies them by airplane. It takes all the physical abuse of a car but has to do it to a frame designed to fly. It takes all the weight-saving measures of an airplane and makes them endure the punishment of bad asphalt. Drunk flying....texting while flying....inattentive pilots....poor maintenance... There's too much stacked against the idea for it to be practical.

Long ago I made mention of this in the old worldbuilding list in hopes of identifying such bogus fictional technologies. "Flying Cars" and "Jetpacks" are not held back by a technological problem. They are held back by the fact that they are impractical. Up until the point that we actually HAD a flying car, no one could understand the reasons as to why they wouldn't work as described on the tin.

We embrace this "problem" and we call it "The Singularity" - now, a pessimist might say we're fooling ourselves in thinking that we can make any sort of intelligent guesses beyond it. But - a pessimist can't write decent speculative fiction.

Now - this might suggest (it does for me) the question "What parts of OA are jetpacks and flying cars?" (meaning that they're not exactly impossible, just so impractical that they won't exist)

Likely whole swaths of our canon fit this bill - but we kind of have no way of knowing....what are we going to do? Such is the danger of speculative fiction. Maybe, if we are both smart and lucky, we'll have more "communicators" than "transporters".

Honestly, it kind of doesn't matter. People are willing to suspend their disbelief pretty damn far - as long as you don't go changing the suspension bridge while it's under a load. Internal consistency is more important than accuracy.

[Drashner1]

Now - this might suggest (it does for me) the question "What parts of OA are jetpacks and flying cars?" (meaning that they're not exactly impossible, just so impractical that they won't exist)

Interestingly, OA has both aircars and personal flying devices (although they aren't jetpacks per se). Transporters of a sort as well (although not exactly). Note however, that each operates in a milieu that is significantly (some might say drastically) different from the way the concept was originally imagined. Most OA habitation areas are much less urbanized than the RL and given the lower population density there may be much greater distances between communities. So an aircar (or personal flying devices) makes more sense under those circumstances. OA also postulates significant advances in materials and massive advances in automation that help resolve some of the major problems we encounter with both techs in RL. The lower gravity on many habs probably doesn't hurt either

Perhaps the lesson here is that a tech that is impractical under one set of circumstances might become much more workable under a different one.

Todd

[Steel Accord]

I mean, how many other times have people looked into the future and predicted wild technological innovation, only for reality to slap them in the face and had them an iphone?

How do we know our vision of transhuman tech isn't anymore quaint than the fifties thinking the seventies would have flying cars?

Three things here:

First, Transhumanism is actually more of a philosophical or social movement/mindset then an attempt to accurately predict exactly how the future will turn out. There are certain techs that current transhumanist thinking is widely associated with and interested in, but that's not the same as saying: This is exactly what will happen. For more on this see HERE.

Second, virtually every discussion about the development of possible future technologies (and I've been reading them since I was in HS, and like to think I've had a pretty broad exposure to the subject) speaks in terms of what WILL happen and/or paints verbal pictures of what a world employing that particular tech would look like. I would suggest that this has less to do with the authors seriously thinking that this is how the future will actually turn out and more to do with:

a) making the subject interesting to the reader (who is typically a layman). Humans respond better to narratives than to dry technical treatise.

b) building enthusiasm for the idea so that people will actually want it to happen and will perhaps work toward/support work toward the sort of world depicted (which is generally described as being rather more pleasant in various ways than the 'current' world.

I actually find it somewhat bizarre that anyone could seriously think that a book talking about the future was actually aiming to make 100% accurate predictions.

Finally, why do you think that an iphone isn't an astounding piece of futuristic technology? As an interesting exercise, I would suggest that anyone who thinks that our current world is disappointingly mundane in the technology department take some time to find out what the world was like only 100 years ago. 100 years is a trivial amount of time even by human historical standards and falls (increasingly) within the scope of a single human lifetime, at least in the advanced Western countries.

In 1915, much of the technology we take for granted (and most especially things like iphones, their supporting infrastructure, and the related technologies) didn't even exist. Often it didn't even have a theoretical basis yet. From the plastics and alloys that make up the case to the computer circuitry, to the very concept of cell towers and satellite communications, most of what goes into an iphone would range from being beyond the comprehension of the best engineers of the day to seeming downright magical.

Consider that accurate weather prediction and all the other things we get from satellites didn't exist. That spaceflight was a wild eyed gleam in the eye of authors like Jules Verne. That the internet wasn't even a concept. That while anesthesia and antisepsis were known, and X-ray machines were cutting edge tech, things like organ transplants, MRIs, and much of the rest of our medical science didn't exist even as concepts yet.

And travel around the planet was vastly slower and less comfortable. TV didn't exist yet. etc.

We are discovering planets around other stars, routinely cross entire oceans in less than a day, have magic windows that let us view things happening thousands of km away and things that have happened in the past, and think nothing of drawing on vast stores of information from little boxes that we carry in a pocket (literally days of music at the touch of a finger). And yet we complain that our world is just so mundane and not at all futuristic.

Humans have a way of adapting to things and also new discoveries are often less exciting when you live though tthem.

Somthing to think about.

Todd

Hold on there good sir. My point wasn't that our world isn't a wonder to live in, I certainly believe it is and thank God everyday that I live now rather than the Dark Ages.

My point wasn't that the iphone wasn't amazing (I'm only listening to one right now) it's that no one could have predicted it.

My question was meant to ask how do we know our predictions for transhuman aimed technologies isn't going to be looked back on as childish as we now do when we see Robby the robot or even the Terminator.

I certainly love the world I live in and I love the science that's gotten us here. I'm jealous that I wasn't alive the moment man walked on the moon, yet people go to space all the time now with a level that's approaching casual. That's amazing!

[stevebowers]

My question was meant to ask how do we know our predictions for transhuman aimed technologies isn't going to be looked back on as childish...

Well, they probably will be. We are constructing a mostly optimistic view of the future in OA; it does involve the Great Expulsion and other nasty events, and humans are relegated to subordinate creatures, but it is optimistic compared to Eclipse Phase, for instance.

The reality could be much stranger, or much nastier, and might be both. Or society could easily collapse before any substantial transhuman technology is developed; this would at least give us one possible answer to the Fermi Paradox.

...as we now do when we see Robby the robot or even the Terminator.

Both of these robots rely on the development of human-like AI that can function inside a mobile robot. In the case of Robby this involves incorporating a human-like AI inside a very primitive 1950s style robot. Instead we are seeing large numbers of quite sophisticated non-humanoid robotic devices used in industry, combined with very competent but non-sentient computer systems. Extrapolating this into the near future we can perhaps predict a world filled with highly sophisticated automated systems and very competent user-friendly computing, but not a single humanoid robot in sight.

When and if we get human-equivalent AI, there will almost certainly be measures in place to restrict its access to mobile robots - if we have managed to create an 'AI in a box', we won't want to give that box arms and legs until it has proved it is safe.

[Drashner1]

Hold on there good sir. My point wasn't that our world isn't a wonder to live in, I certainly believe it is and thank God everyday that I live now rather than the Dark Ages.

My point wasn't that the iphone wasn't amazing (I'm only listening to one right now) it's that no one could have predicted it.

Weellll, maybe. While it's true that most SF authors and futurists never predicted anything like the iphone, there are some who came close. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle describe a 'hand computer' in their book The Mote in God's Eye that is essentially a pocket size solid state device. While it wasn't designed to work with something like an internet, it did allow people to rapidly pull up and display data right from their hand and (IIRC) with some degree of networking to nearby computers. Been a while since I read the story.

Then there is Star Trek - TOS gave us the Communicator - which apparently inspired various engineers and programmers to go forward and develop the cell phone. TNG gave us handheld tablet computers, which were essentially made real about 20yrs (or less) later.

The iphone predates the tablets of course, and I don't think anyone actually predicted anything exactly like it. But there were some other fictional devices that came close enough that it might be more a matter of chance than anything else that kept something like an iphone from being predicted in some story somewhere.

My question was meant to ask how do we know our predictions for transhuman aimed technologies isn't going to be looked back on as childish as we now do when we see Robby the robot or even the Terminator.

The short answer is that we don't. The development of the future involves a vast number of variables of science, technology, culture, history, climate, economics, and who knows what else. So over any significant length of time its impossible to make firm predictions about what will happen. We can do other things however:

a) We can base our predictions on modern physics and science and the best understanding our civilization now has about the real world. While some part of that may turn out to be wrong, for the most part modern science is approached in such a way that new discoveries tend to add a greater level of understanding or open up a bigger world that we didn't know about before rather than showing that we are flat out wrong in our conception of the universe. As such, the tech we describe, based on that science, is more likely to turn out to be possible in some form, even if not the exact form.

b) We can look at our depiction of things in OA as less of a 'this is how things will happen' and more as a 'what might a world in which all these things come to fruition look like?' Science fiction is based on asking 'what if' in one form or another, not 'this is what will happen'.

c) We can remember that history hasn't ended and the story isn't over yet. Meaning that we shouldn't assume that just because something hasn't been achieved yet doesn't mean it never will be. People speak in terms of not having flying cars or cities on Mars yet, and then ask 'why were the people who predicted those things so wrong?'. But are we sure they were wrong? Or just ahead of their time or off with their dates a bit?

Leonardo da Vinci made drawings and models of flying machines that he was never able to successfully make work. Should we therefore conclude that heavier than air flight is impossible? What's that you say? I can't hear you over noise from that 747 flying over my house

Obviously, the predictions that we would have moonbases or the like by now didn't pan out. But that may just mean that it's going to take a bit longer to get to that point than originally conceived, not that we will never have these things or that they are impossible.

Todd

[chris0033547]

Since Steve mentioned the Fermi Paradox: We have at least two maps here, which depict the rough outline of xeno-civs around the galaxy:

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4be587099881e

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48028a7f74e6d

So, why didn't the inhabitants of Old Earth in the Information Age (obviously in the OA universe) detect at least some of theses HEECs? I don't know anything about astronomy but shouldn't at least HEEC1 and HEEC2 be detectable by astronomy instruments from the Information Age? Or maybe the problem is that the inhabitants of Information Age Old Earth in OA could only look at completely outdated information from these regions of space, because the light, which travelled from these regions to Old Earth, carried information about the state of these regions, how they were thousands of years ago.

I mean today's technology is able to detect events, which happen around the central black hole in our galaxy:

http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/23690...-cloud.htm

But I guess the problem is that we are looking at events, which already happened a long time ago in the past so something like HEEC2 didn't exist yet in the OA-universe.

Still I find it weird that we aren't able to detect HEECs in our own universe if we assume the existence of HEECs, which are at least a million years old. This may be a hint that the Technological Singularity may not be possible in the radical way, some people like Kurzweil imagine it to be. What if the creation of the first turing-level ai doesn't cause a process of rapid runaway self-improvement of that ai but instead causes a process of slow self-improvement? Of course that still doesn't explain the lack of HEECs, who are at least one million years old (since the onset of their Information Age). Either the civs, who underwent the Technological Singularity, chose not to expand into the universe(, because they would also have a version of their Fermi Paradox and may decide that it's not a good idea to expand, because other xeno-civs apparently didn't do that either. Although that leads to the question: Why did the first advanced civ in the universe choose not to expand?) or they destroyed themselves after all. In any case this scenario seems highly unlikely:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions...e_Universe

Because the others before us didn't "wake up the universe". So we shouldn't be able to do it either. (Unless of course we are somehow really "special", which is very unlikely in my opinion.)