Posthuman Norms

[xsampa]

What behavioral incentives (or social norms, if they are social) will post-human species have? 
In some works of science fiction, the distant descendants of humans becoming post-sapient animals, notably Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos that are entirely instinctual because human-style brains are a large energetic investment. Notably Watt's Blindsight argues that consciousness is unnecessary for intelligence and that humans may be evolving towards being p-zombies. Outside of these cases, posthumans are seen as having a wide variety of behavioral norms due to the pressures of a different environment (in space, uploaded etc.) and different societies to begin with.

[Worldtree]

What behavioral incentives (or social norms, if they are social) will post-human species have? 
In some works of science fiction, the distant descendants of humans becoming post-sapient animals, notably Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos that are entirely instinctual because human-style brains are a large energetic investment. Notably Watt's Blindsight argues that consciousness is unnecessary for intelligence and that humans may be evolving towards being p-zombies. Outside of these cases, posthumans are seen as having a wide variety of behavioral norms due to the pressures of a different environment (in space, uploaded etc.) and different societies to begin with.

apparently a million different incentives and social norms.

the society and culture pages might help give ideas
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45b177d3ef3b1

They'll still need food, and usually water of some kind, or some kind of nutrition, a drive to survive, and at least on some kind of population level, a drive to reproduce even if it's in a very controlled way. The pursuit of happiness/ transcendent States/ pleasure/ entertainment, and more would probably continue to be drives
 
Others might re-engineer their minds with psychoware to become utterly fascinated with drives we might find more alien, like being obsessed with the fluid dynamics of water (for example). Or their primary motives might be centered around contemplating various abstractions in virtual spaces that would be outside of human comprehension. Or something else. 

starting with the construction of vots early in the timeline, and most explorations of the toposophic landscape since then, would probably explore every possible variant of how to motivate a mind. 
this is just a start to the possibilities.

[AstroChara]

I think they're looking for a generic, non-OA answer, in which case I'm not sure if we have any idea what posthuman norms could be like, but I do think OA's answer is a good one still.

[xsampa]

Is it probable for most clades of posthumanity to be social creatures?

[AstroChara]

Is it probable for most clades of posthumanity to be social creatures?

I think your questions here are necessarily dependent on the factors that we cannot predict, it's like asking a person from ten thousand years ago what our arts today would be like.

[Rynn]

Is it probable for most clades of posthumanity to be social creatures?

I’m going to answer from the perspective of OA, because actually trying to predict the future with something so vague as “post human” is an exercise in futility.

Transapients appear to still primarily be social creatures but their population numbers (in the sephirotics at least) are relatively low. I think it makes sense for OA style superintelligences to still be social because the benefits of social instincts don’t go away just because you’re a transap. If anything the benefits get heightened because you’re in an even better position to specialise and understand cooperative strategy.

At a certain point though the question wanders into territory of “what does it even mean to be a society.” It’s debatable whether archai are individuals or should be better understood as highly harmonious super organisms.

[Drashner1]

Speaking also in the context of OA:

a) Given the scale of Terragen civ, it's entirely possible that there are many, many norms - with different groups of posthumans practicing different norms, many of which may be in conflict with those practiced by other groups of posthumans.

b) Given psychoware technology, whether or not a given posthuman is a social creature (a little, a lot, or not at all) will largely be up to the posthuman and is a variable that may change over time or in response to changing circumstances.

Todd

[stevebowers]

In Orion's Arm, some post-humans are post-intelligent- that is to say, they are not intelligent in any way that we are familiar with.
Post-intelligent types include the Snarks
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4b9d1c357006f
and various a-life types which are not remotely human in their toposophic cognition.
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/45ece4d1ef83d

Some transapient entities are ascended/transcended forms of beings which were once a-life, and these are often entirely incomprehensible to other sophont types (some animins are like this). Others started as more conventional entities, but have changed so much during the transcension process that they are similarly incomprehensible.
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45c540c45a501

[Cray]

Watt's Blindsight

I have that book and I've been meaning to write a rebuttal to the author for, like, a decade.

I really enjoyed it at the first reading. It seemed like a logical derivation from ideas in Harry Turtledove's "Bluff" short story.

The problem I had with "Blindsight" is that it posits self-awareness is not required in intelligent beings. However, an entity capable of high level awareness of its environment, creativity, persistent memory, and other features of intelligence is going to notice that itself is not the same as other objects.

For example, the vampires of Blindsight will notice that their hands respond to their internal thoughts, but the hands of other entities around them do not obey in the same fashion. Self feels pain; pain is not felt when other entities are injured. And so on. Sapiency is one level of recursion that environmental awareness, the consideration of that unique entity "'This entity' - *I* - am thinking about hands." I'd suspect you'd need active "consciousness suppressors" to get an intelligent post-human without consciousness.

[stevebowers]

Interesting observation.

...the vampires of Blindsight will notice that their hands respond to their internal thoughts, but the hands of other entities around them do not obey in the same fashion. Self feels pain; pain is not felt when other entities are injured.

A posthuman, or other post biont, or an aioid, might inhabit a large and complex database with no specific body associated with it. Such an entity might acquire or create a new body, either an artificial ('robotic') body, or a biological body controlled via brain/machine interfacing, or even a virtual body inside a virtual environment (which might be quite abstract). Yes, such an entity would be able to control such a body, and receive sensation from it as necessary.

However, a sufficiently complex entity (such as a transapient) could control more than one body at a time, and even divide its locus of consciousness into separate instances which have little or no shared experience. Each of those remotely controlled bodies might believe that they are independent persons, but they are in fact remotely controlled puppets. Of course these puppets could be merged back together into the original mind at any time, a process which is assumed to be routine in OA, even though it is a demanding process. And the puppet bodies could be dismantled with no discomfort to that original mind.

At the same time, the 'true' location of the sophont entity would be inside the database, possibly many kilometres away from the physical body (or bodies) under its control. Indeed, the database itself might be maintained and defended by completely autonomous, non-sophont robots, capable of sustaining the existence of the sophont mind(s) contained within without any input from those minds.

In short, it is not impossible for a sophont to be completely divorced from its own primary physical substrate, while continuing to experience a complex and satisfying lifestyle.