The experts shared their thoughts about the rapid development of technology in the world.
The rapid development of technology nbic — nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science creates opportunities, which have long been a subject of science fiction. Disease, aging, even death — all of these human realities seek to put an end to the above directions. They can allow us to enjoy the “morphological freedom” — we could take new forms with the help of prosthetics or genetic engineering. Or extend our cognitive abilities. We could use brain-computer interfaces to connect with advanced artificial intelligence (AI).
Nanorobots would roam our bloodstream, watching our health, and affecting our emotional inclinations, joy, and other passions. Advances in one area often opens up new possibilities in others, and this “convergence” may lead to radical changes of our world in the near future.
Transhumanism is the idea that people should surpass its current natural state and limitations of using technology, make a controlled evolution. If we consider the history of technological progress as an attempt of mankind to tame nature, to better meet your needs, transhumanism is a logical extension: to review the nature of humanity to better suit his fantasy.
Says David Pearce, a leading proponent of transhumanism and co-founder of Humanity+:
“If we want to live in Paradise, we have to construct it for themselves. If we want eternal life, we have to rewrite our littered with errors genetic code and become godlike. Only high-tech solutions can save the world from suffering. One desire is not enough.”
But there is a dark side have a naive faith that Pearce and his supporters remain in transhumanism. It is unclear when we will become thereby transhuman, superhuman, transhuman. Most likely, technology will intertwine with us and imperceptibly merge with the human body. Technology has long been considered to be a continuation of our “I”. Many aspects of our social world, not least our financial systems rely heavily on the work of the machines. There is a lot to learn from the process of evolution of hybrid systems man — machine and much can be learned.
However, a utopian language and expectations that surround and shape our understanding of this development, raise questions. Profound changes that lie ahead, often understood very abstractly, because the evolutionary “improvements” seem so radical that ignore the realities of the existing social conditions.
Therefore, transhumanism becomes a sort of “techno-anthropocentrism,” in which transhumanists often underestimate the complexity of our relationship with technology. They see it as manageable, malleable tool that, with proper logic and scientific tenacity, can be rotated in any direction. But exactly the extent to which technological development depends on and reflects the environment in which it appears, to the same extent it comes back to culture and creates a new dynamic, often unnoticed.
Therefore, transhumanism should be considered in the General social, cultural, political and economic context in order to understand how this is ethical.
Competitive environment
Max more and Natasha Vita-Moore say that we need transhumanism “for inclusion, diversity and continuous refinement of our knowledge”. However, three of these principles are incompatible with the development of transformational technologies under the prevailing system, which they currently occur: the development of capitalism.
Scientists have found, is it possible to achieve eternal life
One of the problems is that the highly competitive social environment does not imply different ways of existence. Instead, it calls for more effective behavior. Take, for example, students. If some of them will be tablets, allowing them to achieve better results, whether other students to give them? This is a complex issue. Every year more and more students are turning to performance-enhancing pills. And if the tablets become more powerful or if the improvement will include methods of genetic engineering or nanotechnology Intrusive, which will offer an even more powerful competitive advantage, what then? Rejection of the paradigm of improving technologies can lead to social or economic death (after all, evolution works that way), but universal access to it — will encourage all participants to even greater adoption, force them to keep pace.
Outside the limits indicates a release in some form. However, here lies the motivation to act in a certain way. We just need to rise above themselves, to adapt and survive. The more extreme the transcendence, the deeper will be the decision to adapt and the stronger the imperative to do so.
Systemic forces, forcing the individual “to be updated” to remain competitive, will also play at the geopolitical level. One of the spheres where the methods R&D have the greatest transhumanist potential, is the defense. DARPA (U.S. defense advanced research) that attempts to create a “metabolically dominant soldier” is a clear example of how the interests of specific social systems can determine the development of powerful transformational technologies that will be more destructive than utopian.
The desire to create a Superintelligent artificial intelligence among the competitive and angry at each other States can also lead to an arms race. The novelist Vernor Vinge was the first to describe a scenario in which a Superintelligent artificial intelligence becomes the “Almighty arms.” Ideally, mankind should exercise the utmost caution in approaching the development of so powerful and transformative innovation.
Serious discussion broke out around the creation of Superintelligent artificial intelligence and the coming “singularity” — according to this idea, AI will one day reach a level where will quickly begin to rebuild himself, to improve and will lead to an explosion of intelligence that will exceed human. Futurist ray Kurzweil believes this will happen by 2029. If the world will take the shape you want for the most powerful artificial intelligence, evolution can go in a completely unpredictable way. Can the AI destroy humanity, wishing to make the maximum number of staples, for example?
It is also difficult to identify any aspect of humanity that cannot be “improved”, making it more effective in meeting the needs of a competitive system. That system, therefore, determines the evolution of humanity, not taking into consideration what people or what they should be. The development of capitalism proves its extraordinary momentum in the ideology of ethical and metaphysical neutrality. Philosopher Michael Sandell says the following: markets are not shaking your fingers (do not prohibit). In a developed capitalism is to maximize the purchasing power of one maximizes the prosperity of another — so, shopping can be called the primary moral imperative of the individual.
Philosopher Bob Daudet rightly suggests that this banal logic of the market will prevail:
“If biotechnology and changed human nature entirely, they have no grain, which will limit or direct our constructs in it. And whose constructs are likely to get the successor of the Posthuman artifacts? I have no doubt that widely in our capitalist, consumer, media-saturated economy, market forces will find their way. Therefore, the commercial imperative will be the true architect of the future of man.”
Scientists have found, is it possible to achieve eternal life
Regardless of whether evolutionary progress to determine Superintelligent AI or the development of capitalism, we will attempt to match the eternal transcendence, which will only make us more effective in meeting the needs of a powerful system. The endpoint, of course, will be as far from human — but very effective. It will be the technological essence extracted from humanity, but not necessarily preserving the values of the modern man. The ability to serve the system most effectively will be the driving force. This is true for the natural evolution of technology is not the simplest tool that will allow us to apply engineering techniques to get out of trouble. But transhumanism can also accelerate and the less desirable aspects of the process.
Information authoritarianism
The bioethicist Julian Savulescu believes the main reason for our improvements in the survival of our species. He says that we are faced with the Bermuda triangle of extinction: radical technological power, liberal democracy and our moral nature. Being a transhumanist, Savulescu praises technological progress, considering it inevitable and irresistible. No, to change a liberal democracy and part of our moral nature.
The inability of humanity to solve global problems becomes more apparent. But Savulescu does not regard our moral failings in their cultural, political and economic context; instead, he believes that the solution lies in our biological component.
However, as will be distributed, prescribed, and potentially forced to introduce technologies that improve morality, to moral shortcomings, they seek to “cure”? Probably, it will pass with the filing of the power structures, which may themselves bear much of the responsibility for these shortcomings. Savulescu quickly outlined how relative and debatable may be the concept of “morality”:
“We have to move away from our commitment to maximum protection of confidentiality. We are seeing increased oversight of individuals, and this is necessary if we want to prevent threats, which represent a person with antisocial personality disorder, fanaticism.”
This observation allows corporations and governments to access and use the extremely valuable information. Internet pioneer Jaron Lanier explains:
“Treasure of the dossiers on the private lives and personalities of ordinary people, collected by a digital network, packaged in a new, private, form of elite money… This is a new kind of security available only to the wealthy, and its value naturally increases. It all becomes unaffordable for ordinary people.
Importantly, this barrier is also invisible to most people. His influence goes beyond the conventional economic system and rushes to the elites, much changing the very concept of freedom, because the authority of the government both more efficient and scattered.
The notion of Foucault that we live in a panoptic society in which a sense of continuous self-observation brings discipline, now stretched to such an extent that today’s relentless machines called “superpositional”. Knowledge and information which will develop the forces of transhumanist technologies can strengthen existing power structures that I’m sealing is inherent in the system of logic in which you have knowledge.”
This is partly manifested in the tendency of algorithms to racial and gender bias that reflects our already existing social bias. Information technologies have a tendency to interpret the world in certain ways: they prefer information that is easily amenable to measurement, such as GDP, instead aquantitative information like human happiness or well-being. Because invasive technologies provide increasingly detailed data about us, this data can simply meanings come to define the world — and unfathomable until they the information can not remain only within the limits of human understanding.
The system beschlossene
Existing inequalities will undoubtedly be increased due to the introduction of highly psychopharmaceutical drugs, genetic modification, superintelligence, brain-computer interfaces, nanotechnology, robotic prostheses, and possible life extension. Megalithari they are all fundamentally based on the notion of limitlessness, rather than the standard physical and mental well-being, which we used to involve in the health sector. It is not easy to understand how to make these opportunities available to all.
Sociologist Saskia Sassen speaks of a “new logic of exile”, which refers to “the pathology of modern global capitalism.” The exiles include more than 60,000 migrants who died in a fatal journeys over the last 20 years, as well as victims of racial bias and a growing number of prisoners.
Scientists have found, is it possible to achieve eternal life
In the UK there are 30,000 people, the death of which in 2015 associated with the reduction of spending on social assistance and health care, as well as with those who died in the burning tower, Grenfell Tower. We can say that their death was a result of systemic marginalization.
Along with this, there is an unprecedented accumulation of wealth. Advanced economic and technical achievements cast out certain groups and provide a wealth of other. At the same time, writes Sassen, they create a hazy aimlessness, the locus of power:
“The oppressed have often risen against their masters. But today, the oppressed were mostly expelled and survive at a great distance from their oppressors. “Oppressor” becomes a complex system that brings together people, networks and machines with no obvious center.
Excess population removed from productive aspects of the social world, can quickly increase in the near future as improvements in the field of AI and robotics will potentially lead to significant automation of unemployment. Large companies can become productive and economically unnecessary. Historian Yuval Noah, Harari believes that the most important issue in the economy of the 21st century will be the following: what do we do with extra people?”.
We could be in a situation where a small elite has almost the full concentration of wealth with access to the most powerful transformative technologies in the history of the world and overweight people, not adapted to the evolutionary environment in which they find themselves and in which are fully dependent on this elite. The process of the present obessolivanija groups of exiles shows that the liberal values of the developed countries do not always apply to those who cannot afford the privileges, belongs to another race, culture or religion.
In the era of radical government technology, masses can even pose a serious threat to the security of the elites, which can be used to justify aggressive and authoritarian actions.
Transhumanists in his book “Effective imperative” Steve fuller and Veronika Lipinska claim that we are required to sustain the scientific and technological progress, until we reach the divine or infinite power. They reveal the principles, which will require these prometeia goal — the destruction and the violence, and say that “the replacement of natural with artificial is the key to effective strategy, and it will most likely lead to long-term environmental degradation of the Earth.”
The scale of suffering they are willing to incur for the game in your casino space, become apparent only after analysis of what their project will mean to individual people.
Proactive (effective) the world is not just to transfer risk, but also to promote it because people will be given legal incentives for speculating bioeconomics their assets. Risky life will provide the enterprise with himself as a commodity. The supporters of this approach will be ready to go on big risks for big gains and suffer a lot of damage along the way.
Progress in Overdrive will require sacrifice
Economic fragility, with which people may soon face as a result of the automated unemployment is likely to prove extremely useful to achieve proactive goals of transhumanists. In a society in which large groups of people will rely on food stamps for survival, market forces will determine that the reduction of social security will lead to the fact that people will risk more for less reward, so “proactivity invent the welfare state as a means to promote safe risk-taking”, the “proactive state” will act as a venture capitalist”.
This is based on the removal of basic rights for “Human 1.0” (this term fuller called modern, not improved people) and replace the responsibilities of the future superior Humanity 2.0. As the very code of our being can and should be monetized, “personal autonomy should be seen politically as a licensed franchise under which people understand their bodies as some land in the so-called genetic Fund.” Indeed, the debt which the modern citizen in a developed country has to pay for his life, means that when you’re just living, “you have invested in capital, which is expected to return”.
Scientists have found, is it possible to achieve eternal life
Therefore, socio dying masses can be forced to serve the technical and scientific corproate Humanity 2.0, which will be used the ideology of market fundamentalism in its pursuit of continuous progress and maximum productivity. The only significant difference is that the stated goal of the godlike possibilities of Humanity 2.0 is an open, in contrast to the uncertain end defined by an infinite “progress” of the market logic, which we have now.
The new policy
Some transhumanists are beginning to understand that the most serious restrictions of what can be achieved humans are social and cultural, not technical. Too often, however, their view of politics falls into the same trap as their technicalarticles view of the world. They often argue that the new political poles are not left and right, and technoconservative or technoprogressive (and even technolibertarianism and technocratically). Meanwhile, fuller and Lipinska assert that a new political pole are the top and bottom, not left and right: those who want to rule the heavens and be the Almighty, and those who want to preserve the Land and its rich species diversity. This is a false dichotomy. Saving the last, most likely, will be needed to achieve the first.
Transhumanism and the development of capitalism are the two process that put “progress” and “efficiency” above all else. The first acts as the power tool and the last tool for profit. People have become vessels servicing these tools. The possibility of a transhuman frantically require a policy with a clearly defined and distinct human values, to provide a safe environment in which these profound changes will take place. Now the issues of social justice and environmental stability is more important than ever before. Technology does not allow us to avoid these issues — this allows for political neutrality. Rather, the contrary. This specifies that our policy has never been more important. Savulescu is right when he says that the coming era of radical technology. And they will not fix our morality. They will reflect.
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