SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

So lately I've been seeing a lot of articles which point to a time where humans and technology will be integrated so far that we're cyborgs or even completely machine. None of the articles can give anything more than a "well maybe in 40-50 years" because science is still trying to catch up to sci-fi, but nonetheless, people are working on these things.

http://chirpnews.com/2016/04/05/mind-...

We've seen these transhumanism ideas in sci-fi for a while now, and science seems to be following the leads to see exactly what from sci-fi can be turned sci-fact.

What are your thoughts on man working to become machine? Do you think we're still obsessed with immortality, so much so that we'd give up being human?

I would say that some people are still obsessed with immortality, but I see one huge problem with this, apart from the questionable ethics of the concept of turning ourselves into cyborgs. If we become much more long-lived than we do now, then Humanity's numbers will grow even faster than it does now, due to less deaths happening, and our poor planet would soon choke under the crushing numbers of Humans living on it and exploiting it.

Apart from that, I have grave doubts about how many people would handle their newfound extra powers/capabilities. I suspect that some would then treat those who are still fully human as inferior, less efficient beings only worthy of serving the needs and wishes of cyborgs. What I see presently of Humanity in general does not encourage me to be optimistic about this.

It wouldn't surprise me, should we actually get to that point, that we'd see the elite becoming these things and definitely holding themselves as higher in stature than the "common folk". I'm sure it will spark protests, riots, and war.

If this were to actually happen, I'm borderline between hoping that the human race can overcome, and wondering if we'll just end up destroying ourselves. The idea has made for compelling stories for a long time.

From Galaxy Express 999 started in 1977 (an old manga/anime) to Alterra by Zachary Bonelli, published in 2014, we seem to really struggle with the ethics of moving beyond our human nature in more ways than one.

Michel wrote: "I would say that some people are still obsessed with immortality, but I see one huge problem with this, apart from the questionable ethics of the concept of turning ourselves into cyborgs. If we be..."

Thinking optimistically, I like to believe that if the human race ever got to the point of having increased lifespans and depleting the resources of the planet, science would prevail in the end and we'd find another planet with viable resources.

Secondarily, if we actually made it to the point of becoming cyborgs, I'd imagine that we wouldn't need a lot of the resources we depend on now anyways.

I think the important part is not to fall so far behind in one area of science that we can't survive long enough to see other advances come to fruition.

The resource consumption would drop, definitely. How much would depend on the integration of technology. As in are you still partially human and need to eat, or are you full machine and only require to be plugged in. Do you still need a doctor? Or just a mechanic?

Humans have serious hurdles to jump in order to be ready for such a thing. I think you're right, Tyler, that other sciences need to match pace. Space exploration will allow us growth as a species, to hopefully help us move past some of the stuff we have to deal with on Earth. And our consumption of fossil fuels vs renewable energy is moving at a snails pace. Yes, there are lots of electric and hybrid vehicles, but we still have too much reliance on gas and oil.

I'm also reminded of Lawnmower Man, where a delayed man's intelligence was augmented by becoming one with machine. Or of course, The Matrix where man becomes slave to sentient machines.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ... typed a long response and then accidentally hit a link to another page and lost it all!

All my published works so far have dealt to some degree with trans (or post) humanity. It's one of my favorite topics.

We shouldn't limit discussion to just the body-machine merger, but also to developments in controlling our own biology. Advances in gene editing (CRISPR technology) make it likely that biological manipulation of the human genome will be possible well before full body-machine augmentation is worked out. Whether that's ethical or not, desired or not, is an open question.

But on the body-machine interface front, an interesting author and public speaker is Ramez Naam and his Nexus series. In his lectures, he talks about the experimental work that has already been done in this field. It's farther along than most really know.

In a way we can really say that cyborgs are already around us, what with pacemakers and cortical implants being in wide use.

Experimentally, a lot more has already been done with some success, such as:
--Bionic eyes (same idea as cortical implants, but into the visual cortex)
--Augmented sense of sight (a colorblind guy has a camera with a brain implant that converts color into sound impulses that go directly into his brain)
--Prosthetics that transmit the sense of touch
--Brain-to-computer and then computer-to-brain communication via the internet (crude but effective)
--Remote control of body movements (there have been several successful experiments of this)
--Enhanced memory with implanted chips (in mice)
--Brain implants to control any number of things such as depression, prevention of seizures, treatment of spasmodic torticollis

Naam says, and I think it's an obvious assertion, that the early adopters of these body-machine technologies will begin with those who have physical impairments. Need will drive the research and adoption forward. After that, it might well be picked up by others once it becomes safer and easier to be "upgraded."

Michel wrote: "If we become much more long-lived than we do now, then Humanity's numbers will grow even faster than it does now, due to less deaths happening, and our poor planet would soon choke under the crushing numbers of Humans living on it and exploiting it..."

As Sun Ra once said, "Space is the place."

But that's certainly one huge concern. I don't think cyborgs are going to require any less amount of resources, but the kinds of resources they might use could be different.

It really depends on what cyborgs end up looking like.

SF has a long history of assuming cyborgs are going to be metal men much like the Cybermen of Dr. Who fame. But I can't see people ever giving up bodies that have warmth and touch and sensuality. We're hedonistic beings after all. Which is why the development of prosthetics with a sense of touch is an interesting development.

And don't forget sex robots. If that becomes a reality, then people are likely to start looking at plastic bodies somewhat differently than we do today.

Thomas wrote: "Space exploration will allow us growth as a species, to hopefully help us move past some of the stuff we have to deal with on Earth..."

Cyborgs would also be more readily adaptable to a space environment. Zero-g can't make your bones and muscles atrophy if your bones and muscle are made of tungsten/carbon fiber and synthetic muscle fiber.

IIRC Frederik Pohl wrote about space workers whose bodies had been transformed/augmented so that they could survive and work in vacuum ... in his Heechee stories I think.

Thomas wrote: "I'm also reminded of Lawnmower Man, where a delayed man's intelligence was augmented by becoming one with machine. Or of course, The Matrix where man becomes slave to sentient machines..."

Also, I've always thought that by the time we can actually develop smarter than human intelligence AIs (I believe Kurzweil and his kind are wildly optimistic in their predictions of how soon this will come) we will be able to augment the human mind so that the AIs are not needed. Essentially, we'd have the AIs in our brains. They would be us. Or we would be them.

Will we still be human? Well ... what is human anyway?

I love Gattaca. I've seen articles about gene editing recently too, though I don't believe it to be as much as an ethical dilemma as one might think. I'm sure if you were to ask random people if they'd like to be able to choose things like physical features and the removal of genetic predispositions for diseases, a great number would be on board with that.

As for gene editing's likeliness of becoming a reality before machine bodies, they're both being studied heavily, and I think it's more of an even race. With our technology being on the cusp of quantum computing (10 years before it's widespread is my estimate), we could see great advancements in both areas in a relatively short amount of time due to the extra computing power.

I'm positive I've seen the articles for all of those things recently too, lending more credibility to the idea that we're heading for at least a very blended makeup of our bodies. Naam is entirely right about it being first for those with physical impairments. My son has 2 cochlear implants because he was born deaf/hard of hearing. Thanks to technology, he can hear and is developing language skills. Technology could eventually be adapted to provide us with super hearing with implants, so to speak.

I still put the edge on the genetic side because there you're dealing with direct editing of a body. Body-machine interface has many more problematic issues. Things like your body rejecting technology, the struggle to interface with enough neurons in the case of implants, deterioration of electrically stimulated neurons (as well as the tiny, tiny, tiny wires needed to interface with them).

There are tons of interface issues to be worked out that involve not only engineering, but material science and biology ... It's just a really big tangled up web.

Raw computing power won't necessarily speed that up. Plus, quantum computing has its own strange foibles and **ahem** uncertainties. It's likely to be awesome at solving some kinds of problems better than normal computers (cracking codes for example), and only marginally better than traditional computing at other kinds of problems. And then there is a class of problems (the so-called NP-Complete problems) that no one is really sure whether QC will be able to handle. No one is actually sure that traditional computers can't solve them either.

In fact one of the more interesting kinds of problems that QC should excel at is in chemistry and biology. Designing new drugs for example. Which might actually give the advantage to biological transhumanism over body-machine transhumanism!

Full disclosure, I don't know much about Quantum Computing. It hurts my brain, so I did some online searching. This was particularly interesting: https://plus.maths.org/content/what-c...

Thomas wrote: "I love Gattaca. I've seen articles about gene editing recently too, though I don't believe it to be as much as an ethical dilemma as one might think..."

I liked that movie a lot too. I shouldn't have (didn't like the mood and the actors), but the subject pulled me in.

As for the ethics of human gene editing ... well ... it does carry the potential for a lot of abuse. Who gets to decide what's allowed? If sexual identification is proven to be genetically based and we know how to control it, is it OK to let parents just gene-edit out homosexuality? Some people would probably say it's not only ethical, but should be mandated by the government. And that's even before you get into the Eugenics War scenarios like in Star Trek. Which of course had its roots in the "racial purity," the so-called "Übermensch" idea in Nazism. With genetic editing it would be feasible to actualize such fantasies (at least physically). Stronger. Faster. Better?

You make a good point about bodies rejecting technology, but the question is then going to be: What about our bodies rejecting a genetic modification? I think we still have a long ways to go before everything is mapped, putting genetic modifications running behind the mapping.

What happens if a piece of the code gets deleted because it's undesirable, but then causes significant problems? Will genetic modification be scrubbed because of a negative stigma of "failed experiments"? For example a gene linked to X type of cancer, but also happens to be needed for proper development of Y organ. Obviously this is a hypothetical and there may never be such a correlation, but I anticipate at some time when genetic modification is becoming commonplace, an error will be made and tragic consequences will be felt (whether immediately or generations later).

It definitely won't be the raw computing power which gets us there. It will be the access to the new computing ability by scientists/researchers/engineers/etc which will define how fast their research goes. You're right in that we don't know how far QC is going to get us, and that at early projections based on multiple states that it will be better at finding answers to complex problems faster due to being able to try multiple answers at once instead of sequentially. I don't think it's a matter of whether traditional computers can solve them or not, because I haven't read anything that says they can't. It's going to be a matter of how fast they can, and that's where I think QC will take over.

I will be very interested to see QC develop and how it shapes the answers to our current problems, as well as transhumanism. I agree that it will probably lend more advantage to the biological transhumanism than the mechanical, but so far humans are still working on creating a brain with traditional computers, and that's slow going. Who knows? Maybe a QC brain will be the key to the mechanical side...or the creation of true AI which is another issue altogether.

I too am still learning about QC. I'll take a look at that article. Thanks.

Fascinating topic ... Any recommends for books on the subject?

Chris: I haven't read any non-fiction books on these topics, just research articles and science news pieces.

If you're looking for fiction, you might check out the book Alterra. It touches on a few societal topics, including transhumanism.

Good topic!

There have been so many tales that have tried to deal with this. My own take would be that changing the human lifespan might actually change what it is to be human anyway. Change the lifespan and you change the perspective. Living for a thousand years, for ten thousand? You are bound to see the world in a very different light after such a period of time. Then there is the problem of memory. What do you keep? What do you lose? (Presuming the technology exists that allows you to edit what is in fact a finite resource). Do you store the unwanted parts of your life elsewhere until they are needed again? That also would greatly change your perspective.

Then there is technological augmentation (and an interesting thought experiment.) You replace a part of your failing nervous system with a piece of cybernetic tech that does the same job. Are you still you? More bits are replaced as and when they fail, until, at the end, none of your original parts are left. Are you still you? If not, when did you cease being you, and are you conscious of the difference?

But we aren't just a nervous system! What about all the chemicals our brains are bathed in. They affect us enormously. The whole personality of a person can change if a particular hormone is no longer produced in the same quantities as before. If you replace the nervous system with something technological, is that technology going to be affected by, say, serotonin levels, or adrenalin levels (assuming you still have adrenal glands), or must some kind of analogue accompany the replacement?

This does rather suggest that we are our bodies. We may live in our heads, but our bodies have a huge effect on the way we live. And if you change the body?

Of course, our bodies are changing all the time. We are constantly replacing old cells by laying down new ones (except in certain cases). As and when we learn new skills our brains accomodate us by creating new connections. But we are still conscious of being us! It's a hard question.

And on the subject of QC, there has been a recent suggestion that our brains might work at a quantum level. I read not so long back that quantum effects have been observed, or posited, in nerve fibres.

You might enjoy John C. Wright's The Golden Age, The Phoenix Exultant, and The Golden Transcendence.

Thomas wrote: "You make a good point about bodies rejecting technology, but the question is then going to be: What about our bodies rejecting a genetic modification? I think we still have a long ways to go before..."

Yeah with genetic modification it's not really rejection, but unintended consequences that are the big ???

Chris wrote: "Fascinating topic ... Any recommends for books on the subject?"

Aside from the Nexus trilogy I referenced above ...

Wikipedia has a listing of a lot of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...

On that list, Accelerando, Blood Music, The Star Fraction are favorites of mine. I'd also add another Ken MacLeod: The Stone Canal (in the same universe as The Star Fraction).

In non-fiction it's probably worth it to read some of Ray Kurzweil's rose-colored futurist books like The Age of Spiritual Machines: How We Will Live, Work, and Think in the New Age of Intelligent Machines.. Just take them with a huge grain of salt. Wonderful utopian ideas, but way too optimistic and dismissive of potential Bad Things (TM).

Thanks all for the suggestions. It really was more non-fiction I was after - I've tried Kurzweil, and while I don't necessarily disagree there was something about his writing that I found hard to continue with.

Great post, Simon, so many good points.

Simon wrote: " ... changing the human lifespan might actually change what it is to be human anyway.

I haven’t read Childhood’s End, but I think this is one topic in that book. At least an old ‘70s album by Van der Graaf Generator which has been said to be largely influenced by that book addressed that topic. The song’s called Still Life (the title track of the LP).

What have we become?
What have we chosen to be?
Now, all history is reduced to the syllables of
Our name-
Nothing can ever be the same:
Now the Immortals are here.
At the time it seemed a reasonable course
To harness all the force
Of life without the threat of death,
But soon we found that boredom and inertia
Are not negative, but all the law we know,
And dead are will and words like survival.

It’s also the topic of a micro-fiction story I wrote a while back: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Simon wrote: "...Then there is technological augmentation (and an interesting thought experiment.) You replace a part of your failing nervous system with a piece of cybernetic tech that does the same job. Are you still you?

Ha! You’re hitting all my buttons! I have an unpublished short story about that called The Day I became Software. Kurzweil went through that thought experiment in one of his books. The short story was written as a response. Indeed, are we the particles of stuff that make us up? Or are we the wave function that is a result of all that?

Simon wrote: " ...Of course, our bodies are changing all the time. We are constantly replacing old cells by laying down new ones (except in certain cases). As and when we learn new skills our brains accomodate us by creating new connections. But we are still conscious of being us! It's a hard question.

Of course people do change all the time naturally, but they also change drastically due to natural diseases and accidents and drug use. We’ve all heard of people who suddenly go through complete personality changes. A brain tumor, or drug abuse, or even some kinds of viruses can cause total shifts in behavior. Does that actually change those people into literally different people?

As we can see, this is a topic with a huge amount of potential for stories and thought experimenting. Love this stuff!

Why does everybody assume that the replacements/improvements will be mechanical and electronic?

What about technology which replaces our existing organs and skeleton with improved bio-synthetic ones? Synthetic muscle fibres, reinforced bone structures, "improved livers" and so on. Blend that with genetic modifications and elimination of genetic diseases, plus the reduction or elimination of ageing. Humans would still look and act human, just more efficient ones.

V.W. wrote: "Why does everybody assume that the replacements/improvements will be mechanical and electronic?

What about technology which replaces our existing organs and skeleton with improved bio-synthetic on..."

?? See my messages above, particularly message 6 and 8 and the discussions around them.

3D printing, organs grown from a patient's own stem cells (someone come up with this for prostate glands, please, I miss mine!), as well as genetic modifications are all part of the transhumanist realm.

Micah wrote: "Yeah with genetic modification it's not really rejection, but unintended consequences that are the big ???."

One can imagine nightmares. Beef up the immune system and watch a new autoimmune disease break out. Or engineer everyone to be cheerful -- who wants a morose and sullen kid? -- and watch society go to hell in a handbasket because no one's throwing cold water on ideas.

OTOH, genes don't, technically, code for traits. They code for proteins. What's worse, they can code for several proteins, so a "fix" to one might break the others.

Single-points of failure, like sickle cell anemia, are probably the best bet for good genetic engineering.

Thanks Micah, like you I love this kind of thing as well. And I agree with your comment on drugs and diseases. I will add trauma and surgery to the list. It is a most intriguing, and occasionally unnerving, area of investigation.

Childhood's End is a great book. I can thoroughly recommend it (though I hear the TV adaptation has shied away from the darker questions raised). I will also recommend The City and The Stars as that deals with, partially, some of the questions raised by a society of humans with greatly extended life spans.

I have definitely got to look at Kurzweil's stuff and the other books that have been mentioned above, but I ought to add at least one non-fiction book for anyone interested on the quantum theory side of things. This would be The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch. It covers a multitude of subjects including quantum computing and another of the favoured tropes of the sci-fi author, namely parallel universes (which is also an explanation of how QC might work).

Oh ... and another aspect of progress toward transhumans is ... legal.

http://singularityhub.com/2016/04/04/...

The worlds of science, technology and patent law eagerly await the U.S. government’s decision on who deserves patents on what many have referred to as the biotechnology invention of the century: the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technique.

This case is about who came up with the CRISPR/Cas9 technology, but there are deeper legal questions. If someone comes up with a specific gene modification that's being commercialized (for example, a gene mod to make people smarter, or stronger, or whatever) ... can the designer of that gene mod claim copyright to the gene change?

Are we going to be faced with a whole new labyrinth of end-user license agreements to navigate? Will companies be allowed to own a part of your actual genetic makeup? What happens if two different gene mods interact negatively and they're owned by two different companies? Who can you sue?

Mary wrote: "Single-points of failure, like sickle cell anemia, are probably the best bet for good genetic engineering."

And even there it is fraught with difficulty. Did you know that people with sickle cell anaemia are resistant to malaria? The parasite is hobbled in people with this condition, giving them a survival advantage in areas where malaria is endemic (which is probably how the condition came about in the first place.) I think the warning here is that you have to be even more careful in what you change. (Not that I am saying don't do it, just that there are always unforeseen consequences. In this case, knowing the mechanism that prevents people with sickle cell anaemia from contracting malaria might eventually lead to some kind of immune response treatment. If you cured sickle cell anaemia without ever knowing how it actually stopped malaria in its tracks, you might lose the chance of an effective treatment for the disease!)

Thomas wrote: "Do you think we're still obsessed with immortality, so much so that we'd give up being human?"

Nope. In every conflict/religion/debate people will take different sides. I don't think all of humanity will give up what thinks that make them human. You will always have the stubborn ones that will hold out and refuse to become something they deem 'unnatural'.

I'm more interested in the steps before actual transhumanisme. transanimalism (that's not a word...is it?).

What happens when animals become something more before the humans?

Except that we have other ways to deal with malaria, and large populations of people with the disease in non-malarial regions.

Mary wrote: "Except that we have other ways to deal with malaria, and large populations of people with the disease in non-malarial regions."

But malaria has not yet been eradicated, and sickle cell anaemia points to what might eventually be a way of treating the infection with 100% success.

Yes, it is a genetic defect, but if you removed it without first understanding how it came to be, then you would lose out. (And it has taken them nearly seventy years to work out the specific mechanism that stops malaria in its tracks). I find it fascinating that a supposed disability actually provides an advantage in certain situations.

This raises another question. Improving humanity. Improving how? In whose eyes is something an improvement? Given our adaptability, shouldn't improvements concentrate rather on our abilty to adapt? Intelligence is only one factor. What about a continuously responsive genome that reacts to whatever situation it finds itself in? The world floods? Grow gills! Carbon Dioxide levels rise? Create chloroplast analogues in the skin. OK, that is a bit extreme, but I think you get my drift. With the entire genetic record of the earth at our disposal humans become chimeras, cherry-picking the best from each gene pool. But would you consider the result an improvement?

Ada wrote: "What happens when animals become something more before the humans?"

Go no further than good old H. G. Wells. The Island of Dr. Moreau remains one of the best, for my money.

Simon wrote: " Given our adaptability, shouldn't improvements concentrate rather on our abilty to adapt? Intelligence is only one factor. What about a continuously responsive genome that reacts to whatever situation it finds itself in? The world floods? Grow gills! Carbon Dioxide levels rise? Create chloroplast analogues in the skin. OK, that is a bit extreme, but I think you get my drift. With the entire genetic record of the earth at our disposal humans become chimeras, cherry-picking the best from each gene pool. But would you consider the result an improvement..."

I use that kind of transformational genetic technology in a lot of my writing, postulating that by the time we can travel between the stars it will be easier to adapt the human form to new environments than to terraform alien worlds to our baseline human genome.

Is it an improvement? It is if it allows you to survive. Basically we're talking about self-determined evolution. Better or worse is a subjective value judgment, survival advantage is an objective and demonstrable fact.

In a sub-plot in novelette of mine, I postulate that a population of people are stranded on a harsh planet which lacks the metals needed to repair their crashed and crippled spaceship. Their only choice is to either hole up and wait for someone to the rescue them, or transform their bodies so they can survive on this toxic planet.

Most of the crew choose not to transform...and all die. Those who did transform struggle to survive and ultimately realize they're going to die out too, unless they change their offspring even further: making them smaller in body size, and decreasing their brain size and complexity. Brains eat up too much energy. On this planet big brains are an evolutionary liability. So they alter their offspring to be about the size and intelligence of dogs. They're definitely not what we would call human anymore, but they do survive and thrive.

Are the offspring of these people better or worse for their alteration? Is intelligence and death preferable to lack of intelligence and survival?

Micah wrote: "In a sub-plot in novelette of mine, I postulate that a population of people are stranded on a harsh planet which lacks the metals needed to repair their crashed and crippled spaceship. Their only choice is to either hole up and wait for someone to the rescue them, or transform their bodies so they can survive on this toxic planet."

This actually raises another point. I think, psychologically, most people would not agree to radical transformation.

There is a curious mental disorder called body dysmorphia in which the sufferer decides that their body is seriously flawed in some way. It is almost as if that person's internal map of their body has become corrupted and now an obsession grows in the individual concerning the need to correct the perceived flaw.

What if, after some supposed improvement, whether brought about by environmental conditions or by a desire to be better at something, the same thing occurs in the altered person? What if, now, their internal body map no longer matches their actual body? I think the resultant phobia would lead to destructive obssesive-compulsive behaviour, much as it does in some instances of body dysmorphia. I am not aware of anybody that has tackled this specific subject in the realm of science fiction.

Micah wrote: "Most of the crew choose not to transform...and all die. Those who did transform struggle to survive and ultimately realize they're going to die out too, unless they change their offspring even further: making them smaller in body size, and decreasing their brain size and complexity. Brains eat up too much energy. On this planet big brains are an evolutionary liability. So they alter their offspring to be about the size and intelligence of dogs. They're definitely not what we would call human anymore, but they do survive and thrive."

I have to ask why anybody would choose to do this? At the moment I cannot concieve of a reason other than survival. Survival at any cost? Would a human act this way? A machine might, but then only by virtue of its imperatives. I think the problem here lies in choosing a path that brings about devolution.

@ Simon: I agree with you on this. I think that some of those transhumanism plots tend to forget or play down the human psyche and to assume that people will do anything to survive. That ignores in my opinion the sense of ethics and self-worth most people have. Authors of transhumanism novels should pay attention to that factor, or they will risk having potential readers getting repulsed by some of their plots. To voluntarily choose to become or to produce offsprings akin to animals would be absolutely abhorrent to me, even if my survival is at stake. I would rather die as a true human than survive and multiply as some kind of diminished being. As an ex-soldier, I did face death many times in my life and my statement is not a boast.

Micah wrote: "In a sub-plot in novelette of mine ..."

I think I read that one, Micah. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it was a great idea and very thought-provoking. A few years ago, I took the same kind of situation and explored the same kind of solution in a short story of my own. I came to broadly similar conclusions - most people would rather die than transform so radically but those who did would at least have a chance of becoming a new branch on the evolutionary tree.

I took the opportunity in that story to explore a couple of other ideas too - one of the main characters was an "uplifted" orang utan, and the transformation involved people becoming non-biological artificial life-forms.

Most of my writing of transhuman futures has involved uploading minds to computers or robot bodies. I don't actually believe this will work (basically, a mind is not something you can pour out of one vessel into another - it can only be copied) but loads of people do and that's what matters.

Simon wrote: "Micah wrote: "In a sub-plot in novelette of mine, I postulate that a population of people are stranded on a harsh planet which lacks the metals needed to repair their crashed and crippled spaceship..."

Michel wrote: "@ Simon: I agree with you on this. I think that some of those transhumanism plots tend to forget or play down the human psyche and to assume that people will do anything to survive. . That ignores in my opinion the sense of ethics and self-worth most people have..."

SF authors also have to play down the urge to superimpose their own judgement of what is ethical or abhorrent onto the future cultures they create in order to explore the implications of where current research is leading, or to simply explore what could be, or wheat might be in the future, as well as to challenge our ideas of what it means to be human. Depends on the aim of your story.

We don't have to look too far back in human history to find human civilizations that were equally abhorrent to us today. Performing human sacrifices to ensure the rising of the sun and the coming of the rains, that kind of thing. The Aztec Empire, for example, was only 600 years ago and were radically different from our own culture, to the point of seeming almost alien. If an author is to look 2,000 years into the future I don't think it would be that much of a stretch to think that people would accept radical body alteration/augmentation.


Simon wrote:" Survival at any cost? Would a human act this way? A machine might, but then only by virtue of its imperatives. I think the problem here lies in choosing a path that brings about devolution.

The case I pointed to was an extreme one, even in the universe as I've supposed it in that series of stories. It was too radical for most of the stranded crew. It was way too radical even to some of the posthuman characters who found out about it.

But I have to object to "that brings about devolution." There is no such thing as devolution. Evolution isn't about becoming gradually smarter, more enlightened, more perfected. It is simply about survival. The entity which is best able to survive in an environment is the most highly evolved creature for that environment.

Kurt Vonnegut proposed a very similar thing in Galapagos: big brains are an evolutionary dead end. Obviously they aren't (yet) in our current environment. But in some cases, yes, they could be. That's evolution, not devolution.

Graham wrote: "Micah wrote: "In a sub-plot in novelette of mine ..."

I think I read that one, Micah. If it's the one I'm thinking of, it was a great idea and very thought-provoking..."

It's only been published in The Cut-Up Man: And other Posthuman Cycle stories. If you've read that, then thanks! If not ... oh well!

Micah wrote: "If not ... oh well!"

Ah. Oh well. The one I read was maybe 20 years ago. Still, it does mean that at least three writers have now used this idea in a story and that means it must be on its way to becoming a sci-fi trope :-)

Michel wrote: "I agree with you on this. I think that some of those transhumanism plots tend to forget or play down the human psyche and to assume that people will do anything to survive. That ignores in my opinion the sense of ethics and self-worth most people have. Authors of transhumanism novels should pay attention to that factor, or they will risk having potential readers getting repulsed by some of their plots. To voluntarily choose to become or to produce offsprings akin to animals would be absolutely abhorrent to me, even if my survival is at stake. I would rather die as a true human than survive and multiply as some kind of diminished being."

I think in today's time, if someone came out and said you could become transhuman (whether biological or mechanical), that there would be a significant division. The "for it" group may start out small, but there would definitely be those that are willing to do the radical. At first, and maybe even for a long time, it will be "Humans vs. The Others". Those with their moral and ethical guidelines who will be absolutely opposed to it, and there those willing to embrace it.

A surefire bet is that the wealthy would be the first to want the changes because they would have the money, and it would be about legacy for them. Also, those in power like to stay in power. Then it would be the scientists, to preserve their intellect.

But given enough time, should the human group not seek to utterly destroy the transhumans, it would grow and you would see more people embrace it.

What in this world is forcing us to adapt anymore? We've become so used to adapting things to suit us, will we ever adapt again without it being essentially a human "forced" evolution through adapting our own bodies? Long term space exposure might push our bodies to adapt, but even then we'll be working to adapt the environment around us so that we're comfortable, so it probably won't be a drastic change. But on Earth our bodies aren't pushed to that point anymore except for maybe in the area of pollution and climate change. But even then, we have more availability to move to a new area of the world than ever before, so we move and we don't really adapt.

A good story idea would be transhumanism in a time which the world can no longer sustain the human population. Unlike humans, in which our growth is continuous, the transhuman population creates a new form of classism by picking and choosing who transcends the human condition. Their advertisement: "Do you want to be one of us? Apply now and see if you're qualified."

@ Thomas. Don't take me wrong: I did not say that I was against any attempt at changing the human body with implants or genetic modifications. I was and still am against transhuman modifications that would result in us losing our human nature only for the sake of sheer survival, especially if it diminishes our intelligence level. What Mica described in his entry 31 was simply too extreme to me and, I suspect, to many other people.

Thomas wrote: "I think in today's time, if someone came out and said you could become transhuman (whether biological or mechanical), that there would be a significant division. The "for it" group may start out small, but there would definitely be those that are willing to do the radical..."

As stated before, the early adopters are going to be people in need: the deaf, the blind, those in need of prosthetics, those with medical conditions that impair thought or memory. That will drive innovation.

But when augmentations start becoming better than baseline human, some people who aren't physically/mentally impaired are going to want to augment themselves.

Consider eyesight for example. At first artificial eyesight will be adopted by those with physical impairments. But artificial eyes don't have to be limited to restoring normal human sight. They can be expanded and improved to offer zoom lenses, or being able to see in non-visible spectrums of light. We already have infrared cameras. Once the interface between camera and brain is perfected, why wouldn't someone who's getting an eye implant want those options?

You'd end up with some people with enhanced vision and others are going to say "hey, my eyes are fine, but I want enhanced vision too!"

Basically at some point unaltered people are going to be looked on as the impaired!

A certain subset of the population already goes in for freaky body shaping. I expect that to get even more bizarre as technology allows.

On a slightly different topic, I heard on the radio this morning about some research being done on self-repairing artificial skin that has sensors built into it. Artificial, self-repairing skin which also offers the sense of touch. Yeah, things are gonna get strange!

Micah, you're correct. I was meaning more for after that phase where it's for medical necessity. I should have said that it would be the wealthy who would be the first when it becomes commercialized for "everybody".

And you're right, humans will be looked on as impaired by the transhumans. That's a big part of the classism that I was thinking of.

That's actually very cool. I'm going to see if I can find a link to that later because it sounds like it fits very well with this topic.

@Thomas: Agreed. The big question for a lot of the upcoming science breakthroughs is not going to be if it's possible, or whether people will do it, but rather WHO has access to do it.

On the synthetic skin thing, National Public Radio is going to have a bit about it on All Things Considered this afternoon (sometime between 4PM and 6 PM Eastern Daylight Time). You can listen online or just wait a day or two for the show to go up on their web site. (Or, you know, look it up!)

Micah wrote: "But I have to object to "that brings about devolution." There is no such thing as devolution. Evolution isn't about becoming gradually smarter, more enlightened, more perfected. It is simply about survival. The entity which is best able to survive in an environment is the most highly evolved creature for that environment."

You are absolutely right, of course. There is no such thing as devolution (evolution has no directionality!) But I still find it hard to rationalise the choice just for the case of survival. However, you also make a very good point about abhorrent cultural behaviour, and if any of us now were suddenly transplanted a thousand years into the future I imagine we would find ourselves rather challenged by what we discovered.

I do remember another book that touches on the alteration scenario. The Integral Trees by Larry Niven. Forced adaptation so that they can survive in an environment in orbit about a neutron star. I might also add Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny. Once more the people in the tale have to change themselves in order to survive.

Here's that NPR show about researching artificial skin:

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechco...

Having pondered the above, why survival might be chosen over every other consideration, I came up with the maternal instinct.

The desire for the survival of offspring could be so overarching, so dominating, that it ends up overriding everything else. Unfortunately I can only think of one story by John Wyndham that sort of illustrates the point, Survival. Not quite the same, but as yet I can't think of anything else.

Simon wrote: "Having pondered the above, why survival might be chosen over every other consideration, I came up with the maternal instinct ..."

True. However there's another good reason I can think of.

If you have the technology to affect drastic changes in biological form, then the technology exists to change in all directions. So, given the premise that this spaceship crew was stranded on a planet without the resources to fix their ship, or to make the planet survivable in any other way--and with rescue a very remote possibility in the near term--choosing to transform their offspring might be an acceptable action because sometime in the future rescue might indeed come and their offspring could be transformed back into something more human. Changing their offspring to something more animal than human was not, as it were, a zero-sum solution. Generations of them would miss out on high intelligence, sure, but at some point that gift might be bestowed upon them again.

So then, following that line of thought, is there an additional pay-off? Is there data (stored in hardware or genetically) detailing information pertaining to what was lost? Do the offspring have an opportunity to regain their birthright, so to speak?

Which also begs the question, what would they think of their situation when they discover they are not who they thought they were? Their identity has been changed with a return of greater awareness. Would they resent what was done to them? (This is moving into Flowers for Algernon territory.)

Simon wrote: "Having pondered the above, why survival might be chosen over every other consideration, I came up with the maternal instinct.

The desire for the survival of offspring could be so overarching, so ..."

I was thinking about this too! Ever since the question came up. I do think maternal/paternal/parenteral instinct will kick in in such situations for some people. It reminded me of a question in a book/movie (?). What would you rather be? Beautiful and dumb or ugly and super smart. The answer of the main character was beautiful but dumb because then you wouldn't know what you were missing and you got laid a lot.

Bit of a weird comparison, I know, but as a parent wouldn't you rather see you children survive and happy? Even if you would know what they lost? Would that be a problem for them?

And about this:
Which also begs the question, what would they think of their situation when they discover they are not who they thought they were? Their identity has been changed with a return of greater awareness. Would they resent what was done to them?

I haven't read Flowers for Algernon but would you really resent your ancestors for choosing that their children would survive? Even if you now could see what was given up? Wouldn't that make you more motivated to be more now?

This thread is making my TBR list longer and longer....

Simon wrote: "So then, following that line of thought, is there an additional pay-off? Is there data (stored in hardware or genetically) detailing information pertaining to what was lost?"

In this case there is a whole community of posthumans out in the galaxy who, if they ever found the offspring, would be able to bring them back (and would presumably be smart enough to know what they used to be). However, this was a sub-plot and never explored too deeply beyond presenting "this is what their parents did."

Simon wrote: "...what would they think of their situation when they discover they are not who they thought they were? Their identity has been changed with a return of greater awareness. Would they resent what was done to them?"

Great question and one that would make interesting reading. I haven't explored it. As I said, it was sub-plot (and the circumstances hinted at in the actual story indicated there had not been a happy ending).

There are great moral and ethical questions to explore in trans/posthumanism. The field is fairly wide open despite a fair amount already having been written on the topic.

I really need to read Man Plus.

Micah wrote: "So, given the premise that this spaceship crew was stranded on a planet without the resources to fix their ship, or to make the planet survivable in any other way--and with rescue a very remote possibility in the near term--choosing to transform their offspring might be an acceptable action because sometime in the future rescue might indeed come and their offspring could be transformed back into something more human. Changing their offspring to something more animal than human was not, as it were, a zero-sum solution. "

If it were a biological change for a certain environment, I could see a potential for the altered people to want to "change into" human if they were to return to Earth.

However if it's a mechanical change, I have a feeling that the children would feel that the replacement of their mechanical parts with biological ones would be impairing them, taking away an advantage. This could also be the case for biological if they didn't want to come "back" to Earth.