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POPSTransvision 2007 explores transhuman frontiers Speakers will address how emerging technologies give our societies the ability to solve grand challenges facing humanity, including energy, global health, pollution, and the ethics of human enhancement, with three days of intensive briefings by some of the most influential futurists, innovators, scientists, and celebrities from the U.S. and around the globe.
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POPSIntelligence and Empathy He stresses that the human mind does not qualify as a completely ‘General Intelligence’ but lies somewhere on the spectrum between AGI on one end and ‘Narrow AI’ on the other. This is one of several reasons why he does not expect AGI to be achieved by mimicking the workings of the human brain. He describes how our brains fool us into believing that we understand our actions and decisions when we don’t. And why modeling an AI too closely on the human brain might make it too, vulnerable to false notions. He also says, ‘I think virtual worlds are going to be absolutely critical to the development of Artificial General Intelligence.’ As well as ‘Right now connecting AI’s to virtual worlds is probably the best way to get an AI to have a general human-like embodied experience.’
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POPSDuality of Man & Our Responsibility to Our Species The careful task of becomming unbiased allows the course of balancing the self to run smoothly & unfettered. Those whom endeavor to seek only the positive (or negative, for that matter) will find disappointment in the face of objective truth. Pain is not an enemy to be evaded or eradicated. Suffering will come regardless of efforts to avoid it. Rather than to circumvent suffering, detaching the ego to step outside the self allows one to surpass it & learn from their mistakes, lest they foolishly relive them. Remember that the universe is impersonal, & will continue to unfold as it will with or without you. Only then can the subject detach from the moment holding them back (stasis) & develop into a more appropriate, thus more comfortable state. This is nature’s objective. Rising above the situation awakens our ability to create our own reality.
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POPSThe Hedonistic Imperative This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world.
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POPSBiocultural Evolution in the 21st Century: The Evolutionary Role of Religion My outline introduces the concept of biocultural evolution, particularly with reference to the Twentieth Century and the prospects for the Twenty-First Century. I then explore the concept of complex distributed systems to characterize all highly creative processes in both culture and nature. Subsequently, I turn to the problem of complexity horizons and the challenge that these present for traditional moral reflections. Humans are then characterized as a Lamarckian wild card in epic of evolution. I close by discussing the evolutionary role of religion. See source for the full paper: http://metanexus.net/magazine/ArticleDetail/tabid/68/id/8779/Default.aspx
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POPS Scientists: Humans and machines will merge in future The end result would be a new form of "posthuman" life with beings that possess qualities and skills so exceedingly advanced they no longer can be classified simply as humans. Bostrom declined to predict an exact time frame when this revolutionary biotechnological metamorphosis might occur. "Maybe it will take eight years or 200 years," he said. "It is very hard to predict."
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POPSTranshumanism don't need special dispositions "And yet people sometimes ask me why I want to save the world. Why? They want to know why someone would want to save the world? Like you have to be traumatized in childhood or something? Give me a break."
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POPSTranshumanism vs. Trans-Systemism What exactly is this “human” that we are supposed to extrapolate into the future? Is it an individual animal? A member of a species? A self-aware “software” that resides in the fore brain of an advanced mammal? Several combined pieces of software? Software combined with external knowledge and information? Does it depend on nature? Can it be distinguished form the system in which it resides? Can it exist without the broader system? ******** Perhaps the most critical challenge of transhumanist philosophy is exactly this: To offer a vision of the future human, the human of beyond. Transhumanism will not grow into a mature philosophy without defining and describing the possible favorable directions of human evolution, both as individuals and as a specie.
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