Comments on: Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism

By: Oliver K

Oliver K — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:26:41 +0000

After posting this, I watched a video of Yudkowsky’s speech at the 2006 singularity summit, and he made some reassuring remarks about telling an AI to do it and to make sure that the person stays alive the whole time.
Just thinking about it now, what happens to someone’s memories if their mind suddenly turns much smarter/stupider?

By: Oliver K

Oliver K — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 20:57:47 +0000

It seems to me that the problem with letting somebody’s IQ fall from 120 to 110 points could be more that the person’s mind is tampered with than that they end up being less intelligent. In other words, I would worry that so dramatic a change to the way someone’s mind works could be analogous to killing them (I should point out that I don’t necessarily think so, but that the possibility occurs to me and has, as the saying goes, a nonzero chance of being true based on what I know).
What I’m getting at is that raising somebody’s IQ from 110 points to 120 points could be considered just as bad as doing the opposite. I’m curious as to your response (assuming you’ve looked at these comments since 2007, EY).

By: Patrick Robotham

Patrick Robotham — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:55:45 +0000

Millennia of adjustment? Hardly.

Life Expectancy in Europe circa 1700: 43.13 years.

Life Expectancy in Europe Circa 2010: 78.67 years.

You can make the argument that there were still a few old people around in the 1700s, making it to their 60s, but these days we have people going in to their 80s and 90s.

Sources:

1700 life expectancy:
http://apps.business.ualberta.ca/rfield/lifeexpectancy.htm

2010 life expectancy: http://www.indexmundi.com/european_union/life_expectancy_at_birth.html

By: Ryan Callahan

Ryan Callahan — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:24:24 +0000

Amen, brother! Can you believe that there are people who are against transhumanism… not just religious nuts, either. It makes me sad, sad, sad.
I have a friend who claims, without being able to justify it logically, that any improvements that could be made to a human being would “ring hollow.”
Apparently there is some deep secret importance to inheriting talents based on random chance, and a holiness to the statistical dictate that such phenomenon will follow a bell shaped curve. He cited athletes enhancing themselves as an example of why transhumanism is bad. Then I cited athletes enhancing themselves as an example of why transhumanism is good, to prove that his statement was meaningless. Oh no! What if I could play football so well that I only ever wanted to PLAY football, rather than WATCH football!!!??!?!?! What would happen to our sports franchises!?
Logic doesn’t enter into the argument… it’s like talking to a bleating flock of sheep. They don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing… but it must be important! At least they could have the personal insight to say that technology makes them uneasy because it makes other people uneasy, and because it confuses them. Instead they cite A to prove B to prove C to prove A, over and over and over again.

I do have one important reservation, though: in the future, talent will become capital. People who are of a very conservative, aristocratic mindset who are also transhumanists do arouse some of my distrust. I don’t want to see these powerful tools to help humanity become just one more way for the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer. Cure diseases in seconds, give everyone a university education in a day, and by all means improve everything you can get your hands on. But remember: transhumans will have an important duty to the rest of mankind, just as the naturally gifted do today.

By: Anon

Anon — Mon, 31 May 2010 06:28:58 +0000

Hello? I’ve recently read about the singularity after looking over an article concerning transhumanistic ideals. And to say the least, I am intrigued with the idea of a proposed singularity event, and wish that it would occur. Sadly, as I lack the skills or determination to become an A.I programmer, I cannot help bring about the singularity that way. But I do have an interest in Biology, especially genetics. It’s been a dream of mine to heal humanity through medicine, maybe i could help do this while others work on an A.I?
Another thing. It was extremely difficult to find any information at all about the singularity, or transhumanism at all. In order to find cites like this an others related, I had to know what i was looking for. It was pure luck that i decided to research transhumanism as well. Global awareness is sorely needed if we wish for the labors put into the singularity to come to fruition.

By: Giorgis

Giorgis — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:33:38 +0000

It’s all game theory … you can talk about a brother of a sister and the value of 110 or 120 but it has no connection with the truth. Can you imagine a society of 200 IQ people. Nature has chosen by natural selection that it needs this bell curve of all qualities in a random mix. The case with age is a little different. Accumulation of power is one way. He who has it, doesn’t want to let go. So being 1000 years old, and at the helm for 900 … why give it to some 800 year old kid !? You may think that human ingenuity can overcome all problems but don’t be so sure.

So you wont get change in your society, and much like every empire has fallen to some new idea let that be bronze weapons, fighting on horseback or trivial stuff like … having more babies.

By: Michael Blade

Michael Blade — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:32:30 +0000

What if there was really was no such thing as death?
Would that effect our morality?

Let’s hypothetically supose that people of the future (if you can call them human by our standards) are simulating backward to our now… reverse time simulation in a sort of virtuality, if you will. Wouldn’t the moral thing be to reduce suffering?, since death didn’t really exist for them…

If this interest you, check out my well thought out science fiction time traveler encounter story at…

http://webmac.com/blog/

Its the result of a lot of thought after attending a SIAI Sumit… Comment if you like Transhumans, Thanks.

-M. Blade

By: Accelerating Future » Anissimov on FastForward Radio

Accelerating Future » Anissimov on FastForward Radio — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:13:01 +0000

[...] of Dale Carrico criticisms of transhumanism, politics in transhumanism, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism”, nanobots vs. nanofactories, what I think will happen after the Singularity, and what technologies [...]

By: Accelerating Future » Response to Amor Mundi on Transhumanism

Accelerating Future » Response to Amor Mundi on Transhumanism — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:43:29 +0000

[...] more on this, see Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism, by transhumanist guru Eliezer Yudkowsky (see what I did [...]

By: Rick Schwall, Ph.D.

Rick Schwall, Ph.D. — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:54:52 +0000

Dear Eliezer,

I have great respect for you, your intellect, your mission, and even most of your opinions.

In this discussion, you left out the costs. If you confront the resources it takes to add another year to Dick Cheney’s heart-attack-ridden life, and what else could be done with those resources, you get confronted by trade-offs. Preventative nutrition in impoverished areas, or positron scanning for wealthy Americans? $38,000 of high-tech medical care to add one last (miserable?) year to an American’s life (h ttp://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1464043) versus $500 to save the life (several years of life) of an impoverished 3rd-world child (h ttp://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/world-uniting-to-save-million-lives.html).

To get a bit deeper, what’s so wonderful about human lives anyway? Humanity is certainly a Cost to the biosphere, causing a huge number of species extinctions (h ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction_event). Is Humanity contributing something so valuable as to make it worth while?

OK, I consider MY life to be valuable. That’s probably evolved-in, not rationally deduced from some deeper principles. And it wouldn’t LOOK GOOD to admit that I value the lives of my immediate acquaintances more than those of poor Burmese rice farmers. Society has tried to train me to regard human life as valuable. Agreement doesn’t create truth.

So, what IS a foundation for moral thinking?

Let’s imagine that we figure out what Humanity’s Mission is. THAT might be a foundation on which to judge the morality of actions. My guess is that 7 billion people is not the optimal number to carry out Humanity’s Mission. At least not right now. I’ll bet 10-to-1 that it’s a LOT less. I can at least _conceive_ that saving an ordinary human life in this “overpopulated” world might be a negative value. (I’ll still fight to save my own life. I’m a mammal first and a rationalist second.)

I’m stuck without a firm foundation for moral judgments. Nobody appointed me judge of the actions of others, anyway. I have a rule FOR ME, not to steal. Today. I have a rule to use MY anger as a clue to “Pan for the Gold” in what another person is saying, even when it sounds REALLY WRONG to me. I couldn’t deduce my moral rules, so I made them up, _picking and choosing_ from the ideas of others. Just because I say so. By the Creative Power of my Word.

I choose to play on Eliezer’s team to save Humanity from itself.

When humanity has built the Super-Intelligent, Super-Moral Engineered Intelligence (SISMEI? that still needs work), it will be Humanity’s Triumph over Evolution(C).