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Old 12-08-2009, 08:05 AM   #61
Agemegos
 
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

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Originally Posted by Molokh View Post
(Compare: can one prove to a solipsist that everyone else is real/really a person?)
Recite the following Limerick:
There was a faith healer from Deal
Who said "Although pain isn't real
When I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin
I dislike what I fancy I feel."
Then kick the solipsist sharply in the shin and say "If you act on the belief that I don't exist and don't matter, I will make damned sure that you dislike what you fancy you feel. So come on Solipism-boy! Show us what you really believe"
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Last edited by Agemegos; 12-31-2009 at 08:19 PM.
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Old 12-08-2009, 08:55 AM   #62
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
What, you're saying that the fact that this message originated from me and not from someone else, and is based on the content of my mind and the information available to it and not on anyone else's, is not detectable? How then do you know who you're talking to?
It's not detectable with THS's TL. In fact, it's not normally detectable at our TL - I've witnessed cases when people chatted behind another's nick, and it went undetected.

The obvious solution is to stop taking it for granted - which, of course, you can use in THS horror as a the me (identity theft).

What is also very important is that the origin of the message is less important than content. For instance, look at the way a typical post looks: there's a quote (with or without the reference to the poster whose quote it is); then there's the relevant message; then there's the signature so that one could identify the poster of the message. Notice that the nick and avatar take place to the side, in 'bannerspace' - a blindspot for a typical reader.

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And the ability to perceive consciousness in other people is one of the most basic human capabilities, one found even in infants. According to one theory, its lack is a specific abnormal developmental path, called "autism."
No, it's a shortcut to save 'processing time'. Something people do to avoid working with all the complexities of reality. It's a form of stereotype, same as 'Jews have higher IQ than other Europeans' - it can be true, maybe even most of the time, but not always.
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Old 12-08-2009, 09:25 AM   #63
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

May I suggest taking the identity/uploading discussion off to its own thread? It's drifted a long way from the title of this one.

(And for a bonus, we could direct people there whenever it comes round again.)
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Old 12-08-2009, 09:32 AM   #64
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

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Originally Posted by Phil Masters View Post
May I suggest taking the identity/uploading discussion off to its own thread? It's drifted a long way from the title of this one.

(And for a bonus, we could direct people there whenever it comes round again.)
I see that as a good thing to do. Sorry.
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Old 12-08-2009, 11:53 PM   #65
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

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Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert View Post
And just why should humans fall ill, grow old, and die? Why should we be content to live with all the weaknesses of the human condition? If all those weaknesses are really part of a grand divine plan, then you might as well join the Amish because we have tried to circumvent them for centuries now.
For the record, the Amish are more than happy to take advantage of modern medical care. It's possible they'd balk at real life extension but I have no idea.

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Of course. Other animals do it, too.
But they do not create new forms of life except by evolving into them over megayears.
Breeding has made some dramatic changes over kiloyears or less. We don't even know for sure what the base plant of maize was. Dogs... can still breed with wolves, if the sizes match, but we've made some rather dramatic changes. A bioconservative should probably think what's been done to dogs to be rather horrific, really: tiny chihuahuas, giant Great Danes, parts of the natural wolf behavior program hypertrophied to make pointers, setts, sheepdogs, etc.

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Earth's carrying capacity isn't indefinite. It's already getting overpopulated by now. Dying is what life does - why should someone want to become immortal? (That is a point I seriously don't understand. Even the Afterlife I believe in imho isn't really a selling point.)
Carrying capacity can be preserved through expansion into space or through having fewer children. Dying is what multicellular organisms generally do, probably due to entropy -- on time scales ranging from a few weeks to 6000 years. Bacteria and protists are another matter -- and one could just as well say that living is what life does.

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Creating Übermenschen is a way of escapism. It has nothing to do with divine plans: If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen and don't cheat.
Accepting your weaknesses and dealing with them is strength, cheating isn't. If humanity can't manage to survive in microgravity without serious sports, do the sports or settle on a world massive enough to not create problems.
Your definition of cheating seems completely arbitrary. Our "dealing with weaknesses" *is* cheating from the POV of most other organisms, or Social Darwinists. Wearing clothes to deal with cold? Cheating! Eyeglasses, painkillers, antibiotics? Cheating! Take aspirin for your headaches? Cheater!
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Old 12-08-2009, 11:58 PM   #66
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

My own two cents on identity: indexing is valid but forkable. If I make a copy of me, both the copy and the normal continuation of me are me. They are not, however, each other. My memories, personality, and my guilt if any, are inherited by both, but any crimes one or the other commits obviously don't directly impinge on the other. (Though one might view the other with suspicion about what it might do!)

A backup is immortality for the me making the backup. It is not immortality for the later me who got killed while rock climbing, prompting the activation of the backup. We don't have a good word or concept for what it *is* for the later me -- what it is to die knowing that a younger self will appear to fill your shoes.
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Old 12-09-2009, 12:06 AM   #67
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

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A backup is immortality for the me making the backup. It is not immortality for the later me who got killed while rock climbing, prompting the activation of the backup. We don't have a good word or concept for what it *is* for the later me -- what it is to die knowing that a younger self will appear to fill your shoes.
Sure we do: Reproduction. Asexual organisms do it all the time.

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Old 12-09-2009, 12:11 AM   #68
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

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Sure we do: Reproduction. Asexual organisms do it all the time.

Bill Stoddard
With genetic memory, no less.
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Old 12-09-2009, 12:24 AM   #69
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

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Sure we do: Reproduction. Asexual organisms do it all the time.

Bill Stoddard
There's something to that analogy. OTOH, we don't have anything for the subjective experience of that, bacteria not being very verbose. And what they do isn't the same: there's no backup there, just forking. This would be the rock-climber falling knowing that someone else was out there with his old memories plus some new experiences, as opposed to knowing that a pure earlier self would activate. And of course this 'reproduction' is a lot different from usual human reproduction, so if you just call it reproduction the word will have to shift meaning.
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Old 12-09-2009, 07:47 AM   #70
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Default Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?

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Originally Posted by mindstalk View Post
There's something to that analogy. OTOH, we don't have anything for the subjective experience of that, bacteria not being very verbose. And what they do isn't the same: there's no backup there, just forking. This would be the rock-climber falling knowing that someone else was out there with his old memories plus some new experiences, as opposed to knowing that a pure earlier self would activate. And of course this 'reproduction' is a lot different from usual human reproduction, so if you just call it reproduction the word will have to shift meaning.
Yes, but human reproduction is only one type. There is reproduction of bacteria, as you note. In THS there is human cloning, which is different from ordinary human reproduction but is still classed as reproduction. And of course we use "reproduction" for making multiple copies of a work of art, too.

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