12-24-2017, 10:02 PM | #41 | |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
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Then the Time Traveler goes further forward, to a time when Man and his degenerate descendants are long gone and the world is dying. None of it ever mattered, no matter what heights Man reached before the decline began, it's all as it if never happened. It never mattered.
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12-25-2017, 01:27 AM | #42 | |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
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12-25-2017, 02:22 AM | #43 |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
Most such transhuman stories make inhuman = inhumane. I don't see that as a necessary outcome. Likely with anything progressing from an evolved state such humans and our creations, but not absolutely certain.
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12-27-2017, 08:56 PM | #44 | |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
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In each case, the transhuman power was almost surely correct in this evaluation. So you could argue that they were also applying moral ethics. But from the POV of the Atlanteans, or the Velantians, or any of countless other races and peoples, the Arisians look less benevolent. Ditto the subjects of the God-Emperor Leto II, who reigned over a fairly restrictive empire for thousands of years. He was trying to prevent the eventual extinction of the human race, in the near-term historically, though still thousands of years away. But he conquered whole worlds, wiped out entire nations, and enforced a medieval-level life on the commoners for millennia. Leto was not simply a pragmatist, he was genuinely trying to prevent extinction by the least bad route available, but that 'least bad' route was pretty harshly bad from the POV of a mortal. My point, though, is that from the POV of the mortal man, it can be very, very hard to tell the difference between a transhuman acting for the greater good and a transhuman being a monster. The more 'transhuman' the transhuman is, the harder it is to tell the difference. A creature who is just moderately more than human is one thing, but the bigger the gap the harder it is to tell.
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12-28-2017, 01:51 AM | #45 | |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
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12-28-2017, 03:11 AM | #46 |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
Virtually no human in history believed they were doing evil.
"You just don't understand" is always their cry when stopped.
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12-29-2017, 07:51 PM | #47 | |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
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That's the unnerving part.
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12-29-2017, 10:15 PM | #48 |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
Even if they accept that superhuman minds exist and can predict such things, transhuman demigods could always be lying.
And honesty is not generally proved with displays of force or intelligence.
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12-29-2017, 11:40 PM | #49 |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
Exactly. There's no way for the mortals in question to know.
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12-30-2017, 08:59 AM | #50 | |
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Re: The best Transhuman scii-fi novels?
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So it's not that transhuman moralities are necessarily in comprehensible, but rather that in the prominent examples of incomprehensibility, the authors have deliberately picked a system of ethics that produces wildly different results depending on the intelligence level of the wielder, and that is very opaque to lower intelligence levels, since it relies so heavily on calculations and predictive ability . . . and has a helping of "the outcome will change if the targets of an influence understand how they're being influenced, so I'll deliberately keep them in the dark". |
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