Month: July 2014

could you explain what a transhumanist is (if you haven’t before)

towardsagentlerworld:

cyborgbutterflies:

A transhumanist is a person who accepts the ideological values and goals described as transhumanist. This doesn’t explain much by itself so let me explain those (sort of summarizing this here).

Life over Death/Health over Disease: Although some “clever” people try to argue for it, it is easy to see that death – even “natural” death – is very bad. It forever annihilates everything a person is and brings great sadness and grief to others.

Transhumanists consider death as an enemy in general, and hope to achieve a radical extension of human lifespans and healthspans through technology.

Even if physical limits or the like ultimately it impossible to have actual deathlessness, it does not mean we can live much longer than we do now. And we want to be healthy and happy at an old age, too. Not decaying in a hospital bed. We hold such a change in the current situation to be desirable.

Now, for some reason this kind of reasoning has been culturally coded as villainous, but the arguments about that are for another post, I’m using this one to just explain what transhumanism is.

Have a quote I posted a while ago on this topic:

“There is no glory, no beauty in death. Only loss. It does not have meaning. I will never see my loved ones again. They are permanently lost to the void. If this is the natural order of things, then I reject that order. I burn here my hopelessness, I burn here my constraints. By my hand, death shall fall. And if I fail, another shall take my place … and another, and another, until this wound in the world is healed at last.”

Overcoming human limitations: All humans could theoretically be improved in some ways. We grow old, we forget things, we are physically unimpressive relative to other animals, our minds are extremely prone to bias…

Transhumanists also hope to use technology to grant the possibility to improve our conditions and be happier. There are a few ways in which this is already happening, even.

Morphological Freedom: This one is important. We believe that in general people should have the freedom to do what they wish with their bodies. Individuals can think very differently and have different goals.

For example, one person could want to use technology to use like an elf, another could want to use it to become smarter, a third could want to remain as they are. Under this principle, all of them deserve the freedom to follow their individual goals.

This value is even important enough to overrule the first. We may consider death to be bad, but transhumanists in general seem to be in favor of letting people have the freedom to end their lives if they really really want to.

This is important, because one of the uninformed criticisms people make to those who wish for immortality is “But what if you get bored and just want to die some day?”

Then one can answer “That won’t be for a very long time, but if I succeed in spreading my values, it won’t be an issue since I can just do that once I want to.”

Wide Access: If human enhancement technology appears but is restricted to a tiny elite, that is not the preferred outcome. Transhumanists want to give access to everyone who wants it.

We don’t want to just avoid death, we want to deny it to everyone who does not wish for it. We truly want people to stop suffering and dying involuntarily.

I notice that a lot of the people who criticize transhumanism as some sort of rich libertarian thing don’t seem to be aware that we actually want this sort of arrangement, which is pretty odd since it is also one of those big things you notice from reading pretty much any of the influential transhumanists…

We do want everyone to be able to improve themselves, be healthy, and have longer lives. It is more fair, it increases the chances that our loved ones and us will benefit, it reduces global suffering much more than limiting to an elite would…

We also do think that, unless great efforts are made against this, human enhancement will eventually reach everyone. If history teaches us anything, it is that new technology usually does start out as nice toys for the rich, but then the price drops and everyone can enjoy it. It has happened many times before.

Hope for the future: Another trend we notice through history is that, in general, things have been getting much better over time.

This is the hope that the trend continues. But hope is a lousy defense.

We also try to promote work based on this hope. Work to prevent global catastrophe and improve people’s lives.

The future is to be protected before it can be enjoyed. The present does not treat everyone nicely, so we want to help those who need it. Nature does not care about us, but we do.

Do my transhumanist followers have more to add?

This is a really excellent explanation. 

hugtherobots:

I know it’s trendy to fight the system and cry that we are all becoming slaves of technology, but this attitude overlooks that computers and phones are tools for communicating. When someone thinks I’m an idiot smiling at a machine, I’m actually smiling at my girlfriend who is 10000 miles away and whom I would have never met if not for these newfangled electronics. As they say: when the wise man points to the moon, the fool looks at the finger.

This is a topic that I’ve been wanting to tackle for a while now; much credit to this excellent post for bringing it to the front of my brain.

YES. THIS.

hot-gay-rationalist:

Man, Avatar is a great show and all but

…

you’re a nation of waterbenders in a fortress of ice surrounded by water being attacked by ships

I’ve seen Katara make giant waves by herself

I cannot imagine that you’d have a hard time simply sinking all of those ships

give me an AU where the benders are actually smart about their bending and the fire nation has to be ridiculously clever

give me an AU where the air nomads were a force to be reckoned with because they can take your breath away when they’re 10

give me an AU where benders are absolutely terrifying, and the meekest of bendings – fire! who cares about fire! – has to be insanely, horrifyingly smart to get the upper hand

IMO, the air benders weren’t unable, but mostly unwilling to defend themselves due to their teachings of the value of life and peace. I mean… Aang is unwilling to kill even the fire lord, I can’t imagine him using his bending to take someone’s breath away. That would be like Katara’s blood bending – possible, but considered too sinister to use.

And I think the waterbenders’ abilities are range-dependent, which means they might not have been able to create huge waves at the necessary distance.

scienceyoucanlove:

Evolution is awesome!  A native group of people living on the Soloman Islands northeast of Australia called Melanesians is famous for their beautiful dark skin and naturally blonde hair. 

The odd combination has got scientists wondering about how such a color combo develops over time. According to the Global Financial Newswires, many scientists have long thought that their blonde hair was a result of a diet high in fish, perhaps bleaching by the sun and salt water, or a reminder of the island’s historic relations with people of European descent.

In fact, the blonde Melanesians have blonde that is unique solely to them. According to the study in which scientists compared 43 blonde hair islanders to 42 dark hair islanders, blonde Melanesians have a variant of a native gene called TYRP1 that plays an important role in the melanin biosynthetic pathway. This variant is completely separate from what causes blonde hair in Europeans, and doesn’t even exist in the European genetic set.

What’s truly beautiful in this fascinating discovery, as so perfectly stated by the study author Sean Myles, a geneticist at Nova Scotia Agricultural College, is that “it’s a great example of convergent evolution, where the same outcome is brought about by completely different means.”

Found on http://tinyurl.com/6u8kwhl

source 

Woah :O

pocineurope:

josiephone:

josiephone:

Okay guys, I’m going to get serious for a minute. 
If you’re not in Ireland at the moment, you may not know about the situation regarding the laws on abortion. It is completely illegal, even in cases of rape, incest, fatal foetal abnormality, and other such things. 

Women have died in this country because inability to have an abortion put strain on their health. A woman who wasn’t even Irish begged for an abortion because her child was about to die in the womb. The complications arising from her case resulted in her contracting septicaemia, organ failure, and tragically dying. 
In 1992, the X Case took place, involving a 14-year-old girl, knowns only as x, who became pregnant after being raped. Instead of offering help to the girl, who because suicidal, they prevented her from travelling out of the country for an abortion.

Any Irish woman* who needs an abortion has to travel to the UK, which means if you don’t have the money, you’re out of luck. What does the Irish Government have to say about this?

Well, recently the UN confronted the Government about our abortion laws, pointing out that we were breaking Human Rights laws, and that the Government treated Irish women* like vessels.

Joan Burton, the Tánaiste, said that there will be no referendum on abortion in this Government’s lifetime. They’re literally saying that they don’t care enough to rectify Human Rights breaches.

I am NOT a vessel, and neither are you. Make your voice heard. Come to the March for Choice on the 27th of September in Dublin. 

Never give up, never stay quiet.

This has only been up since last night and LADS, the NOTES. Keep spreading the word!

Important!
-Dee