Hey faggots, let's talk transhumanism.
If it were possible to have a limb replaced by a mechanical one, would you consider it?
Would you consider becoming a cyborg?
Would you consider getting a [spoiler]mechanical benis[/spoiler]?
And do you consider there being a moral difference between mechanical enhancement of the human body and gene therapy?
>If it were possible to have a limb replaced by a mechanical one, would you consider it?
should only be allowed if you lose said limb
>Would you consider becoming a cyborg?
why not
>Would you consider getting a [spoiler]mechanical benis[/spoiler]?
nah
>And do you consider there being a moral difference between mechanical enhancement of the human body and gene therapy?
Depends how much we know about it. Tampering with genes without full understanding of how they work is not unethical. It's idiotic.
I don't have a problem with it. The only issue I see is like in Deus Ex if more advanced models of augmentations come out, leaving the last generation obselete. If I were to do it, I'd need to know if I was future proofed. Furthermore what exactly do the parts allow me to do better? I imagine having your limbs replaced would be expensive, especially if you need new replacements every few years to avoid being outdated. We already have this problem with our phones, I wouldn't want it to happen to my own body, so it'd better be worth it. Extra strength isn't that important, you can go to the Gym for that for next to nothing.
So if I could afford it, knew I was future proofed, and it was actually worth cutting off parts of me and replacing them with robotic ones, not just to look cool then sure, I'm game.
I'm assuming it would be cheaper to run mechanical bodies than farming tons of food and meat. Inorganic matter also has the benefit of not developing cancer or disease.
It's quite possible in the future you could trade off the costs of replacing obsoleted limbs for the longevity they might give the remnants of your actual body.
Can you imagine being 80 and still being able to walk upright and do all the physical things you can do now? That's a luxury no human being has had so far.
I am a cyborg. I have fake teeth that helps me eat. My ears are enhanced with electronics so I can hear. My eyes require lenses to see properly. Without added technology my life would be a fuzzy quiet life of oatmeal. I love being a cyborg.
That is definately true. Although I doubt society would jump right onto the cyborg bandwagon however, so the first of the first would find it hard to run themselves, just like people with electric cars today. I suppose we'd just have to hope it catches on quickly.
>Would you consider getting a [spoiler]mechanical benis[/spoiler]?
I've got one. It's a Coloplast Titan.
As well, I have cheeks and a chin implant, and I'm probably going to need a hip joint replaced sometime in the next few years. This year I'm going to try to get internal contact lens installed.
I think that you're talking about external hardware though. Me, I don't care what parts that I've got on the inside as long as I can pass for human on the outside.
That's the beauty of it, it's not the same as with electric cars.
Electric cars do roughly the same thing as regular cars, they move you somewhere. The market is pretty much the same for both. With artificial limbs however you have amputees and heavy industry that can get a direct benefit from them that nothing else gives.
My guess is artificial limbs that perform better than our own would come from the medical and military industry, before being picked up by companies and ultimately individuals.
> it were possible to have a limb replaced by a mechanical one, would you consider it?
Fuck yes
>Would you consider becoming a cyborg?
Fuck fuck yes
>Would you consider getting a [spoiler]mechanical benis[/spoiler]?
Depends
>And do you consider there being a moral difference between mechanical enhancement of the human body and gene therapy?
No, science is science, we have been using it for years, just because something is more advanced dose not mean it is bad, now give me my fucking lazer eyes
>all those implants
Wait why, a/s/l?
>should only be allowed
Who gets to decide what I do with my own body? You? The government? What is morally incorrect about a limb replacement that would require that oversight, in your opinion? Can a person truly be free with no bodily autonomy? If a government gets to decide what you do with your body, what you put into your body, what medicines you're allowed to have, whether or not you're allowed to self-terminate.. It's illegal to take your own life, although you don't have a choice in your birth.
How is it morally correct to govern over people's bodies, but it's morally incorrect to want to improve your body with technology?
>you have amputees and heavy industry that can get a direct benefit from them
Sorry, in that situation an exoskeleton makes shit tons more sense. I'm not about to ruin what is undoubtedly an expensive prosthetic when I could use a wearable forklift. Also keep in mind your shiny metal arm has to pass the weight of what it's holding through your puny human skeleton.
Wow, that's a good point actually. Although why not just use robots, which have the added benefit of being able to work without question or any real ethics or rights (without human-like AI)? I can definately see the uses in the military however where the soldiers insight is essential.
The upfront cost of the operation is of course the most important factor in how successfully something takes on. Computers, for example went a similar route where they were used in the miltary, before making their way to offices before being used in the home as costs went down. But I do think, especially in heavy industry cyborgs are threatened by all out robots. Boston dynamics for example can pretty effectively now build robots that walk upright on two legs stably, in 10 years they might have perfected human movement entirely. Although I'm sure its cheaper to replace an arm with a robotic one, than purchase something as advanced as a robot to do tasks that aren't straightforward like a production line.
Perhaps there will be a fusion of the two options, with cyborg workers together with robots performing tasks that suit each role.
True, but the incentives to create a functional artificial hand, combined with the material research that goes into making affordable, yet insanely useful exoskeletons could eventually end up in feasible full-body modifications.
The point is, there are benefits to better than human limbs from multiple angles, unlike electric cars, which weren't directly beneficial to anyone. Therefore the switch to cyborgs is not something that needs to happen with consumers first, which will make widespread adoption somewhat easier.
59 year old male, Southwest USA.
I'm going to blast this in shorthand, tell me if I descend into total gibberish and I'll try to fix it.
Me, then age 44. Have little boy with special needs. My Dr. tells me that because I'm almost 400 pounds, have super high cholesterol and hadn't gotten my blood pressure under control for a decade that I will be dead relatively soon and leave my son without a dad. Fuck that.
I have DS weight loss surgery, drop a ton of weight and start working out. I realize that I've got enough loose skin to make a leather sofa.
I find a kick ass plastic surgeon. Body lift: excess skin and old connective tissue no longer needed as fat cell matrix are removed. Face still has way too much skin.
I think the real issue with transhumanism is the chance we obsolete ourselves through automation and advanced computing or maybe even AI. Right now there's still jobs that need a hands-on with a live human being, but a lot of those are gradually disappearing. And if there is no economic drive to improve the human body other than straightforward longevity, then chances are it's not going to happen.
you're a moron, OP, for reasons unknown to most.
>If it were possible to have a limb replaced by a mechanical one, would you consider it?
No, because mechanical devices suck. They require maintenance, they require inherently ineffective energy sources and they have no autoregulation mechanisms.
OTOH, with sufficiently sophisticated technology, you could dynamically modify the DNA of a living organism to have a tensile strength of muscle and tendons an order of magnitude higher, while hypertrophicaly increasing the size of muscle cells. Or you could make your neurotransmitters be an order of magnitude more reactive. And so on.
>Would you consider becoming a cyborg?
No, because cyborgs will become obsolete before they even get trendy. Imagine yourself running a 80286 CPU today.
>Would you consider getting a [spoiler]mechanical benis[/spoiler]?
No, because I have more inches than I need to fuck people of both sexes successfully.
>And do you consider there being a moral difference between mechanical enhancement of the human body and gene therapy?
No. The difference is with the road you take - either you really change yourself, by changing your genetic makeup, or you make yourself a pitiful cripple.
>ITT people who don't realise that cyborgization is the poor man's version of gene remake.
>inb4 I'm a faggot
sign me the fuck up
Totally. Ford in the 20's went a long way to helping americas unemployment issues with the creation of production lines. These are all handled by machines now. The day it's cheaper to stack shelves and flip burgers with robots 24/7, the job market is going to suffer dearly.
check'd
After 50 years old yeah of course. Human body gets old too much, cyborg can live for centuries.
it's still cheaper to breed & pay off some Hindu or Chinese people to do your work for you, than to design and produce a robot that would do that.
or just go and get some slaves. they breed by themselves, you can force them to produce their own food, and generally speaking have been verified by millennia of trial & error as an effective work force.
One word: pyramids.
tl;dr your argument is invalid.
I've yet to see a mechanical device that works 10 years without excessive maintenance; you're speaking of centuries. The question is: are you misguided, or just delusional?
continued...
I tell the surgeon I've seen his work, I trust him and that he can do anything he wants with my face as long as I look normal. The guy is a fucking Michelangelo. Cheek, chin implant, brow lift, face lift. God damn, I end up on the more handsome side of normal appearances.
Become gym rat. Take up fencing, Got rather good. Fenced for ten years until my shitty posture fucked up the left hip socket and the nerves feeding my left leg.
Had to have mesh installed to fix twin hernias. Years of high blood pressure killed Mr. Happy's ability to stay erect, so I had a Coloplast Titan installed. Interesting to say the least. 24x7 boners are completely possible, and somehow I gained an extra inch and a half length.
Who wants to live for 10 years in the cyborg body.
Cyborgs are made for a long run it is part of the deal.
Biological matter is an inferior to machinery. AI will outstrip humans in about 13 years, then the real fun begins.
What an age we live in.
Is it truly though? unless you actually capture and force slaves to work, they need a wage, and breaks, and living quarters, and some form of morale. Even if you have slaves you need to hire people to force them to work, and they need the same.
robots, just plug them in and they'll work 24/7 nonstop, usually with more effficiency than slaves ever had. No slave owner ever produced thousands of cars a day, or anything of the same vein as we have with robots now.
As soon as the upfront costs become viable, robots will rule manufacturing.
You don't get the point, user. Mechanical devices are prone to breakage. Everybody with even an Eng degree knows that - and that's exactly why we replace mechanical and electromechanical devices with electrical and electronic devices whereever possible.
Have you ever took care of an engine running at least 8h/day? I did. Belive me or not, but it would be plainly impossible to make it work *a year* without constant maintenance. The problem with implants is that, after going anywhere deeper than simple ocular or aural implants, your get severe immune responses; when you start to introduce mechanical devices, you have to compensate for mechanical wear, heat emissions, part breakage, metal fatigue etc. Not only no biological organism won't be able to repair any damage in cybernetic prosthetic - it will actively try to destroy it.
Again, play DEx 1; there's a reason agents with cybernetic prosthetics (Herman, Anna etc.) are called (let me paraphrase) "heaps of rusty junk" there. Nanomodification is OK, but it still has to work *with* human biology, not *against* it (i.e. the mod agents have to be at least mostly biological).
>they need a wage, and breaks, and living quarters, and some form of morale.
Nope. Many civilizations relied on slaves for thousands of years and haven't provided those, without any significant revolts.
>Even if you have slaves you need to hire people to force them to work, and they need the same.
The amount of workforce generated by slaves is excessive to the degree that it can support those who create it and there's still left. Otherwise slavery would self-collapse - yet it doesn't.
Also, you don't take into account the fact that any sufficiently sophisticated AI is also inclined to "revolt", i.e. stop doing the work that *humans* deem important in favour of work that *it* considers important.
> they'll work 24/7 nonstop
nope. Again, I assume you never worked with real machines, let alone a robot. Robots break. Robots require maintenance and supervision.
>No slave owner ever produced thousands of cars a day, or anything of the same vein as we have with robots now.
Ever read about Egyptian pyramids? Then please read; especially the part about *how much building them would cost today*. You're missing the point that our entire civilization was build on different forms of slavery; and, while functional robotics are available for at least 50 years, there doesn't seem to be a real drive to replace cheap human labour with them.
>As soon as the upfront costs become viable, robots will rule manufacturing.
It won't. You can't make a robot cheaper than a human; otherwise Africa would have died out decades ago.
>If it were possible to have a limb replaced by a mechanical one, would you consider it?