
Transhumanism Is a Dead End (2017) - onemoresoop
http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/essays/transhumanism.htm
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age_bronze
I always failed to understand what the "consciousness isn't local" can
predict. I mean, come on. You either take the egocentric view that you're the
only conscious being in the universe, or you realize other humans are similar
enough to you that the only conclusion is that they are all similarly
conscious.

From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really all
there is. Just look at all the brain malfunctions. You've got people
forgetting from dementia, so clearly the brain has most of your memories.
You've got people with all sorts of weird phenomena from strokes.

Even if you take the most egocentric worldview, you can still drink alcohol
and watch and realize how your internal logic and consistency and personality
is changed by an external chemical. I can't see any possible conclusion from
that other than the fact that this brain really is all you are.

Suggesting there's anything non-materialistic in consciousness means there's
an aspect of human consciousness that remains immutable under all internal
brain malfunctions, under drugs, under different education, under different
environment, under different circumstances. I've yet to find a single
counterexample.

~~~
skissane
> From there you don't need to look far to realize that the brain is really
> all there is. Just look at all the brain malfunctions. You've got people
> forgetting from dementia, so clearly the brain has most of your memories.
> You've got people with all sorts of weird phenomena from strokes.

We observe many correlations between the neurological and the mental, and it
seems likely that in the years and decades to come we will learn many more.
Materialists argue that this is evidence that the mental is a product of the
neurological. But what about the idealist alternative, that the neurological
is a product of the mental? An observed correlation between two phenomena
cannot, by itself, tell us which of the two is more fundamental.

~~~
etrautmann
What?

Each of the provided examples from the parent comment are causal perturbations
to the system that establish necessity (although perhaps not sufficiency)
beyond a pure correlation. If you lesion a part of the brain, you lose
associated "mental" faculties. If you perturb the system via disease or
chemicals, you observe a corresponding change in the mental state. This is
evidence of a one way interaction beyond correlation.

~~~
skissane
> This is evidence of a one way interaction beyond correlation.

You appear to be saying that non-mental event A temporally precedes mental
event B, therefore the non-mental must be the cause of the mental, rather than
the mental being the cause of the non-mental.

However, "you perturb the system via disease or chemicals" is not non-mental.
There is a mental act of will to do perform such a perturbation, and a mental
awareness of such perturbation being performed.

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ebg13
> _Transhumanism is based on a wholly materialistic conception of reality. In
> effect it says, “What we now understand about the mind and consciousness is
> all there is to it; there’s nothing left but to fill in the details of how
> the brain works.”_

Woops, I detect a straw man being set up! The view in opposition of "we
already know everything" is _not_ "woo must be true", but merely "evidence
rules".

> _For millennia the majority of the human population has believed..._

...that the sun was pushed across the sky by a great scarab beetle. Oh
wait...that isn't what you were going to say? Oh. So maybe believing things
doesn't make them true.

~~~
burtonator
> For millennia the majority of the human population has believed...

argument from antiquity.

------
mcguire
" _For millennia the majority of the human population has believed that the
mind is more than a biological machine, that it extends in some inexplicable
way beyond the individual body both in space (ESP) and in time (continued
consciousness after death). The scientific evidence for the former can be
denied only by those with closed minds;..._ "

I'm not one to dispute that transhumanism is an unspectacular idea, but....

Ok, fine. I have a closed mind. If you can consistently do something clear and
visibile that cannot otherwise be done, I'll take you seriously. Until then, I
won't. Sorry. Pick me some Powerball numbers or something. Tell me where the
hell my old copies of The Fantasy Trip stuff is hiding. Fling Randi James into
an ocean. _Something._

~~~
zone411
I stopped reading exactly there.

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delecti
At least as far as I managed to stomach, this reeks of "woo". It uses vague
wording and suggestion to avoid making concrete supernatural claims, but
supernatural premises seem to be the only real arguments it poses against the
idea of transhumanism.

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raws
I think the transhumanism that she talks about is very specific in the way
that it is one that believes in the capacity to upload consciousness in some
sort of computer hardware which wholly differentiate itself from transhumanism
that sees more simple improvements like say eyesight repairs through hardware
augmentations which is the more realistic one.

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dvt
Transhumanism is a fairy tale, but I do appreciate the pointed critique of
materialism. I always found it odd that the majority of mainstream
philosophers are materialists (apart from a few standouts like Chalmers).

Even if I wasn't a Christian, I'd find materialism to be absurdly reductive.

~~~
m1el
I would contest "materialism being absurdly reductive" with a quote from
Feynman:

> I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t
> agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it
> is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this
> is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,”
> and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees
> is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be
> quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a
> flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I
> could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also
> have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one
> centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure,
> also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order
> to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can
> see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in
> the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions
> which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the
> awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

I think that even if science can reduce processes to simple understandable
components, this doesn't take away from everyday life.

The fact that a book consists of characters doesn't make it worse.

The fact that you're simply a specific configuration of atoms* doesn't devalue
you as a human being.

* or evolution of this configuration in time, but that's a story for another time

The fact that your neural system is entirely responsible for your thinking
(conscious and unconscious) doesn't make your mind less fascinating.

~~~
dvt
> The fact that your neural system is entirely responsible for your thinking
> (conscious and unconscious) doesn't make your mind less fascinating.

I think you're attacking a straw man here. I agree that the mind is
fascinating whether or not dualism is true. But at the same time, I think that
the kind of hand-waving materialists do when faced with qualia,
intentionality, and (what appears to be) objective morality is not very
convincing.

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microwavecamera
Good article and I totally agree. Besides when we look at all our intrepid
tech-bro "pioneers" that embrace transhumanism, it begs the obvious question.
Would you want to spend eternity with them? I, for one, welcome the sweet
release of death. It can't possibly be worse.

~~~
Dudenoso
Or you could just not interact with the people you don't want to interact
with.

I don't think any transhuman has a vision of transhumanity where you are
physically impossible to suicide or are forced to interact with certain
people.

~~~
microwavecamera
Who else would you be interacting with? You would only exist through our own
technology. You would solely exist in a predetermined state of "existence"
created by us. How would that be "transhuman"? It's just a lateral form of the
experience we create for ourselves now, just without the inconvenience of
objective reality and immediate consequence. We don't even understand the
state of our own existence. How can we move forward when we don't even know
where we are?

