This is assuming a lot of things. Firstly that our bodies aren't already replacing parts over time. You think your arm is the same arm from when you were a teenager? Secondly, when medical technologies gets to the point where we can 3D print our parts then we won't be using cybernetics. Finally, our bodies can do this already and has done this before when you were born. The genes needed to regrow body parts just needs to be turned back on. Once we better learn how to manipulate genes then our organic body maybe superior to cybernetic replacements.
Brains, probably. A machine would have far less emotions due to no chemicals... At that point the discussion becomes heated, I suppose.
Isn't this what "Ghost in the Shell" is basically about? I mean this and future politics and future social/economic problems, but mostly the where does the human end and machine begin when it comes to cyborgs.
I think once you start being able to have experiences no human could possibly have. Like for example if I see someone pinned under something heavy and I am able to use my cybernetics to lift the object up and pull the person out, I am not having a human experience. Instead, I am having an augmented human experience, doing something no other human could ever do. I do think it's a sliding scale though, the more you give up, the less and less real human experiences you will have, thus the less and less human you will be. With the end being you no longer being able to be genetically identified as human.
The Right isn't universally bad. The Left isn't universally good. The Left isn't universally bad. The Right isn't universally good. Legal doesn't equal moral. Moral doesn't equal legal. Illegal doesn't equal immoral. Immoral doesn't equal illegal.
Have a nice day.
I suppose you could say that having a super-human body that can't be created by genes would make that person post-human or non-human. However it would still operate based on the same cognitive paradigm as everyone else and so it would simply be engaged in an endless process of problem solving, the only difference between a super-human and a human is the speed of problem solving, which is obviously faster for a creature with a superior body.
Likely we'll destroy our civilization long before that question has to be answered, or outside factors will keep our march towards a dystopian body horror future mercifully short.
It very much is. It's normally triggered by outside influences that cause us to adapt to our surroundings.
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So when someone breaks a record for a human achievement they are no longer a normal human? Say someone like Usain Bolt, arguably the fastest man alive. Very few, if any can run as fast as he can.
MMO-Champ the place where calling out trolls get you into more trouble than trolling.
I am more so talking about cybernetics specifically. When getting into just biology things tend to get a lot murkier. It's easier to define human against cyber humans, a lot harder when it comes to humans against slightly better humans. Usain Bolt, as far as I know, has no cybernetics and is still human by my definition.
The thing is... Much of who we are is defined by our psychical nature.
Sensory experiences, hormones, pheromones, etc.
Our body per say doesn't "feel" anything, our brain does, the body is just the detection equipment.
Who we are isn't really defined by what we experience the world with and what we interpret that input with (that could be a machine or an organic body) but rather by how we experience things.
All humans in that sense share a common framework. If I say I'm hurt, in love, cold, happy, itchy, depressed, my arm, my leg, my tongue etc we are largely talking about a shared reference framework, it what makes us human, at least in the sense that we can identify others as also human.
If the reference framework drifts too far apart we would be too alien to each other to see ourselves as "the same".
Thus someone who is let's say 90% machine (which parts don't really matter) has a body that looks like a metallic octopus, "sees" in ultra sound and ultra violet, hears radio waves, uses electromagnetic sensors to "touch" and uses accelerometers to keep his balance and has a body that no longer produces endorphins, cortisol, adrenaline can no longer realistically interpret the world in a way that makes any sense to a "human" nor could he understand how a human experiences reality.
(Not to drift into religious topics but it is also the reason why the concept of an excorporeal soul that still preserves a continuous sense of self doesn't make much sense. Unless the "soul" exists in a Matrix like simulation.)
Could they still be technically defined as human? Maybe. Would we see them as one tho? Would it see us as one?
But if you build a machine that is 100% machine, but "feels" human and thus also acts within the same framework we identify as human (has the same limitations, fears, experiences etc) we would, unless we willingly chose to, be able to consider them human.
Humans have a surprising capacity for de-humanizing other humans for whatever reasons (see Racism, Xenophobia, Sectarian violence), so just because you technically qualify as being human in every imaginable way, it doesn't actually guarantee you would be seen as one.
Last edited by Mihalik; 2020-04-04 at 04:11 AM.
I'd argue your last paragraph contradicts your hypothesis. We already dehumanize each other, so that dehumanization isn't occurring because of any necessary fundamental difference, it's just happening because of normal human bigotry.
Sure, that might be the bigotry du jour, but it's still just about humans trying to argue that other humans aren't humans and thus can be abused and oppressed. We've been at that for thousands of years; that's not anything new.
The point I was trying to make is that even when "something's" humanity ought to be self evident and undeniable we are capable of not recognizing it. As the drift increases and becomes actually tangible, the inability to recognize the "other" as human would increase exponentially.
As I said before what can technically qualify as human is indeterminate (and highly subjective), but what we would likely identify as "human" would be quite narrowly defined by our working reference frames.
Actually... As Robocop keeps getting mentioned here. Think back to the 2nd film, our hero Robocop is a largely humanoid thing, really it just looks like a person in a metal suit, it even has sufficient facial features for us to be be able to read emotional responses off of it, this makes him/it relatable, we can empathize with him/it. Although we could never really imagine how it "feels" to be it/him, we focus on the bits and pieces of him we can relate to.
Now look at the machine villains, their bodies drifted sufficiently from the acceptable human framework that it becomes impossible (or much harder) to empathize with them. Yes they are the villains, but by making them much less human than Robocop it also becomes easier for us to cheer their dismemberment and destruction.
Last edited by Mihalik; 2020-04-04 at 04:44 AM.
Which defeats the point.
You acknowledge that what defines one as "human" is indeterminate and highly subjective, and thus increasing cybernetic replacement does not in any way provide an argument for a reduction of humanity. That's just one random anti-clank bigot's opinion, by your own argument.