I'm tryna learn about posthumans (future humans)?

Question

I seem to be battling to find out where I can learn about posthumans and related things such as the simulation argument by nick bostrom, stories about posthumans and their behavior.

Answer 1

Could you mean transhumans? This is very popular right now. In 1998, philosophers Nick Bostrom and David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), an organization with a liberal democratic perspective. In 1999, the WTA drafted and adopted The Transhumanist Declaration. The Transhumanist FAQ, prepared by the WTA, gave formal definations of Transhumanism. See:

http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/01D1A2E9-9D52-4B2B-B9E7-680BEF9E5036/

This article offers a good overview of the subject:

http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm

For Nick Bostrom's work see this:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Transhumans.html

And finally, this is an interesting guide to debate about the issues in Post and Transhumanism:

http://www.trianglephilosophy.com/wiki/index.php/Transhumanism_Debate_Guide

Sorry if this is more than you wanted to know. I just find this stuff so interesting that I have trouble stopping.

Answer 2

I think the most interesting information about this sort of thing is found in "The Hedonistic Imperative" by David Pearce (mentioned above as the founder of the World Transhumanist Assocation).

It's book-length and details how humans were not made to be happy, but only to reproduce. He theorizes that using biotechnology, humans can be made genetically happy, with an inability to feel pain or suffering.

(And, if this sounds far-out, remember that in the 1800s, many people said that it was a natural thing for a woman to experience severe pain in childbirth and anesthesia was not how God intended things to be.) It seems quite possible that this is entirely feasible.

http://www.hedweb.org
That should give you plenty of food for thought! :)

Answer 3

A posthuman or post-human is a hypothetical future being whose capabilities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer human by current standards. A posthuman can also be described as the creature that results from a combination of radical human enhancement and natural evolution as humanity disperses into the universe. In these ways, the difference between the posthuman and other hypothetical sophisticated non-humans is that a posthuman was once a human, either in its lifetime or in the lifetimes of some or all of its direct ancestors. As such, a prerequisite for a posthuman is a transhuman, the point at which the human being begins surpassing his own limitations, but is still recognisable as a human person.

Posthumans could be a symbiosis of human and artificial intelligence, or uploaded consciousnesses, or the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound technological augmentations to a biological human, i.e. a cyborg. Some examples of the latter are redesigning the human organism using advanced nanotechnology or radical enhancement using some combination of technologies such as genetic engineering, psychopharmacology, life extension therapies, neural interfaces, advanced information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable or implanted computers, and cognitive techniques.

The term can also refer to the possibility of a technological singularity or that humanity or a segment of humanity could create or evolve into a "posthuman God".

As used in this article, "posthuman" does not refer to a conjectured future where humans are extinct or otherwise absent from the Earth. As with other species who diverge from one another, both humans and posthumans could continue to exist.

At what point does a human become posthuman? Steven Pinker, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of How the Mind Works, poses the following hypothetical:

"Surgeons replace one of your neurons with a microchip that duplicates its input-output functions. You feel and behave exactly as before. Then they replace a second one, and a third one, and so on, until more and more of your brain becomes silicon. Since each microchip does exactly what the neuron did, your behavior and memory never change. Do you even notice the difference? Does it feel like dying? Is some other conscious entity moving in with you?"

"stories about posthumans and their behavior"
Science fiction has depicted transhumanism in various forms for many years. The literature of science fiction contains many positive depictions of technologically enhanced human life, often set in utopian (especially techno-utopian) societies. However, science fiction's depictions of technologically enhanced humans or other posthuman beings frequently come with a cautionary twist. The more pessimistic scenarios include many dystopian tales of human bioengineering gone wrong.

Contemporary novels dealing with transhumanist themes that have stimulated broad discussion of these issues include The Beggar's Trilogy (1990-94) by Nancy Kress, Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood, and The Possibility of an Island (Eng. trans. 2006) by Michel Houellebecq, much of Greg Egan's work such as Permutation City (1994) and Diaspora (1997), The Bohr Maker (1995) by Linda Nagata, Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds and The Culture of Iain M. Banks are other popular examples of this type of literature.

Fictional depictions of transhumanist scenarios are also seen in other media, such as television series (the Ancients of Stargate SG-1), manga and anime (Ghost in the Shell), role-playing games (Rifts) and computer games (Deus Ex).

"Nick Bostrom"
Nick Bostrom (born Niklas Boström in 1973) is a philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on the anthropic principle. He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics (2000).

In addition to his prolific writing for academic and popular press, Bostrom makes frequent media appearances in which he talks about transhumanism-related topics such as cloning, artificial intelligence, mind uploading, cryonics, nanotechnology, and the simulation argument.

In 1998, Bostrom co-founded (with David Pearce) the World Transhumanist Association (an international non-profit membership organisation which advocates the ethical use of technology to enhance human capacities) (http://www.transhumanism.org/ ). In 2004, he co-founded (with James Hughes) the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (a non-profit techno-progressive think tank that seeks to contribute to understanding of the likely impact of "emerging technologies" on individuals and societies) (http://ieet.org/ ). Bostrom currently serves as the Chair of both organizations. In 2005 he was appointed Director of the newly created Oxford Future of Humanity Institute (http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/ ).

Answer 4

http://www.simulation-argument.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthuman_(Human_evolution) (and the external links section of the article)

good places to start. maybe I should start too, thanks you provoked thought