From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Mon Dec 23 2002 - 15:42:19 MST
On Sat, Dec 21, 2002 at 10:33:12AM -0000, Steve wrote:
>
> Any notion of "transhuman" is fallacious! This is because of the law
> of the excluded middle. Evolution can be from (sub/pre-human) to
> (Homo Sapiens/ Human), and to (after/post-human) .... but at no
> stage is there a separate "trans" stage. Sure, you might get two or
> more classes co-existing at the same time, and individuals with traits
> from more than one category ... so an individual humanoid might
> be more regonisably human than post-human for example.
>
> We cannot meaningful aim to be "transhuman" .... only post-human.
Here's another possible coinage: anyone got anything to say about it?
Human: our basic genotype and phenotype, including extended phenotypic
traits such as culture, language, memetic exchange, tools ... but no
direct modification to our core genotype and phenotype.
Meta-human: us, plus neural prostheses, smart drugs, direct brain
interfaces, early uploading -- any degree of augmentation that gives us
heightened abilities by modifying our core genotype and phenotype, but
not actually deleting original human traits (other than inborn errors
of metabolism that can be corrected in phenotype if necessary).
Post-human: something derived from the meta-human platform that explicitly
omits some of the core human characteristics. (e.g.: it doesn't sleep,
ever, and all the neural circuitry associated with pain has been deleted
and replaced by some strange new damage control subsystem.)
-- Charlie
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