[p2p-research] Drone hacking

[Michel Bauwens]

Machines and AI will continue to amplify and improve on our externalized
powers, as they've always done, only more so. They are and will be
especially useful in their capacity to replace hard and rote activities,
both mental and physical, but they will not replace us as living intentional
and social beings, nor take away the need for ethical and complex judgement,
though they will offer us a vastly better informational basis to do so.

This is only transhuman in the sense that it transcends the possibilities of
isolated humans that cannot rely on such collective amplification.

Technology is us, not separated, and it doesn't dissolve the necessity for a
critical appropriation, or refusal, of certain of these amplications. In
addition, technology is not 'neutral', but the product of contradictory
human drives and intentions, and therefore a terrain of struggle and
bifurcations.

Transhumanism as a movement is probably the worst possible technology
politics, driven as it is by unconscious religious desires for escaping the
human condition, simplistic and reductionist technological determinism,
unwilling to see the larger political economy in which technological
development occurs, and beholden as many of its researchers are to the
military-industrial complex.

Ryan, the silly beliefs of transhumanists are not salesmanship, but true
articles of faith, unfortunately.

Michel

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

>  On 12/24/09, Tere Vadén <tere.vaden at uta.fi> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> At the end of the day the human brain may be a quantum device, but for
>>> the purposes of behavioral predictability it is indistinguishable from
>>> a classical computing device. It is almost an orthogonal argument.
>>>
>>
>> No it is not. Like you pointed out at the beginning, one crucial question
>> is which way Occam's razor is supposed to cut. If one would want to argue
>> for the view that the razor should cut away classical determinism, one
>> supporting observation could be that the behavioral predictability that you
>> speak about does not exist, other than as an idealization. So the claim
>> about full deterministic predictability is exactly the kind of unnecessary
>> complication that Occam is talking about. We can do science, more simple
>> science, without the claim.
>
>
>
>
>> It really doesn't matter.  Reproduction is not the aim.  The aim is
>> superiority.
>
>
> But the point is clear that there is nothing going on in brains that cannot
> be simulated that has been identified so far in terms of learning processes
> or "thinking".  I don't see anything Andrew has said is in any way
> deterministic or reductionist...particularly in any naive way.  Sometimes a
> bit testy and snarky, yes, reductionist or deterministic, no.
>
> The object here isn't to meld your brain with a machine and have it take
> over your identity.  I realize that is some of the singularity press.  To my
> mind that is salesmanship.  The aim is to build machines that have a much
> higher probability of doing things we find getting from human brains as
> useful.  That is, to limit the artificial scarcity of human intellect.
> Smart doesn't have to be elite...we won't need thinkers.  That can be
> offloading to systems far better suited to do it.  People can simple improve
> for the fun of it...just like we have distance runners even though we have
> cars and motorbikes.
>
> In what way can this possibly be offensive?  To me it sounds great.  It
> puts to the test all of the shibboleths of being human.  Thus, the
> transhuman term is quite appropriate and accurate.  I don't want to live on
> perpetually in a machine.  I want to know my children will live in a safe
> world ruled by robots that respond to crises in appropriate ways and with
> learning and reasoning vastly beyond what mere politicians and philosophers
> can muster.  Why is that not an appropriate goal now that it starts to
> appear attainable?
>
>
>
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