It’s pretty true that just because it’s possible to have and simulate human brains it doesn’t mean that we’ll be able to do so (meaning that we can’t really enhance intelligence meaningfully). The same is true for pretty much any scientific progress. It’s totally possible that instead of humanity just continuing to innovate we just hit a brick wall and we just plain cannot advance any further. That said, that outcome is pretty damn depressing. If you don’t believe in religion then there really isn’t any other avenue to improvement and if this dead ends… then what? While being shiny 500-year old supermen isn’t a prerequisite to happiness, it’s pretty obvious that it enhances it.
Even if we solve all of the ongoing social problems in human society (war, climate change, poverty, etc…) the fact remains that it’s still kind of sad that for the next ten thousand years people are still going to have to handle problems inherent in humanity like dying when you’re 150 at the absolute most (and probably less than that), genetic defects, long-term mental degradation, old people losing control of their bowels, people not having equality in biologically reproduction because they have the ‘wrong’ kind of romantic attachment such as infertile couples or same-sex pairings. Even if you find some kind of Romanticist handwaving of all that and accepting the fact that humanity is damned to die in a pile of their own filth like dogs, there’s still just the plain moral implications. It seems like things like Dunbar’s Number has a strict biological component to it–meaning that there is a strict limit on how advanced and moral a human being can be.
I wonder if sometimes that the only thing that keeps people going is the idea that, even if there’s no promise of a better future for their children, there might be for the people who come by 100 years after that. But what if we’re just confronted with the fact that we’re pretty much at the limit of human achievement and the best we can hope for is an eternal plateau?
I don’t agree. Let me quote Admiral Akbar: “It’s a Trap!”
I’m definitely no Luddite, but the notion that happiness can be increased as a result of unlimited technological progress strikes me as naive. Sure, in *some *ways technology increases happiness (by entertaining, by reducing time spent on labour, by connecting people…) but in other ways technology *decreases *it too (improved weapons, alienation, spam…). Look at it this way, and it becomes more probable that the goal should be to be happy independent of tech level.
One could grow as a person, I guess. If we are at that limit (and I doubt that, seriously. I mean, soon we’ll be able to 3-D-print replacement body parts, FPS) one has to accept that. In fact, I sometimes wonder if removing that constant drive might make more people look at the world around them and improve it, not constantly be focused on a distant horizon all the time.
Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not *against *dreaming of the possibilities or wishing for more, necessarily. But sometimes you have to look at reality and line up with it. For instance, transhumanism or no, we’re never, ever going to travel faster than C. Ever. I came to terms with that, but it makes me view any SF with FTL as just a fantasy story now. And that’s a little sad, because there was a time when I didn’t, and I thought the stars might be mine, or my children’s. But yet, there’s a kind of existential happiness that comes from that knowledge too. That we are not “doomed” to taking the slow route to the Universe, we’re *blessed *with having to innovate that slow route. So too with transhumanism - say we never extend life past 200, and we never get to improve our AIs beyond current levels, or directly interface with them to increase our own IQs? So What! Already I have more knowledge accessible in my pocket than anyone 100 years ago could have even conceived of. Augmented reality tech makes me more than just what’s in my head. I can see into the IR and the UV. I am an extelligent being already. And I’m cool with that.
Right now, 90% of the people living on this planet have their lives wasted as cogs in a machine. Even if the most we can hope for is for everyone on Earth to be healthy, sane, well-fed, free, rested, and engaged in whatever pursuits seem best to them, we’d be at social and economic level 10 times greater than we are now.
If you think your life will be meaningless unless it leads to a transhuman future, well, get used to disappointment.
When I look around and see all the ignorance and waste, I see that as a *hopeful *sign. Because it means that just a little bit of improvment can pay off dramatically. We just need to stop doing some obviously stupid stuff. It’s like the guy who hit himself in the head with a hammer, because it felt so good when he stopped. If we were managing everything rationally and efficiently, and STILL had the problems we have now, then I’d be terrified because that would mean even in a best case scenario we’d be teetering on the brink of disaster. But we have all sorts of vast untapped potential that are currently being thrown into the dumpster. How about we stop doing that? This makes me an optimist.
Then we might still have a ST:TNG future – without the FTL travel, etc., but with the medical technology and matter-replicators. Not a bad future in which to live 150 years at most. If depressed one can always look back on the past, when some people did not have enough to eat all the time.
I don’t agree with the underlying assumption that technology could hit a wall like that and human technology reaches a plateau. But for the sake of argument I will go along with it.
Even if it happens, quality of life will be far better than it is now. In the year 2100 the global per capita GDP will be about 100k a year (inflation adjusted, so I’ve heard), up from about 10k right now. That is a ton of wealth to work with to find fun things to do.
Not being able to move beyond the limitations of biology would suck. But even within the limitations, with far more wealth, knowledge, medicine, travel, etc. life would be far better. Knowledge is power because knowledge helps you understand what you want, why you want it and how to get it. And money/power helps you achieve that goal. Both will grow drastically in the near and medium term future. We will know more about how to get what we want, avoid what we don’t want, enjoy what we want and recover when presented with what we don’t want.
So even if we can’t have a singularity our standard of living will still be far higher, and people will look at life in 2011 the same way Rousseau looked at life before civilization. If it reached a plateau in 2011, then yeah that is kind of a shame. But even with that we can still make massive improvements in environment, poverty, medicine, etc. But even if we did reach a plateau it would be a hundred years or more in my view before it happened.
The concept that we are at a plateau is pretty much how people lived, as far as technology, until 300 years ago. And not a good plateau either.
We will reach the transhuman state when the stars are right, when mankind will have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones will teach us new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy ourselves, and all the earth will flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. And then we’ll get bored again.
Heck, before that time it was common for the perception of how the world worked to be that once upon a time in the distant past things were marvelously good (the Golden Age, Eden, etc.), and then have ever degenerated into barely muddling through to survive. The idea of continuous “positive” progress as the “right” state of affairs in the physical world is a relative newcomer to human thought.
Which is a good thing, Praise “Bob”; for we can then resume selling the bored survivors empty promises of how to reignite the ecstasy.
I can’t quite answer the hypothetical without questioning it first (sorry to be a spoilsport).
Progress might seem slow at times from the perspective of a human, but compared to the lifetime of the planet all our struggles so far have happened in the blink of an eye and progress is accelerating greatly.
And unlike other species, we’re unlikely to ever hit a plateau as our ability to communicate gives us a ratchet effect.
And it looks like the earth will be habitable for billions more years.
So if something is possible, then it seems it’s only a matter of time for us, as long as we can keep civilization going.
And to say it’s impossible to extend our lifespan significantly…I can’t see a scenario for that without some kind of supernatural element. Which is ruled out in the OP.
Finally, the tone of the OP is somewhat like “Everyone assumes a transhumanist future, but what if…”. Actually, I think the opposite is the case. Most visions of the future leave humans pretty much as they are, but surround them with shiny stuff.
Even for people like me, who suspect that we will greatly augment the body in many ways (and yes start to manipulate our own genome too), have great difficulty beginning to imagine what the world and society would become like.