Comment by ecmascript | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ecmascript | Hacker News Reader

> Self-improvement of the transhumanist sort requires that we adopt an entirely functional understanding of who and what we are: All of our abilities can be improved upon and all of our parts are replaceable. Upgradable.

Yeah right, but we're so far away from creating even a single "upgrade" that's comparable with the human body. For example, even the best cameras would never even be in the same competing arena as the human eye. No sensors come close to our sense of touch.

The transhumanist ideology is nothing else but some kind of perverted ideology that we somehow would be upgraded with a usb port sticking out from the skin.

Even the very best tools we have today to save lives and help our bodies sucks in comparison with the biological counterpart. Sure there may be a future that we would "upgrade" ourselves, but when that time is here (which would be very, very far into the future) everyone will instantly do it because it will be so much better. There wouldn't be some kind of discussion about it since the result is so obvious.

For it to happen, whatever we replace something with will have to have all the features that we currently enjoy + a lot more.

> everyone will instantly do it

With the current state of software development, I'd wait at least a year, like when a new Windows version comes out (or less in case of iPhone iOS).

I don't like to beta-test with my HW; I wouldn't do it with my body.

> even the best cameras would never even be in the same competing arena as the human eye

All it takes is looking at photos from space telescopes, or electron microscopes... It should be obvious that technology can make better cameras than human eyes. Or slow motion video cameras... Infrared cameras...

The only thing about human eyes that is superior is that they come connected to the brain.

For now, technological augmentation is "air-gapped". It's incorrect to ignore air-gapped augmentations. Hell, even glasses could be considered the first step, and have existed for hundreds of years.

Using glasses is essentially the "no brainer" conclusion that you are looking for. People already accept that it's ok to try to do better than nature provided for you.

Just being able to see something is just a small part of an eye.

You have "instant" focus, muscles that can turn the eye in almost every direction except where the skull is. We have self repairment to some degree if you get hurt. Automatic cleaning.

Sure other cameras that humans have built could be a good extension to the body if we somehow could send it wireless to our brains. Because all ways we have to date when it comes with integrating with biological matter is the part that is hard.

If we could have a chip inserted into our brains that accepted wireless communication, then sure it would be very useful. The issue is we have nothing that even comes close to that today afaik. Using glasses could also be a useful tool, but that isn't really "upgrading" the human body or being a transhuman in the sense that the article brings up.

My point is sure we have tools that could potentially upgrade our bodies but they aren't good and it seems it is a long way before anyone would operate some cables into their brain in order to accept infrared video.

Think about insulin pumps, cataract surgery, LASIK/PRK, or any type of surgical augmentation for disability (limb replacement or hip replacements) - we are definitely improving and upgradeable, it's only a matter of degree.

Transhumanism is just a poor copy of christianity where deliverance is an npm module hosted on GitHub, accepting pull requests from the enlightened priesthood and deployed to the cloud. If you don't have at least a wireless transceiver implanted, downloading timely updates, then you're a heretic. After all, you also have to upload yourself so you can live on in purity after you cast off your biological remnants, for as long as the subscription fees are payed. Christianity has invented all this much earlier, and it was dubious then already.

This reads like it was written by a neural network

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