Poll: Transhumanism: How Far Would You Take It?

[Guitarmasterx7]

I'd replace bits and pieces. Legs Definitely. Eyes and ears probably. If I could do arms while keeping the hands human i'd do that too. MAYBE a little bit of the mind, just enough to give me better reaction time or something, but nothing that affects how I reason. I still want to be able to enjoy my robot parts with juvenile satisfaction after all.

 

[Amakusa]

Hmm i took no 6, since i'd be curious as to what i'd become as a posthuman. heh

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I'd be willing to go to at least 4. I fear death really bad, if I can achieve immortality by any of them I'd do that.
I'd prefer my own mind but I'd try anything once. Jack of Blades mask comes to mind as something I'd like, not that it really counts here.

 

[saintdane05]

I won't stop till I end up like this.

 

[Yopaz]

I am planning to get laser eye surgery so I think I would fit into option 2. That's kinda an augmentation... right?

I also wouldn't mind more effective lungs, I wouldn't mind a one way system like the kind birds have, increased memory and of course better than what we now consider perfect vision. I still want to be human though.

 

[KeyMaster45]

#5 intrigued me when I watched the Ghost in the Shell series. Specifically one where Motoko has to switch to a backup body. Something about that I just found kind of fun; the idea of being able to slip into a new body like a new outfit. I guess it would be kind of like having alts in an mmo. When the mood strikes you, you can just roll to a different character and play as them for awhile.

The idea of it though does kind of scare me. There's plenty of existential questions that go into what makes a person a person. Being the careful person that I am I would have to be absolutely assured that I'm not going to cease to have consciousness, and what amounts to a very convincing copy of me walks off while I instead just die. It's a silly fear I guess, but the point of it is that I as I am now want to be able to experience it; not a copy/paste version of me that's a separate consciousness all its own.

I suppose a better way to describe it is sitting across from your own clone. You both have the same memories and personality, but at the same time you're two separate conscious beings. If the original dies and the clone continues on, the original's consciousness has ceased to be.

 

[Sarah Frazier]

There isn't much (yet) that I see as worth replacing of my own body beyond the organs that are damaged. Then again... I wouldn't mind something like a neural jack to I could type as fast as thinking, bypassing slow and clumsy fingers. I just don't want a full immersion interface for movies and games because I could get lost in those imaginary worlds and forget to stop for food and drink until someone else pulls the plug.

 

[Your Rival]

Well since minor augmentations comes with enhanced physical abilities and immunity to diseases and the others don't seem to offer anything additional besides looking like monster I'll go with that one.

 

[Stryc9]

Option 5. If the technology existed and was proven to be stable enough I would do it in a heartbeat. I can think of no reason not to really.

 

[lacktheknack]

Insert terrified rambling about inequality of humans and post-humans here.

I'd stay the way I am, thanks. All the parts of me can get better and stronger with training, good diet and surgery, which is more than can be said for metal.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

If you could but my brain in a jar and then put that jar in a gorilla...well that would be just great.

All kidding aside. If there's a part of my brain or body that can be made better by whipping a few cybernetic parts into them then by all means do it.

 

[AlbertoDeSanta]

Option 3. The idea that part of my body can be easily changed with a man made replacement is very enticing, since it'd mean I could alleviate back pain as well as have heightened abilities. I understand the mentality of 'purists' but just recently, there was a story of some 10 month old baby hearing for the first time from cochlear implants and it really makes me wonder why anyone could be against any form of bodily modification that is used for the betterment of human society.

 

[Saulkar]

A number 3-4 semi-fullbody-prosthesis that falls between the Nano Suit or the Replicant Assassins cybernetic cloak suit.

 

[Captain Quetzal]

I'd take 5 or 6. I really wish I could live long enough to see such technology come to fruition.

5 is a definite, I'd snatch that right up if offered.

6 is difficult to imagine. I'd need it explained to me in detail before I opt for it. Who I am now is irrelevant though, I'd be transcending the meat sack, and perhaps meatspace itself. But I would need to know precisely what it entailed first.

 

[Agayek]

It all depends on what the possibilities are.

I would have absolutely no issue going all the way to 6 though. I don't see why anyone would, to be perfectly honest. We're all just sacks of meat, why is it such a big deal to replace the meat with some metal? Honest question there. This question has come up a few times in the past (especially during discussions of Deus Ex) and I've never received an answer more substantial than "But it's icky!".

Is there anyone on here who would limit themselves in such a fashion and are willing to explain why?

 

[DkLnBr]

I'd be willing to choose number 5, yes door number 5! I'd gladly take a robotic body over my useless meat-sack, assuming its the futuristic cybernetics rather than the current clunky stuff. I'd also be willing to augment my brain as well. Not everything, but I'd upgrade the logic, memory, and processing parts of my brain, but keep the emotional and personality sides as untouched as possible. So long as my personality and capacity for emotions are still intact then hell ya, upgrade everything! I will become the next stage in human evolution!!!! NO, I will transcend the weakness of flesh, cast off the squishy shackles AND BECOME MORE THAN HUMAN!!!! I WILL BECOME A GOD!!!! ........ ehem... got a little carried away there.

 

[Dimitriov]

I wouldn't get any modifications unless I lose a limb or my hearing or something in a terrible accident. Basically my motto is if it works, there's no need to change it. If it doesn't, you might as well fix it.

If the rest of humanity agreed with you on that last statement, we'd still be hunting down our dinner with sticks. Living as a hunter/gatherer society "worked" just fine for our ancestors. There's always room to grow, to improve, to surpass. And frankly, there is a LOT that is wrong with the way our bodies function.

You could say that the motto of engineers like myself is "if it doesn't seem to be broken, you just haven't identified the problems that need to be fixed yet"

We've evolved as much as we'll ever need to, what's the need to have even more? The human body has been more than capable ever since our existence.

Natural evolution only helps you survive, it doesn't help you thrive. If we ignored "the need to have even more", we would still be hunter gatherers who worked every hour of every day to help their starving children live to the age of 40, providing they didn't die to disease first. Technology helped us move beyond that, so why not apply that technology directly to ourselves? We can do better than nature, much much better.

There are some patently false statements here. Traditional hunter-gatherer societies were neither starving nor particularly hard working. In fact most studies and projections suggest they lived longer, healthier, and enjoyed more leisure than pretty much any agricultural society ever has. Only in the last century, in the 'first world' countries, has that changed (and we still have less free time).

The only reason agricultural societies triumphed and replaced hunter-gatherers is that they allow for massively larger populations which can kill and displace smaller traditional bands of maybe 70 people. Which is why we might tend to think of hunter-gatherers living such hard lives: the only examples of that lifestyle that survived into the modern period were peoples that had been pushed out and relegated to the shittiest climates on earth (deserts, jungles, tundra etc.).

Not necessarily saying that transforming into agricultural civilizations over the last 9000 years was a bad thing, just trying to add some perspective.

 

[Hat Man]

The body is just a vehicle. The brain is where our minds our. Though I'd limit cybernetic enhancements to external assist modules that will feed information into my brain and help speed up processing. Not to mention that without an organic body significant parts of the brain that handle things like organ control will be completely unnecessary if they can't be linked into the new body, the brain won't have to tell the liver what to do from then on after all, but pain receptors retain their usefulness.

 

[RedmistSM]

Option 3, a brain in a machine. But I wouldn't do it _today_. I would like to do it when I'm old, and frail, or sick.
Also, no replacing the brain. The brain is me. What would be the point? Might as well just build a robot, no point in taking a human and then slowly replacing every part of it. I certainly wouldn't earn anything on that deal. If you went the route that scans your brain patterns and make it a chip or whatever, then that's all fine and well for the chip. But the brain that's me would still die. I wouldn't get to experience any of it.