Intergalactic Summit

M. Thessalonia,

The examples you state appear to conflate external developments, internal evolution, and internal developments. Forming spears and lighting fires show humanity's ability to influence and manipulate its external environment. This is something I applaud and hope never ends, for it brings new frontiers, opportunities, and adventures to all that brave to grasp them.

Speech, on the other hand, helps illustrate my point. If our mute forefathers had the ability to simply re-animate in an exact copy of their body every time the sabre tooth beat them instead of the other way around, this would have stalled - and perhaps doomed - humanity. Where is survival of the fittest, if even the most unfit can simply be rebuilt exactly as-was?

The culling of the herd is what moves species forward. Stagnation = extinction.

By placing ourselves on pause, we never have to die. I freely admit, that sounds good to me!

However, those choosing to hit play rather than pause move the species forward. While the individual may die, the species will live.

Us capsuleers will live on, never dying, never changing.

But I wonder what humanity will evolve and change into while we play interstellar tiddlywinks in our pods.

At the end of the day, are we helping to cull the weak from the herd by choosing to withdraw from the herd? Are we so afraid to individually die that we instead collectively doom the capsuleer sub-species to extinction?

Are we truly that far removed from Neanderthals, flinging bullets and missiles at each other, rather than our bodily waste?

The timing of this invitation to discuss, Mr. Moros, is so serendipitous that it has me verifying the security of my comm routers.

Might I ask this simple question: why the focus on humanity?

Humans have been struggling to define what it means to be human since long before the capsule, space flight, computing technology, the development of religion, and the invention of the wheel. Even taking the infomorphic factor out of the equation, the level of humanity bestowed on any form of life varies widely from polity to polity in our current cluster. Fetuses, dependents, slaves, castes, the ill-of-mind, the unborn, the dead, criminals, et. al. are all caught up in this endless debate over what is pre-human, human, post-human, or non-human.

I find all of this tedious and short-sighted. Our species has allowed its sub-identity to eclipse its broader identity: life. We are life, and it is the nature of all life to do all things possible in order to improve and transcend itself. This imperative is built into our very DNA, present in the way all living things recreate themselves. When did we start being ourselves? When our ancestors first assimilated other cells to develop mitochondria? When they bound themselves together to form multicellular organisms? When they became conscious of light and sound? When they developed conscious thought? When they developed rational thought? When they began building things?

We have a rich history that is already chok full trans-X leaps that drove us from one phase of evolution to another that would have been absolutely inconceivable to its predecessors. To expect that to stop all of a sudden because we have reached some sort of epitomized state is stupid. And to expect us to restrain our efforts to elevate ourselves at all is unnatural.

Kat Robspierre and Deceiver's Voice.
As Deceiver's Voice suggested, to spend all of one's available time in the capsule is a relatively uncommon concept. One can be a Capsuleer without being a prisoner to the capsule.

Extending that same idea, Mr. Robspierre implies that the Capsuleer ability to sidestep death in a roundabout way leads to stagnation. Why would this be the case? The mantra of "survival of the fittest" assigns an inherently good aspect to death: namely, those dying are somehow unworthy to continue existing and in doing so contribute to a purification of the gene pool.

With the ability to improve oneself beyond this avoidance of permanent death, however, why would the so-called "unfit" have to remain as such? The Capsuleer is far less impeded by death than the baseline human being, but why does this equate to stagnation? He is still capable of changing himself, after all. Even if we consider still further into the future, to an ultimate hypothetical obsolescence of the Capsuleer, replaced by something "better" -- the specifics of this "better" entity are unimportant for the sake of a thought experiment -- why would this Capsuleer be incapable of taking his brainstate and moving to the upgraded model? Jump cloning has become almost a triviality amongst the Capsuleers, and the underlying principles are the same.

As for your second post in this thread, Mr. Robspierre, the assumption that those who "stay behind" by choice or necessity are abandoned is perhaps unfair. The Capsuleer is the most extreme example of a technologically-facilitated step forward in capability only available to a select subset of the human race, but it is by no means the only. There is still access to the various non-Capsuleer cybernetics for such people, and who is to say that, in the future, the same restrictions will hold? Why should, say, mind transfer and cloning technology forever remain the domain of the Capsuleers and richest of the baseline population?

There was a time when the most basic of computers were only available to the uppermost strata of society. Where are we now?

Half Cocked Jack.
Your moving the ideas beyond humanity is a bold move, but one with no small degree of wisdom. It certainly avoids the issues of defining the notion of "being human" and provides a far more comprehensive term by which to refer to the various entities to which these ideas are applicable. In fact, it is probably an idea I will be using in the future.

Beyond this, I agree entirely. Progress has always been best described as a continuous process; with the exception of the intermittent ground-shaking scientific insights so yearned for by the academic community, advances have been small and incremental, building upon what came before. Naturally, over time, what is produced by this gradual process of accretion is unrecognisable compared to what it began as.

One could make a convincing argument as to posthumanity being a questionable concept, it occurs to me, based off this. With a gradual transition away from the biological norms of today, it may be that there is no well-defined boundary of posthumanism. Much as I hesitate to return to the same example a third time, is Todo Kirkinen posthuman by our standards? What about by those of five centuries ago, or five millenia?

Your candor is appreciated, but some clarification is in order.

Who are you defining as "we"?

Capsuleers have no control over the proprietary technology used in the pod and neural rigging, nor do we hold any sort of sway in regards to cloning technology. We can operate cloning centers and ships capable of providing the same services, but CONCORD and the Empires control the other aspects of our existence; education and access to ships and crew. We are the ones who take action, but we are far from the deciders of fate for New Eden.

It is a noble thing to engage this debate, but I do wonder what your interest is. Cybernetics, genetics... these are two aspects of trans- and post-human development that are most common, but they are not the end-all and be-all of this discussion.

I do not think it is a matter of wanting to become something better, but whether we will be allowed to attempt it. Let's not mince words either; not everyone who would attempt to rise above our inherent limits will do so for the betterment of others. Just look at what happened to Kuvakei and you have your evidence of the consequences of attempting such an audacious act. Look at the Rogue Drones for how humans treat new life. Look to your fellow capsuleers and their circumstances to see the kind of controls that will be placed on those who rise above baseline existence: we either play by the rules, or we are exiled.

It is not a simple subject, but the bottom line is this; we do not have the power to chart our own course in these matters, unless you know something I do not.

Here's a question then; what do you consider human traits? Are there any that you would do away with in order to improve yourself? Would you wish traits to be removed from others for the benefit of all?

What do you need, what do you want, and what can you do without? Your answers are different than mine, you see. That in and of itself is something that many would see as a trait to remove or dissuade; those wonderful differences that drive the same innovation that some of us seek.

What would you give up for a better world, and how far would you go to insure that such a world were to come about? Think about it. Be honest with yourself. Ask if you truly think that the only hurdle we have is internal, that the intrinsic nature of we humans is that we are -biologically- human.

If you did away with what makes you human, you run the risk of destroying your survival instinct. I do not mean just personal survival; I mean survival of what makes you a unique individual. Giving in to social pressures, for instance. Giving up power to choose for yourself the best course of action. Relying on a tool to provide security that you should be responsible for. If you ignore the social instincts of your fellows, you could find yourself taking actions which assure your demise.

Tell me, are you already at risk of losing yourself to advancement? As Miss Doyle so eloquently put it in her post here on the IGS, "Stop thinking about a purple slaver hound."

Transhumanism and posthumanism rely on not only advancing the individual but also advancing society to cope. Which is of course the point, isn't it Kybernetes? Not that I disagree. It needs to be discussed. I simply hope you understand the potential ramifications of such discussion.

For the sake of clarity before anything else, at the end of my previous post here, the "we" to which I referred was no particular social or political group; "people as a whole" would be an adequate replacement. Genetics and cybernetics are just two aspects of trans- and posthumanism, as you say, but with the prominence of the Capsuleer in popular culture, they are the ones associated with it by most. This need not be the case were the misconception of Capsuleers being "the deciders of fate for New Eden", as you put it, less widely accepted.

We cannot chart our own course into the future, of course, but does that make a discussion of the themes behind one possible route any less valid? Anyway:

Kat Robspierre.
The greatest advancements have been the vast leaps of invention and ingenuity because they are the fastest and most obvious. Iterate on a basic design a thousand times with a minor improvement each time, and what do you come out with but a tremendously improved version of the original, perhaps so much so as to be close to unrecognisable?

The introduction of the computer changed society; the ability to buy it in designer colours did not. The progressive and slight increases in processing capability did. You seem to make the assumption that repeated alteration cannot produce any meaningful change, and I am lead back to an example from earlier in this thread.

Go back to our own evolution. Was there a specific point of transition when we stopped being basic multicellular organisms and suddenly lurched out of the oceans as human beings, or was it better defined as a sequence of smaller changes? One organism wasn't sensitive to light; the next was very slightly sensitive to it; the next one to come along with better vision again found itself having an advantage over those first two, and so on. We cannot survive solely on those rare insights of rarer genii because what they produce is more showy, Mr. Robspierre.

Our clones our, yes, genetically identical to one another -- a limitation of the cloning procedures in their current incarnation. I cannot speak for you, however, but my clones are far from unchanging. They all have a certain degree of similarity, in the form of the capsule interface technology, yes, but they are by no means identical in anything but external appearance.

At the time of writing this, I have four distinct clones at my disposal: the one currently active, and three scattered throughout the rest of the cluster. The active clone has a series of augmentations improving my ability to use laser weaponry, another has a set for missiles, another a selection designed to make me better able to fly one particular ship, and the final one nothing at all beyond attribute enhancements.

This is to say nothing of implants irrelevant to flying as a Capsuleer, but I will note that a similar variety is found there.

If we take evolution out of the hands of random chance and give it over to the authority of the individual and those responsible for developing the multifarious technologies behind it, is it worth any less? Do you think it is stilll evolution? Why, or why not?

Deceiver's Voice.
Perhaps something worth considering would not be if the risk of losing oneself to advancement is present, but if it has not already happened, and if it is something inherently bad.

"Advancement" implies "change"; not all changes are advancements, of course, but the inverse holds. How far can change be taken before you lose sight of the original?

If someone begins exercising and finds, a few years later, that their body is markedly more muscular than when they started, have they? What about an athlete who undergoes a series of modifications to improve their strength and their blood's oxygen uptake? For a less physical example, how about a research scientist who has various cybernetic subprocessors implanted to improve their mental acuity? A businessman who tires of struggling to read subtle facial and postural cues in clients and consistently finds himself stressed has a number of social interaction circuits installed to ease the former and help to cope with the latter?

None of these examples are particularly hypothetical. The first has been seen for thousands of years; the second is common in sporting leagues; the third and fourth require a fair sum of money, granted, but perhaps one was subsidised by the research institution itself, viewing it as an investment, and nobody said the businessman need be unsuccessful -- they all have happened in the cluster, in short.

How many times over need each be repeated until it has gone too far, if any at all?

To address the final point, then of course society needs to be advanced in tandem. It is not something that can go undiscussed forever, either, with our abilities for direct improvement of the human body and mind growing all the time. (Though which particular changes represent improvement and which something else entirely is another discussion, as we can readily see from Mr. Robspierre's posts.)

How, then, should that be gone about? Should the changes arise naturally with time, or should societies take the same approach as with individual transhumanism and intervene directly? There is no right or wrong answer, but it is certainly worth the while to think about.

Hooch Flux.
Our abilities are certainly new compared to, say, two hundred years ago.

Control over the process of improvement, what constitutes improvement, and when we are allowed to improve, be that a restriction imposed by another or by our own actions towards overs, are topics I intend to turn towards in the future. For your point about cloning, I would say much the same as I did to Mr. Bloodlor.

Namas, Professor Moros.

As intriguing as your questions are, and as great the temptation is to engage with them, I feel it is more important to first address the narrative you weave in building up to those questions. For in your reasoning and terminology do I see certain biases that would color the final analysis.

The term transhuman may be a misleading one. It evokes the same sensibilities as transcendence, that is, the noble overcoming of inherent limitations. In it is the combination of being and becoming; to transcend is to cross over. But while it captures the act of movement, it neglects vector. To transit away from human requires not just motion, it also requires direction. And it is the latter that I feel warrants particular discussion.

Similarly, you posit capsuleer technology as one of a great many series of advancements stretching back to the dawn of written language. It is a neat and linear progression that you paint, from towns and cities to planetary civilizations and interstellar polities. It is fortunate that you mention evolution here, if only in passing. I will borrow from its imagery in this discussion.

When charting the development of a species, from its ancestors up to the present, it is tempting to see that progress as both linear and inevitable. But that straight-line chart is an incomplete picture. Place that ancestral line beside the history of the entire family and you will instead see branching tree of possibilities, a fractal maze of explored options and dead ends.

You will also find evolutionary progression is not necessarily ‘progress’ in the arbitrary sense that humans intuit. Natural selection often chooses against an overabundance of strength and intelligence, particularly in times of change or scarcity. Nervous systems can wither, and muscles can be winnowed away. Advanced complexity very often dies out, while the simple survives.

When drawing the line of history from the past to the present, it is tempting to see unbroken relentless progress. What that line does not show are the branching paths, or the roads not taken. In our own family of human civilizations, we already have numerous examples of ‘dead ends.’ The Yan Jung, the Talocan, and the Takmahl are no longer among us, to name a few.

Go back further and you find evidence of even more catastrophic collapse – stargates that predate history and ancient ruins radiating from the enigmatic Gate. Some suggest that our fragmented empires were birthed of common origins, yet even now they move in opposing directions. The Jove are, perhaps, the most advanced and knowledgeable of our civilizations. But does their path have a future?

What I mean to point out by this meandering discourse is this: it is a mistake to equate change with abstract notions of progress. The real question is not whether we should change, but what we want to change into.

I apologize, Professor Moros, for drawing politics into the discussion at this point. However, I feel an important observation must be made.

The narrative you weave suggests a paradigm that views cloned ‘immortality’ and personal modification as the latest in a long line of inevitable human advances. That is a paradigm that benefits that faction which has had the least scruples in pursuing both for its own aims. Drugs can sooth and heal, as you pointed out, but they can also be used to rob an individual of their dignity and subject them to the caprice of addiction. Implants can enlighten and enhance, but they can also control and enslave.

The barriers between individuals can be lowered and consciousness’s can be united and liberated. But they can also be made thrall to the vision of a single Master.

You would ask at what point does the transhuman become the posthuman. I would ask: What kind of posthuman are you trying to become?

Mlle D'Arc makes excellent points here, of which my own thoughts are but an echo.

I disagree. If it did not at least originate as a human, it can only be human-like.



To use a similar analogy, if you replace the parts of a human body with prostheses over time eventually replacing the entirety of the body with nothing but artificial parts... it could still on some vague notion be considered human.

However, if you built an exact copy of that now completely prosthetic body and animate it with a human-replica artificial intelligence... it is not human. It did not originate as a human, as homo sapiens sapiens. It can only be a replica of a human, or human-like.

For our part, as Capsuleers, we still retain our original personalities and memories which come from a time long before our first clone. Of course, this is a very grey area, and it is difficult to distinguish the two.

It should also be noted that a starship is not sentient. You are comparing the metaphysical to the mechanical.



Almost. I still maintain that the source of the consciousness must come from a human, either through procreation, cloning, or some other direct-inheritance method.

Being built by a human does not count.

Just because something is indistinguishable from the genuine article does not make it genuine too. It just makes it a very good copy.



The origins.



They would still be RDs. Human-like RDs. They would have evolved from drones, not from humans. Thus, they would continue to be drones. This is probably the most obvious example you could give me, actually... there is not a shred of us (human) in them. That they resemble us does not make them one of us.