arguing for the sake of arguing?
note: i started this with a link to nico's wall to pick up our old argument, humans first v. transhumanism. (is it funny that i am a humanist and a transhumanist? i think so.) so, to be fair, i recognize that i provoked this entirely. i also recognize that abby is an incredibly lovely and intelligent person who happens to have a different opinion on the matter than i do.
on the flip side, i am a competitive jerk who likes to argue. if anyone would like to attack my argument or support abby's, please feel free to do so. i can't guarantee that i'll interpret your criticisms in the same paradigms that you offer them (see below, mostly in how i change the scope of her argument). this comes down to a debate of values, and there is no final answer except the greater or lesser adopting of values (not necessarily a very good measure of the worth of a set of values, in my opinion). i feel snotty and elitist and would appreciate an argument that could knock me down a peg or two.
abby: When we are not taking care of our own human needs, we are less human.
"But then we have more time for exploration!" you may say.
Being human is not just about exploring and thinking. It is also about taking care of basic needs. Being alive is a lot of work. Now, we could argue about the merits of using technology to assist us in daily life (like my glasses, for example), but let's not pretend that there is some common esoteric goal of humanity that our bodies are getting in the way of. And whenever people are arguing in favor of technology, they bring up the point that we will have so much time to explore, commit good deeds, create amazing works of art, etc. etc. But technology will always be exploited by greedy people, and it is often the people driven by greed who are pushing these supposedly benign messages.
Where is the line between a human using a prosthetic device and a cyborg? Is there a line? It depends on your definition of cyborg, and it depends on when a simple tool becomes upgraded to a prosthesis. Like every other subject of debate, there are grey areas.
However, I do not see how non-human entities could make us "more human." We are already human; being human does not mean that we are entitled to a certain amount of time or any degree of freedom. Whether or not we are enslaved or encumbered by our difficulties, we are always human, and machines cannot make us more so.
hunter: Any animal can take care of its own subsistence needs. How does yoking ourselves to those same time-sinks make us more human? The way in which humans differ from animals is that we have more free time to do the things that make us uniquely-human-as-opposed-to-animals: exploring and thinking. If you really value subsistence work, that's your right as a human (humans being able to form values, unlike animals), but don't get in the way of those of us who want more time and energy for the things that only humans can do.
As for the question of entitlement, of course we are entitled to time and freedom. If you really didn't believe that we are, you would live your life in a radically different way, and you wouldn't care for the freedom of others. Everything you do depends on using technology to make it easier, from pooping to fucking to schoolwork to communication. "Simple tools" that reduce the amount of time that it takes to do things and increases our personal freedoms are prosthetics, as much as the spring-steel limbs we attach to Olympic athletes.
And of course greedy people will take advantage of it. Greedy people take advantage of everything. That doesn't mean that moving toward a more technology-integrated future is a bad thing at all. We couldn't even have this debate (debating: also a human thing) without the technology facilitating it.
abby: My point is not that technology is evil.
People ARE animals. Each animal is unique. We have language, an elephant has its size, and the flea has its powerful legs. I do not think we are necessarily progressing toward a common goal. Rather, we are always changing. We change as we move through time, but evolution is neither positive nor negative. More technology is not evidence of our betterment or superiority as a species.
I don't particularly value subsistence work and I don't romanticize menial labor. But I do think survival is part of what makes us human, because humans are, in fact animals. If we are trying to become closer to machines, I don't want a part of it. I find that the fewer physical risks I take, the less fresh air I breathe, the more time I spend staring at a screen, and the more the atmosphere is filled with the sounds of machines, the less alive I feel.
I can only speak for myself.
hunter: So do whatever you do to feel alive, but it's disingenuous to claim that "machines can't make us more human" when machines 1) literally make us more alive (lower death rates & longer lifespans) and 2) you are operating from a radically different perspective of what it is to be human than I am. The knowledge that I can live longer and help more people is deeply gratifying to me; it makes me "feel" both more alive and more human. Change is GREAT, and our species has been changing more through our technology than whatever it is you think makes us human (which I could admittedly use some clarification on) for the last whatever thousand years. We outstripped animals through our ability to create tools and minimize time-to-labor-output. Yes, we share the basic physiology and material needs as animals, but mentally we are a qualitative leap, something completely unlike anything else. Language is apples and oranges to physical size and muscular ability.
Long story short, it's your prerogative as a unique alive human to chain yourself to the dirt of subsistence, but I have no intention of remaining in the current paradigm of a squabbling, greedy, territorial, wasteful humanity if I can use technology to help us outstrip the inadequacy of our current resource infrastructure and empower more people to live better, longer lives.
hunter: (P.S. Even though I disagree with you entirely, I do appreciate the effort that you're putting into your rhetoric. This is stimulating.)
on the flip side, i am a competitive jerk who likes to argue. if anyone would like to attack my argument or support abby's, please feel free to do so. i can't guarantee that i'll interpret your criticisms in the same paradigms that you offer them (see below, mostly in how i change the scope of her argument). this comes down to a debate of values, and there is no final answer except the greater or lesser adopting of values (not necessarily a very good measure of the worth of a set of values, in my opinion). i feel snotty and elitist and would appreciate an argument that could knock me down a peg or two.
abby: When we are not taking care of our own human needs, we are less human.
"But then we have more time for exploration!" you may say.
Being human is not just about exploring and thinking. It is also about taking care of basic needs. Being alive is a lot of work. Now, we could argue about the merits of using technology to assist us in daily life (like my glasses, for example), but let's not pretend that there is some common esoteric goal of humanity that our bodies are getting in the way of. And whenever people are arguing in favor of technology, they bring up the point that we will have so much time to explore, commit good deeds, create amazing works of art, etc. etc. But technology will always be exploited by greedy people, and it is often the people driven by greed who are pushing these supposedly benign messages.
Where is the line between a human using a prosthetic device and a cyborg? Is there a line? It depends on your definition of cyborg, and it depends on when a simple tool becomes upgraded to a prosthesis. Like every other subject of debate, there are grey areas.
However, I do not see how non-human entities could make us "more human." We are already human; being human does not mean that we are entitled to a certain amount of time or any degree of freedom. Whether or not we are enslaved or encumbered by our difficulties, we are always human, and machines cannot make us more so.
hunter: Any animal can take care of its own subsistence needs. How does yoking ourselves to those same time-sinks make us more human? The way in which humans differ from animals is that we have more free time to do the things that make us uniquely-human-as-opposed-to-animals: exploring and thinking. If you really value subsistence work, that's your right as a human (humans being able to form values, unlike animals), but don't get in the way of those of us who want more time and energy for the things that only humans can do.
As for the question of entitlement, of course we are entitled to time and freedom. If you really didn't believe that we are, you would live your life in a radically different way, and you wouldn't care for the freedom of others. Everything you do depends on using technology to make it easier, from pooping to fucking to schoolwork to communication. "Simple tools" that reduce the amount of time that it takes to do things and increases our personal freedoms are prosthetics, as much as the spring-steel limbs we attach to Olympic athletes.
And of course greedy people will take advantage of it. Greedy people take advantage of everything. That doesn't mean that moving toward a more technology-integrated future is a bad thing at all. We couldn't even have this debate (debating: also a human thing) without the technology facilitating it.
abby: My point is not that technology is evil.
People ARE animals. Each animal is unique. We have language, an elephant has its size, and the flea has its powerful legs. I do not think we are necessarily progressing toward a common goal. Rather, we are always changing. We change as we move through time, but evolution is neither positive nor negative. More technology is not evidence of our betterment or superiority as a species.
I don't particularly value subsistence work and I don't romanticize menial labor. But I do think survival is part of what makes us human, because humans are, in fact animals. If we are trying to become closer to machines, I don't want a part of it. I find that the fewer physical risks I take, the less fresh air I breathe, the more time I spend staring at a screen, and the more the atmosphere is filled with the sounds of machines, the less alive I feel.
I can only speak for myself.
hunter: So do whatever you do to feel alive, but it's disingenuous to claim that "machines can't make us more human" when machines 1) literally make us more alive (lower death rates & longer lifespans) and 2) you are operating from a radically different perspective of what it is to be human than I am. The knowledge that I can live longer and help more people is deeply gratifying to me; it makes me "feel" both more alive and more human. Change is GREAT, and our species has been changing more through our technology than whatever it is you think makes us human (which I could admittedly use some clarification on) for the last whatever thousand years. We outstripped animals through our ability to create tools and minimize time-to-labor-output. Yes, we share the basic physiology and material needs as animals, but mentally we are a qualitative leap, something completely unlike anything else. Language is apples and oranges to physical size and muscular ability.
Long story short, it's your prerogative as a unique alive human to chain yourself to the dirt of subsistence, but I have no intention of remaining in the current paradigm of a squabbling, greedy, territorial, wasteful humanity if I can use technology to help us outstrip the inadequacy of our current resource infrastructure and empower more people to live better, longer lives.
hunter: (P.S. Even though I disagree with you entirely, I do appreciate the effort that you're putting into your rhetoric. This is stimulating.)