Trans(human)-Bashing

Cishumanism is a newly formed ideology designed to counteract the progression of the transhumanist movement. Transhumanism, as described by Wikipedia, is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Cishumanism attempts to oppose transhumanism at the roots (get it? trans, cis). We who do not wish to have our bodies replaced by machines, who desire to live out our lives on this green Earth in our fleshy coffins, can now unite under one banner. The development of technologies to enhance the human condition will lead to unprecedented divides between the rich and the poor. Those without the means for enhancement will be be exponentially left in the dust as those with more resources attain capabilities beyond our wildest dreams. As a species, we must unite underneath cishumanism. Machines are our creations, we use them for our benefit and overall wellbeing. Transhumanism implies the joining of man with machine, the enactment of which will remove the distinction between creator and creation, leaving us as nothing more than extraneous matter taxing our robotic bodies with organic needs. If we allow our machines to be part of us, they will soon create for us, they will create themselves, they will create themselves better that we do, and we will become obsolete. Do you wish to become obsolete? If not, join the cishumanist movement.

"Transhuman-Bashing (Trans-Bashing) is a new game developed by the leaders of the Cishumanist movement to show people the implications of Transhumanism. In this game, players post information or links to recent Transhumanist developments that will have a large effect on society. Other players then place comments on their post explaining the philosophically significant implications of such a technology. If a comment is made that sufficiently refutes the legitimacy of the technology, the author of that comment has won the round. 'Sufficiency' is determined based on the sum of positive and negative feedback given on the comment." - Luddite (Creator)

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

GAME ON!

Let's get our first Transhuman-Bash (Trans-Bash) going with a slam on self-replicating robots:


Autonomous self-replicating robotics.
Why do manual labor when the robots can do it for you? Self-replication might be considered the Holy Grail of robotics. A landmark NASA study, “Advanced Automation for Space Missions”, found that robotic self-replication is just a matter of engineering, and that no fundamental theoretical breakthroughs are needed. The study proposed sending a 100-ton package to the Moon, with a self-replication time of 1 year, and letting it self-replicate until the desired level of development is attained. The design – which was fleshed out in great detail – was based on electric carts running on rails within the factory, “paving machines” that direct sunlight to melt lunar regolith, robotic strip miners for obtaining raw materials, and a solar cell “canopy” for powering it all. After 10 years, over 100,000 tons of lunar factory could be produced autonomously. The factory’s functions could then be hijacked for the benefit of human colonists, used to produce housing, products, and provide large quantities of solar power.
If similar self-replicating systems could be constructed on Earth, there would be little limit to the material plenty they could provide. Self-replicating factories could turn the vast empty badlands of Australia into lush gardens by pumping water from the oceans, self-replicating factories in the high Arctic could melt snow and create gigantic transparent domes suitable for habitation, and submersible automata in the seas could dredge sand from abiotic regions of the ocean floor and process it into gigantic platforms for human colonization. By opening up such vast new regions of the Earth’s surface, talk of overpopulation and crowding would fall by the wayside for quite a few decades, with people realizing how much space there actually was all along. And once things really do get too crowded here on Earth, we can move to the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt, using the power of self-replicating robotics to create rotating space colonies suitable for housing trillions of people.
Self-replicating factories could reduce the costs of material goods close to that of food – the primary expenses would consist of raw materials, energy, and whatever small quantity of human oversight is necessary to keep an eye on the overall structure of things. By utilizing special, man-made “nutrients” for top-level functions (rare or exotic molecules such as custom-synthesized proteins) and the broadcast architecture – whereby derivative factories must receive affirmations from a central parent factory to continue self-replicating – such factories could be made safe by design. With such abundance, humanity might actually shift from having a zero-sum perspective on a world to a positive-sum perspective. With medical tools and basic goods in ample supply, no one in the world would need to suffer from poverty or curable disease. The nature of human work would shift from manual drudgery and mind-numbing routine to more creative and personally fulfilling endeavors, like art, music, math, science, literature, and exploration.
For more details on the state of the art in self-replicating machines, see the Wikipedia entry, or the magnum opus on the topic, Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines

Friday, April 1, 2011

Welcome to the cishumanist movement!

Thanks for choosing human individuality!  This blog is for those who prefer to live embodied!