Where's the need for compromise? No discrimination, period. That's basically how the laws already on the books work. There'd simply be some minor tweaking to add in different protected classes. Honestly I see a far greater chance of non-augmented people imposing their own sense of morality on those who do choose to be augmented. People generally dislike change.

It's a far shot to suggest that because special interests and lobbyist groups get preferential treatment that there will be a widespread, concerted effort to persecute the masses in regards to human augmentation.

I think people are imagining some situation where there are people exactly like today and others who are basically superman. This is a gross exaggeration. These technologies are a long, long, long way off. The transition will be mostly gradual. You won't have B-average students sitting next to people with supercomputers wired up to their brain.

It might make things more convenient, but most circumstances don't require an individual to have access to a car. Public transportation (buses, cabs, etc) is available to those in any income bracket. If you look at major metropolitan areas, public transport might actually be a more convenient means of travel.

In any case, are you bringing this up as support for modification or to oppose car requirements?

No one is saying there is anything wrong with it. On the contrary, some people do seem to say it is wrong for people to not want to die. Who here is being more inclusive exactly?

I bet Julian Bashir would have something pertinent to say about all of this..




..too bad he's fictional.




Too bad this isn't.

In some ways it would be nice but people being manipulated like in the case of the individual eleven. Looks at avatar There is a possibility of a major abuse of them if true.


Togusa seems like the only one to seem happy , from me watching Stand Alone Complex and GiG about ten times each I think the show points out the major problems of it but also show the pros of it. Then again the show is about a public security and helping people, how is that suppose to be sunny and sunshine.

ok.. edited after a re-read of what youre saying.
sounds delightful from a lawers perspective, doesnt it? maybe not so great for the industries and people whose lives get caught up in it, huh?


look at college though.
costs are super high to go to school right now.
Why? because we got the notion that going to college equals getting more money. its just not the case.
but, everyone will go, even if they cant realistically pay back their ever increasing student loans.
i see this sort of theme carrying over into augmentation. where peopel will get them because they feel they have to, or its what people do.

I guess i can just see being human getting lost in this equation.

For one, for laws to work, people have to actually abide them. Let me know when discrimination gets dropped from the dictionary.

it is not a far shot to suggest the possibility. and its not jsut special interest groups, but differing ideologies of political parties. and the idea isnt that the government is evil, or will become so- its that it is a slippery slope- this particular subject just happens to be a slope the size of Mt. Everest. I am not outright opposed, but critical thinking doesnt allow me to exclude to possibility of the less than savory side of human nature.


Where is that line? Can we stop when we get close to it, or will it be like evertying else as a hindisght is 20/20 sort of thing?

I know some pelaces have great public transportation.. but theres a whole lot more that dont or where it isnt a realistic option.. its nto easy to take your entire family shopping for groceries on a bus or in a cab, either. this isnt even facoring in transport for the majority of commercial and consumer goods at any stage of production, development or shipping to the ultimate destination.

i bring it up because cars have become such a staple that its difficult to get around it. think of cars a a metaphor... what is the equivalent of public transport in regards to augmentation?




this is another debate all together, but im pretty sure the laws of conservation are right on this one and not Ponce de Leon.

Autism isn't "on the rise". Autism was just very little understood until the last couple of years.
Also, technology has a lot more to do with the change in the way our brains works.

There is no such thing as a pollution of the gene pool btw.
Think about it, it's only been three generations ago infant death was still high.

What could have possibly happened to our genes in 60 years?
It takes at least 20 generations before a new (good or bad) gene can spread through the gene pool.
Modern medical science can fix bad genes long before we get even close to that.

The psychological definition for autism has been becoming progressively broader and more subjective over the past few decades, so that's one thing to consider.

We are getting better at treating diseases and / or doing something about the symptoms. We will continue to get better at it, improving the quality of life of anyone who chooses to 'opt in'.

Some people will prefer the equivalent of homeopathic remedies / prayer healing / whatever. Some few of them will get better, just by chance. Most of them will continue to suffer. That's up to them, really.

In the future we will presumably figure out how to make the human body and mind better at certain tasks, also potentially improving the quality of life of those who opt in. There's a distinction between medicine and augmentation, but it's not a particularly important one - the point is to improve the life of those who want it.

It freaks me out when people say that wanting to improve our lives is 'playing God'. You are given this one life, this one body, this one chance... surely the urge to make the most out of it is the most human thing imaginable?

Obviously we need to think things through, both collectively / legislatively and at an individual level - with great power comes great responsibility, and all that. But why wouldn't you want the OPTION to 'fix' things about your body that hinder you in some way?

I wear contact lenses. It would annoy me no end if I knew that contact lenses were technologically possible, but not available because 'not everybody is supposed to have perfect eyesight'. So what if it makes long-distance reading less viable as a sport? The interesting sports will always have some non-body aspect to them anyway... people apparently still watch Tour de France despite the fact that it's basically a battle of pharmaceutical R&D.

Our flaws aren't what makes us human. What makes us human is that we strive against them.

(What makes us CUTE is perhaps that we often fail, but let's face it, there'll always be something new to fail at...)

The first thirty seconds of the video didn't do much for my prejudgement of its eugenical similiarities.

a lot of this also still comes back to a "more money, more problems" type of situation.

Would we really be improving our lives, or just referencing ourselves to a new standard that has more catastrophic penalties during those off chances of not realizing that standard?

That's the problem, everyone wants to be better. Only the rich can afford it, and people want to think they're superior to people. You just can't bottle that enough, and it manifests in the need to compete. If this competition gets bad enough... well look at history. I don't think any sane human would deny someone the chance to be happy, but the problem is when it's not equal. Everyone should be given this opportunity, and they might not get it with this method costs a lot. So what then? Just say [censored] them? They didn't get their big break?

Autism is defined on a spectrum. The criteria for autism has not become more subjective over the past few decades - psychologists and psychiatrists have become better at diagnosing the disorder. By becoming better at diagnosing the disorder, more children will likely be included - it allows a psychologist to say more definitively that "this child, based upon this revised criteria, displays the symptoms of autism." Thus, children who were once diagnosed as Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) are then moved into the autism spectrum and better treatments can be devised based on that knowledge.

No one knows. But hypothetical reasons are not a valid reason to keep from technological progress. Hell, some scientists thought that the first atomic / hydrogen bomb test would set Earth's entire atmosphere on fire.

Deus Ex?

that was meant to be more rhetorical in nature, to invoke thought as opposed to a direct reply.

I am admittedly not able to articulate this as well as i would like to but, if you boil it down to its simplest expression, its the law of conservation. . there is no easier.... only different.

I believe someone already asked the question, "Where does it end?" Where's the line drawn that we don't cross? What is considered"better for us?" I remember having to get up off the couch and walking, yes I know crazy notion, to walk, over to the t.v. and manually change channels. *gasp* Can you believe that? Now, we can all sit on our rapidly spreading fat arses and not only change the t.v. channel, but we can also: change the stereo station, open draqes, turn the ceiling fan off and on, lights off and on and the list goes on of what we can do, while sitting on the couch. That's tech advance, but it's also making us lazy creatures whose blood pressure is on the rise, fat cells multiply and increase, health risks increase, not to mention the fact that so many look like they haven't seen the light of day in years. God forbid they get up and go outside and take a walk. Oh, here, let's just counteract our lazy asses by using technology to enhance ourselves. I happen to like the fact that I have to work hard to look half way decent. I don't have Botox injected here and there, or have my fat svcked out of my butt and inserted into my lips to give me luscious lips. Or have Silicone implants stuffed painfully in places that will look really silly, high and perky when I'm ninety. :shakehead:

But more than all of this, I like to learn with my OWN brainpower, not with some computer micro-super chip that's been planted in my head. Somehow that just seems like a cheat. (And, I still say again that noone knows who or what can connect to that chip and do God knows what with me and my thoughts and actions) I'll just grow old the way I am, and die a natural death, knowing I am the way I am, thankyouverymuch.

It bothers me, because anything of this nature starts out with good intentions, but once started, how far do we go?

Sure, but that's a different problem altogether, albeit one that will probably come more into focus as the possibilities become more and more awesome. Uneven healthcare coverage is a huge problem today. Rich people being able to buy more stuff is pretty much the definition of 'rich people'.

I'm all in favour of sharing out the wealth a bit, but that's not a reason to limit ourselves. A move towards equality and a move towards more advanced technology could just as easily go hand in hand, that's really more of a political / economic issue.

I'm sure that 'feeling superior' will be a driving force for some people, but not for us all - and maybe the competitive side gets a bit boring in areas where technology takes over? For me, the main attraction would be technologies that allow me to do more of what I enjoy, the ultimate example being a longer healthy lifespan (allowing more of EVERYTHING I enjoy).

how do we sustain more and more people enjoying more of that "EVERYING" they enjoy?

I pretty much agree with all of this apart from the conclusion

Sure, it feels good to work out, to move about, to take a walk. Sure, you should think hard before implanting anything into your brain, especially if it's connected to the Internet in any way. Yes, I'd feel out of place getting cosmetic surgery, although mostly because it seems painful, expensive and tends to end up looking kind of ugly.

We already live in a world where you can do all the above. You choose not to, I choose not to. It's cool. I'd hate to degenerate into a couch potato. I like the squirrely charm of my own face. To be honest I wouldn't mind an implant that can solve equations for me, mostly because I don't find equation-solving that interesting in itself but occasionally have to solve an equation. Hey, hang on... I already have that implant, just in the form of a portable computer.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we already have all kinds of technological assistance available. We can pick and choose which bits we want to use.

"Where does it end?" Wherever we want it to end. Maybe in the future it will be more difficult to remain competitive in certain areas if you don't embrace new technology to some degree, but that's nothing new... it's more difficult to get a job these days if you refuse to use a computer, because computers are useful things. But at the end of the day it's still up to you. I'm not convinced that more technology leads to a slippery slope of more laziness, less physicality, more mind control, or anything of that nature.

You probably weren't talking directly to, and it doesn't really matter, but I just want to put my statement in context to what you presented.
with another short stamtement

missing things and broken things are not a situation where we are playing god.
Considering if human biology altogether is broken, is what I was referring to.

No, but we have seen many time in history how the gulf between the rich and poor have resulted in chaos and massive suffering. Should we go the way of transhumanism, particularly libertarian transhumanism, we will see the gulf between rich and poor become so wide that the poor will have no hope competing. if you need a chip in your head to get a good job, and the better the chip (presumably the more expensive) the better the job, no one who cannot afford the best chips will ever be able to compete.

The bloodiest revolutions are revolutions from the bottom.

You got me there, that's a huge problem. Still, with massive population growth, it's going to be a huge problem anyway.

If we increase everybody's HEALTHY lifespan (without increasing the old-age period afterwards), this will allow us to be productive for longer, which could sort the economic aspects out.

In terms of food it's not that simple. Maybe technology can vastly increase the amount of food available, but no matter what, we'll hit the limit someday.

We make this decision every time we give older-than-average people medicine, though. I'd hate to be the one who has to draw the line: "Good work... but... that was one cure too many! Delete those results!"

right?!

when you can essentially make one live forever, they also keep that money essentially forever. old money doesnt even begin to describe it.
before we know it 500 biomechanoids have all the wealth on the planet.

im not sensing that a lot of people in this thread are familiar with anologies.

No thanks,
so, it is really being less human.
I would rather leave it too mother nature's evolution for making our species stronger.
Now having said that, of course I take medicine if I get ill, so I am not exactly weeding myself out of the gene pool for the future.

so we should expedite the process of sappiing the worlds resources?
"hey, youre gonna die eventually, why not help speed that along?" does that sound like sound logic?

increased productivity would only speed up the rate that materials are consumed, as it takes materials to make that energy to create that producivity., which is the problem with a massive population growth to begin with.
I suppose we could start colonizing other planets. i will miss the earth though. "it was beutiful when there was life on it."

It's a difficult issue. The thing is, we're already increasing our lifespan. It's not a new thing. It won't happen overnight, it'll be a gradual development. And at the same time, population growth is going to be a problem anyway, no matter what happens in medical science.

So there's one ethical issue: when do you stop trying to cure people? And another: how should we control population growth?

Assuming we are close to the limit (I don't think we're there yet, but for the sake of argument):

One solution is to only allow one child born per parent. In that case the population remains stable, no matter what the maximum lifespan ends up being. If we figure out how to put enough solar cells in space and effectively beam energy down to us, that's a steady state model for Earth. Is that ethical?

Another solution is to avoid medical research, keep the average lifespan as it is today, and limit population growth in such a way that the number of people born equals the number of people dying. Is that more or less ethical than the first solution?

I have no idea. I'm inclined to favour the wellbeing of the living over the wellbeing of the not-yet-concieved, but the right to squeeze out a massive number of babies also seems to tie into the 'wellbeing of the living', so that doesn't really help.