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Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?


Ragitsu

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To those of you open to augmentation/replacements, is there a limit to the kind of cybernetic or bioengineered "part" you'd accept?

 

Do you mind looking markedly other than human, or do you want to look as you are now?

 

Would you mind anything that is connected to your brain/nervous system, or are you a strictly "normal consciousness" kind of person?

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

While I would prefer to look human, that definitely is not a deal breaker.

 

If it's not connected to the brain, what's the point? I want perfect memory, downloadable memory (with the possibility of off site backup), and the ability to access the net without a keyboard, mouse, or monitor. I want to be able to record that script or story fragment I have in my mind in that boundary between sleep and waking without getting out of bed.

 

Being a Strong AI proponent, the ultimate goal of the cyber-upgrades would be to move out of the meat puppet into a designed body, maybe one I can use to help look for life on Mars, or Europa. My current body disqualified me from astronaut training at the age of 12.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

Have you ever read Shadowrun? In those terms, I'd like to stop installing the best grade cyberware when I am at about 0.025 essence. Replacement sensory implants, muscle augmentation, skillsoft, dermal armor, wired reflexes, smartlink. I want it all. Unless, of course, I am a mojo slinger after the Awakening. :)

 

EDIT: Oh and I am already ugly as sin. Looking inconspicuous is nowhere near a priority for me.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

Would I balk at things connected to the brain? The real question is, why stop there? I'm currently running on an inefficient blob of greasy meat. A lump of computronium the same size would have room for me to upgrade to demi-god levels and still have a harem of a hundred lovely catgirls along for the ride.

 

I'm all for casting off the limits of flesh, but I'd like to retain the option to appear as a stock human and interact with the world as one, when I felt like it.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

Not only that' date=' if we were talking bioengineering, I might look better than I do now. And I'm not ugly. Just not good looking either[/quote']

 

Everybody is good looking to somebody.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

To those of you open to augmentation/replacements, is there a limit to the kind of cybernetic or bioengineered "part" you'd accept?

 

Do you mind looking markedly other than human, or do you want to look as you are now?

 

Would you mind anything that is connected to your brain/nervous system, or are you a strictly "normal consciousness" kind of person?

I am principally open. I sometimes even play augmented guys/robots.

 

For the other two questions, it is the question what the altertnative is:

Asuming I don't have some serious damages from an accident, no I wouldn't use cyberware to upgrade myself. Neither the obvious, nor the inobvious or invisible kind.

My neural system and personality is enough of a mess without buggy hardware in the middle of it.

 

When it is about replacing lost organs/arms/eyes:

When it seriously hinders me at living not havgin those parts, I guess I would replace them. And if I don't have the money for the invisible kind (or my health plan doesn't covers it), I would even go for the obvious ones.

And being liked into the brain (using the normal ways for those body parts) is the best way to replace them.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

Anything goes, to the point where A) I'm still me as I define it and B) I still have total free will (no override programs, please!).

In sci-fi terms, I'd have no problems with being one of McCaferry's Brainships, but if anyone tried to put in the hypnotic override from Haldeman's The Forever War there'd be blood on the floor.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

To those of you open to augmentation/replacements, is there a limit to the kind of cybernetic or bioengineered "part" you'd accept?

 

Do you mind looking markedly other than human, or do you want to look as you are now?

 

Would you mind anything that is connected to your brain/nervous system, or are you a strictly "normal consciousness" kind of person?

 

I want to keep my brain organic and preferably factory parts, but I'm fine with cyber connections between my brain and machine. Where my body is concerned enhancements are good but I'm not yet ready to trade the whole thing in unless the new one can do all the things that the old one did. Later as the original body loses functionality, I might be willing to consider something that is wholly machine.

 

Have you ever read Shadowrun? In those terms, I'd like to stop installing the best grade cyberware when I am at about 0.025 essence. Replacement sensory implants, muscle augmentation, skillsoft, dermal armor, wired reflexes, smartlink. I want it all. Unless, of course, I am a mojo slinger after the Awakening. :)

 

EDIT: Oh and I am already ugly as sin. Looking inconspicuous is nowhere near a priority for me.

 

I've met you and at the time of our meeting you looked just fine. So either something drastic has happened to in the intervening years or you are way to hard upon your personal appearance.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

For the most part, I would not be afraid to accept artificial replacement parts, although I would prefer to maintain normal human appearance. I do not want to gain new abilities such as ones that allow me to directly connect to computers, shoot blasts from nothing, implanted armor, etc. This does include prosthesis for either arm or leg in addition to internal organs. If said prosthesis needs to look artificial, then i will accept it, although that will not be my forst choice. Mental enhancements would defenately be off the list. The mind has worked great for thousands of years with no aid from man (the body has needed great assistance though) and will continue to do so for the next several thousand years to come. Robots and AI will never truly be able to duplicate what the human mind can do today and has for half a million years.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

I've met you and at the time of our meeting you looked just fine. So either something drastic has happened to in the intervening years or you are way to hard upon your personal appearance.
Self-deprecating humor is all.
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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

Robots and AI will never truly be able to duplicate what the human mind can do today and has for half a million years.

 

Is that not potentially underestimating human creativity in the field of robotics/artificial intelligence?

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

Robots and AI will never truly be able to duplicate what the human mind can do today and has for half a million years.

 

You know, I've never heard an argument for that position that didn't boil down to either "computers will never be able to think because thinking is something computers can't do" or "computers will never be able to think because that would be scary".

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

Robots and AI will never truly be able to duplicate what the human mind can do today and has for half a million years.

 

Is that not potentially underestimating human creativity in the field of robotics/artificial intelligence?

 

You know' date=' I've [i']never[/i] heard an argument for that position that didn't boil down to either "computers will never be able to think because thinking is something computers can't do" or "computers will never be able to think because that would be scary".

Personally I think it's carbon chauvinism. Sir Roger Penrose bases his argument from Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

 

To quote Wiki

The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (essentially, a computer program) is capable of proving all facts about the natural numbers. For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem shows that if such a system is also capable of proving certain basic facts about the natural numbers, then one particular arithmetic truth the system cannot prove is the consistency of the system itself.

 

In other words, sometimes you can't get the right answer by logic alone, sometimes it takes intuition. Penrose claims this puts a limit on AI because we don't know how to give a computer intuition.

 

My response is that we don't know how to give a computer intuition -- YET!

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

I made my comment on robots/AI because nature gve humans some feature that cannot be captured nor studied (call it our soul, lifeforce, essence, whateverver). There is no way that that could be neither copied nor recreated in an artificial manner. This spark is what makes us human and will stop machines from properly duplicating humans. They will eventually gain camplexities that rival human mental engrams and can think in some manner but be able to use true human-level thought will always be beyond their grasp.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

I made my comment on robots/AI because nature gve humans some feature that cannot be captured nor studied (call it our soul' date=' lifeforce, essence, whateverver).[/quote']

Humans used to think illness came from bad spirits, because they could not study cells.

Humans used to think lightning/eartquakes/volcano erruptions is a sing of gods, because they could not study it or knew about physics.

Not even 80 years ago we did not knew of the neutrons and thus had no idea (or the basis to get the idea) of nuclear fission, both controlled and uncontrolled.

 

You see, there was alsways a supposed "final frontier", something "no thinker would be able to explain" or humanity would be unable to copy.

This is just another instance. It may take soem time, perhaps even thousand years (asuming no great war get's into our way), but there will be A.I. as powerfull as any human.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

I made my comment on robots/AI because nature gve humans some feature that cannot be captured nor studied (call it our soul' date=' lifeforce, essence, whateverver). [/quote']

There is no way that that could be neither copied nor recreated in an artificial manner.

This spark is what makes us human and will stop machines from properly duplicating humans.

They will eventually gain camplexities that rival human mental engrams and can think in some manner but be able to use true human-level thought will always be beyond their grasp.

I separated those because I would LOVE to know enough about biology, metaphysics, and computer science to state ANY of those as a fact. I am in awe, and envious, of your knowledge.

 

I am a dualist, I believe there is a "ghost" in the machine, that we are our genetic potential and subsequent environment PLUS something else. The exact nature of the "something else" is beyond my knowledge, but I see evidence of its existence. I certainly do not know enough about the "something else" to state categorically it cannot tap into a network of silicon as well as it can a network of carbon.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

I certainly do not know enough about the "something else" to state categorically it cannot tap into a network of silicon as well as it can a network of carbon.

Who says anything about future computer bieng made of silicon? Or anorganic matter, for that matter?

 

The Sky is the Limit. And our current knowledge is only a raindrop - what we do not know yet is all the water in the oceans.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

Create wholeclothe? Doubtful. Set on the evolutionary path towards? I believe yes.

Well, once we know how to teach them we can make A.I. that teach A.I. the same things at hothouse speed. Basically "growing" them in a high-speed environment.

Of course, we have to pay the teaching A.I. for the time services were rendered - not the time we waited ;)

 

It's a lot easier than doing that with humans, because you don't have the wriggle the space-time continuum to let the time go faster.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

Everybody is good looking to somebody.

 

I think this is just what we tell ugly people to make them feel better ;)

 

(I am no adonis, as can be seen by my profile pic; therefore, I am allowed to make this joke :D)

"You can point to any item in the Sears catalog and somebody wants to sleep with it." -- DETECTIVE STANLEY WOJOHOWICZ

 

McCoy, who has been called a chubby chaser.

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Re: Cybernetics and Bioengineering: what are YOUR limits?

 

I made my comment on robots/AI because nature gve humans some feature that cannot be captured nor studied (call it our soul, lifeforce, essence, whateverver). There is no way that that could be neither copied nor recreated in an artificial manner. This spark is what makes us human and will stop machines from properly duplicating humans. They will eventually gain camplexities that rival human mental engrams and can think in some manner but be able to use true human-level thought will always be beyond their grasp.

 

This is the standard tautology argument that I mentioned--"computers will never be able to think because thinking is something computers will never be able to do."

 

You know, men of science have invoked the "special something" or "lifeforce" concept before. For a time, certain chemical compounds were known to be present in living things, but attempts to synthesize those compounds in a lab failed. It was hypothesized that some sort of "vital force" found only in living things was required to create these "organic compounds".

 

In 1828, a German chemist named Friedrich Wohler synthesized the compound urea, a substance previously only created in living kidneys. While this didn't immediately overthrow vitalism, chemists were eventually able to say with certainty that living bodies do NOT have anything special, and are simple chemical reactors following the same laws as anything else.

 

Today, we find ourselves in a similar situation, regarding informational instead of chemical processes. We see certain informational processes taking place in artificial computational systems, and we note that some processes occurring in the human brain are not represented there. It's tempting to answer to our egos and assume that we have "something special" that "cannot be duplicated", but to my knowledge, there is no empirical evidence to suggest this.

 

The issue is further complicated by the fact that we don't have a good definition of what it means to "think" or "be conscious." Can we objectively determine if someone or something is exhibiting "true human-level thought"--that is, make a decision without resorting to our human chauvinism or a subjective "gut feeling"? If the behaviors that constitute "true human thought" are clearly and objectively defined, won't that make it much easier to program a computer to meet the standard?

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