when i was a little girl[1] and learned about crispr in biology class it immediately became my dream to get pregnant and crispr my own fetus, my body my choice they cant stop me. i was weirdly serious about this until i hit college and realized doing any bio related research would involve undue amounts of pipetting (which i hate) and not enough math (which i love).
you’re right—AI has overtaken all of the discussion and we have forgotten about how cool genetic modification can be. i am sure biologists are still plugging away at interesting genetic modification in the background. we should be putting more funding and research towards topics like this currently outside of the research vogue. i so totally agree. more transhumanism. on this note, i argue that we are already cyborgs[2] and have already succeeded in transing our humanity[3]
but to me, transhumanism would need some sort of overaching goal. like i support doing transhumanism for sillies, but i’m just not a silly guy personally. why are we transing our humanity like that? whats the end goal here? i am so serious. i have seen both life and beauty posited as goals, neither of which compel me much. transhumanism for space colonization i like though. that one compels me.
i truly do not think humanity will make it in space. or at least, its not the most feasible. i feel it is a waste of resources and humans would have to evolve so much that they are essentially no longer humans to exist in space. BUT i think we should build robots that can colonize space. in many ways we already have.
i always get a little confused on the end goals of human space exploration. here are some i see:
because it is a difficult thing to accomplish, and to quote jfk, “we will go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard” and hard things are fun.
resource extraction (this, i feel, makes the most sense, as i am toxically economically pessimistic.) robots are the answer for this i feel.
escaping earth because it is burning up. i feel surviving on a polluted, climate changed earth will always be easier than surviving in space. supervolcano, etc, i feel would be easier than space. (i can elaborate upon request.)
like uh legacy. some sort of “we were here” and continuing the legacy of the human race type thing. i feel robots are the answer to this one as well.
maybe im the weird one but i dont feel the human body/form is that sacred. i think we should be focusing on robots that can do the things that we cant. i know i am a freak for saying this but i view robot successors to the human race as an almost parent-child relationship. as oingo bingo once said, “nooone lives forever!”[4] and thats why you leave someone behind to continue your legacy. this is normal and i am quite comfortable with this.
anyhoo. most living organisms are suited to earth-like conditions. i feel replicating earth-like conditions in space consistently is much harder than simple designing robots built to survive in space. or even designing organisms, that could be cool, i am just more into robots because its more related to my area of research. also, i feel designing umwelts for space capable of data collection, data synthesis, and construction methods would be easier using robot type tools and not designing a high level organism from scratch. for numerous reasons.
nice essay tho ur prose is very emotional in a moving way 👍 u shld write poetry king
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age 14, which, actually not too long ago!
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the phone is an extension of the self, taking my computer away from me is like cutting of part of my brain, technology is so involved in our lives that we become disabled without it; conversely through phones and such our capabilities are enhanced. bionic humans are you and me. this delves into philosophy of the self and how we define the self which is its own topic. unrelated. i shant delve into that one.
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what defines a human anyway?
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i read like 2⁄3 of HPMOR. the section where dumbledore was like “harry everything dies u must make peace with it” and harry was like “no i think we should live forever because: life is good. you’re crazy for not thinking life is good.” and then the narrative structure of the passage was like “BOOM! DUMBLEDORE JUST GOT DESTROYED!” was very funny in how i felt it was poorly argued. also riddled with fallacies. maybe it was better argued at a later point, but at the time of reading it i was obsessed with how the author was just claiming life is good therefore we should live forever. not to reference clavicular [5]but its like saying “beauty is good” and just running with that. like u havent convinced me that life or beauty is good at all but i respect the confidence. lol. my take is that reproduction is part of life and instead of living forever we should be focused on effectively reproducing. (whatever that may entail.)
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also not to wallacianly footnote my footnote, transhumanism is SO in full swing see: clavicular see: people who research robotic limbs. i just think the phone as a cyborgian component of the human experience is more interesting as it is more commonplace.
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i apologize for mentioning clavicular but in my defense eliezer yudokowsky and him are the same to me. i enjoy them both. i want them to do whatever they think is right. eliezer yudokowsky twitch stream when, clavicular harry potter fanfiction when?
i used 2 feel this way about nuclear war. i spent a summer being really stressed about total nuclear annihilation. i believe the line of thought that mostly got me out of the spiral was that i am alive until i am dead, anything that happens once i am dead does not matter, as i will be dead and there is nothing i can do about it. if nuclear war does come and i am alive, i will deal with it when it comes. i trust in society 2 pull 2gether 2 find a solution. for now, it hasnt happened yet, so i dont care. also i got busy with things outside of my own head. that helped.
there is an instinct to prepare, but i personally feel more preppers are foolish in prepping with material stockpiles as opposed to skills and relationships that will be helpful in any difficult situation. learning to garden is fun and helps hedge against catastrophe! and such. learning a useful skills both functions as a way to distract yourself and your way to prepare for bad things happening in the future. also u can make new friends along the way! :D