/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12614072]

Just finished reading this and it made me realize that Humanity either needs to be destroyed in an apocalypse or abandon all scientific developments and return to an agricultural subsistence existence. If we don’t, we will lose all conception of what it means to be Human. Beauty, ugliness, struggle and triumph, heroism and tragedy: everything that is good and right and unique about the Human experience will be destroyed in a storm of idiot scientists playing with forces beyond their comprehension.

[Anonymous No.12614091]

Explain further

[Anonymous No.12614124]

>>12614072
>Beauty, ugliness, struggle and triumph, heroism and tragedy

Cringe. None of these mean anything or have any real value.

[Anonymous No.12614132]

>>12614072
Being destroyed would without a doubt make us lose everything that you call good, right and unique. Returning to agricultural subsistence gives no guarantees that our descendants won't repeat our mistakes. It's only pushing the problem back a few millennia. Attempting course correction is the only rational choice if the goal is to preserve those values. A nonzero probability of success is always preferred.

[Anonymous No.12614134]

>>12614091
Increasing in biotechnology, the rate of cybernetics developments and the quest for immortality are all factors that will fundamentally change humanity.

Already now you can get drugs that manipulate the satisfaction experienced by your brain. Already you can purchase interfaces that let you use cybernetics with only your thoughts. Already life expectancy has been extended by two decades in the past three decades. What will become of us when we truly unlock the capacity to edit our genome? What will become of us when we augment our bodies and minds with cybernetics? We will become unrecognizable.

Right now, you can look back at our ancestors and their works and you can see yourself in them. The Bible still speaks to us because it was written by people not so very different from us in spirit. All great works of art and literature were written by Humans with the Human condition firmly entrenched in their lives. Pain and suffering are as important to our soul as pleasure. If we eliminate pain entirely and we immerse ourselves in total pleasure, we will lose the Human condition and we will lose our species’ soul.

>>12614124
>The Human condition is meaningless
Maybe if you’re a soulless automaton, like Humanity is on the path to becoming. If you can’t appreciate the dichotomies of life such as beauty and ugliness then you aren’t even Human to begin with.

[Anonymous No.12614138]

>>12614132
It would be better to be destroyed with our souls intact than to live and lose them for eternity.

Course correction is not possible. Who will tell the masses that they must continue to suffer and die because really, truly, it is in their best interest?

[Anonymous No.12614189]

>>12614138
>Course correction is not possible.
[citation needed]

Like I said, I'll stick with the potentially nonzero probability of course correction, rather than the certain zero of species suicide. Call me stubborn, I don't mind that I am.

[Anonymous No.12614203]

>>12614124
>already this far gone
sad

[Anonymous No.12614204]

>>12614134
>don't transform yourself into a higher being because then you won't be able to connect to books written 2,000 years ago

Oh no, what a loss.

When we're all immortal cyborgs exploring the stars nobody is going to give a fuck about some bullshit written in the iron age. There will be new works of art created by gene edited 200 IQ gods that shitty "real" humans won't even be able to comprehend.

Humanity as we know will be erased, but it will have been replaced with something objectively better.

[Anonymous No.12614213]

>>12614204
>exploring the stars
what's actually out there though?

[Anonymous No.12614216]

>>12614189
You’re an optimist, I can respect that, but I do believe that line of thinking gambles more. In my mind, to lose our Humanity but continuing to live on as some technological abominations would be worse than to be destroyed. The future generations would suffer more to be soulless than we would to be annihilated

[Anonymous No.12614231]

>>12614213
shiny metals
maybe god

[Anonymous No.12614232]

>>12614216
>just give up and die
To accept that is the surest denial of humanity that exists.

[Anonymous No.12614253]

>>12614216
>but I do believe that line of thinking gambles more
Heh, I can see that it does. It's probably good that this decision doesn't really fall on any one individual.

>>12614232
Be nice.

[Anonymous No.12614257]

Can we please throw neo luddites into the ovens they crave so much?

[Anonymous No.12614277]

>>12614213
If we knew we wouldn't have to explore it.

[Anonymous No.12614289]

>>12614277
like maybe alien life but by the time we get to that stage will that even still be that interesting?

[Anonymous No.12614311]

>>12614124
yikes

[Anonymous No.12614346]

Read some Kurzweil instead. Also, Kantian-singilaritianism is the future.

[Anonymous No.12614522]

>>12614204
I'm sorry man, but you really need to get some help. Your idea of the transcendental man is completely out touch with how biotechnology has changed the world as it stands. Rather than being this force for futuristic 40k style transhuman fantasy, biotechnology has instead prolonged the suffering of people who through no fault of their own were born into mortal bodies too frail to survive the easy mode conditions of the modern world. Rather than creating positive momentum for "improvement" of humanity, we have instead allowed for a massive expansion of those who can barely get by via improving medical technology, while diluting the population of people who through 10s of generations of positive adaption to selection pressures would have otherwise found themselves thriving in comparison to the rest of humanity.

Biotechnology has been sold to the small souled bugman as the creation of the Spartans from halo, but is instead just a method to allow even more wretched and feeble people to emulate health and project their weakened biological matter into the future.

[Anonymous No.12614537]

>>12614072
>what it means to be Human

[Anonymous No.12614543]

>>12614522
the 'real' population explosion is only about five generations old, man, there's no way to even tell what, if any, 'dysgenic' consequences there have been.

[Anonymous No.12614608]

>>12614072
>"We should go back to agricolture or the values which I arbitrarily chose as representative of the human essence will be lost forever!"

And not only that, you are also implying that being human is a good thing. We have no proof of what makes us what we are, or if we would be better of without it.

[Anonymous No.12614710]

>>12614072
pleb tier reading sorry

[Anonymous No.12614716]

>>12614072
>old way GOOD
>new way BAD

[Anonymous No.12614926]

Anyone who thinks they can predict what a civilization of immortal geniuses, neurally linked to the entirety of human knowledge, will be like is deluding themselves. These creatures will look upon 21st century man as we look upon our pre-language ancestors. They will struggle to imagine what was like to be us, as we struggle to imagine how our ancestors thought without language.

[Anonymous No.12614995]

>>12614134
You are both right and wrong.
Right in that science is getting ahead of our biology, but wrong to assume the only way out is returning to the stone age.
The other option is accelerating our evolution, which is exactly what you fear; but for what purpose?
Evolution is a random gambling process; applying actual thought to it will have positive results.
Of course humans will change - and have to - because we change the world at a rapid pace.

[Anonymous No.12615059]

[Anonymous No.12615070]

[Anonymous No.12615119]

>>12615059
>no likes
jesus even twatter thought that joke was shit

[Anonymous No.12615133]

>>12614124
Based.

All current data projects that these symbols were merely unintended consequences of societies which focused on well-being.

[Anonymous No.12615140]

>>12614277

[Anonymous No.12615141]

>>12614543
lol watch a film from the 60s and watch one now, or better yet, watch some street interviews, you're deluded

[Anonymous No.12615185]

[Anonymous No.12615206]

>>12614072
>>12614134
>>12614522
Maybe you should stop reading propaganda from a guy out of his depth and think critically about the world.

>return to an agricultural subsistence existence
The unhealthiest point in history where our mortality rate grew astronomically but not a quick as our population so we managed to still work (he says so in Sapiens). This would also kill curiosity, exploration and render consciousness meaningless (also denying what makes humans unique). If you said go back to pre-language, hunter-gather times maybe I could agree with you.

>drugs that manipulate the satisfaction experienced by your brain
Maybe this was the escape it was 10-100 years ago but now science/society is favouring holistic methods like mindfulness, yoga, diet, etc over drug intervention.

>Bible still speaks to us
We have more in common with your future (with it being a literal style of teaching) than the bible (a symbolic style of teaching)

>cybernetics with only your thoughts
>augment our bodies and minds with cybernetics
The only purposes outside of medical recording brainwaves have given us is the ability to improve them which is exactly what meditation does. Benefits of meditation arguably make us more human than the social conditioned things we are now.

>life expectancy has been extended by two decades
But still, the people that live the longest live on blue group islands away from technology and modern advancements. The only reason it has an increase as an average is due to us being able to treat illnesses we couldn't before. Do you also think penicillin was a bad idea?

>If we eliminate pain entirely and we immerse ourselves in total pleasure
Impossible, they are relative terms. You can only experience one without the other.

>Your idea of the transcendental man is completely out touch with how biotechnology has changed the world as it stands
And you're whole understanding comes from a single book written by something without the authority to do it.

>Rather than creating positive momentum for "improvement" of humanity
Biological evolution isn't the only way to progress. It takes hundreds of thousands of years to make small improvements in biology and is particularly impossible with how big our population is and how we reproduce (wonder why animals have subclasses of species isolated to small areas). There are much more effective ways to progress which is clear from technology.

>just a method to allow even more wretched and feeble people to project their weakened biological matter into the future.
You've come at this from a poor angle. If instead, you said that technology, language, and all modernity is cancer to the true human state of being and that before you nuke us back to hunter gather times you were going to cull all the inferior beings and segregate races to foster homo aryanous that can become even more genetically superior through selective breeding than I would have called you unironically based.

[Anonymous No.12615207]

>>12614716
>old way BAD
>new way GOOD
what's your point exactly?

[Anonymous No.12615217]

>>12615119
imagine being this seething because he's got a girlfriend and you don't

[Anonymous No.12615239]

>>12615070
Why are secular Jews allowed to be a thing? Sapiens is just the writings of an angsty teen trying to disprove his Dad's religion.

[Anonymous No.12615301]

>>12615059
That's quite the dystopian capitalist tool.
>work workers to death
>develop robotic implants to keep them functioning
>work them even harder

[Anonymous No.12615442]

>>12615059
this picture is shopped

[Anonymous No.12615443]

>>12615141
which films would you have me compare?