Category Archives: Transhuman

For the last several decades, a strange liberation movement has grown within the developed world. Its crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gay-rights advocates. They want nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints. As "transhumanists" see it, humans must wrest their biological destiny from evolutions blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species.

It is tempting to dismiss transhumanists as some sort of odd cult, nothing more than science fiction taken too seriously: Witness their over-the-top Web sites and recent press releases ("Cyborg Thinkers to Address Humanitys Future," proclaims one). The plans of some transhumanists to freeze themselves cryogenically in hopes of being revived in a future age seem only to confirm the movements place on the intellectual fringe.

But is the fundamental tenet of transhumanism that we will someday use biotechnology to make ourselves stronger, smarter, less prone to violence, and longer-lived really so outlandish? Transhumanism of a sort is implicit in much of the research agenda of contemporary biomedicine. The new procedures and technologies emerging from research laboratories and hospitals whether mood-altering drugs, substances to boost muscle mass or selectively erase memory, prenatal genetic screening, or gene therapy can as easily be used to "enhance" the species as to ease or ameliorate illness.

Although the rapid advances in biotechnology often leave us vaguely uncomfortable, the intellectual or moral threat they represent is not always easy to identify. The human race, after all, is a pretty sorry mess, with our stubborn diseases, physical limitations, and short lives. Throw in humanitys jealousies, violence, and constant anxieties, and the transhumanist project begins to look downright reasonable. If it were technologically possible, why wouldnt we want to transcend our current species? The seeming reasonableness of the project, particularly when considered in small increments, is part of its danger. Society is unlikely to fall suddenly under the spell of the transhumanist worldview. But it is very possible that we will nibble at biotechnologys tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost.

The first victim of transhumanism might be equality. The U.S. Declaration of Independence says that "all men are created equal," and the most serious political fights in the history of the United States have been over who qualifies as fully human. Women and blacks did not make the cut in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson penned the declaration. Slowly and painfully, advanced societies have realized that simply being human entitles a person to political and legal equality. In effect, we have drawn a red line around the human being and said that it is sacrosanct.

Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project. If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind? If some move ahead, can anyone afford not to follow? These questions are troubling enough within rich, developed societies. Add in the implications for citizens of the worlds poorest countries for whom biotechnologys marvels likely will be out of reach and the threat to the idea of equality becomes even more menacing.

Transhumanisms advocates think they understand what constitutes a good human being, and they are happy to leave behind the limited, mortal, natural beings they see around them in favor of something better. But do they really comprehend ultimate human goods? For all our obvious faults, we humans are miraculously complex products of a long evolutionary process products whose whole is much more than the sum of our parts. Our good characteristics are intimately connected to our bad ones: If we werent violent and aggressive, we wouldnt be able to defend ourselves; if we didnt have feelings of exclusivity, we wouldnt be loyal to those close to us; if we never felt jealousy, we would also never feel love. Even our mortality plays a critical function in allowing our species as a whole to survive and adapt (and transhumanists are just about the last group Id like to see live forever). Modifying any one of our key characteristics inevitably entails modifying a complex, interlinked package of traits, and we will never be able to anticipate the ultimate outcome.

Nobody knows what technological possibilities will emerge for human self-modification. But we can already see the stirrings of Promethean desires in how we prescribe drugs to alter the behavior and personalities of our children. The environmental movement has taught us humility and respect for the integrity of nonhuman nature. We need a similar humility concerning our human nature. If we do not develop it soon, we may unwittingly invite the transhumanists to deface humanity with their genetic bulldozers and psychotropic shopping malls.

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Transhumanism Foreign Policy

Artificial intelligence has a long way to go before computers are as intelligent as humans. But progress is happening rapidly, in everything from logical reasoning to facial and speech recognition. With steady improvements in memory, processing power, and programming, the question isn't if a computer will ever be as smart as a human, but only how long it will take. And once computers are as smart as people, they'll keep getting smarter, in short order become much, much smarter than people. When artificial intelligence (AI) becomes artificial superintelligence (ASI), the real problems begin.

In his new book Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, James Barrat argues that we need to begin thinking now about how artificial intelligences will treat their creators when they can think faster, reason better, and understand more than any human. These questions were long the province of thrilling (if not always realistic) science fiction, but Barrat warns that the consequences could indeed be catastrophic. I spoke with him about his book, the dangers of ASI, and whether we're all doomed.

Your basic thesis is that even if we don't know exactly how long it will take, eventually artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, and once they're smarter than we are, we are in serious trouble. This is an idea people are familiar with; there are lots of sci-fi stories about homicidal AIs like HAL or Skynet. But you argue that it may be more likely that super-intelligent AI will be simply indifferent to the fate of humanity, and that could be just as dangerous for us. Can you explain?

First, I think we've been inoculated to the threat of advanced AI by science fiction. We've had so much fun with Hollywood tropes like Terminator and of course the Hal 9000 that we don't take the threat seriously. But as Bill Joy once said, "Just because you saw it in a movie doesn't mean it can't happen."

Superintelligence in no way implies benevolence. Your laptop doesn't like you or dislike you anymore than your toaster does why do we believe an intelligent machine will be different? We humans have a bad habit of imputing motive to objects and phenomenaanthropomorphizing. If it's thundering outside the gods must be angry. We see friendly faces in clouds. We anticipate that because we create an artifact, like an intelligent machine, it will be grateful for its existence, and want to serve and protect us.

But these are our qualities, not machines'. Furthermore, at an advanced level, as I write in Our Final Invention, citing the work of AI-maker and theorist Steve Omohundro, artificial intelligence will have drives much like our own, including self-protection and resource acquisition. It will want to achieve its goals and marshal sufficient resources to do so. It will want to avoid being turned off. When its goals collide with ours it will have no basis for valuing our goals, and use whatever means are at its disposal for achieving its goals.

The immediate answer many people would give to the threat is, "Well, just program them not to hurt us," with some kind of updated version of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. I'm guessing that's no easy task.

That's right, it's extremely difficult. Asimov's Three Laws are often cited as a cure-all for controlling ASI. In fact they were created to generate tension and stories. HIs classic I, Robot is a catalogue of unintended consequences caused by conflicts among the three laws. Not only are our values hard to give to a machine, our values change from culture to culture, religion to religion, and over time. We can't agree on when life begins, so how can we reach a consensus about the qualities of life we want to protect? And will those values make sense in 100 years?

When you're discussing our efforts to contain an AI many times smarter than us, you make an analogy to waking up in a prison run by mice (with whom you can communicate). My takeaway from that was pretty depressing. Of course you'd be able to manipulate the mice into letting you go free, and it would probably be just as easy for an artificial superintelligence to get us to do what it wants. Does that mean any kind of technological means of containing it will inevitably fail?

Our Final Invention is both a warning and a call for ideas about how to govern superintelligence. I think we'll struggle mortally with this problem, and there aren't a lot of solutions out thereI've been looking. Ray Kurzweil, who's portrait of the future is very rosy, concedes that superior intelligence won't be contained. His solution is to merge with it. The 1975 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA is a good model of what should happen. Researchers suspended work and got together to establish basic safety protocols, like "don't track the DNA out on your shoes." It worked, and now we're benefitting from gene therapy and better crops, with no horrendous accidents so far. MIRI (the Machine Intelligence Research Institute) advocates creating the first superintelligence with friendliness encoded, among other steps, but that's hard to do. Bottom linebefore we share the planet with superintelligent machines we need a science for understanding and controlling them.

But as you point out, it would be extremely difficult in practical terms to ban a particular kind of AIif we don't build it, someone else will, and there will always be what seem to them like very good reasons to do so. With people all over the world working on these technologies, how can we impose any kind of stricture that will prevent the outcomes we're afraid of?

Human-level intelligence at the price of a computer will be the most lucrative commodity in the history of the world. Imagine banks of thousands of PhD quality brains working on cancer research, climate modeling, weapons development. With those enticements, how do you get competing researchers and countries to the table to discuss safety? My answer is to write a book, make films, get people aware and involved, and start a private-public partnership targeted at safety. Government and industry have to get together. For that to happen, we must give people the resources they need to understand a problem that's going to deeply affect their lives. Public pressure is all we've got to get people to the table. If we wait to be motivated by horrendous accidents and weaponization, as we have with nuclear fission, then we'll have waited too long.

Beyond the threat of annihilation, one of the most disturbing parts of this vision is the idea that we'll eventually reach the point at which humans are no longer the most important actors on planet Earth. There's another species (if you will) with more capability and power to make the big decisions, and we're here at their indulgence, even if for the moment they're treating us humanely. If we're a secondary species, how do you think that will affect how we think about what it means to be human?

That's right, we humans steer the future not because we're the fastest or strongest creatures, but because we're the smartest. When we share the planet with creatures smarter than we are, they'll steer the future. For a simile, look at how we treat intelligent animals - they're at Seaworld, they're bushmeat, they're in zoos, or they're endangered. Of course the Singularitarians believe that the superintelligence will be ourswe'll be transhuman. I'm deeply skeptical of that one-sided good news story.

As you were writing this book, were there times you thought, "That's it. We're doomed. Nothing can be done"?

Yes, and I thought it was curious to be alive and aware within the time window in which we might be able to change that future, a twist on the anthropic principal. But having hope about seemingly hopeless odds is a moral choice. Perhaps we'll get wise to the dangers in time. Perhaps we'll learn after a survivable accident. Perhaps enough people will realize that advanced AI is a dual use technology, like nuclear fission. The world was introduced to fission at Hiroshima. Then we as a species spent the next 50 years with a gun pointed at our own heads. We can't survive that abrupt an introduction to superintelligence. And we need a better maintenance plan than fission's mutually assured destruction.

See more here:
When Robots Take Over, What Happens to Us?

Welcome to the Transhuman Space WikiEdit

The Transhuman Space Wiki is an online reference for everything related to the GURPS Transhuman Space setting by Steve Jackson Games.

Transhuman Space (THS) is a hard science fiction setting that takes place in the year 2100. It's somewhere between 'cyberpunk' and 'space opera,' both in technology and mood. The world is neither pessimistic nor optimistic but realistic; science has both solved problems and made new ones.

The idea is to create content in the main page and only once a particular content will be rich enough it will be moved to its own page. That's way, we shall avoid minimalist pages.

Transhuman Space and GURPS are registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by Steve Jackson Games. Material used here is in accordance with the Steve Jackson Games online policy.

This Wiki is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games. Steve Jackson Games is not responsible for the content posted by users of this Wiki. Content is not reviewed prior to posting, and nothing on these pages indicates any official sanction by Steve Jackson Games.

This wiki is not a replacement for official Transhuman Space or GURPS books and does not reproduce content from them. Rather than reproducing official content from the sourcebooks, please reference the material instead. Errata and/or book/page references are appreciated. Do not post the contents of the books themselves. No entry should diminish, even slightly, the necessity of anyone owning the book that is being referenced.

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Transhuman Space Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia

I'm a huge Eclipse Phase fan, although I think the setting needs to be reworked for sanity, and is dated due to the references to the politics going on when it was written. I realise that it's justified as Autonomist propaganda, but it really is too much of an author tract. It does have a useful number of references listed in the back of the core book if you are looking for more fiction and nonfiction works featuring transhumanism.

From things I have personally read:

Greg Egan is an Australian mathematician and computer programmer who excels at hard science fiction. Not all of his works use real physics, but he has an unmatched passion for internal consistency and thinking through the ramifications of new technologies.

Permutation City - my favorite Egan novel, this deals with uploads, artificial life, and simulated realities, among other things. This was written in 1994, but it reads like it was penned yesterday. Filled with all kind of interesting ideas and technologies to mine for inspiration, including a look at how these technologies would impact society. I would not run or play an Eclipse Phase game without reading this.

Axiomatic - A collection of short stories. Uploads, genetic engineering, mind editing, nanomachines, and a number of other ideas are explored. A few "holy shit" moments. Lots of stuff to steal.

Schild's Ladder - A physics experiment goes wrong. Has an interesting look at how humanity adapts and spreads throughout the galaxy based on our current understanding of physics - there is no FTL, which means that travelling to other stars involves transmitting the data making up your ego so that you can be reinstated at your destination. All kinds of interesting ideas that were lifted wholesale in Eclipse Phase. Hard science fiction.

Peter F. Hamilton writes hard-ish space opera. Some elements can be excused (FTL travel, for example) but some of the things he introduces are completely ridiculous (the souls of the dead, really?). Still, his fiction is filled with cool technology, factions, settings, and spaceships. Lots of inspiration for things to use in your own fiction.

His Night's Dawn Trilogy is the best of his work that I have read so far. Features an interesting dichotomy between hi-biotech people with living starships, grown O'neill colonies, and an interesting version of uploading, as well as a faction who have pursued mechanical solutions to their problems, using cyborgs and nanomachines. Voidhawks are pretty cool.

Peter Watts has a background in marine biology, and his attention to detail in the biological sciences as well as the mechanical aspects makes for fascinating reading - Watts and Egan are the gold standard for hard sci-fi. His misanthropy shines through in his novels, however. To quote one reviewer, "Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts." His writing really sets the tone for Eclipse Phase. Most of his work is actually hosted on his website.

Starfish, Maelstrom, and ehemoth compose the Rifters trilogy. Not to spoil too much, it features a group of very broken individuals who have been modified to survive several kilometers beneath the surface of the ocean in order to maintain a geothermal power plant. An extremely spooky setting is only made more interesting by an author who knows his shit. Bad things happen.

Blindsight deals with a near-future first contact scenario. Hard sci-fi with actually alien aliens. I'm not going to spoil anything. Thematically, this questions the nature of cognition and consciousness. I don't agree with his conclusions, but it really made me think about my own arguments. If Neon Genesis Evangelion depressed you, avoid.

Echopraxia is the sequel to Blindsight. Things get worse.

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Humanity, Plus: Transhuman Ideas, Recs, Discussion ...

Excerpts

Transhuman Space won the Grog d'Or for the best roleplaying game, game line, or RPG setting of 2002.

In the coming decades, technologies like genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology will transform humanity. A strange new world is unfolding nightmarish to some, utopian to others. Soon we'll have the power to reshape our children's genes, build machines that think, and upload our minds into computers.

And Earth no longer confines us. Space tourism, mining the Moon and asteroids, a settlement on Mars: all are dreams poised to take wing.

The universe of Transhuman Space is a synthesis of these two visions a world in which ultra-technology and space travel fuse to forge a new destiny for mankind. Neither utopia nor dystopia, it is a place of hopes, fears, and new frontiers.

Written by David L. PulverEdited by Andrew HackardCover art by Christopher ShyIllustrated by Christopher Shy

Transhuman Space Line Editor: Phil Masters

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It's the year 2100. Humans have colonized the solar system. China and America struggle for control of Mars. The Royal Navy patrols the asteroid belt. Nanotechnology has transformed life on Earth forever, and gene-enhanced humans share the world with artificial intelligences and robotic cybershells. Our solar system has become a setting as exciting and alien as any interstellar empire. Pirate spaceships hijacking black holes... sentient computers and artificial "bioroids" demanding human rights... nanotechnology and mind control... Transhuman Space is cutting-edge science fiction adventure that begins where cyberpunk ends.

This Powered by GURPS line was created by David L. Pulver and illustrated by Christopher Shy. The core book, Transhuman Space, opens with close to a hundred pages of world and background material. The hardback edition includes a customized GURPS Lite no other books are required to use it, although the GURPS Basic Set and Compendium I are recommended for GMs. The softback requires the Basic Set and Compendium I, but nothing else.

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Transhuman Space

Reactivated late '80s/early '90s technical-thrash metallers BELIEVER will release their new album, "Transhuman", on April 12 (one day earlier internationally) via Metal Blade Records. The CD was produced by Trauma Team Productions and was mixed by Kevin Gutierrez (RAVEN, PROJECT: FAILING FLESH, DECEASED, DYSRYTHMIA, GARDEN OF SHADOWS) at Assembly Line Studios in Virginia.

Once again, BELIEVER tapped into the artistic genius of Michael Rosner and Eye Level Studio to produce the "Transhuman" artwork and layout.

"We wanted to work with Roz again on 'Transhuman' as our visions of combining art and music truly parallel," the band said. "He just gets it and his artwork is outside the typical box in a way that we strive for musically. It is an amazing collaboration that we have with Roz that continues to evolve. We are excited for everyone to see the final layout!"

The band continued; "Sonically we're extremely happy with this album and can't wait for other people to hear it. We feel like this is a really strong and unique album in the BELIEVER catalog and it's something we're definitely proud of.

"So what will you hear? As we mentioned, we focused more on the overall musicality which included more instrumental layers than we used before. The vocals were also more of a focus as we have had much feedback throughout the years, specifically to get out of the one dimensional realm. Kurt [Bachman] wanted the vocals to be more complimentary to the overall tune feel, so he used many facets of his vocal abilities.

"As with all BELIEVER albums, this one is definitely unique."

Transhumanism: The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies.

Fans can pre-order their copy of "Transhuman" at link textthis location where the album is available on its own or bundled with a t-shirt. Also available on the band's pre-order page is a video that shows how the cover art came to be. Below are some images taken from the extraordinary artwork within the CD's packaging.

BELIEVER performed live for the first time in 16 years on September 25, 2009 at Sterling Hotel in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The band's fourth album, "Gabriel", was released in March 2009 through KILLSWITCH ENGAGE frontman Howard Jones's new imprint label Cesspool Records via Metal Blade. The CD featured guest appearances by Jones, Joe Rico (SACRIFICE), CKY/WORLD UNDER BLOOD guitarist/vocalist Deron Miller and Rocky Gray (EVANESCENCE, SOUL EMBRACED, LIVING SACRIFICE).

The rest is here:
Believer - Transhuman - Amazon.com Music