Androids and AI's: Next stage in human Evolution?

[WesFox13]

For quite a long time I have believed that one day, humanity would slowly become more cyborg and robotic if the technology comes by. I think that the advantages could many including immortality.

The questions I want to ask you is this. Does this sound at all reasonable or plausible? I mean I wouldn't mind being an immortal machine or AI. I also want to ask you even if human minds were inside of it would someone think of them as Non-Human?

[Vehrec]

You refer to the Technological Singularity? It's a real possibility, but it's unclear just how much technology we'll need to start reinventing ourselves and the world. It's all very Evolutionary, and not at all a religious idea, so we can anticipate this board being Early Adopters by and large. We are already mechanical intelligences, just ones based off organic chemistry and ion levels in a couple of pounds of fat and protein instead of electrons or photons or q-bits. AI transfered humans would make nigh-perfect space explorers, capable of surviving radiation, lack of air, and other conditions that would kill fleshbound men as well as having the lifespan if not the sanity to survive the long journey to another star.

I'm not sure where the line should be drawn between men and machines, but I suspect that it will be arbitrarily drawn close to the meat. Evolutionarily, this makes no sense, as you will never be able to point to a single individual and say 'here is the man who traded away humanity for immortality.' It doesn't work that way. You'll be able to trace the steps and know that this is different from that, but where do you draw the line? It's the same problem that faces those who try to define Human ancestry, where do we become Homo, where do we become sapiens?

Where do we leave our baby-steps behind? From monkeys to men, shall we next become angels and demons? Or shall we be Gods?

[White Haven]

For an interesting look at the concept, I'd recommend Charles Stross's Accelerando. He tends to write about Singularity a lot, and Accelerando more or less tracks humanity from near-future to way-the-hell-out-there postmodern through the experiences of a rather odd and slowly-obsolete family.

[Enforcer Talen]

http://www.aleph.se/Trans/ I bookmarked this site a while back. It might stir your braincells some.

[Molyneux]

One thing I liked about "The Singularity is Near" (which I have not yet finished reading - had to return it to the library) was that he gave, fairly early in the book, something of a concrete timeline - so if it completely diverges from reality within the next, say, ten years, we'll know he was wrong.

[Enforcer Talen]

Im reading that myself right now, actually. This topic made me dust it off and take a look again.

Im hedging my bets, really.

IF peak oil global warming < WW2
THEN singularity

My line of thinking is ww2 didnt derail the tech advance, so I can have a tiny bit of hope

[Gullible Jones]

Sorry to burst your collective bubbles, but Kurzweil is a huckster.

And though I think it's pretty well guaranteed that we'll see some strange (and awe-inspiring) stuff in our lifetimes... I'd be a more than a bit weary of this Singularity stuff. It makes a lot of assumptions about how things will work out, and history has consistently proven that such assumptions tend to be inaccurate. Transhumanism is a noble philosophy, but it's best not to make a religion out of it.

[Sarevok]

Im reading that myself right now, actually. This topic made me dust it off and take a look again.

Im hedging my bets, really.

IF peak oil global warming < WW2
THEN singularity

My line of thinking is ww2 didnt derail the tech advance, so I can have a tiny bit of hope

I say it's more like if posthumans arrive before civilization declines. A bunch of posthumans running on solar power and eating dirt and replicating like SG-1 replicators would be able to breeze through peak oil untill they invent fusion or something else.