What trans-human modifications would you make?

[magnemoe]

35 minutes ago, razark said:

We lack high speed, protective skin, brute strength, sharp claws, and long fangs.  Yet we are the creatures that have bent this world to our will.  The other animals on this planet exist because we find them useful, cute, or just because we can't be bothered to eliminate them.  We have reached the point where we are reintroducing predators we once feared into areas where we once strived to eliminate them.  We've turned various grasses into mutant seed-bearing plants for our food source.  We found the least poisonous strains of poisonous plants and turned them into tasty fruits.  We made tools by banging rocks together.  We took a terrifying, destructive force of nature and now keep pet fires in our homes, to turn on and off at our whim.  We threw rocks into really hot fires until we found out how to make the very earth bleed useful metals.

We are humans.  We'll do just fine.

You misunderstood my post a bit. All my changes was fixing health issues, many who pops up as most of us are not hunter gatherers anymore. 
Most however because evolution is an very crude tool, issues only get fixes if its an good chance you will not reproduce because of bugs. 

And an mix we live longer after we stop reproducing than most animals simply because grandparents has an important role in an tribe, they can watch over and later teach kids skills and do lots of camp chores. Focus on tribe, system is probably more than 50K year old. 

In short evolution is extremely broken, slow and cruel, its used because it works in an way, but its so far from human rated you can get. 
Bring on intelligent design . look that it has done the last 50K years, look how cars or planes has changed the last 100. 
 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Solve the problem of the mind transfer, and grow bodies. Then neither aging, nor illnesses are important.

And get Kilrathi as a result.

Growing new bodies is an option for immortality, or kind of one, take regular backups, you die and wake up some months later in an new body.
You feel like you are resurrected, people will pay serious money for this, but are you really? 
The original you might still be around knowing he is you, you was missing assumed dead or some other plot.
This will be way more relevant once we get sentinel AI as this is pretty easy for them:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff400/fv00380.htm read the next 4 pages, 

And yes the technical problems here is probably much larger than  simply eliminating aging who is simply very hard.

[kerbiloid]

17 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

And an mix we live longer after we stop reproducing than most animals simply because grandparents has an important role in an tribe, they can watch over and later teach kids skills and do lots of camp chores.

The problem is: these creatures don't teach children, but live much longer than their average siblings.

Ocean quahog clam. > Oldest recorded: 507 years.

Greenland shark. > Oldest recorded: 392 years. ...

Bowhead whale. > Oldest recorded: 211 years. ...

Rougheye rockfish. > Oldest recorded: 205 years. ...

Red sea urchin. > Oldest recorded: 200 years. ...

Galapagos tortoise. > Oldest recorded: 177 years. ...

So, maybe just the hormonal disbalance which made us looking like a neotenic baby-chimp  (hairless, flat-faced, browless, with small teeth, with childish habits compared to the adult apes) increased our lifespan over the chimp's normal value.
Like a sterilized cat often lives longer, so we do.

 

24 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Growing new bodies is an option for immortality, or kind of one, take regular backups, you die and wake up some months later in an new body.
You feel like you are resurrected, people will pay serious money for this, but are you really? 
The original you might still be around knowing he is you, you was missing assumed dead or some other plot.
This will be way more relevant once we get sentinel AI as this is pretty easy for them:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff400/fv00380.htm read the next 4 pages, 

This works if presume that the mind can be copied, cloned.
I.e. if the mind is a combination of electric signals circulating in the brain cells.

If the mind is an unique "holographic" structure existing in background, and the brain is just a low-level body driver with a nested network adapter, the mind can't be cloned (unlike the robot AI), but probably can be reattached to another adapter.
Say, where is the mathematics physically placed?  If the mind exists similar way, it's a physically unique object, so there can be only one highlander "I", and the body changing doesn't cause a personality cloning.

[magnemoe]

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The problem is: these creatures don't teach children, but live much longer than their average siblings.

Ocean quahog clam. > Oldest recorded: 507 years.

Greenland shark. > Oldest recorded: 392 years. ...

Bowhead whale. > Oldest recorded: 211 years. ...

Rougheye rockfish. > Oldest recorded: 205 years. ...

Red sea urchin. > Oldest recorded: 200 years. ...

Galapagos tortoise. > Oldest recorded: 177 years. ...

So, maybe just the hormonal disbalance which made us looking like a neotenic baby-chimp  (hairless, flat-faced, browless, with small teeth, with childish habits compared to the adult apes) increased our lifespan over the chimp's normal value.
Like a sterilized cat often lives longer, so we do.

Yes, slow growing animals  having an slow life cycle or large animals who need long time to grow up as in elephants or whales tend to live an long time.
Having few predators also help, compare to <200 kg mammals. 
However outside whales and elephants the biochemistry is very different.
Still an long term and large scale study of Greenland sharks and  Bowhead whales would be relevant. for cancer research if nothing else, large long lived creatures should get cancer more often. You probably get an medal in Stockholm for it and an high number of billions for the drug but we will obviously add it to the gene line once its tested for an generation. 

And yes we die as kittens compared to other animals. Did the Neanderthals? We know they tried to copy us at the end, but it might be desperation or HS helping their friends.  

And yes neutered cats live longer, most animals don't play nice, my old cat came home seriously beaten up a lot of times, that was how I got her.  
Armor or martial art training for cats would be a bit silly. The problem with the armor is that you need armor for yourself to get the cat into it. 

Uplifting would again solve the issue and you need armored cats to fight the raccoons 

Animals are idiotic violent by human standards, humans are very good at large scale organization including warfare,  this make us much more like social insects than mammals organized in packs. Might be an late evolution after we started growing grain.

Now some nightmare fuel to offset the cute cat, the Stockholm syndrome is an evolved trait. 
Yes again I don't like evolution, I prefer groups of master craftsmen using an long time coming up with something better. 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

This works if presume that the mind can be copied, cloned.
I.e. if the mind is a combination of electric signals circulating in the brain cells.

If the mind is an unique "holographic" structure existing in background, and the brain is just a low-level body driver with a nested network adapter, the mind can't be cloned (unlike the robot AI), but probably can be reattached to another adapter.
Say, where is the mathematics physically placed?  If the mind exists similar way, it's a physically unique object, so there can be only one highlander "I", and the body changing doesn't cause a personality cloning.

I say its an decent chance out brain contain some quantum level computation, and yes copying one would be idiotic hard compared to eliminating aging. 
Still the freefall robots has an point, still I would buy an health plan who included resurrection  

Enter the 3rd charge of the redshirts, initiated by an orbital bombardment followed by forces who had detail knowledge of he enemy tactic and setup   

[kerbiloid]

50 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

eliminating aging. 

A not aging creature can't die peacefully, only tragically.

The aging gives a possibility to shutdown without being crashed, smashed, burnt, eaten, poisoned, or so on.
A not aging creature doesn't have such possibility, it always dies violently. Or gets disabled but lives forever.

So the disaging postpones the problem for the price of inevitable fear and suffering in the end.

To avoid this it's not enough just to eliminate aging, a quick and deep regeneration is necessary, otherwise everyone's body will be one big complex wound after several centuries of inevitable damages.
Try to keep some of your limbs living since, say, XV century. So, just healing scratches is not enough, whole limbs should re-grow.

Next there is the question: how deep should the regeneration go?
Should an appendix grow back? Should a heart disease be restored? Should (women deals mentioned here)? A harelip? A cleft palate? A conjoined twin?
Should the body be restored to the original cradle state?
Is the first ova division a trauma to be regenerated?
Hairs and nails regenerating once gotten cut?
Epythelium cells? Bone marrow? Are their fission a trauma?

And as we know, the regeneration, the ova fission,  and the cancer are nearly the same process ancested from unicellular, just being stopped on corresponding conditions.
So, by eliminating the aging we kinda open gates for other unpleasant things, which almost never happen with one person at once just because don't have a time for this.
By eliminating the aging we give them additional time and force their natural progress.

So, probably we should assume that every particular body is finite, and trying to let it exist much longer than it usually does, is not the way.

Also, any body modifications shouldn't actually give a lot more than a body has on its nature.

Spoiler

 

Edited July 26, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Guest]

Spoiler

7 hours ago, ARS said:

Neural implant? Some kind of high end VR device like NERVGEAR that transfer your consciousness into cyberworld and keep it there forever? Once the system  finished scanning the brain, you end up with a file that you run in a physics simulator, and presto, you have a computer that remembers being a human. If you do it carefully enough, the original brain won't even notice it happening (at least on theory)

This computer has a number of advantages over regular  human. The simulation can be run many thousands of times faster than objective speed, if you've got enough computing power. It can be backed up with trivial ease. You can run multiple copies at the same time, and have them do different things, make exotic personality composites, and tinker around with the inner workings of the brain in ways that are either difficult or impossible to do with a meat brain. Additionally, there's the fact that it's impossible to kill as long as its data is backed up somewhere and there exists a computer on which to run it - you can just restart the simulation wherever you left off and the mind won't even recognize it.

Critics of the concept are quick to point out that it presupposes an understanding of neurology (not just human neurology, but even the neurology of a common insect) far,far beyond what currently exists; and that without that knowledge, even the most powerful computer cannot do this. Proponents of the idea assure us that this knowledge is coming. Proponents who hope to live to see and actually benefit from it assure us that it's coming really really soon

As with The Singularity, the idea of brain uploading has inevitably taken on a quasi-religious aspect for many, since it does promise immortality of a sort (as long as your backups and the hardware to run them on are safe), and even transcendence of the body. The advantages bestowed by brain uploading are a bit overwhelming if you're think about it. However, despite it's theoretical immortality, there's still questions:

1. What is the underlying mechanism of the upload? Is the computer simulating every atom in every neuron, or is the upload applying memories and personality characteristics to a default template? This one is still unanswered

2. Is uploading destructive? Depending on which process you use, it may be possible to do it nondestructively, but many deem it convenient to have it destroy the original, to avoid the confusion of having two copies of the same people running around. The easiest, and currently the only vaguely practical process would be to take the brain down to liquid nitrogen temps, then image it with a scanning probe microscope. Except that a SPM has to get the probe within nanometers of the surface it's scanning, so after you scan a layer of brain, you scrape it off with a diamond microtome and scan the next layer down. You end up with a map of the locations of each atom in the brain, and a pile of rapidly defrosting brain slices on the operating room floor. This is also the most destructive brain uploading process imaginable that doesn't involve TNT.

3. Can you augment intelligence? Or does the brain's pattern need to be copied exactly to still function like a mind, leaving no room for radical enhancements?

4. Can the upload be copied? If the cybernetic entity can be copied, does that constituted as cloning?

It's still interesting concept though

There's a project called The Blue Brain Project. They've claimed to have simulated a rat's neocortical column and expect to be able to simulate the entire human brain by sometime in 2020, depending on which expert you ask. In practice, those who actually study brain development generally believe that it's pointless to predict such a thing, since our understanding of the brain's structure is not complete enough to create an AI.

My only criticism of the concept is that the people copied don’t live in the computer. They die when their brain does.

11 hours ago, ARS said:

turn this earth into planet-sized supercomputer where all humans live as uploaded cybernetic being 

What you in effect have is a race of memory and personality simulations based of the scanned brains of people who once lived. My question would be, why would you want that if you yourself dies anyway. It would be great for all the copied beings who remember being human and now get to live forever unbound by death, disease and traditional concepts of mortality... but everyone copied after this procedure has since left the copying building, gone home, made themselves dinner... and generally lived their life until their natural death. There’s still no immortality for them. For us @_@! 

 

[farmerben]

6 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Uplifting raccoons would be nice they would love to be able to pick locks  

I was thinking about beavers.   How smart do you have to be to understand levers and teamwork?  It seems like if one beaver could tell another beaver something really useful to coordinate their actions, civilization would naturally follow.  But that didn't happen.  Once beavers did abandon the water and roam the land as predators, but they did not get technology and died out.  Beaver society has nothing on monkey society, and our basic primate family has about a 1% success ratio of developing simple technology and surviving.  The biological great filters are a poodle.

Uplifted raccoons could rise up and become a threat to our species.  I think we must start with our pets and livestock and add thumbs, rather than starting with creatures with thumbs and altering their personality.  A dog brain with a goat digestive system, and thumbs on all four feet would truly be man's best friend.  It can eat all the crop products we don't eat, or mow the lawn, or thin the trees so we can have 50% shade everywhere.  And sacrifice the ability to run fast for the ability to climb trees.   

Also saying, for those who want to fully merge with computers, then what?  What specific capabilities then?  Ok, patch the optic nerve with an augmented reality interactive visual display.  That is like having a laptop inside your eyeball.  If you want to exist as a virtual person detatched from flesh, please explain what you would do with that?

 

 

Edited July 26, 2019 by farmerben

[ARS]

1 hour ago, Dale Christopher said:

My only criticism of the concept is that the people copied don’t live in the computer. They die when their brain does.

IKR, we all gonna die someday. I do have some skepticism towards brain uploading, since it's rather sketchy subject that violates what we have destined to be at the end of our life. There are people from the past that has searched a way for immortality, even today. Yet there's no such thing as eternal life for humans

[Guest]

On the topic of uplifting animals though, this series is pretty cool:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreau_series

 

[Guest]

Spoiler

Quote

 @ARSI do have some skepticism towards brain uploading, since it's rather sketchy subject that violates what we have destined to be at the end of our life.

How so? If you are describing copying someone’s mind, and if doesn’t change anything about the person being copied, the original person is unaffected. Their life continues and eventually ends like a normal person. What you’ve essentially created is another entity who’s path diverged from the original at the moment the process was performed. None of that extends the actual life of the original. 

 

Edited July 27, 2019 by Guest

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Dale Christopher said:

Their life continues and eventually ends like a normal person.

Who of you's is married to your wife?

[Guest]

Spoiler

15 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Who of you's is married to your wife?

The one that married her @_@...

 

Edited July 27, 2019 by Guest

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, Dale Christopher said:

15 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Who of you's is married to your wife?

The one that married her @_@... 

And who should paid her money if you divorce?

Edited July 27, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Guest]

Spoiler

Just now, kerbiloid said:

And who should paid her money if you divorce?

You XD

 

[DDE]

17 hours ago, Dale Christopher said:

My only criticism of the concept is that the people copied don’t live in the computer. They die when their brain does.

I think, therefore I am... AM.

[Aelipse]

Depends whether you want to live in space or just use space travel as a necessary way of reaching other planets. Adjusting your body for weightlessness in space means you won't be able to walk on the surface of any planet anywhere.

I would very much prefer bending our environment (building space ships, terraforming uninhabited planets and moons) to the needs of our bodies than the other way around. Evolution will continue to make changes to our gene pool whether we desire it or not, even without our help.

As much as I'm excited about genetic engineering and the possibilities it brings to the table, I'm at the same time afraid that once we dip our toes into deliberate genetic modifications, there's no end to it. We might as well just copy our brain's neural structure into a computer and be in charge of a fully robotic body, or just become a part of the internet.

I know this is a bit off-topic, but I just love how many ethical questions these hypothetical (yet not at all unrealistic!) technologies bring to the table.

Edited July 27, 2019 by Aelipse

[HebaruSan]

It would be nice to adapt to our current environment first, specifically with regard to "diet and exercise."

If we eat too many calories, our body says, "Oh boy, insurance against famine!" and packs fat on our bellies, hips, and thighs. But most of us (in the developed world, at least) are not going to experience a famine in our lifetimes. Instead we are saddled with struggling against this now-unnecessary adaptation with guilt, willpower, scales, and recipe books. We ought to be able to remove this tendency from our genes and settle comfortably at an optimum weight regardless of calories consumed. (Obviously this would not help with nutritional deficiencies; you still have to eat all the right vitamins and minerals.)

Exercising a muscle damages it microscopically; the body interprets this as a signal that you need that muscle to do something important and reinforces it, and over time this causes muscle growth. It's an ingenious way to ensure that resources are spent efficiently in an environment of scarcity. Nowadays (again in the developed world) it is common for a person's necessary daily tasks to be physically undemanding, which our body interprets as an opportunity to save metabolic energy, rendering us weak and vulnerable to various diseases. So we go to the gym, where with an unreasonable expenditure of time and calories and occasionally injuries, we attempt to artificially instruct our bodies what a desirable build looks like through the aforementioned primitive indirect mechanism. We ought to be able to alter our genes to simply grow the tissue to the desired size and strength regardless of our physical activity.

The former might not be too helpful to astronauts, but the latter certainly would be.

[Guest]

There are more useless adaptations that we ought to throw out. Aside from diet and exercise, there's also the fact our bones don't take kindly to the most comfortable position to operate machinery in (that is, sitting). 

Other things would be various ways to increase G tolerance (useful for fighter pilots and astronauts), better memory (sourced from genotype of savants), increased reflexes (would improve all-round safety), ability to regenerate the sound sensing cells. We could also try increasing bone density (for tougher bones) and replacing collagen in the skin with spider silk (for much tougher skin). The big one, though is that intelligence is heritable, and if we figured out genes involved, we could probably increase it across the board.

Indeed, I think that genetically optimizing humans as scientists, pilots, administrators, soldiers, etc. is how it'll eventually go. Modern world is increasingly demanding, and if this trend continues, this will be required just to keep ahead. 

[kerbiloid]

The most required modification which would make its provider enormously rich:
"Eat a lot and still stay thin".

[Delay]

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

"Eat a lot and still stay thin". 

You don't need genetic modification to achieve that!

[coyotesfrontier]

Full control over my sleep/wake cycle, so that I can easily sleep at night, and stay awake during the day.

[Guest]

On 7/28/2019 at 2:27 AM, DDE said:

I think, therefore I am... AM.

You can’t think when you’re... DEAD.

XD

@DDE I’m speaking in terms of this type of thing btw https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus 

basically in this context a copy is not the original from the perspective of the original which is you for the purpose of this discussion. So you copied yourself and say now you have that copy on a CD. You could take it home and put it in a draw. You aren’t the copy right? 

1 hour ago, coyotesfrontier said:

Full control over my sleep/wake cycle, so that I can easily sleep at night, and stay awake during the day.

It’s called an alurm clock >_< and slaeping pills ( although I did took two night time cold and flus recently and they did nothing =\ )

Edited July 30, 2019 by Guest

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, Dale Christopher said:

It’s called an alurm clock >_< and slaeping pills ( although I did took two night time cold and flus recently and they did nothing =\ )

Try to not take the alarm clock next night.

Edited July 30, 2019 by kerbiloid