Transhumanism: The Discussion On Future Wars And What They Will Look Like!
February 5th, 2014 // http://breakingdeception.com/transhumanism-will-future-wars-look-like/
Throughout the transhumanist movement there is a strong belief, that transhuman technology will eventually end all wars and poverty. On the other hand there is a very large military interest in transhuman technology, like DARPA. There is an old saying, that war stimulates progress, but like with every stimulant, one must care not to overdose.
Source – IEET
Throughout the transhumanist movement there is a strong belief, that transhuman technology will eventually end all wars and poverty. On the other hand there is a very large military interest in transhuman technology, like DARPA. There is an old saying, that war stimulates progress, but like with every stimulant, one must care not to overdose.
Many transhumanists
point out that all the wars and horrors of armed conflicts are caused by
economic scarcity and “primate behaviour” or religions. Aside
from the debate, whether atheists should leave the transhumanist
movement, or should it be the other way around, removing the religious
and new age based members from the movement, the sole topic of faith,
religion and science are a regular flashpoint. Can’t prevent it? Join
it.
Transhuman technologies, outlined in the NBIC report as well as in other major publications could help us enhance humans via augmented perception, direct braincomms1 , increased durability, self-regeneration, built-in emergency life support, interchangeable bodies/avatars and “black boxes”2 (containing
personal backups) would both improve the human condition and life
expectancy, as well as create better super-soldiers. How will the future war or wars be fought?
Quoting Albert Einstein, farther future wars would be
fought with rocks. This would mean that there would be either a
Mutually Assured Destruction, or on the other hand, like in several
sci-fi and cyberpunk novels, it would involve the usage of mass drivers
and launching asteroids towards the enemy. But this would probably a
weapon of last resort. Most scenarios include using specialized armed
forces – cyborg agents, robots and drones3 -
terminating threats and securing the target area. Low costs and
collateral damages at a high gain with extremely high precision. But
what would the transhumans fight for?
Freedom? Probably, but what kind of freedom? To something or from something. A fight to liberate those who want take a step further, alter themselves, upload, clone or immortalize, could lead to an armed conflict, which can easily get out of hand.
Freedom? Probably, but what kind of freedom? To something or from something. A fight to liberate those who want take a step further, alter themselves, upload, clone or immortalize, could lead to an armed conflict, which can easily get out of hand.
Resources? That would be quite probable, for it is
unlikely that there is going to be a post-scarcity economy in the
nearest transhuman future. More resources (asteroids, helium 3,
space-based solar power) gives one more means to intimidate, harass or
influence other parties. There would be still rare resources and markets
(transhumanism doesn’t rule out corporations, rather most works
concerning AI personhood law are based on the concept of corporate
personhood, or even expanding it).
Ideology? This is one of my personal favourites. It
revolves around a concept, by which transhumans are enforcing their
world view on everybody else. Settling two things straight,
transhumanism is not a monolithic philosophy, it’s very diverse and has
multiple approaches ( from left and right, as well as from the green,
LGBT or white supremacist point of view), and like with every ideology,
one can be forced to join it, or face the dire consequences.
As American science fiction fans would recall the
Borgs assimilating every encountered specie into the collective (with
their famous catchphrase “Resistance is futile”), Cybermen “upgrading”
humans, hard science fiction literature shows us a more reasonable
example. In the Revelation Spaceuniverse, created by Alistair
Reynolds, featuring both the future of humanity and a number of
posthuman factions, the one I would like to consider in this article
would be the Conjoiners. Long story short, the more people were
“conjoined” via their implants and collective consciousness, the more
sophisticated were their inventions and achievements.
Hence the larger need to “expand the web of minds”,
and those who refused were taken in by force, which of course had
started a war against the Conjoined. If computational power is needed
for solving large problems, like for example in bitcoin mining, could
one force unemployed people to sell their “computing power” (via direct
BCIs) in exchange for a percentage of the profit? Can we imagine
detention camps, where those socially unfit, criminals and so on would
be serving a life sentence, and be voluntarily, or not, used as living
computational engines?
This is one of the main rupture points in
transhumanist views, should we go collective, with p2p thought exchange,
or be a “movement” of independent individuals. Same as with space
colonies, either they’d be held on a tight economic leash, or left on
their own, which could also have catastrophic outcomes. A tight leash
will sooner or later become the main cause of abuse, political, social,
economic, when on the other hand, without any authority watching over
the colony, being able of rapid response in case of any hazardous event,
its residents would be exposed to danger resulting in many casualties,
if not the death of the entire colony. If one of the main purposes of
transhumanism is creating a spacefaring humanity or posthumanity, we
also need to take those things into consideration.
Though “space warfare” won’t be no Star Wars orBattlestar Galactica, more like Harrison’s “No War or battle’s sound”, accelerations
and forces acting on the pilot during evasive manoeuvres would be fatal
to that person, therefore “space combat pilots” should be altered or
augmented to withstand those forces… or on the other hands we could use
autonomic drones, or informorph controlled ships.
Or may it be the other way, rebelled masses of those
who refuse to be part of this trans or posthuman society attack
databanks containing uploaded personalities, ruin atmospheric
controllers, sabotage power stations, upload viruses to damage the AIs.
Transhumans would have two main options available, either let them be
and destroy, for we are higher consciousness beings and need to
understand their frustration, or they can fight back. As posthuman times
require posthuman means, the law in this case would also have change,
like abolishing the institution of “human rights”, and making another
legal institution in its place, that would recognize great apes,
cetaceans, sentient AIs, baseline humans, posthuman beings or “corporate
entities”4 as
persons or sophonts. Despite the introducing a rule that once an entity
has gained personhood, it cannot be stripped of its rights, the right
to live and the right to one’s mental integrity would be severely
altered. That could be a cause of a major turmoil, or a civil war,
unless proper preliminary actions would be taken. Either way damage will
be done.
Entertainment? Remotely controlling a robotic body,
or a Mech, derived of feeling pain would be seemed for many people as
fun. But how come an armed conflict can be seen as entertaining? First
thing we need to remember is the popularity of warfare related computer
and console games, ASG and paintball manoeuvres. Killing artificial
soldiers, shooting down digital planes differs from real life warfare.
For now. No matter how sophisticated an artificial soldier would be,
basically there is a phenomenon, where the human mind doesn’t recognize
it as another human, rather as an object.
Singularity seen as the rise of the machines is a
popular sci-fi apocalypse scenario, where synthetic being decide to
“ultimately solve the case of humans” is not very likely, unless the
humans will start to pose a major threat to the newly developing
“beings”. That we cannot exclude.
The hybrids on rampage scenario, where transgenic
chimeras either declare a war on humans or suddenly goes berserk,
slaughtering humans in their vicinity is also very unlikely and mostly a
poor plot device. The real threat would be a genetically modified
virus, like human rabbis. That kind of pandemic would resemble some
popular zombie flicks5,
and would resolve in the use of extreme measures regarding quarantine,
containment and eradication of the virulent agent, along with its hosts,
unless it could be cured via some means.
Population and living space? We cannot rule out the
probability that in order to restore the environment via advanced
biotechnology, or making room for more advanced technological
endeavours, the transhumanity would have to move the local population to
another place. There are two problems here however. First of them is
the growing human population, and forcing one population to migrate to
another place, already inhabited by another population, making them cram
like sardines will mostly be viewed as an atrocity and would spark a
conflict. The other way around is for the transhumans to leave Earth,
and inhabit space habitats and other worlds, thus reducing their need
for living space, as well as specie based tensions that would be likely
to occur.
But talking about stand out conflicts resembling a
futuristic depiction of a conventional all out world war would not seem
the case. Living in an information age, on the verge of redefining the
World Wide Web6 or
even splitting it into diverse alternatives, the vision of guerrilla
warfare and covert ops actions is quite more plausible. Of course, arms
dealers and producers would like to lose their profit, despite 3D
printed DYI railguns7 are
sure to be a large competition for them in some regions, and there will
be minor conflicts, turmoil as well as proxy wars, but then again, if
it would be a “conflict” between the baseline humanity and the
transhumans, or will it be a clash of transhuman factions, he means
would be more stealth and swift that cavalcades of brain-controlled,
super heavy battle tanks. Those would involve hacking, sabotage,
bombing, nanoviruses, implant hijacking, assassination8 and other method, that wouldn’t require sever firepower or extensive use of armour.
The last thing that needs to be considered, is that
there is a possibility that higher consciousness beings, enhanced and
augmented via technology or merged into group minds or possessing sub
personas, lacking bodies or being able to use them interchangeable,
biologically immortal would not seem the “rest” as equal, thus applying
extreme measures in order to end a conflict. Would they even recognize
it as a war… or as pest control?
Source – IEET
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