Quote from: jeff37923;759411... There is a belief that human nature will suddenly change and we will become a race of godlings ...

Yes. Or that we will suddenly eradicate tribalism, or our scarcity mentality, or we will suddenly become comfortable with the idea that my best friend can change bodies (genders, species) and then throw a party where I welcome him/her/it with open arms with the same sense of emotional investment...

The Trill species in Star Trek has some of these elements. They explored some of these themes when Kurzon-Dax now in a female body (Judsea-Dax?) ran into a former lover (female) and tried to rekindle the romance (albeit against the laws of their home forbidding such things...). Capt. Sisko seemed fine with  Dax's new joining in Judsea most of the time, but he still expressed difficulty from time to time (calling her "old man" and such). I think they did a good job of showing our ability to handle such things more realistically. I don't imagine we will just embrace these changes overnight. I'm guessing we would need some time to adapt, say 50 years or so.

I am not sure I buy all of the movement's ideals BUT it's fun to explore some of these ideas (I especially like the horror-conspiracy-espionage angle in EP, but I like Conspiracy X too...). I personally like the advanced tech the most, and the concept of being able to clone and replace bad body parts, or clone a replacement body, or remote into a cyborg/robot to mine on the surface of Venus. I think there's some grand adventure to be had in the genre, but you definitely have to focus your game and I would always interject the action-adventure in space themes to keep it moving.

Quote from: Ravenswing;759512(shrugs)  My take is that there are a couple dozen gaming genres in which I have little to no interest.  Dungeon fantasy, a favorite of a large number of posters to this forum, leaves me cold.  I don't think horror translates well to RPGs.  Slapstick or silly genres have no appeal.  I'm no fan of goth.  And so on.

But I don't go on to imply bewilderment as to why anyone else would want to play them.  Demonstrably a lot of people do.  They don't ask for my approval as to what they find entertaining than I ask for theirs.

Very open minded. Though you seem to be being a bit holier than thou there at the end and I'm not sure why. I'm not "bewildered" by why anyone else would play Transhumannist genre or demanding its fans ask my approval. I'm trying to find out about it, what appeals to its fans and more about what its like from fans and casual interest. Its a discussion not a judgment. I've had a fairly limited exposure to the idea and I want to learn a bit more about it, maybe initial impressions were incorrect.

Quote from: Nexus;759603Very open minded. Though you seem to be being a bit holier than thou there at the end and I'm not sure why. I'm not "bewildered" by why anyone else would play Transhumannist genre or demanding its fans ask my approval. I'm trying to find out about it, what appeals to its fans and more about what its like from fans and casual interest. Its a discussion not a judgment. I've had a fairly limited exposure to the idea and I want to learn a bit more about it, maybe initial impressions were incorrect.

Well, I'd humbly suggest that I might not be the only one drawing the conclusion that referring to the genre or elements thereof as "dull" or "disturbing" did involve judgment ...

Quote from: dragoner;758958Science wise, it is very suspect, humans are emotional operators and very much tied to biology. Thus putting a human in a machine, would most likely irrevocably change the person. An AI would be totally different as a conscious, self-aware being, for example, all knowledge uploaded would be instantly known for the most part, a novel read in a millisecond. Operating from the same information, in a logical manner, the thoughts of two different AI's would be the same. So as to them, individuality would not be important maybe; I don't necessarily think they would be evil, or harmful to us though.

I'm suspect of that too. it seems unlikely even if only from a psychological point of view that you can change someone's physical body and leave their psyche unaffected. People change behavior wise after simple cosmetic surgery or even working out and building up their own body. Seems reasonable there would be effects from ditching your body all together for something superhuman (or even inhuman).

I agree that it doesn't mean they'd automatically going to become monsters or evil. I doubt it would effect everyone they same way. But I don't think there'd be no effect at all.

True self aware thinking AIs, as I imagine them would be very alien beings to us unless deliberately modeled strictly off human minds and conscious (which we do understand very well) with all our foibles and oddities. Which hobble them to some degree. They wouldn't have our drives, our instincts, the things that make us "human" even if we aren't conscious of them. They'd be different beings, IMO, not people that happen to live in boxes. But again
not necessarily malevolent.

When we were completely "tied" to biology... we were monkeys.  From the moment the first homo habilis picked up a piece of flint we became cyborgs, of a sort; and yes, it changed us forever.