Transhumanism with Arbalest Model and Ichirin Kumoi.

4:46 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Good evening, High Judge.
4:47 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...Are things going any better since you'd told me about your obnoxious instructor?
4:47 PM - Eiki: Still the same
4:47 PM - Eiki: But I have something important to as
4:47 PM - Eiki: ask
4:47 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Aah - yes?
4:47 PM - Eiki: Well.. Not so important
4:47 PM - Eiki: But I am curious!
4:48 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Certainly. I'll do my best to assist. What is on your mind?
4:48 PM - Eiki: How do you feel about Transhumanism?
4:49 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Transhumanism in what sense?
4:50 PM - Eiki: Upgrading the human body
4:50 PM - Eiki: Replacing functional limbs with better ones
4:50 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Hm.
4:50 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...I believe in Pandora's Baby.
4:50 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: If there is no God and faith is null...
4:51 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Then - as I am very fond of Friedrich Nietzsche's view on the matter - the only logical "Goal" of man in the death of God is to transcend itself.
4:51 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: We will get better. We can get better. And it will take Pandora's Baby.
4:52 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: The first Transhuman-minded birth.
4:52 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: The precident-establish birth. The first scientific instance.
4:53 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...I am a spiritual person, though perhaps not a religious one...
4:53 PM - Eiki: But what about people who are already alive?
4:53 PM - Eiki: Like
4:53 PM - Eiki: What if I had an arm removed and replaced with one that reacted faster and could lift heavier objects
4:53 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I value my humanity, yes, but that is a choice of mine. An ethic of mine. And it is not everyone else's--
4:53 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: A la, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger"?
4:54 PM - Eiki: Like Deus Ex!
4:54 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Hm. That's interesting. The thing is, I don't see it being done casually.
4:55 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: For one, people are afraid. People are afraid to donate blood. They are afraid to donate marrow. The only people who I think are not afraid are the utterly disgusting displays of people clinging to their youth that I see casually undergoing and advocating cosmetic surgery.
4:55 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: In that respect, I don't see anyone like Jet, of Cowboy Bebop, existing in widespread commodity.
4:55 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: You would only have the Augmented Upper-Class.
4:56 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Because frankly, short of rare incidences of needed prosthesis for which that technology could be use, but likely will not for the sake of...
4:56 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Well...
4:56 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Practicality?
4:57 PM - Ichirin Kumoi tries to pick up a teacup, and annihilates it with her superior strength?
4:57 PM - Eiki: A lot of people seem to fear Eugenics Wars
4:57 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: You're only going to have the weathly needlessly supe--
4:57 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: No. I don't see that happening.
4:57 PM - Eiki: Well
4:58 PM - Eiki: The two popular things are Eugenics Wars and the Terminator Scenario
4:58 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: We have a government that requires mass support and only long after the entire era of Pandora's Baby, where...
4:58 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: The Augmented Man is understood. Developed. Explored. Advocated.
4:59 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...It'll take a long while for things to become commonplace, or common practice. And even then, it'll be a continuing and growing thing.
5:00 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Frankly, by the time Augmentation is fully understood, it will be so advocated for sake of extending life and minimizing healthrisks...?
5:00 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: It will be advocated to the average citizen, who will likely embrace it just as people embrace vaccinations and booster-shots.
5:00 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: At least...
5:00 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...That's what I think.
5:01 PM - Eiki: I would like it that way
5:01 PM - Eiki: Biological limbs don't make you human!
5:01 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: People are worried it would make a class-divide, which it might...
5:01 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Have you ever seen a film called GATACA?
5:01 PM - Eiki: Nope.
5:01 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: It centers around the idea of engineered birth.
5:02 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Perfecting the human body through the tampering of the Genome, which I could see being similar to Augmentation.
5:02 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Bear in mind, one's capacity to understand can be altered through this...
5:02 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...But not neccessarily their desire.
5:03 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: People with a higher capacity for thinking. A lower risk for health complication...
5:03 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...They become favored in the workplace for practical reasons.
5:03 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: And it leaves unaltered humans doing...
5:03 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...Well, daylaborer's work.
5:04 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: It was an interesting film.
5:04 PM - Eiki: Which is why I like the idea of building on an existing platform
5:04 PM - Eiki: Although much later after it has become commonplace
5:05 PM - Eiki: Perhaps growing people around machines
5:05 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Hm...
5:05 PM - Eiki: Nanoaugmentation!
5:05 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: But the Mind is the key.
5:05 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Nature and Nurture.
5:06 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: No matter how exquisite you make the human body...
5:06 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: If we become those Greco Idealist Sculptures on display...
5:07 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: We will still have our outcasts. Our poets. Our religious. Our spiritual. Our hardworking. Our rally-goers. Our artists. Our scientists.
5:07 PM - Eiki: The way I see it, the human body is far less capable than the spirit
5:07 PM - Eiki: Which is holding us back from the stars
5:07 PM - Eiki: So improve the body to match the strength of spirit better
5:07 PM - Eiki: A human body that can survive leaving out solar system.
5:08 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I don't think there exists the capacity for a dystopian realm created by the advancing of humanity beyond Mutually-Assured Destruction.
5:08 PM - Eiki: our
5:08 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Hm.
5:09 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: And why, beyond depleated resources and the innate sweet-tooth for Science Fiction, would you want a human body fit for space?
5:09 PM - Eiki: Space is incredibly hostile
5:09 PM - Eiki: And is a good comparison
5:10 PM - Eiki: Kind of like
5:11 PM - Eiki: Building a car to survive a head-on collision with a semi
5:11 PM - Eiki: It probably won't happen
5:11 PM - Eiki: But then there is a good chance you can survive an impact with a smaller vehicle
5:11 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Hmmn...
5:12 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I imagine, should we ever progress that far, we will be akin to parasites. Very much like the Terran Race of StarCraft.
5:12 PM - Eiki: I also feel the human race is evolutionarily stagnant
5:12 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: "Industrious, and capable of depleating resources of inhabited planets quickly."
5:13 PM - Eiki: Nature is done with us
5:13 PM - Eiki: SO we have to pick up where it left off
5:13 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Perhaps. But never be so vain as to challange nature. We've not existed long enough to determine if that is right as a species.
5:13 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Moreover...
5:13 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...Control the weather.
5:14 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: You can put a bubble over towns.
5:14 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...But Earthquakes, Hurricanes, Blizzards, Drought...
5:14 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: They still are quite good at humbling man on occasion.
5:16 PM - Eiki: I just think its the right thing to do.
5:17 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I think so long as Science does not hurt man...
5:18 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: And that the perfection of the human race - the maximum of the Human Potential - is our loftiest goal...
5:18 PM - Eiki: Hmn
5:18 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: There can be no illdoing.
5:18 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: And I think so long as the human mind and soul remain unaltered?
5:18 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Balance shall always exist, be it universial or bastioned.
5:19 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...If it helps, I've read books on the topic, and have since strayed into more spiritual waters in old Order of the Hermetic Dawn textbooks.
5:20 PM - Ichirin Kumoi smiles sheepishly.
5:20 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I like to have my bases covered.
5:20 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: And I think the world needs the Prophet and Monastic just as much as it needs the Scientist and Theorist.
5:20 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: In fact...
5:20 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...I often dream of a world where the priest and scientist hold hands...
5:21 PM - Eiki: The world ill needs extremists on either side as well
5:21 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...A world like Tommaso Campanella's "The City of the Sun"?
5:22 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Where Religion, and Thought, and Commerce, and Science, and Art, and Nature are all embraced by the city, and people understand the importance of each but are not confined to any...
5:22 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: But alas, Utopian Worlds are as distant and unrealistic to me as Dystopian ones.
5:23 PM - Eiki: Dystopian worlds are far more realistic
5:23 PM - Eiki: Unfortunately
5:24 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I think it's more-possible, but at the same time...?
5:24 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I don't think it's possible.
5:24 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: It's the more-realistic of the two impossibles.
5:25 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Even if you created the Dystopian Government that Orwell feared, you have National Superpowers that would intervene.
5:25 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...Frankly...
5:25 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I just don't see the world lying down and letting a Dystopia occur for longer than an instance.
5:26 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: The worst possible scenario I can imagine is a Nuclear Holocaust.
5:26 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Because the capacity for it exists.
5:27 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I would hope any nation hit with a nuclear weapon would be mature enough to be Hiroshima about it and simply...
5:27 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Nurse their losses without like retaliation.
5:27 PM - Eiki: The only countries willing to lauch would not care about retaliation.
5:27 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Precisely. It is as it always has been:
5:28 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Those with nothing to lose are those that are most dangerous.
5:28 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: ...Eiki?
5:29 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I am proud to have moments like this, because they remind me of the capacity for everything.
5:29 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: And you're a very unbiased listener, yet a convicted speaker.
5:30 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I appreciate your arguments as I do your audience. And your ability to retain a mature attitude all the while.
5:30 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: But, please excuse me. I have a few figures I have to attend to. I'm...Trying to finance a trip.
5:31 PM - Eiki: Try to enjoy yourself!
5:36 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: I already am.
5:37 PM - Ichirin Kumoi: Thank you for a wonderful evening.