Monday 21 November 2022, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Any replies to the organizer
- thormay@yahoo.com
Venue: Cafe Brunelli, 187
Rundle St, Adelaide CBD, South Australia
Focus Questions
1. Will humans win the fight to be
independent of nature? The mythological Adam and Eve were naked
in God's orchard. He cast them out. They should have perished
but they became independent and thrived. The moment humans put
on clothes they began to evolve away from animals entirely
shaped by nature. The change may have been initially driven by
climate but it soon developed a life of its own.
2.
Consider what parts of you have already been replaced or
modified (don't forget your brain). Think of your grandparents
in this context. What's the trend?
3. So which part of
your old body do you want to keep when all the other parts are
replaced? Why?
4. Why do surgeons and medical specialists
sometimes give bad advice? What can you do about it? Medically
it is now possible to replace quite a large number of body
parts. It has also emerged gradually that a significant number
of these replacements are pointless, useless or in some cases do
real damage.
5. "You Are Already A Cyborg" [Elon Musk] -
Agree? Why/why not?
6. Well, what will we look like in
1000 years? (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BibBMBibTq0 )
7. All the cells in your body eventually die and are
replaced. Is the new 'you' the same as the 'old you'? (Have a
look at the Ship of Theseus paradox @
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus ).
8.
Humans have doubled or tripled average life expectancy in a few
generations. In what ways (if any) are these longer lived humans
(you) different from the previous type who only lived 30 or 40
years? [..is this true? See the BBC link
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity
]? Would humans be qualitatively different again by living, say,
200 years?
9. The R&D industries which support militaries
worldwide are furiously researching battle soldiers - either
humans with enhanced mental & physical support, or robot
soldiers. This is creepy but impossible for you and I to stop.
What consequences do you expect to grow from these man-machine
killing creatures?
10. Natural population growth has
peaked in developed economies, and world population growth will
peak by 2080 (Africa last to level off). Given the ponzi
structure of modern economies (growth, growth, growth) this
means that aging populations will not be able to service their
own wants and needs. How might cyborgs and robots step in to
provide this support? Will it happen? How soon? Can it work?
Extra Reading
Wikipedia (2022) "History of Nudity" @
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nudity
Matthew Alexander (20 Jul 2016) "Did you know? These 10
human body parts can be replaced". Memeburn @
https://memeburn.com/2016/07/replaceable-human-body-parts/
Wikipedia (2016) "Artificial Organ". @
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_organ
Tyler Baum (March 27, 2022) "Humans could live up to 150
years, new study claims". New York Post @
https://nypost.com/2022/03/27/humans-could-live-up-to-150-years-according-to-new-study/
Caleb E. Finch (October 12, 2009) "Evolution of the
human lifespan and diseases of aging: Roles of infection,
inflammation, and nutrition". Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences @
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0909606106
Tech Insider (7 May 2017) "What Humans Will Look Like In
1,000 Years" Youtube @
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BibBMBibTq0
[25,295,913 views; 3 minutes] [Quote: "There will eventually be
a day where prosthetics are no longer just for the disabled.
However, it’s not just our outside appearance that will change –
our genes will also evolve on microscopic levels to aid our
survival".]
Sonia Sodha (6 November 2022) "The tunes you
hum, books you read, rows you have: Twitter and co are shaping
your world". The Guardian @
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/05/what-speaks-to-us-twitter-tiktok-code-algorithm
John Naughton (6 November 2022) "Machine-learning
systems are problematic. That’s why tech bosses call them ‘AI’".
The Guardian @
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/05/machine-learning-systems-are-problematic-thats-why-tech-bosses-call-them-ai
[Quote: "Pretending that opaque, error-prone ML is part of the
grand, romantic quest to find artificial intelligence is an
attempt to distract us from the truth"]
Joe Rogan (2020)
"Joe Rogan Experience #1169 - Elon Musk" Youtube @
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPr5-27vSI [views:
62,517,098 Length: 2 hr 37 min] (Thor, comment: Why would you
spend over 2 hours of your life watching Joe Rogan interview
Elon Musk? Well, you can't answer that until you've done it, but
if you have a working brain this video will give you lots of
ideas going forward. You don't even have to like Musk (watching
did change my view of the guy a bit...). ]
Paul Ingraham
(Jun 8, 2021) "Knee Replacement Surgery Doubts - Is it legit?
Knee replacement is extremely popular, but not yet based on good
evidence of efficacy". Pain Science website @
https://www.painscience.com/articles/knee-replacement.php
[Quote: "Various types of knee replacement surgeries are a
popular choice for people with intractable knee pain caused by
osteoarthritis. Both partial and total knee replacement (PKR,
TKR) are common... This is a huge industry, delivering hundreds
of thousands of knee replacements annually in the US, and
millions globally. That’s a lot of bionic knees. ... Does knee
replacement work? No one really knows, period — there simply
isn’t enough of the right kind of evidence. It is effectively an
experimental treatment. ... Meanwhile, there is now substantial
evidence that several similar orthopedic surgeries cannot help
people more than a sham".]
Peter Eisler and Barbara
Hansen (June 19 2013) "Doctors perform thousands of unnecessary
surgeries". USA TODAY @
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/18/unnecessary-surgery-usa-today-investigation/2435009/
Adam Taylor (October 6, 2017) "Seven body organs you can
live without." The Conversation @
https://theconversation.com/seven-body-organs-you-can-live-without-84984
Simply Tech (18 September 2022) "Boston Dynamics' New
Robot Makes Soldiers Obsolete, Here's Why". Youtube @
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu1kpnCylKQ [14
minutes]
Amanda Ruggeri (3rd October 2018) "Do we really
live longer than our ancestors?". BBC @
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity
[Quote: "“There is a basic distinction between life expectancy
and life span,” says Stanford University historian Walter
Scheidel, a leading scholar of ancient Roman demography. “The
life span of humans – opposed to life expectancy, which is a
statistical construct – hasn’t really changed much at all, as
far as I can tell.” ... ancient Rome’s ‘cursus honorum’ – the
sequence of political offices that an ambitious young man would
undertake – didn’t even allow a young man to stand for his first
office, that of quaestor, until the age of 30 ... To be consul,
you had to be 43 – eight years older than the US’s minimum age
limit of 35 to hold a presidency... life expectancy in the
English mid-Victorian period [1800s] was not markedly different
from what it is today”. A five-year-old girl would live to 73; a
boy, to 75".
----------