9088 réponses à ce sujet

[von uber]

Well she does have her own disciples.

[ImaginaryMatter]

StreetMagic wrote...

The first three I might be able to tolerate, if given time. The last, never.

I don't like it here anymore than BSG or Matrix. It amazes me though how some people can create compelling sci-fi settings like these, and then ruin in one instant by going the "mystical" route (to be fair though, it's only one choice out of three in Mass Effect. For which I am grateful. If some people like it, to each their own).

I'm definitely, most likely, not going to play the next game if there is some sort of Shepard religion.

Modifié par ImaginaryMatter, 19 février 2014 - 01:52 .

[Bob from Accounting]

AlanC9 wrote...

Bob from Accounting wrote...

I'm curious. What benefits exactly do people believe 'transhumanism' would bestow that propel humanity into a new age and yet somehow never infringe on valuable human institutions we generally don't think of higher beings as sharing?

Technology always infringes. The printing press infringed on pretty much everything -- religion, politics, art, you name it. Institutions change over time to cope.

What sort of infringement are you talking about here?

From what I've seen, there's been a great deal of frustration directed towards BioWare for making Synthesis pointlessly vague to the point of being useless information-wise. Which is fair. 

But how is this any different? It looks to me like this is a community generally vehemently opposed to Synthesis praising the concept because of...what, exactly? A few sentiments of 'science is good' and 'intellectualism is good' ? Were those things not on the table before?

Modifié par Bob from Accounting, 19 février 2014 - 02:16 .

[AlanC9]

I'm still not following the argument. If there's a problem with Synthesis, what is it?

[Bob from Accounting]

The point is that sH0tgUn jUliA and StreetMagic condemn Synthesis in it's current form as 'mysticism,' but yet seem to have no concept of what 'transhumanism' actually entails or means aside from a vague sense of 'humans get smart, humans get better, humans have freedom.'

They're repeating the exact same mistakes the narrative did. How can a person be in support in such a thing if they have no concept of what it actually means aside from a wholly useless 'it makes things better'?

Modifié par Bob from Accounting, 19 février 2014 - 04:19 .

[Mcfly616]

All one needs to do to get a concept of Synthesis (or transhumanism) is pick up any number of modern sci fi novels. It's everywhere. Anybody labelling it "space magic" may as well condemn the entire genre as it stands today....

[AlanC9]

OK, got it now. Yeah, merely increasing human capacities a bit isn't important. And if we're actually talking about something transformative, you need to say exactly how it's transformative if you're planning to judge it.

OTOH, it might be best to just let us all project our own version of "good" transhumanism rather than try and work one out. But then there isn't much of a problem with the existing endings, I guess.

Modifié par AlanC9, 19 février 2014 - 06:31 .

[Mcfly616]

Transhumanism is inevitable.

[Obadiah]

@Bob from Accounting
There was another thread about mysticism and Synthesis over here, where it was examined in-depth. I think everyone's already read it, and they're referring more to the presentation than what it actually does:
http://social.biowar...ndex/15928739/1

Modifié par Obadiah, 19 février 2014 - 05:25 .

[Mcfly616]

I think that you misunderstand or atleast mislabel most "futurists". Just because someone theorizes about what the future holds or predicts what form the coming technological singularity will take, doesn't mean they don't live everyday in the here and now to the fullest.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Bob from Accounting wrote...

The point is that sH0tgUn jUliA and StreetMagic condemn Synthesis in it's current form as 'mysticism,' but yet seem to have no concept of what 'transhumanism' actually entails or means aside from a vague sense of 'humans get smart, humans get better, humans have freedom.'

They're repeating the exact same mistakes the narrative did. How can a person be in support in such a thing if they have no concept of what it actually means aside from a wholly useless 'it makes things better'?

How do you know I don't have any idea of what transhumanism is. I had to go to the hospital, that is why I did not reply. I also have things to do. Are you the new David? You seem to ask questions and give little in the way of content.

Here's a link for you about synthesis: http://social.biowar...3660/1#12153660 

Anyway here's a link for you: http://www.transhuma...anshumanism.htm

[dorktainian]

Mcfly616 wrote...

Transhumanism is inevitable.

 

There is only two things that are inevitable.  Taxes and Death.

[Helios969]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

Regarding synthesis. From what I'm reading today, I really think it should have been dropped from the plot. I'm reading stuff that is practically telling me in about 50 years we're going to be there. There should have been a hell of a lot of transhumanism in the plain vanilla MEU. And there was some, like the skin and bone weaves, but what I'm seeing about artificial limbs and stuff like that and nanotech, we would be light years ahead by 2183-86. We wouldn't be thinking anything of nanotech enhancements, genetic engineering of humans. We're going to have cybernetic cerebral enhancements in the next 40 years. Immune system boosters. You wait and see. And they're going to keep getting smaller and smaller and more and more mainstream. It's going to be for the rich at first, but it'll trickle down sooner or later. Time to start playing powerball so I have the money.

Synthesis wouldn't have been a reaper idea. That's what I'm saying. We probably would have already achieved it to some extent already, and so would every other advanced civilization in the galaxy.

Having front row seats to much of that "cutting-edge" research that might be a bit optimistic.  I do think it is pretty obvious to project humanity down the transhumanism path, though I suspect that there will be a whole lot of growing pains and unintended consequences to making those alterations.  It also probably will not start with the wealthy, but rather in military and research hospitals on disabled veterans and people with debilitating genetic disorders, respectively.

-----

On the religious issue I think there will always be people who take things to the extreme, whether you're talking about transhumanism or neo-luddism.  People have a tendency to defend their ideologies, too often viscerally.  I do think the benefits outweigh the risks and have to admit that the possibility of overcoming some of those biological limitations appeals greatly.  With that said, I have no illusions that embracing transhumanism will deliver me to some utopian-state of existence.  There will be some who believe that - and some that will try to force that way of thinking onto everyone else.   And it's this latter that is a problem, and where ME3's synthesis fails (I tend to agree with Ieldra2 it is largely a presentation issue.)  Thirty-something playthroughs and I still shoot the damn tube.

[Ieldra]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...
Regarding synthesis. From what I'm reading today, I really think it should have been dropped from the plot. I'm reading stuff that is practically telling me in about 50 years we're going to be there. There should have been a hell of a lot of transhumanism in the plain vanilla MEU. And there was some, like the skin and bone weaves, but what I'm seeing about artificial limbs and stuff like that and nanotech, we would be light years ahead by 2183-86. We wouldn't be thinking anything of nanotech enhancements, genetic engineering of humans. We're going to have cybernetic cerebral enhancements in the next 40 years. Immune system boosters. You wait and see. And they're going to keep getting smaller and smaller and more and more mainstream. It's going to be for the rich at first, but it'll trickle down sooner or later. Time to start playing powerball so I have the money.

I am somewhat skeptical about the timeframes given by your sources. Many people are blinded by the extraordinary speed of advancement in information technology, never really appreciating how truly extraordinary that is and how slowly other areas of technology have developed in comparison. If production technology had advanced as fast in the past 50 years, we'd have Drexlerian nanotech by now. I agree, though, that these things are not nearly so far off that we'd need super-intelligent beings to give them to us. 

Synthesis wouldn't have been a reaper idea. That's what I'm saying. We probably would have already achieved it to some extent already, and so would every other advanced civilization in the galaxy.

Instead BW took the idea and subverted it by 1) making the idea come from the Catalyst. 2) making Shepard have to die to achieve it. 3) applying it to every single organism in the galaxy. 4) adding mystical connotations to it and the last two made it repulsive.

Bioware blew it on this one.

Most definitely. Because of those incongruities, particularly by the absence of choice which is an important part of transhumanist philosophy (it is about changing ourselves as we - as individuals - see fit in order to overcome limitations of the human condition) and by introducing the mysticism, there was a time when I had my doubts that Synthesis was intended to bring about a transhumanism-themed future in the first place. However, the term "a new ascension" used by the leaked script, as well as the EC after it came out made that rather clear.

The other problem is what we were never allowed to appreciate similar things within the existing ME universe. Take Miranda: as genetically optimized beyond the human norm, the result of mediated reproduction and an artificial biotic on top of it, she's one of the best examples of what those "transhumanist" technologies can do. Yet she rejects all that, embracing traditional values instead, and we aren't even allowed to gainsay her in that. Then take Shepard themselves: the result of "biosynthetic fusion" with extended capabilities, Shepard's another good example even though their brains were left unaffected as opposed to Miranda's. Yet, the story goes out of its way to reassure the traditionalists that Shepard is "fully human", even mangling the definition of transhumanism in order to make that assertion.

So while I'm glad the Synthesis option exists, the way it's brought about and presented betrays some of the themes it could be said to represent, and it is not a natural fit at the end of a story that thematically reinforces the current boundaries of the human condition rather than challenging them.

Edit:
At this point, I'd like to correct an apparently frequent misconception: transhumanism is not any kind of supremacism philosophy. There is no concept of being a "transhuman" who is better in the sense of "intrinsically more valued" than another. The term "transhuman" isn't even used within the movement. It is actually the other way round: one important goal is to make those transformative technologies widely available, preferably cheap enough that anyone who wants can benefit from them, and the ethical issues created by the likely exclusive access in an intermediate period are very well recognized.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 19 février 2014 - 09:14 .

[Helios969]

^Miranda makes for an interesting case study. It raises an assortment of ethical questions about the power authorities (parents, military, governments) will have over ones' genetic construction in the distant future - creating the "perfect" child, soldier, citizen...It also raises the question of what is perfection or even what it means to be aesthetically pleasing.

I actually think this is where the brilliance of the ME-universe lies - presenting a multitude of scenarios dealing with a range of themes to make people really think. This has spawned countless pages of discussion. Indoctrination is one of my favorite concepts from ME, and something I never really considered in any depth before. But it's all around us. We're indoctrinated by our parents, peers, co-workers, social networking, society as a whole. It can be a subtle and positive influence or carry rather nefarious connotations.

[Farangbaa]

Mcfly616 wrote...

Transhumanism is inevitable.

Corrected for clarification

[Farangbaa]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...
Regarding synthesis. From what I'm reading today, I really think it should have been dropped from the plot. I'm reading stuff that is practically telling me in about 50 years we're going to be there. There should have been a hell of a lot of transhumanism in the plain vanilla MEU. And there was some, like the skin and bone weaves, but what I'm seeing about artificial limbs and stuff like that and nanotech, we would be light years ahead by 2183-86. We wouldn't be thinking anything of nanotech enhancements, genetic engineering of humans. We're going to have cybernetic cerebral enhancements in the next 40 years. Immune system boosters. You wait and see. And they're going to keep getting smaller and smaller and more and more mainstream. It's going to be for the rich at first, but it'll trickle down sooner or later. Time to start playing powerball so I have the money.

I've said this before. From what is happening today, in real life, by the time ME1 is set, Synthesis should already have been nearly completed. Aside from a few lunatics that hold onto 'what's natural', all the while using cars, watching tv, using a computer and all that.

[Helios969]

StreetMagic wrote...

Helios969 wrote...

 But it's all around us. We're indoctrinated by our parents, peers, co-workers, social networking, society as a whole. It can be a subtle and positive influence or carry rather nefarious connotations.

Definitely. That's why I keep to myself. And when I wasn't doing that, I was getting into a lot trouble fighting people off anyways.

At least Miranda (or people like her) aren't as bad as how Star Trek treats the subject. They had the "eugenics wars" when the genetically altered decided to take over the world. This is where Khan came from. Ever since, gene alteration is outlawed in the Trek setting (or at least, in Federation space).

I do not think you can every really break free.  Isolation is helpful from the stand point that it gives you some distance, but only if you're introspective (usually go hand-in-hand.)  Too much (isolation) though and you become callous and un-empathetic...Balance is the key.  As best I have been able to figure the closest one can come to breaking free of indoctrination is to become self-aware, well-informed, educated...and then make decisions based on that.  In a sense, stay true to yourself.  Even if it doesn't endear you to the mainstream.  Of course, all very simplified.

[Ieldra]

Helios969 wrote...
^Miranda makes for an interesting case study. It raises an assortment of ethical questions about the power authorities (parents, military, governments) will have over ones' genetic construction in the distant future - creating the "perfect" child, soldier, citizen...It also raises the question of what is perfection or even what it means to be aesthetically pleasing.

I actually think this is where the brilliance of the ME-universe lies - presenting a multitude of scenarios dealing with a range of themes to make people really think. This has spawned countless pages of discussion. Indoctrination is one of my favorite concepts from ME, and something I never really considered in any depth before. But it's all around us. We're indoctrinated by our parents, peers, co-workers, social networking, society as a whole. It can be a subtle and positive influence or carry rather nefarious connotations.

The potential for all this is there, indeed, and it does make people think. However, the trilogy is also annoyingly prescriptive about certain things. As I said, we aren't allowed to appreciate the benefits of Miranda's genetic engineering, only allowed to acknowledge the problem of their origin and rationale. It's one reason why I think ME is traditionalist at its core, which is of course an annoyance for an anti-traditionalist radical like me.

As a workable rule of thumb for genetic engineering, I propose "A modification is acceptable if it can reasonably be expected to be seen as beneficial." Thus, I would count modifications towards a longer life and greater physical or mental capabilities as unproblematic. However, ethical debates of this kind inevitably run into the non-identity problem. Basically, it states that since the person we brought into existence through genetic engineering is non-identical to the person we would have brought into being had we not used genetic engineering, there is no actual harm or benefit done to anyone by either avoiding or doing it, and the action can't be evaluated by ethics of autonomy.

Conversely, we also aren't allowed to point out the obvious flaws with the concept of "perfection", namely, that there is no objective measure of perfection and using the word as if there is means you already have an ideological bias which needs to be discussed. This also applies to the Synthesis after the EC tells us that people will be "perfected". At the very least, this is a very unfortunate phrasing, and if the rest of the EC epilogue didn't tell us that it's intended to be good I would be very suspicious of it.

As I see it, bringing up those interesting problems but not allowing us to take a position in regard to them in-game removes almost all of the appeal of having them present in the stories.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 19 février 2014 - 10:59 .

[Helios969]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Helios969 wrote...
^Miranda makes for an interesting case study. It raises an assortment of ethical questions about the power authorities (parents, military, governments) will have over ones' genetic construction in the distant future - creating the "perfect" child, soldier, citizen...It also raises the question of what is perfection or even what it means to be aesthetically pleasing.

I actually think this is where the brilliance of the ME-universe lies - presenting a multitude of scenarios dealing with a range of themes to make people really think. This has spawned countless pages of discussion. Indoctrination is one of my favorite concepts from ME, and something I never really considered in any depth before. But it's all around us. We're indoctrinated by our parents, peers, co-workers, social networking, society as a whole. It can be a subtle and positive influence or carry rather nefarious connotations.

The potential for all this is there, indeed, and it does make people think. However, the trilogy is also annoyingly prescriptive about certain things. As I said, we aren't allowed to appreciate the benefits of Miranda's genetic engineering, only allowed to acknowledge the problem of their origin and rationale. It's one reason why I think ME is traditionalist at its core, which is of course an annoyance for an anti-traditionalist radical like me.

As a workable rule of thumb for genetic engineering, I propose "A modification is acceptable if it can reasonably be expected to be seen as beneficial." Thus, I would count modifications towards a longer life and greater physical or mental capabilities as unproblematic. However, ethical debates of this kind inevitably run into the non-identity problem. Basically, it states that since the person we brought into existence through genetic engineering is non-identical to the person we would have brought into being had we not used genetic engineering, there is no actual harm or benefit done to anyone by either avoiding or doing it, and the action can't be evaluated by ethics of autonomy.

Conversely, we also aren't allowed to point out the obvious flaws with the concept of "perfection", namely, that there is no objective measure of perfection and using the word as if there is means you already have an ideological bias which needs to be discussed.

As I see it, bringing up those interesting problems but not allowing us to take a position in regard to them in-game removes almost all of the appeal of having them present in the stories.

I hear ya, and my hope is that these games continue to evolve to include that level of depth.  But it's also understandable given BW has to sell a game that appeals to a broader audience.  Also, you might be ignoring that the writers themselves are asking the question to which they do not necessarily know the answer.  Long ago when I was serious about writing I used it as a tool for self-discovery.  In a way it kind of help me grow up and make that transition from oblivious teen to aware adult.  Sometimes just fostering the discussion is enough.  Of course, I liked more in depth discussion/debate with my squad mates to delve into these topics - challenge conventional, and spawn further meaningful dialogue on these forums.  (Off to work.)