On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 09:36:27PM +0530, Amit Varma wrote: > I don't know enough about transhumanism to comment on this, so let me modify > my statement to add "as long as human nature remains more or less as it is".
That I can agree with. > That unsupported neolithic software still seems darn complex to me. True, but we definitely run it on borrowed time. > > > > But of course we have. > > > > Such as? Artificial life allows you to build animat communities which e.g. evolve language to solve complex cooperative tasks. The hypothesis that degree of cooperation is a function of intelligence (=ability to process information) is quite easy to test for. And, of course, you can build artificial communities from a few-sigma human individuals, or augment individuals with devices keeping track (the cypherpunk/wearable approach), or redesign people (the transhumanist approach, not really testable yet). I'm not saying this is easy, but definitely not ignoramus et ignorabimus (I interpreted "we have no way of finding out" that way).
