Humans as Cyborgs
anima.nz
anima.nz
We're absolutely already cyborgs.
I recently started backing out of my garage, and after maybe 6 feet, immediately went "No. Something is wrong." There wasn't any noise, dashboard light, or obvious problem, there was just something slightly different. I didn't know what it was, but I felt it, on the left side of the car. I got out and looked, and my tire was half flat, with a piece of metal stuck in it. I felt it.
There's this sci-fi trope: what happens if we completely replicate an exact artificial copy of your brain and turn it on? The copy would think it's you -- would actually be you! Sci-fi shenanigans ensue. We'll never explore the stars, but maybe our artificial copies will! If only I were the artificial copy, being turned on, to live an immortal digital life.
But this is what people are missing: your brain is incorporating new bodily elements all the time. Your hands. Your car. A tool you use every day. Your avatar in a video game. You feel them. Neura-link isn't there, but one day something will be. You'll get a calculator in your head. We don't actually need to completely figure out the brain to build an interface: we just need to build something that our brain can figure out. And your brain is extremely good at incorporating new inputs. You'll feel it. And soon it will be more than a calculator. And as we get to the level of synthesizing full brains, it won't be a copy. It will be introduced, piecemeal, to your brain, and your brain will be given time to incorporate it into itself. Never will there be a "break" where the artificial brain is someone else. Over time, it will be you, even as the few remaining biological bits die off. You'll "live transfer" into a digital brain without ever being turned off; without any new Yous coming online.
Well, maybe not you, but your grandkids, or their grandkids.
The tooth is a goner now and the fourth implant is now being scheduled.
A bone graph will be put and my brain is going to have get use to the missing tooth for a few months.
A titanium post driven into my jaw with some sort drill and then a ratchet tool that will screw a post that will hold a new shiny synthetic molar capable of incredible dynamic pressures.
My brain will then get used to the new molar. Long live plasticity.
Do people who get pacemakers or cochlear implants or organ transplants need counselling or is it just not a problem for most people?
It was implanted three days after the VF episode, and the doctor basically said "we don't know why the VF happened in your case, the ICD is your best option for staying alive in the future". The implantation procedure only involved a heavy local anaesthetic and wasn't unpleasant. Much, much less painful than the broken ribs from being CPR'd, which took a couple of months to heal. The ICD sits under the skin above below my left collar bone, and the shape is clearly visible. I ignore it on a day to day basis. Every year I go in for a device check and sometimes for a joke they make it buzz (like having a mobile phone on vibrate, under your skin). Hehe.
It's fired once, almost a year ago. I was on my own at the time, at home, and if it hadn't gone off, I'd be dead, again. So having it is a no-brainer, and I have never felt traumatised / horrified by it. What was / is harder to deal with is that every time it fires, I now face a two-year driving ban. I totally understand the reasoning here: when a VF episode happens I have perhaps 5 to 10 seconds of useful consciousness, some of which is spent feeling disoriented, and I know I'd be a danger if driving. But the lifestyle changes caused by loss of driving are more mentally challenging than the fact of the ICD itself.
Mine isn't quite the same but I have had bilateral tonic-clonic seizures (Previously called "Grand Mal") and time traveling like that isn't ever fun.
Lots of different sorts of 'heart attack'. My form of VF is basically due to an electrical fault, not due to blocked arteries / clagged up valves, etc. Implantation has some risks (infection, etc) and the device needs to be swapped out every few years when the battery dies. The device can only help if you have a 'shockable' rhythm. It doesn't restart a stopped heart, it causes the out-of-control muscle fibres in a fibrillating (quivering) heart to resynchronise so that you get proper pumping in the heart's chambers.
Cost is obviously a factor as well.
i think the reasonable alternative to this led to all the red Automated External Defibrillator stations around
which is quite a social cyborg thing to do
I don't think it's a problem for most people. Most people are more grateful to have a life saving device/organ implanted in them that allows them to live a relatively normal life that would have been impossible otherwise, than no implants but be dead/dying or living in agony.
I personally never found them to be weird or scary. I think they're really cool, though the closest I get to a prosthesis was hearing aid, which is a wearable, not something implanted into me.
The real 'horror' is not having a leg and being unable to move. I experienced debilitating pain in one of my legs before, and the inability to walk really suck. Imagine how much more it would suck if you permanently lost a leg.
It sounds like you probably have a phobia around implants.
As an example, a friend had surgery for a badly broken bone, he ended up with a metal rod in his body. He was given the option to have it removed, but most people, including himself don't take it. The risks of complications are higher than if left in place.
My grandparents considered cochlear implants but didn't take them, not because of the fear of implants, but because they were rather experimental at the time and expensive. So they went to regular hearing aids until tech improved.
As for pacemakers, people who I know have them are much more worried of the underlying heart condition than of the device.
I remember when I was young a friend broke their leg badly and needed one of those devices with the scaffold that has pins going into their legs, I couldn’t even look at it it freaked me out too much. Maybe that experience gave me a phobia
and i had bad ankle break a year or so ago, and needed lots of external meccano to stabilise it. it wasn't fun, and very inconvenient, but not too painful or scary.
I also have two stents in my heart. I was going to have a heart attack within five years. Again, I'll take the implants, and be glad for the chance. I can still run. I can still climb stairs, and I can do it without fear.
None of these are intended to augment me (though I see better at distance than I have since kindergarten). They're intended to let me live normally rather than degraded.
And in both cases, no, the implants didn't freak me out at all. I basically never think about them, but when I do, it's with gratitude, not revulsion.
It probably also helps that it's a relatively simple, mechanical part. If I was editing my brain, that would bring up all sorts of philosophical problems that would probably paralyze me with indecision.
Same issue with implants. Do I really need a cochlear implant? Do I really need you to drill in my skull? I don't trust your surgery intentions enough. I think I'd rather learn to read lips and sign language.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/20/23882888/elon-musk-brain-...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musks-neuralink-may-...
Thanks for that, even if it was accidental.
Vehicles and computers are, in practice, much more powerful and feasible augmentations than literal sci-fi robot limbs, brain chips, or digital eyes.
The future has been here for a while.
Having tech more immediately accessible to our bodies can have a large impact on usability and usage patterns (see mobile), but there's not much of a fundamental qualitative difference in what it enables us to do as humans that we couldn't do before.
It's not me that's being enhanced. It's a device external to me.
That's why I am not excited by stable diffusion. It doesn't make me better at drawing.
Now, you might say that it doesn't matter technologically if your brain is doing it as opposed to a computer doing it. The result would be the same. Sure, I'll concede that, but that would be more about me or you as a person getting better skills, which feels more empowering than a tool that does all the work for me.
It's not closed minded, it's a different perspective.
What I am more focused on is: what impact “me” as an individual person (an independent human agent) can have on my environment. We build technology mostly to optimize for this.
My point is that wearable (or implantable) cybernetics lead to an incremental improvement on how easily or frequently we can do what we already do as individuals, but they don’t fundamentally change the things we can do. Sci-fi makes them look amazing but our R&D resources might be better spent elsewhere.
We can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. I don't see why we should allocate resources away from cybernetic implants.
R&D resources spent on leg and arms prosthesis is incredibly important since movement is very important for a certain portion of our population. Imagine not being able to walk or not being able to grasp.
Artificial heart and other cybernetic organs are very useful to have if we can mass production techniques, but it may be easier for us to grow organs that can be implanted. We don't know which will win out, which is why research is needed. Being able to replace part of your body if they're broken is a powerful promise to me.
Now...the most underrated tech? Continuous glucose monitoring. It's kinda like a wearable, but it's an implantable device that tell you your blood glucose level almost in real time. It's the most powerful behavioral tool I ever encountered. Now I have 'intentionally' eaten junk food, but the CGM is always there to remind me what a bad job I am doing for my body. Nothing work without the cooperation of the people who uses these devices, of course, but I found a CGM an incredibly powerful lever. I hope that it get cheaper and get more widely used by the population at large rather than being confined to diabetics.
That's a narrow interpretation of augmentation. Being able to modify one's behavior or live longer lives is arguably adding capabilities.
If you can live to 120 years instead of dying at 65, you have a longer period in which you can accumulate new skills and wisdom.
And, like any other instrument or art form, the skills needed to build it are totally different from the skills needed to play it.
I wasn't really going to be impressed with someone doing prompt engineering. It might actually be faster to just manipulate pixels.
A great deal of external technology, like automobiles, attenuates human natural capability.
Heck, with a brain implant you might not even need to get in via information - just use a reward response like a pet training clicker and steer.
I think I agree, at least with that point. We're extremely intertwined with technology.
- We might be born from cells mashed together in a lab. The cells might be taken from people we'll never meet.
- We selectively get rid of embryos with unwanted characteristics.
- We implant devices that control fertility, electric impulses in the heart, hormone levels like insulin.
- Our limbs are replaced by electromechanical devices that sometimes link up directly to our nerves.
- Our sensory organs are augmented in various ways. Our eyes are reshaped using lasers. Our hearing is amplified by hearing aids, and sometimes added to people that didn't even have working hearing in the first place by directly interfacing a device with our auditory nerve.
- A large part of our daily lives take place on a separate plane of reality built on top of a planet-wide network.
- Much of our communication is now electronic.
- We created a new form of intelligence, in our own image. It can be think in ways that are similar to us. Is it our offspring?
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/under...
But from what I understand, the Cyborg Manifesto is about much more than that. I recently came across a really informative video about it[0] that it was also a feminist critique of other brands of feminism. An opposition to identity politics. We shouldn't divide ourselves into restrictive categories based on identities we subscribe to, but reject those restrictions and divisions.
I'm not sure if I agree with all aspects of the Cyborg Manifesto, but that part is certainly something I strongly agree with.
Whenever this kind of thing is mentioned, people usually bring up the (tired) trope of Nazis/eugenics.
Personally, I think this activity is necessary - Our genes are naturally filtered via evolutionary forces every time we fall prey to some disease or mal-condition. As medicine get better, we need to replace this process with a synthetic one or we'll become less fit - I feel human immune systems are already pretty weak comparatively. Waiting for human deaths via "herd immunity" isn't better than explicit genetic filtering (or augmentation).
combine this with "are we living in a simulation", and maybe this already happened...