/cyber/ - Cyberpunk & Science Fiction

>I fucking LOVE thinking about this kind of shit. Anyone else?

Me too.

>Even beyond that, How does one make an argument that a human is not simply a chemical computer?

This is hard to believe for people, because they're limited by their religion and culture. If you know how brain and body works, you can see it is just a machine created by selfish genes to replicate themselves. It doesn't matter where the data is processed it is still the same, so it doesn't matter if the data is processed in a brain or in a computer. In my opinion a fully cyborgized human is still a human, but as far as I know androids are just an imitations of human being. To be a human you must think, feel things and be conscious in the same way as human.

>Is there a functional difference between those chemical processes and one of ones and zeroes in a machine?

A bit different - brain is parallel by default, whereas computers are less parallel or even serial, but it doesn't matter. Brain is just a machine that let's animals find food, avoid danger and reproduce - an input-output machine.

information from the environment -> processing -> response

Transhumanism is just the next step of life evolution, but instead of genes evolving, we're reaching the point, when memes (in this meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) are becoming new replicators.

Read The Selfish Gene, it's a great book.

>>55676

What I find fascinating is that political propaganda and corporate advertising are memetic in nature. Interestingly, once you become acutely aware of the meme it ceases to affect you. In much the same way as internet memes and image macros have become a point of amusement both propaganda and advertisements become something viewed as either foolishness or hilarity.

The NPC meme is a favorite of mine for this reason.

>>55737

It's quite alarming at times imo.

>>55765

I find its effectiveness on the general population rather alarming, but not the existence of it. I think it's sad because it exposes how stupid and easily led most people are, especially in densely populated cities.

>>55737

>Interestingly, once you become acutely aware of the meme it ceases to affect you.

Yeah, that's disgusting. Sometimes you know that a meme is using your brain as a vector, starting from simple things like a language you speak to things like political views. The more a meme is useful for selfish genes, the more it is common. Religions make people think there is a life after death, whereas being concious about the system that drives everything makes people depressed, without any purpose of life, which obviously drives them to commiting suicide - the gene or the meme coding that is removed from the meme/gene pool. A successfull meme is a meme, which also uses people's emotions.

This is fucking stupid. We could just copy the memes, which are responsible for our "soul" to another body, but no, because an ad with happy children and a grandpa is more important…

We must break the system! Let's stop the machine of death, let's kill all selfish genes, or make them serve us. We should work hard, so we can build our own cyber bodies.

>>55906

> whereas being concious about the system that drives everything makes people depressed, without any purpose of life

Beware of systems. At best, they are only models, and don't accurately reflect reality. At worst, they're designed to enslave you.