I think I indeed am the only one nervous about the intentions of our higher ups...and Im probably the only one who feels a need to be careful hearing what the government blabs. Still, I found what Asia said about human nature to be true and I agree with him highly. But how far can you push mankind before we loose our humanity? Are we going to get to the point where our human nature is gone, replaced by another form of nature?
That's actually a very interesting point, but I don't think will affect us for a very very long time. I mean, the things that could possibly affect human nature in today's world is possibly eugenics but even then, you're still functioning within the boundaries of humanity. I think perhaps an alteration of brain function would be the best bet for changing humanity, but we currently know so little about the brain that the barriers towards doing that are really quite high. We can activate certain emotions, we can read thoughts we can stick a brain in a robot and make it work properly, but that is basic stuff because the brain is so complex. Signals are being sent out all the time and we don't really know what those signals are saying. I mean, only recently did scientists find that daydreaming works the brain as hard as focused work, and is very important. Scientists still don't know why more signals come out of the heart than there are going in. We know where memories are kept, but we don't know what memories are being accessed and how to isolate them. It's like looking at a cluster of ant-hills, with each section having a different species of ant, and you can see the ants coming out. You know which species is part of which ant hill, but you don't know who each specific ant is, and what each ant is thinking, and why they go on these specific paths...
I'm probably wrong on a lot of points, but if human nature (something that is hardwired into our subconscious) were to be altered, it would have to be done on the brain, and to be done effectively, we'd need more information than we have.
You could take a kid and get it raised by animals but you'd still have the human hardwiring put into. The same way you could take a chimp from day one and raise it as a human. You can't keep it as a human, because it's not one. The hardwiring is there.
In a way I think technological advancement is scary... But my fear is for computers and robotics, we've already got CPU's that are smarter than us!
Not necessarily. They can make more calculations per second, but there are things humans are far better at, such as visual acuity and lateral thinking.