The myth of "cyberpsychosis" and intolerance to cyborg
Today, many people are concerned about the problem of artificial intelligence. Both Hawking, and Musk, and other people spoke on this subject ...
However, concentrating on AI, people somehow lose sight of another possible outcome of the future: cyborgs. And the way they will interact with society.
I do not mean cyborgs in the technical sense, “I have an RFID chip in my thumb - I am already a cyborg” ... I mean cyborgs in the usual sense of the word - a person who has a significant number of organs replaced, or improved with the help of technology. Artificial limbs, brain implants, to some extent even partial loading of consciousness.
All this can, in theory, raise the development of humanity as a civilization to unprecedented heights. But I have the impression that before this, cyborgization will take place extremely restless, uneven and, frankly, a shitty period ...
For a start, let's talk about the so-called. "Cyber ​​psychosis".
')
During the development of desktop role-playing on cyberpunk, a problem arose - players who actively set up cyber implants for themselves could eventually become too strong and broke the whole gameplay balance to hell without leaving players without implants any hopes. The developers of the game thought, thought, and it was decided to introduce the concept of cyber-psychosis, postulating that the more metal is in the character, the less this character is “humane”, the less pleasant it is in communication and calm, until finally it breaks and turns into insane and aggressive being, a psychopath incapable of rational thinking. From the gameplay point of view, the solution solved the problem, the characters had a limitation, which did not allow them to get over the maximum and become boring and invincible. Such a game convention, as health points and levels of experience.
If this were all over ... The term has spread, like a virus, outside the game convention. It would seem that those who like cyberpunk, those who like to play according to such a setting, the ideas of transhumanism should be close to them, well, or at least they should have a healthy look at progress, right? However, a lot of people believe that cyber-psychosis is the real law of the universe, and that cyberimplants are, in fact, harmful. They will cause madness, “because because”, or that “more efforts” will go to the management of mechanical limbs than organic (what the interlocutor had in mind by this, I could not find out).
Before I continue, I want to note: it goes without saying that if you pull a human brain out of a person and stuff it into a huge walking tank stuffed with various weapons, then naturally this will have certain changes in the psyche and will, in fact, be pretty close to the traumatic one. Such a body gives a lot of opportunities for causing goodness and causing happiness to others, and almost completely makes it impossible for constructive and safe activities (after all, even just going somewhere, you can stupidly step on someone accidentally).
Something very similar happened in one of the series of the series Ghost In The Shell. Waking up in the body of the robot, the human brain broke a considerable amount of firewood, although in fact I just wanted to show off in front of my parents.
I do NOT talk about such cases. Everything is pretty obvious here, as well as the fact that if you give Vasya a T-90 refueled and brought into combat readiness from the next entrance, nothing good will come of it. We are talking about the usual civil class cybernetics, without razor-sharp tungsten carbide blades embedded in the elbow.
It seems that the concept of cyber-psychosis has fallen on fertile soil, previously fertilized as natural human xenophobia, including fear and subconscious dislike of everyone who differs from the usual and customary picture of a person (including the sick, disabled, people with any defects). Man is ready to accept any difference as a defect. It mixes with luddist notions, the “Frankenstein effect”, diligently cultivated by games, movies and some books, the view that science, and in particular technology, is something that should be treated with caution, from which it is not worth waiting for something good. In addition, the futurosh is also mixed in - an irrational fear of new opportunities and changes in the usual way of life. Even the thought that the society of the future will live according to some new laws, different from the present, is frightening to a person. New = unknown, unknown = danger, but danger must be avoided, or eliminated.
Meanwhile, full-fledged cyborg already exists . At the moment, of course, the possibilities of cybernetics are modest, and cyber limbs can hardly fill even the basic functionality of a real hand. But remember, the first personal computers were also cumbersome and slow monsters, and the ability to display color pictures on the screen was presented as the cutting edge of progress. I think that in the next 30 years, cyber-prostheses will lose the right to be called prostheses: they will no longer restore the lost functionality, they will add a new one on top of the existing one. Some prosthetic legs, for example, have already been recognized as giving an advantage over ordinary legs.
Will cyber prosthetics change the psyche of people with cyber extremities? Of course. A person’s psyche can be altered by a very large number of things. But these changes will not consist in the loss of humanity, spirituality, the ability to sense emotions and other things that cyborgs are usually demonized in such statements. If the brain and organs involved in the work of it (for example, the glands secreting neurotransmitters) are not affected, there should be no physiological effects on the psyche. They will think "different", yes. How do car owners think otherwise compared to pedestrians. As citizens compared with the villagers. How do people who have a holster with a gun react to danger differently than an unarmed person. How the hell are programmers versus accountants!
An intolerance of AI is growing from about the same direction (with its memes of the Robo-apocalypse and SkyNet), but this is a separate topic.
But the fact that the concept of cyber-psychosis has gone beyond the limits of game conditionality speaks volumes. Cyborgs in the future, in a transitional time when they already appear, but there will not be too many of them, may face very real problems of discrimination.
People with implants have already been attacked because of their implants, the presence of - for example, Steve Mann was attacked at McDonald 's because the employee found that Mann could not shoot video in a restaurant.
I do not think that in the future there will be public places, at the entrance to which will hang signs "We service baseline humans only", as it was with blacks in the United States at the beginning of the last century. It is unlikely that morals are not the same.
But cyborg still have bad. It will be not only external physical faces that stimulate various phobic associations in people. At first, the attitude towards people who agreed to cut off their healthy hands to replace them with cyber-prostheses as freaks, or even as mentally ill people who should be avoided, is likely to be quite popular. There is still a problem arising directly from the consequences of progress: sooner or later, but a cyborg will be better than you. A brain implant with Internet access will significantly increase and speed up access to knowledge, a person will be able to google what he doesn’t know in seconds, without making personal gestures (In Charles Stross’s Accelerando book, one of the main characters data warehouses and an implant with Internet access, which has passed, in fact, to the border state of the pre-Loaded: the consciousness is not even close digitized, but a tangible part of the memories and mental processes already takes place oschyu Internet bots performing searches, and programs running on his implants and the CCP in a bag on the belt). A cyborg with eye implants will see a better person with excellent eyesight. Mechanical hands will not get tired, shake, and may even be stronger than ordinary human hands.
Very soon, employers will understand this feature, and cyborg will begin to receive priority when applying for many types of work. And this will serve as an additional reason for intolerance. Vaguely similar events have already taken place in 2013 : local residents of Silicon Valley began to boycott, block and even attack buses of firms working there, which carry employees to work, as well-paid workers and the need created by companies like Google in them the region has significantly leaped up, leading many non-IT locals, in fact, below the poverty line. The situation has a chance to repeat itself, but already with long-distance drivers .
It is not difficult to imagine that in the case of cybernetic implants, which began widespread, such crises can become global. People will start to see cyborgized competitors, and competitors who have received a “unfair advantage” (Yes, why the hell did they not accept me for work, but him, he doesn’t get better, he just stuck the latest version of iMind to himself, but in fact he don’t know anything!) .
The state may try to start somehow to settle the growing division ... And it is unlikely that cyborg will get better because the government’s decisions are likely to consist in regulating cyborgization and imposing restrictions on the cyborgs themselves, most likely additional implantation taxes.
Interesting fad, traditionally written in small-fine print. Comics Drugs and Wires .
But this is, in fact, only the tip of the iceberg. There may be much more unpleasant problems, fueled by the split mentioned above. Can a cyborg, most of which is already mechanical, be considered a human? Are human rights applicable to him?
But what if a person bought his augmentations on credit, or even rented them from a manufacturing corporation, and the corporation decided to revise the contract and demands his property back, but a person cannot physiologically live without implants of vital organs?
The world of the near future will have to solve a huge number of new moral and ethical issues and problems, and as long as he understands them, those who are affected by these problems are unlikely to live a carefree life.
I see that a similar period is inevitable, but I hope that it will be at least relatively short-lived.
As for the AI ​​... It is unlikely that they will appear in the arena before cyborgs with a high degree of cyborgization, which means that perhaps the bumps and bruises that society will fill during the integration of cyborgs into society will help to significantly smooth out similar problems that will arise when artificial digital personalities.
However, concentrating on AI, people somehow lose sight of another possible outcome of the future: cyborgs. And the way they will interact with society.
I do not mean cyborgs in the technical sense, “I have an RFID chip in my thumb - I am already a cyborg” ... I mean cyborgs in the usual sense of the word - a person who has a significant number of organs replaced, or improved with the help of technology. Artificial limbs, brain implants, to some extent even partial loading of consciousness.
All this can, in theory, raise the development of humanity as a civilization to unprecedented heights. But I have the impression that before this, cyborgization will take place extremely restless, uneven and, frankly, a shitty period ...
For a start, let's talk about the so-called. "Cyber ​​psychosis".
')
During the development of desktop role-playing on cyberpunk, a problem arose - players who actively set up cyber implants for themselves could eventually become too strong and broke the whole gameplay balance to hell without leaving players without implants any hopes. The developers of the game thought, thought, and it was decided to introduce the concept of cyber-psychosis, postulating that the more metal is in the character, the less this character is “humane”, the less pleasant it is in communication and calm, until finally it breaks and turns into insane and aggressive being, a psychopath incapable of rational thinking. From the gameplay point of view, the solution solved the problem, the characters had a limitation, which did not allow them to get over the maximum and become boring and invincible. Such a game convention, as health points and levels of experience.
If this were all over ... The term has spread, like a virus, outside the game convention. It would seem that those who like cyberpunk, those who like to play according to such a setting, the ideas of transhumanism should be close to them, well, or at least they should have a healthy look at progress, right? However, a lot of people believe that cyber-psychosis is the real law of the universe, and that cyberimplants are, in fact, harmful. They will cause madness, “because because”, or that “more efforts” will go to the management of mechanical limbs than organic (what the interlocutor had in mind by this, I could not find out).
Before I continue, I want to note: it goes without saying that if you pull a human brain out of a person and stuff it into a huge walking tank stuffed with various weapons, then naturally this will have certain changes in the psyche and will, in fact, be pretty close to the traumatic one. Such a body gives a lot of opportunities for causing goodness and causing happiness to others, and almost completely makes it impossible for constructive and safe activities (after all, even just going somewhere, you can stupidly step on someone accidentally).
Something very similar happened in one of the series of the series Ghost In The Shell. Waking up in the body of the robot, the human brain broke a considerable amount of firewood, although in fact I just wanted to show off in front of my parents.
I do NOT talk about such cases. Everything is pretty obvious here, as well as the fact that if you give Vasya a T-90 refueled and brought into combat readiness from the next entrance, nothing good will come of it. We are talking about the usual civil class cybernetics, without razor-sharp tungsten carbide blades embedded in the elbow.
It seems that the concept of cyber-psychosis has fallen on fertile soil, previously fertilized as natural human xenophobia, including fear and subconscious dislike of everyone who differs from the usual and customary picture of a person (including the sick, disabled, people with any defects). Man is ready to accept any difference as a defect. It mixes with luddist notions, the “Frankenstein effect”, diligently cultivated by games, movies and some books, the view that science, and in particular technology, is something that should be treated with caution, from which it is not worth waiting for something good. In addition, the futurosh is also mixed in - an irrational fear of new opportunities and changes in the usual way of life. Even the thought that the society of the future will live according to some new laws, different from the present, is frightening to a person. New = unknown, unknown = danger, but danger must be avoided, or eliminated.
Meanwhile, full-fledged cyborg already exists . At the moment, of course, the possibilities of cybernetics are modest, and cyber limbs can hardly fill even the basic functionality of a real hand. But remember, the first personal computers were also cumbersome and slow monsters, and the ability to display color pictures on the screen was presented as the cutting edge of progress. I think that in the next 30 years, cyber-prostheses will lose the right to be called prostheses: they will no longer restore the lost functionality, they will add a new one on top of the existing one. Some prosthetic legs, for example, have already been recognized as giving an advantage over ordinary legs.
Will cyber prosthetics change the psyche of people with cyber extremities? Of course. A person’s psyche can be altered by a very large number of things. But these changes will not consist in the loss of humanity, spirituality, the ability to sense emotions and other things that cyborgs are usually demonized in such statements. If the brain and organs involved in the work of it (for example, the glands secreting neurotransmitters) are not affected, there should be no physiological effects on the psyche. They will think "different", yes. How do car owners think otherwise compared to pedestrians. As citizens compared with the villagers. How do people who have a holster with a gun react to danger differently than an unarmed person. How the hell are programmers versus accountants!
An intolerance of AI is growing from about the same direction (with its memes of the Robo-apocalypse and SkyNet), but this is a separate topic.
But the fact that the concept of cyber-psychosis has gone beyond the limits of game conditionality speaks volumes. Cyborgs in the future, in a transitional time when they already appear, but there will not be too many of them, may face very real problems of discrimination.
People with implants have already been attacked because of their implants, the presence of - for example, Steve Mann was attacked at McDonald 's because the employee found that Mann could not shoot video in a restaurant.
I do not think that in the future there will be public places, at the entrance to which will hang signs "We service baseline humans only", as it was with blacks in the United States at the beginning of the last century. It is unlikely that morals are not the same.
But cyborg still have bad. It will be not only external physical faces that stimulate various phobic associations in people. At first, the attitude towards people who agreed to cut off their healthy hands to replace them with cyber-prostheses as freaks, or even as mentally ill people who should be avoided, is likely to be quite popular. There is still a problem arising directly from the consequences of progress: sooner or later, but a cyborg will be better than you. A brain implant with Internet access will significantly increase and speed up access to knowledge, a person will be able to google what he doesn’t know in seconds, without making personal gestures (In Charles Stross’s Accelerando book, one of the main characters data warehouses and an implant with Internet access, which has passed, in fact, to the border state of the pre-Loaded: the consciousness is not even close digitized, but a tangible part of the memories and mental processes already takes place oschyu Internet bots performing searches, and programs running on his implants and the CCP in a bag on the belt). A cyborg with eye implants will see a better person with excellent eyesight. Mechanical hands will not get tired, shake, and may even be stronger than ordinary human hands.
Very soon, employers will understand this feature, and cyborg will begin to receive priority when applying for many types of work. And this will serve as an additional reason for intolerance. Vaguely similar events have already taken place in 2013 : local residents of Silicon Valley began to boycott, block and even attack buses of firms working there, which carry employees to work, as well-paid workers and the need created by companies like Google in them the region has significantly leaped up, leading many non-IT locals, in fact, below the poverty line. The situation has a chance to repeat itself, but already with long-distance drivers .
It is not difficult to imagine that in the case of cybernetic implants, which began widespread, such crises can become global. People will start to see cyborgized competitors, and competitors who have received a “unfair advantage” (Yes, why the hell did they not accept me for work, but him, he doesn’t get better, he just stuck the latest version of iMind to himself, but in fact he don’t know anything!) .
The state may try to start somehow to settle the growing division ... And it is unlikely that cyborg will get better because the government’s decisions are likely to consist in regulating cyborgization and imposing restrictions on the cyborgs themselves, most likely additional implantation taxes.
Interesting fad, traditionally written in small-fine print. Comics Drugs and Wires .
But this is, in fact, only the tip of the iceberg. There may be much more unpleasant problems, fueled by the split mentioned above. Can a cyborg, most of which is already mechanical, be considered a human? Are human rights applicable to him?
But what if a person bought his augmentations on credit, or even rented them from a manufacturing corporation, and the corporation decided to revise the contract and demands his property back, but a person cannot physiologically live without implants of vital organs?
The world of the near future will have to solve a huge number of new moral and ethical issues and problems, and as long as he understands them, those who are affected by these problems are unlikely to live a carefree life.
I see that a similar period is inevitable, but I hope that it will be at least relatively short-lived.
As for the AI ​​... It is unlikely that they will appear in the arena before cyborgs with a high degree of cyborgization, which means that perhaps the bumps and bruises that society will fill during the integration of cyborgs into society will help to significantly smooth out similar problems that will arise when artificial digital personalities.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/367965/
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