{"id":4211,"date":"2012-03-20T10:14:04","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T14:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4211"},"modified":"2014-03-11T14:39:01","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T18:39:01","slug":"on-becoming-a-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4211","title":{"rendered":"On becoming a machine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A regular, TomA, asks: &#8220;If you could replace your organic body (in its entirety) with a machine, would you do it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is one of those questions where examining the implied premises is the most interesting thing about answering it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My shortest answer is &#8220;No, unless I were dying and it was the only way to escape mortality.&#8221;  I have a strong hunch that being embodied as a human is required to understand the minds of other humans. Being posthuman might get pretty lonely. I&#8217;d also hate to give up eating and sex.<\/p>\n<p>A slightly longer answer is that the question as posed neglects important issues about the capabilities of the machine. If I get to be an android with a fully human sensorium, that&#8217;s a very different and more acceptable case from being a mobile computeroid with tank treads and grippers.  <\/p>\n<p>An interesting counter-question is: &#8220;How am I not a machine already?&#8221;  I&#8217;m not a vitalist.  I regard my body as a machine that happens to use organic molecules and assemblies thereof as parts. This observation takes me back to the question of how much transforming me into a <em>different kind<\/em> of machine would alienate me from human experience.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not asserting this is true of TomA, but I think people who ask this question often have a sort of clanking Robbie-the-Robot stereotype about what becoming a machine would be like.  Well, it would beat dying, but please hurry up the upgrade with the syntheflesh and genitalia, would you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A regular, TomA, asks: &#8220;If you could replace your organic body (in its entirety) with a machine, would you do it?&#8221; This is one of those questions where examining the implied premises is the most interesting thing about answering it&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4212,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4211\/revisions\/4212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}