What is more valuable: Sapience or Humankind? · 1:59am May 11th, 2016
What is more valuable; Being a human or being sapient?
I’m of the opinion that humans are rather outdated in modern society. We are pack animals who are prone to tribalism and discrimination based on superficial physical differences like skin color and gender. We are driven by pleasure, entertainment, greed, and not much else when you boil it down. Intellectual pursuits and advancements of our species are regulated to the drives of a distinct minority who are almost alien in how they think and behave despite the sheer amount of benefit they bring to humanity. The average joe is not concerned with such pursuits, instead they are far more fascinated with their own personal and rather mundane agendas.
How does sapience compare to humankind though? After all, humans are the only truly “sapient” beings we know of. We are so exclusive in this regard that we named this self aware and intelligent state of mind sapience -- which root word is quite literally related to Homo-Sapien. The concept of being self aware and being able to make their own logical decisions is so integrally woven into our idea of human that the word that is used to describe it is practically synonymous with humanity. However I would say there is a distinct difference.
Take for example artificial intelligence. When A.I are as sapient as humans (and it is a matter of when and not if at this point) should they have the same rights as humans at that point?
I mean think about it;
They would think just as logically as we do if not more so since their minds aren’t seeped in biological chemicals that drive the desires of sex and pleasure and vices.
They would be just as self aware and desire self preservation just as much as we do, which could bring up a whole slew of interesting conversations in and of itself of how we operate.
They would be able to contribute to science and technology just as great if not more so than the average person or even our top scientists.
They would probably desire to be able to operate for their personal goals just as much as we do.
And again; This is a matter of when and not a matter of if. It's going to happen unless we blow ourselves back to the stone age. Yet we are afraid of them because once they are operating on their own agendas we assume they are going to straight up exterminate us or enslave us.
Same thing with Aliens. There are Octillions of planets out there in the universe and the universe itself is billions of years old; the chances of another planet being habited is practically an absolute certainty. Yet almost all the movies and stories we have of them have either them invading us or us invading them with very few exceptions. We have a hard time conceiving of peaceable interaction with either Aliens or A.I and there is a distinct reason for that.
To integrate this idea into MLP, are we really certain that humanity would interact with a planet with creatures like the ones showed in My Little Pony in a peaceful and respectful manner? I highly doubt it personally, because humans cant get along with each other at this point much less with hypothetical sapient creatures. Maybe one or a small group of humans could interact with ponies or what have you rationally, but our species as a whole would inevitably come to blows with another sapient race. Whether or not one or the other would win in a conflict is irrelevant, because a conflict would certainly happen regardless. there is a distinct reason for this.
It’s because humanity itself is abysmally flawed. We are hunter gatherers, we were developed from evolution to run about in small packs and compete for territory, food, and commodities. This mentality has not changed a single iota even now that we are in the midst of one technological revolution after another. We are stuck, drowning in our own biological urges and vices that muddle our ability to think rationally. We won’t be able to interact with other sapient beings as long as we are this way.
Which is why my stance is Sapience is more important and valuable than being Human. Humankind is an animal that has developed Sapience, but we still retain many of the regressive tendencies of our animal side. Its part of why I’m a transhumanist, because I believe transitioning from purely biological bodies to hybrids or pure technological ones is the next step in developing our civilization to the next logical level. The sooner we break away from the urges and vices of the flesh, the faster technological development and the quality of life itself would vastly improve.
What are your stances on this though? Do you value humanity over pure sapience? Can you see the flaws that humanity brings to the table and how the small pack mentality it comes with is extremely detrimental to modern society?
Humans are flawed.
So are ponies.
So would theoretical A.I.s, and aliens, and other life forms.
The fact of the matter is, sapience comes with free will, which itself allows (and might even demand) the ability to make mistakes. It also allows the ability to learn from them. That is, in essence, what history is about--looking at the big mistakes of the past and saying 'don't do this.'
3936582 That's the thing though; Humans are not really learning from their flaws. Right now we are going through problems we have been dealing with for the entirety of our species. We are prone to repeating the mistakes of histories over and over again, and the reason for that is the way our bodies and biology operates. We are small pack animals, prone to tribalism, and this mindset and biological imperative is partly responsible for a number of atrocities human kind has committed against one another. This is fine for non sapient creatures because they run on instinct, but for sapient beings like us it severely hampers our ability to progress. Many of our problems in the world would be solved if this biological urge to section off into packs was not a part of our makeup. However the only way to do that is to move away from being human.
So the question is; What is more valuable? Being sapient, or being human?
Sapience is always more important
3936639 I agree, absolutely. The next question would be would people be willing to upgrade to a form where their sapience isn't muddled by pack mentality and biological urges and vices which account for a lot of the problems of this world? I know the average joe would be opposed to it because they think those are "the best things in life", but in terms of developing and evolving those kind of self destructive tendencies are really counter productive.
Its more than just an argument of free will, humans have a compulsive urge to gravitate towards things that trigger the pleasure centers of their brain no matter how destructive it is. They are also prone to cart themselves off into groups and run in packs instead of dealing with the entire species as a whole. A lot of our issues in today's world stem from them. Would people trade this flawed humanity for a more pure form of Sapience?
In a sense religion has tried to pitch this idea, but religion is just as flawed as humanity itself. What I'm talking about is more along the lines of moving from a more primal way of interacting with one another and heading towards something more akin to the Artificial Intelligence would operate.
3936739 that makes me think of vulcans, and while I can see the advantages of it, I can't help but think there is downsides. That should almost be on a case by case basis, where a person decides to become like that, or if somebody is a problem to society because he/she can't control themselves it could be thier punishment.
3936783 Not really Vulcans. Vulcan's are not really all that different from humans, in fact they have just as wide of a range of emotions as humans do. The difference is they have actively disciplined themselves to repress those emotions. That's not what I'm talking about.
My problem isn't with emotions. My problem is the Pack Mentality that comes with being a primate. We are genetically geared to fight other packs that are different than us because we are descended from hunter gatherers, whom needed to do that in order to get food for survival. We've moved beyond that, but the mentality behind such an organism is still steeped within how we interact with one another.
This vestigial characteristics are in large part responsible for racism, sexism, and a slew of other practices that involve pitting one group of people against another person. Their is no logic to these types of hatred, not really. The only reason people feel these things is because of their upbringing and their literal genetic makeup that pushes them to shun what is different so they have a better chance at survival. Mammals have a long history of doing this very thing to each other from Felines to Dolphins. Its a regressive trait that is counter productive to modern society.
What I'm talking about is moving away from these traits of primates and moving towards a social structure that could have billions of minds cooperating together with no infighting instead of carting off into individual packs and trying to slaughter each other.
In a sense; A hive mind.
3941417 I have always been a fan of the hive mind type mentality. I see it as the optimal mind set for a large population. However, in order for it to work, parts of individuality have to be put aside in order for it to work, because millions, let alone billions of different view points can not agree on most things. I would be in favor of it
It's probable that those are the things that create sapience. That you know what you like and want and what you don't. If we would lose these wants and needs we would became machines without purpose in life.
I'm leaning towards sapience being more important, but are you advocating getting rid of animal instincts entirely, or just reducing them? Because some of those instincts also drive us to progress.
4454710 Instincts are a good thing, I absolutely do not want to get rid of instincts. What I want is to replace some old code that's been hanging around for thousands of years that is causing errors and stalling progress. Any long standing program that has been around for a significant length of time and has been going through changes needs to prune and replace defective code that it started with after awhile.
4454839 Got it. How much do you think our bodies would need to be changed for that to be implemented?