Supernova Man: Will We Become Cyborgs Soon?

In the new year, the film “Ghost in the Shell” is released. His character is a cyborg whose body is almost entirely artificial. Cybernetic vision allows her to shoot without a miss, and brain implants – to assess the situation and predict events with high accuracy. Only her organic brain, like a defenseless baby, hides in the depths of the “armor”.

The film takes place in 2029, but now it seems that the picture drawn by the authors is not so fantastic. There are already prostheses that can be controlled with the help of thought. On the way – biocomputers that will detect and correct defects in cells at the molecular level.

The first child of three parents was born. The limitations that are inherent in us by nature turn into the category of technical problems. Even death from this point of view is just a program that can be hacked.

But this is not enough for techno-romantics. They advocate further improvement of our capabilities, even if at the cost of abandoning human identity and becoming some other form of life. These ideas have been embodied in the philosophy of transhumanism. “Wishing to remain the same as you are, you only limit yourself” – this is how transhumanists respond to the challenges of the technological revolution. But are we ready to step beyond this threshold?

Complex machines

“Since transhumanism involves going beyond the limits of a person, it is useful to begin by understanding what we mean by a person,” notes psychologist Anastasia Gosteva. – Depending on the era and culture, people gave different definitions of the human. But up to a certain point, they all included two parts: a mortal body and an immortal soul.

At the same time, it was impossible to separate one from the other: the body was revived and spiritualized by forces that came from higher authorities. In the Middle Ages, the church did not approve of the autopsy of corpses for medical study, referring to the fact that man was created in the image and likeness of God and cannot be encroached upon. The development of science and philosophy brought the body out of divine jurisdiction.

“In the XNUMXth century, a key event happened in Europe: the church accepted the ideas of the philosopher Rene Descartes that the mind and soul exist independently of the body,” continues Anastasia Gosteva. “Science got the opportunity to study the structure of the body, but should not have invaded the sphere of thinking and emotions.” Gradually, the rational in the definitions of a person began to concern not only his body, but also his mind. Expanding the scope of scientific research meant expanding the area of ​​what we can influence.

At the same time, advances in the creation of “smart” machines led to the fact that thinkers began to perceive a person as a complex machine. If we can improve our devices – add new features and details – what prevents us from improving ourselves? As did the Briton Neil Harbisson in 2004, who, with the help of an antenna implanted in the skull, was able to see in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum. Moreover, the task now is not to restore the functions of the body lost as a result of an illness or accident, but to arbitrarily change the set of capabilities that we have by nature.

“The main challenge of modern technologies is that we need to redefine the boundaries of human existence,” says philosopher Elena Bryzgalina. – In the modern world with its multiple approaches to assessing a person, this is difficult to do. Some approaches will inevitably clash with others.”

Signs of backwardness

However, transhumanists do not set the task of defining boundaries – they want to quickly cross them and move on. In their view of man, there is contempt for his weaknesses and imperfections. We are too emotional, vulnerable and fragile – especially against the background of the calmness, endurance and reliability of our machines. In addition, we are spurred on by the logic of modern capitalism, with its growing demands for skills and abilities: we must be productive, efficient, multi-tasking, always engaged in the process and ready to work without rest. Coffee and antidepressants no longer help – is it electronic neurostimulators?

In an effort to set records, we are trying to deceive our own nature: after all, our body, our brain is stuck somewhere in the times of the tribal system with its primitive dangers, small groups of people and modest amounts of information. Isn’t this the reason for our frivolous treatment of our own technologies? Perhaps we are simply not developed enough, or even wild for the world we want to build? And if so, should we hold on to our humanity and all that comes with it – sensitivity, doubts and mistakes? Wouldn’t it be better to abandon it and become cyborgs?

unreal brain

So far, we cannot transfer ourselves into perfect cyberbodies, but we have tools that allow us to at least play superhumans. In online games and in augmented reality, we can create any image for ourselves and get experiences that are practically inaccessible to our imagination: for example, flying above the ground in the body of a dragonfly or creating three-dimensional paintings in the air. Feel the limitless possibilities – albeit through a simulation. But it seems that already now our psyche is not quite able to cope with unusual sensory experience.

“Increasing stress on the brain can cause an increase in the number of mental disorders,” says cyberpsychologist Natalya Bogacheva. – Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan (authors of The Online Brain: Man in the Age of the Internet, ABC-Atticus, Hummingbird, 2011) note that the use of modern technologies, such as searching for information on the Internet or playing computer games, affects brain activity. Changes in the frontal lobes in the “digital generation” may reduce the ability to empathize; adolescents with Internet addiction have reduced social intelligence, impaired perception of their own body.

So what awaits the pioneers of a new era – the era of the fusion of man and machine? Assimilation of game characters, whose mind and sensual sphere are limited by the framework of virtual space? However, the penetration of technology into everyday life may not be so dramatic. Provided that we ourselves understand what we are looking for. “If we talk about the virtual relationship of love and sex, this is still communication with a real person, albeit mediated by technology,” emphasizes Natalia Bogacheva.

Precious Weaknesses

Yes, in some ways we envy the devices that we have created. We can’t move and compute as fast as they can. But what if we have some value that is not quantifiable?

“There are subtleties that are incomprehensible to machines,” notes existential psychologist Svetlana Krivtsova. Why, for example, do we sometimes like the expectation of a holiday more than the holiday itself? It has to do with how human emotions work. The feeling of pleasure obeys its own logic. The strength of satisfaction is related to the duration of the hunger. Without a difficult path, there is no joy in completing it. This is the art of enjoying life – alternating satiety and abstinence.

Perhaps for this reason, the artificial mind is still far from the human one: the experiences of loneliness, vulnerability, and fear are inaccessible to it. But love is not available either. For it is the awareness of our incompleteness and imperfection that makes us seek intimacy with others. According to the psychoanalyst Valerie Blanco, this is the fundamental error of our desire for omnipotence. “When we tell ourselves that we will have more ability, more knowledge, more time to live, it does not meet our need to make up for what we lack and increases anxiety instead of calming it.”

We can have infinity at our disposal, but what are we to do with it if there is no love in it? If each of us, new people with cyber limbs and extra memory capacity, is left alone with our childhood traumas, adult disappointments and the question of the meaning of life?

Algorithms don’t explain everything

Can we get rid of weaknesses, leaving virtues – the ability to be creative, originality, unpredictability? American neuroscientist Antonio Damasio wrote the book Descartes’ Error in the 1990s. Descartes believed that there was an unbridgeable gulf between the spiritual and the material. But all the studies of the last twenty years prove the opposite: a person thinks with the whole body – the stomach, intestines, genitals.

“Our whole body is involved in thinking, it influences our ideas, conclusions, way of thinking, logic,” emphasizes Svetlana Krivtsova. “They are not just born in the brain, but are created from a variety of sensations.” If we lose our unique body, we will lose what makes our perception of the world unique.

Mathematician, physicist, and consciousness researcher Roger Penrose recalls that in the 1960s, “everyone was convinced that man is just a complex computer, and I, in general, adhered to this point of view. But even then I had doubts: algorithmic constructions do not explain everything.” Reasonable activity is not limited to calculations. It is possible to study the connections between cells, build the most accurate model of our brain – but will it have our consciousness, will it be able to experience inspiration, compassion, bliss?

“If a person is just a body that can be frozen in a cryochamber, and emotions and mind can be rewritten onto a new medium, then transhumanism will be a natural solution,” Anastasia Gosteva reflects. But if we admit that man is something more, which is the mystery of life, we have to redefine the boundaries of humanity. And their own boundaries – after all, when it comes to our body, this is still a matter of personal choice.

Transhumanism is a philosophical concept, according to which a person is not the final link in evolution. Transhumanists associate the transition to a new, more perfect form of life with the development of technologies (cybernetics, nanomedicine, neurobiology).