How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life, Ruth Goodman (Liveright, 2016). Ruth Goodman is a reënactor, costume drama and museum consultant, and historian of Tudor England “as it was lived”: not names and dates, nor tables of agricultural production by county, but the practical concerns of daily life from clothing to cooking to ploughing. We’ve already met her in
Such a brilliant example of the idea of social signaling
>A computer can write the self-flagellating tweetstorm about your personal privilege, but only you can voluntarily take the psychic damage of posting it in public.
I read that and burst out laughing in the London tube, good thing I’m not English
It is with two and a half years of foreknowledge that I read your thoughts on what makes humans human.
Today, the age of humanoid robotics seems evidently on the horizon. About half a dozen companies are racing to market with the first bot capable of washing your dishes and folding your laundry.
Inarguably, it's been difficult. Years after LLMs have obviously destroyed the idea that humans are uniquely good at thinking and writing, it's impressive when these robots can put dishes away without breaking them. It seems to me though that this, like most hard problems, will be solved.
What is left of your conception of humanity when, in ten or so years, a family can shell out the cost of a new car and receive a humanoid bot capable of all the agility and awareness that you deem "special"?
When my robot can watch the hummingbirds swarm the feeder hanging outside the kitchen window while it washes my dishes, and then go in the other room and create an impressionist oil painting based on the scene, it will be a cold comfort knowing that it took a paradoxical amount of effort and research to make it happen.
I'm too young and too stupid to throw my hat into the ring on what makes humans special, but I don't think that moving the goalposts to something that AI finds merely "difficult" at current is the solution.
Perhaps two and a half years ago, what I see now as inevitable wasn't so clear. It seems to me, though, that any framework of humanity must be applicable across time. In the far past, and the possible future.
Otherwise, must we not concede our humanity as merely transitory, ephemeral? Here humanity resided, until all the things they could do, something else could do better.
What makes humans special? You are quite close to the mark considering the mind-body coherence. Let’s extend it to: we are embodied spiritual beings with mind-body-soul woven together. Beyond even that, to be fully human is to have spiritual life in Christ animating the whole kit.
This will transcend even physical death and the remaking of a new heaven and a new earth until we are once again walking in the presence and love of God. Let the animals, computers and trans-humanists match that!
What an image thinking of all the Tudor men twisting themselves into the most high status stance. Thinking about it, though, embodied and physical ways of signalling status could be a response to LLMs eradicating the status signals related to intellectualism. The way you stand is hard to be anything but human. The way you write is increasingly met with suspicion about using the latest GPT or something similar.
> personally costly adherence to luxury beliefs. A computer can write the self-flagellating tweetstorm about your personal privilege, but only you can voluntarily take the psychic damage of posting it in public.
This is a great example of a luxury belief. Public self-mortification about your privilege is a way of signaling your membership of the cultural elite. There is no damage involved; quite the contrary. Doing this buttresses the poster's self-concept and social position.
Social damage would come from violating a luxury belief, for example, by asserting that your privileges are well-deserved because genetically endowed. (The luxury belief being contradicted here is the one that states that everyone is a blank slate and all people are therefore equal in all abilities at birth, and deserve equal outcomes.)
Psychic damage would follow the social/reputational damage from posting this if you were a narcissist, or otherwise had your self-concept bound up in your reputation or membership of an in-group.
--
I completely agree with your thoughts on what it is to be human. As a schizoid myself I am acutely sensitive to the downsides of the schizoid-autistic reduction of human experience that is promoted by the transhumanists. What room is there in their vision for the sensation of coming out of the cold surf and throwing yourself down on the warm, silky-soft sand, and feeling the burning sun dry the water drops on your back, forming tiny, itchy salt crystals on your skin? Or the sense of harmony and rightness that comes from walking in a forest, and seeing scattered sunbeams shining down through the canopy onto the forest floor, highlighting seedlings and ferns?
I am also a big fan of domestic beauty and harmony (despite not being good at creating it myself).
It seems to me interesting to assign the ability to experience sensory stimuli as a demarcation of being "human", for the simple reason that such sensory capabilities can be lost or never have been possessed.
Is a blind man fundamentally less human, because he will never see the way the sun shines through the forest canopy? Is a deaf woman less human because she will never hear the song of morning birds?
I'm not sure I qualify as what you call a "transhumanist". I've never read the literature, and frankly don't know if such a corpus and consensus on what being a transhumanist means exists.
I do, however, stand more with what Jane described as thinking our identity is primarily intellectual.
Let's liken humans to cameras, a photographer's favored mirrorless. Cameras, fundamentally, are all about taking in photons and producing beauty. The interesting thing about them is that all the real work happens in the actual camera, the sensor the software the whatever (I don't actually know much about cameras), but you need a lens.
Lenses focus the photons, enables the sensor to see the world. Sometimes, though, the lens is a little broken. Sometimes it's a bit smudged, or there's a crack in it. Sometimes it filters out entire wavelengths. The camera still takes the photo. There's still beauty in it.
It's no mark against the camera if the lens lies about the world. The photographer is blessed, for they can switch out the lens for a new one, without the blurs and cracks and missing colors. Suddenly the photos are grand, but it's still the same camera.
Unfortunately we can't yet replace our lens, so we just have to take care of what we have, and love it for all its many, many faults. We're the camera, and though our body might be wrong, we still produce beauty.
Such a brilliant example of the idea of social signaling
>A computer can write the self-flagellating tweetstorm about your personal privilege, but only you can voluntarily take the psychic damage of posting it in public.
I read that and burst out laughing in the London tube, good thing I’m not English
“The more of your life that could be taken over by a machine, the faker, the less human, it turns out your life was.” A keeper 😂
Ruth Goodman's seven-episode series on Tudor Life is on Youtube now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQvMybw_IJw
It is with two and a half years of foreknowledge that I read your thoughts on what makes humans human.
Today, the age of humanoid robotics seems evidently on the horizon. About half a dozen companies are racing to market with the first bot capable of washing your dishes and folding your laundry.
Inarguably, it's been difficult. Years after LLMs have obviously destroyed the idea that humans are uniquely good at thinking and writing, it's impressive when these robots can put dishes away without breaking them. It seems to me though that this, like most hard problems, will be solved.
What is left of your conception of humanity when, in ten or so years, a family can shell out the cost of a new car and receive a humanoid bot capable of all the agility and awareness that you deem "special"?
When my robot can watch the hummingbirds swarm the feeder hanging outside the kitchen window while it washes my dishes, and then go in the other room and create an impressionist oil painting based on the scene, it will be a cold comfort knowing that it took a paradoxical amount of effort and research to make it happen.
I'm too young and too stupid to throw my hat into the ring on what makes humans special, but I don't think that moving the goalposts to something that AI finds merely "difficult" at current is the solution.
Perhaps two and a half years ago, what I see now as inevitable wasn't so clear. It seems to me, though, that any framework of humanity must be applicable across time. In the far past, and the possible future.
Otherwise, must we not concede our humanity as merely transitory, ephemeral? Here humanity resided, until all the things they could do, something else could do better.
What makes humans special? You are quite close to the mark considering the mind-body coherence. Let’s extend it to: we are embodied spiritual beings with mind-body-soul woven together. Beyond even that, to be fully human is to have spiritual life in Christ animating the whole kit.
This will transcend even physical death and the remaking of a new heaven and a new earth until we are once again walking in the presence and love of God. Let the animals, computers and trans-humanists match that!
What an image thinking of all the Tudor men twisting themselves into the most high status stance. Thinking about it, though, embodied and physical ways of signalling status could be a response to LLMs eradicating the status signals related to intellectualism. The way you stand is hard to be anything but human. The way you write is increasingly met with suspicion about using the latest GPT or something similar.
> personally costly adherence to luxury beliefs. A computer can write the self-flagellating tweetstorm about your personal privilege, but only you can voluntarily take the psychic damage of posting it in public.
This is a great example of a luxury belief. Public self-mortification about your privilege is a way of signaling your membership of the cultural elite. There is no damage involved; quite the contrary. Doing this buttresses the poster's self-concept and social position.
Social damage would come from violating a luxury belief, for example, by asserting that your privileges are well-deserved because genetically endowed. (The luxury belief being contradicted here is the one that states that everyone is a blank slate and all people are therefore equal in all abilities at birth, and deserve equal outcomes.)
Psychic damage would follow the social/reputational damage from posting this if you were a narcissist, or otherwise had your self-concept bound up in your reputation or membership of an in-group.
--
I completely agree with your thoughts on what it is to be human. As a schizoid myself I am acutely sensitive to the downsides of the schizoid-autistic reduction of human experience that is promoted by the transhumanists. What room is there in their vision for the sensation of coming out of the cold surf and throwing yourself down on the warm, silky-soft sand, and feeling the burning sun dry the water drops on your back, forming tiny, itchy salt crystals on your skin? Or the sense of harmony and rightness that comes from walking in a forest, and seeing scattered sunbeams shining down through the canopy onto the forest floor, highlighting seedlings and ferns?
I am also a big fan of domestic beauty and harmony (despite not being good at creating it myself).
It seems to me interesting to assign the ability to experience sensory stimuli as a demarcation of being "human", for the simple reason that such sensory capabilities can be lost or never have been possessed.
Is a blind man fundamentally less human, because he will never see the way the sun shines through the forest canopy? Is a deaf woman less human because she will never hear the song of morning birds?
I'm not sure I qualify as what you call a "transhumanist". I've never read the literature, and frankly don't know if such a corpus and consensus on what being a transhumanist means exists.
I do, however, stand more with what Jane described as thinking our identity is primarily intellectual.
Let's liken humans to cameras, a photographer's favored mirrorless. Cameras, fundamentally, are all about taking in photons and producing beauty. The interesting thing about them is that all the real work happens in the actual camera, the sensor the software the whatever (I don't actually know much about cameras), but you need a lens.
Lenses focus the photons, enables the sensor to see the world. Sometimes, though, the lens is a little broken. Sometimes it's a bit smudged, or there's a crack in it. Sometimes it filters out entire wavelengths. The camera still takes the photo. There's still beauty in it.
It's no mark against the camera if the lens lies about the world. The photographer is blessed, for they can switch out the lens for a new one, without the blurs and cracks and missing colors. Suddenly the photos are grand, but it's still the same camera.
Unfortunately we can't yet replace our lens, so we just have to take care of what we have, and love it for all its many, many faults. We're the camera, and though our body might be wrong, we still produce beauty.