Editing Transhumanism (section)

== Transhuman Skub wars and conundrums==
Surprisingly (to some), this is a very skub filled topic for both sides of the topic. Mainly lots of false assertions and fanaticism involved. A large bottle of salt is recommended when delving into these "heated" discussions.

The Skub mostly stems from the clashes between those who's religion is opposed to human body modification and/or the concept of Singularity, and those who are the proponents of these concepts. We will of course NOT go into the arguments here since Skub, if you want examples just use google and take your pick on the gajillion religious & transhumanist forums that dot the internet.

Aside from the above, there are more practical concerns regarding the whole philosophy, namely:

*'''Who gets to use it and profit from it?''': Transhumanism by it's nature would enable ordinary humans to enhance themselves until they are, and let's not mince words here, VASTLY superior to nonmodified humans, if this technology is not somehow made widely available the end result may well be a bifurcation of humanity into a demigod elite and the vast majority of baseline plebs, and all [[Communism|the delightful political and]] [[Nazi|social developments this produces]]. Do we rely on the free-market approach similar to cellphone development to take place and hope that the tech to modify oneself eventually becomes cheap and readily available. Do we decide to subsidize certain mods deemed of public health importance or do we have a flat government discount and let the people decide what mods they want?

*'''How do we approach custom/copyrighted genes?''': The USA already adopted the GINA (Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act) back in 2008. which protects one form genetic-based discrimination in regards to health insurance and job hiring. However as gene sequencing has become vastly cheaper and more accessible, do we also institute genetic copyright to protect ourselves from being cloned? Do gene-modding corporations have the right to copyright their custom-developed genes? How do we decide which genes are a part of a public domain?

*'''What research should be allowed and what should be banned?''': Obviously, anyone with a functioning moral compass will agree that involuntary human experimentation deserves blamming in short order, but what about animals and plants? If cybernetic & genetic research makes some animals or plants sentient, do we have the right to keep experimenting on them or should we severely regulate/ban any research that may lead up to that? Should human embryos or body parts/tissues be free game or similarly regulated (imagine human cells develop sentience after some institute tried to make a biocomputer out of them)?

*'''How do we handle the existence and rights of new races/species of beings that will be created?''': Related to the above, if we do grant sentience to plants/animals/machines, what rights (if any) should they have and how do we protect them? If a human achieves a trans-human status and becomes a cyborg, furry or something else completely, do we recognize them as a subclade of ''homo sapiens sapiens'' or do we deem them an entirely new species and do they have any say in the matter?

*'''How do we prevent deranged individuals from releasing doomsday tech on the world?''': There already exist basic gene-editing kits using the Cas-CRISPT19 tech mentioned in the section above which allows people to make custom genes in their garage. What is there to sop some lunatic from engineering a virus to be far deadlier than it would have been, or give a new trait to an insect that turns it into a super-pest? Do we ban people from garage-editing their genes with only licensed corps and agencies doing the modding? How do we deal with gene-pirates? In fact, this is the reason why the entire planet has such strong regulations on nuclear and organ transplant technologies, it's something you simply can't let run amok, there is a major field ahead in terms of how you legislate transhumanist-creating technologies.

*'''What happens to our society and present socio-economic models if Transhumanism succeeds?''': As demonstrated on none other that our good 'ol Warhammer 40k - the introduction of the 3D printing technology has sent GW into stealth-panic mode with ever increasing orientation towards [[Video Games]] as they fully realize that the ability to make your own minis will signal the death-knell of them as a company (while the hobby will likely only benefit from this on grassroots-level). With that said, how disruptive would genetic or cybernetic modification be? Would things such as hospitals and schools become obsolete due to improved health and intelligence? If a benevolent AI is developed that is far superior to us in intelligence, should we allow it to assume executive functions in our leadership structures? Should the state and society as we know it be abolished or should we try to modify it in light of these new developments?

*'''How can you prove a true continuity of consciousness?''': Suppose someone claims that they've been able to successfully upload their consciousness into a machine and have effectively become immortal. One simple question: how do you know that the machine is really you and not just a copy? How do you know that the 'real' you simply died and the machine is just a simulacrum with all your memories and 'thinks' that its the same being as you? There's no real way to prove it, because the machine will believe itself to be the same being no matter what. So it may not be so much a transfer of consciousness, where you as an individual being continue existing from an organic body to a synthetic one, so much as, you die, and a machine programmed with your memories and personality takes your place; but until we have a better understanding of what consciousness even is, we will never know for sure. Lastly, digital processors fail and wear out over time as well and files on the same pc are not transferred from drive to drive either but just copied with the old ones getting written over, now imagine that happening to a mind on a computer.

As you can see, Transhumanism does raise plenty of legitimate and interesting questions which we will eventually have to deal with if the whole thing succeeds in real life. Nevertheless these also represent good plot points and setting focuses that can flesh out your game or a homebrewed version of a popular setting. The road towards a transhuman society may be just as exciting as playing within that society.