The document discusses several topics related to posthumanism and transhumanism. It first examines utopian and dystopian visions of humanism from historical and technological perspectives. It then discusses concepts like the singularity event, extended bodies and minds, uploading consciousness, and hybrid meta-beings. It notes debates around enhancing and modifying the brain and questions what defines humanity. The document critiques the assumptions of arguments for an inevitable superintelligent AI, noting that intelligence is relative to human problem-solving abilities and experience. It conjectures that simulating qualitative experience requires first constructing societies of interconnected minds.

1. LA SINGULARIDAD DE LA SINGULARIDAD O
CUÁNTO HAY DE HUMANISMO EN EL
TRANSHUMANISMO
Fernando Broncano

2. UTOPÍAS HISTÓRICAS
• Retratos en negro de las sociedades
contemporáneas
• Hipóstasis a una realidad sin lugar (o
tiempo)
• La hipóstasis funciona como fuente de
imaginación e impulso de la voluntad
• Toda utopía es un topos localizado
histórica y culturalmente.

3. UTOPÍAS Y DISTOPÍAS DEL
HUMANISMO
• El humanismo de “primera ola” estuvo
asociado a ciertas utopías de la promesa (La
ciudad del sol, La nueva Átlántida, etc.)
• El humanismo de “segunda ola” ha estado
asociado a distopías de la promesa (Los viajes
de Gulliver, Frankenstein o el nuevo
Prometeo, Erehwon, A brave new world…)

4. LAS NUEVAS HUMANIDADES
• Humanismo bajo condición “cyborg”: la
naturaleza artificial de lo humano
• Humanismo reflexivo sobre las posibilidades
tecnológicas/sociales
• Utopías y distopías como elaboraciones de las
posibilidades

5. LA SINGULARIDAD

6. LA SINGULARIDAD
Explosión de
inteligencia
Explosión de
velocidad

7. SINGULARIDAD
• Human history has been characterized by an accelerating rate of technological
progress. It is caused by a positive feedback loop. A new technology, such as
agriculture, allows an increase in population. A larger population has more brains
at work, so the next technology is developed or discovered more quickly. In more
recent times, larger numbers of people are liberated from peasant-level agriculture
into professions that entail more education. So not only are there more brains to
think, but those brains have more knowledge to work with, and more time to
spend on coming up with new ideas. We are still in the transition from mostly
peasant-level agriculture (most of the world's population is in un-developed
countries), but the fraction of the world considered 'developed' is constantly
expanding. So we expect the rate of technological progress to continue to
accelerate because there are more and more scientists and engineers at work.
Assume that there are fundamental limits to how far technology can progress.
These limits are set by physical constants such as the speed of light and Planck's
constant. Then we would expect that the rate of progress in technology will slow
down as these limits are approached. From this we can deduce that there will be
some time (probably in the future) at which technological progress will be at it's
most rapid. This is a singular event in the sense that it happens once in human
history, hence the name 'Singularity'.
• http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Singularity/si
ngul.txt

8. Nick Bostrom( Future of
Humanity Institute)
Hans Moravec

9. PROMESA TECNOLÓGICA
• Nanotecnología
• Biotecnología
• Colonización del espacio
• Computación avanzada
• Ingeniería a mega-escala
• Manipulación espacio-temporal
(http://www.aleph.se/Trans/)

10. PROMESA INDIVIDUAL
• Transformación individual
• Longevidad
• Control de la muerte y las enfermedades
• Amplificación de la inteligencia
• Extensión del cuerpo

11. PROMESA GLOBAL
• Singularidad tecnológica (máquinas que crean mejores máquinas)
• Evolución de la humanidad (existencia post-biológica. Seres post-
humanos)
• Expansión al universo (punto Omega: universo como ser inteligente)

12. EL CUERPO EXTENDIDO

13. EL CUERPO EXTENDIDO:
AMPLIACIONES
• Añadidos e interfaces
• Implantes
• Coberturas

14. • Manipuladores
• Bastones, azadas,
lanzas…
• Sensores
• Analizadores externos
• Analizadores internos
• Almacenamiento
• Materiales, energía,
información
• Transporte
• Físico, señales,
semántica
• Comunicación
• Percepción
• Nivel de la señal
• Espectro
• Traducción de
modalidad (“ver”
temperaturas)
• Filtros
• Utilidades (posición,
previsión de tiempo,
….)
• Conducta
• Agentes proactivos
EL CUERPO EXTENDIDO: FUNCIONES

15. • Esqueleto
• Piernas
• Torso
• Tracto Gastro-
Intestinal Sistema
Circulatorio
• Respiración
• Reproducciónn/Sexo
• Metabolismo
• Piel
• Ojos
• Cerebro y sistema
nervioso
• Sistema inmune
• Sistema Hormonal
• Edad y Desarrollo
• Genética
CUERPOS EXTENDIDOS

16. ORGASMATRON DE STUART MELOY
• El Orgasmatrón era un gran tubo que podía contener a una o dos personas y proporcionar orgasmos al
instante en la película “El Dormilón”. Stuart Meloy, especialista en tratamientos contra el dolor,
consideró que no había mejor nombre para su descubrimiento: un implante de electrodos que
maximiza los orgasmos.

17. BRAIN ENHANCEMENTS
Once the brain is in an artificial form, it will be much easier to modify it. Assuming a good
understanding of our neural circuitry, a number of enhancements and deletions will be possible.
These will strain the definition of "human." At a minimum, it is probably best to prohibit modifying
other people's brains without their fully informed consent. It may also be worthwhile to restrict
certain types of modifications. Some of the changes which have been discussed follow.
Ampliaciones
Extended senses (e.g., seeing ultraviolet light); increased working memory capacity; mental calculator
or database; language modules,; and telepathy. Some people may want to go further and more fully
integrate their minds with computers, changing their very thought processes.
Borrado
To remove instincts which are no longer "needed“: food, sex, anger/violence, fear, and so on. Some
may even try to remove all emotion. Although it may (or may not) be true that these no longer serve a
logical purpose in an uploaded person, they are certainly an integral part of what we now understand
"humanity" to be.
Alteraciones de memoria
To manipulate our memories almost as easily as we manipulate disk files. This includes procedural
memory and episodic memory. Memories could be deleted, added, or swapped between persons.
Sondeos mentales
To search a person's memories for knowledge related to a specific event. This could be use to
establish guilt or innocence of a crime, for example
http://www.ibiblio.org/jstrout/uploading/enhancements.html

18. DESCARGAR
• “Subir la mente a la nube”
• “Subir el cuerpo a la nube”
• http://www.minduploadingproject.org/blog/news/

19. META-SERES HÍBRIDOS
• “The integration of human beings will proceed in another dimension than
that of human culture, a dimension of depth. We conceive of a realization
of cybernetic immortality by means of very advanced human-machine
systems, where the border between the organic (brain) and the artificially
organic or electronic media (computer) becomes irrelevant. Such hybrid
organisms would survive not so much through the biological material of
their bodies, but through their cybernetic organization, which may be
embodied in a combination of organic tissues, electronic networks, or
other media. With communication through the direct connection of
nervous systems to machines and to each other, the death of any
particular biological component of the system would no longer imply the
death of the whole system. Such metasystems will be evolutionary
selective, in that they will have advantages for survival in an evolving
environment. This is a cybernetic way for an individual human person to
achieve immortality.” (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SUP-META.html)

20. CUERPO SOCIAL
• Through such techniques, the form or organization with which we identify
our "I" could be maintained infinitely, and, which is important, evolve,
become even more sophisticated, and explore new, yet unthought of,
possibilities. Even if the decay of biological bodies is inevitable, we can
study ways of information exchange between bodies and brains which will
preserve the essence of self-consciousness, our personal histories, our
creative abilities, and, at the same time, make us part of a larger unity
embracing, possibly, all of the humanity: the social superorganism. We
call this form of immortality cybernetic, because cybernetics is a generic
name for the study of control, communication, and organization. It
subsumes biological immortality.

21. MODOS DE REALIZACIÓN
• There may be developed computers that are "awake" and superhumanly
intelligent. (To date, there has been much controversy as to whether we can
create human equivalence in a machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then
there is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly
thereafter.)
• Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a
superhumanly intelligent entity. o Computer/human interfaces may become so
intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
• Biological science may provide means to improve natural human intellect.

22. “We need to first understand that the human form—including human desire
and all its external representations—may be changing radically, and thus
must be re-visioned. We need to understand that five hundred years of
humanism may be coming to an end, as humanism transforms itself into
something that we must helplessly call posthumanism”
(Hassan, Ihab. (1977). ‘Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist
Culture?’, in Michael Benamon and Charles Caramella (eds.),
Performance in Postmodern Culture, Milwaukee: Centre for Twentieth
Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 201–217.: 212).

23. • Badmington, Neil (ed.). (2000). Posthumanism, New York: Palgrave
• Fukuyama, Francis. (2002). Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the
Biotechnology Revolution, New York:Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Foster, Thomas. (2005). The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular
Theory, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Graham, Elaine L. (2002). Representations of the post/human: Monsters, Aliens
and Others in Popular Culture, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Halberstam, Judith and Livingstone, Ira, (eds.). (1995). Posthuman Bodies,
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
• Hayles, N. Katherine. (1999). How we Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in
Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press.
• Terranova, Tiziana. (1996). ‘Posthuman Unbounded: Artificial Evolution and
High-Tech Subcultures’, in George Robinson, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon
Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam (eds.), Future Natural: Nature, Science, Culture,
London: Routledge, 165–180.

25. Alien: Resurrection,
Jean Pierre Jeunet, 1997

26. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Simon West 2001

27. The Dark Knight Rises, Ch.
Nolan, 2012

28. Inception, Ch. Nolan, 2010

29. Cosmopolis (DeLillo, 2003),
(Cronenberg, 2012)

31. • “The posthuman doesn’t supersede
the human subject or offer a ‘better’
or more advanced model of the
human. It doesn’t necessarily want to
leave the body behind. Instead,
interpreting the posthuman as a
process of reformulating established
categories of being creates the
possibility of transforming identity
politics based on dialectical
relations.” (Toffoletti, 2003, pg. 14)

32. • “the posthuman operates as a site of ambiguity,as a transitional space
where old ways of thinking about the self and the Other, the body and
technology, reality and illusion, can’t be sustained.”

33. • How We Became Posthuman
examines the question of
posthuman existence in
contemporary society by
addressing three key areas—the
dislocation of information from
the body, the creation of the
cyborg as a technological
artefact and cultural icon, and
how a historically specific
construction called ‘the human’
is giving way to a different
construction called ‘the
posthuman’ (Hayles 1999: 2).

34. KATHERINE HAYLES: THE SEMIOTICS OF VIRTUALITY
(HOW WE BECOME POSTHUMAN)
Posthumanismo vs pensamientos binarios

36. ¿EN QUÉ SE EQUIVOCA EL
TRANSHUMANISMO?
• La condición humana es la de continua trasformación de su propia
naturaleza
• Las grandes transiciones cambiaron la naturaleza humana: agricultura,
escritura, imprenta, colonización de la energía, control de la información.
• Pero las grandes transiciones son resultado de los compromisos del
presente.
• Siempre fuimos transhumanos.

37. EL ARGUMENTO (CHALMERS (2010)
1. Habrá IA (suponiendo ausencia de obstáculos “derrotantes”)
2. Si hay IA, habrá IA+ (tarde o pronto suponiendo ausencia de OD)
3. So hay IA+, habrá IA ++ (suponiendo…)
4. Por consiguiente, habrá IA++

38. SUPUESTOS DEL ARGUMENTO
• “The argument depends on the assumption that there is such a thing as
intelligence and that it can be compared between systems: otherwise the
notion of an AI+ and an AI++ does not even make sense”

39. EL PROBLEMA
1. Todas las medidas de “inteligencia” que conocemos son relativas a la
capacidad de resolver problemas.
2. Un problema es, desde la perspectiva del humanismo, una forma de
experiencia humana que proyecta una posibilidad en el futuro desde una
proyección del presente o el pasado.
3. La experiencia humana es siempre contextual: relativa a la subjetividad, pero
también a las prácticas y culturas.
4. Una máquina ajena a la experiencia humana dejaría de resolver problemas.
5. Por consiguiente no habría forma de comparar la inteligencia.
6. Sería considerada poco más o menos que un fenómeno natural (no
consideramos inteligente al planeta Tierra, por más que muchos consideren
que es un ente “Gaia”)

40. CONJETURAS
• La experiencia no sobreviene a las propiedades físicas del cerebro
(solamente) sino a las propiedades históricas y contingentes de una
sociedad de cerebros en un contexto de prácticas.
• Los elementos “cualitativos” de la experiencia suponen la capacidad de
“reconocimiento”
• Simular (o construir la experiencia) supone antes haber construido
sociedades de cerebros.
• En el espacio de inteligencias posibles solamente algunas pueden ser
comparadas respecto a la experiencia.
• Pensemos por un momento: podemos comparar la inteligencia de un león
con la de una hormiga respecto a la capacidad de información y resolver
“problemas” en términos abstractos, pero ¿son comparables respecto a los
problemas relevantes de la existencia biológica? (si se responde “sí”
entonces cabría una escala de la evolución. Pero no hay ninguna evidencia
que el león sea más adaptativo que la hormiga (más bien lo contrario)