Human Consciousness Is It The Only Thing That Is Worth Saving? What Does ‘Human' Mean And How Do We Fare With Robots In The Future?
You can look up what human consciousness means because there are bound to be better explanations than this article. To me, consciousness means awareness, creativity, independent thinking, and that awesome free will God blessed each of us with. We know already about the conscious and subconscious states of the human mind: the ego, id, and the superego.
Anyway, human consciousness is a term space advocates use to promote their lofty projects of transporting humans to Mars and making life multi-planetary.
This is because Earth needs more taking care of and there is always uncertainty. So on a bigger scale, human consciousness is beginning to define what it means to be human, the entirety of humanity.
It is a start because thinking about it that way takes you back to basic science where you start questioning what separates human beings from lower animals. I guess it is the power of our brains and minds, that is the human intelligence because other animals can eat, excrete, reproduce, respirate, move around, and respond to stimuli among other features living things have.
It is important to know, although that may not be so easy to define what actually makes us human in the face of the proliferation of robots. What is more important?
Would robots replace human beings in the future?
Why are human beings focused on manufacturing robots anyway knowing that they could although this is better depicted in fiction, replace human beings as we know say in the next 500 years? I do not know it all, in articles like this, I share my thoughts. Otherwise, I write science fiction novels and try to depict situations that are not reality yet.
Even though human creativity is wide, the application in terms of engineering takes time. I really believe that in the near future, a couple of centuries or more, there will be at least three distinct humanoid races that resemble what we have now.
Are there other living beings in the universe?
All right, you know I think like a Sci-fi author, horror and fantasy authors could have a plethora of creatures they are sure exist already, and with everything happening who is to say?
The world is designed in such a way that we don’t know it all. Why I said three is because there will be humans like you and I, mortals, full of empathy and love, kindness, use social media, play soccer, eat food, laugh at funny jokes, you know every little thing that makes us human as we know it now. So yea, you and I.
There will be something else that is already existing, also human at least now but probably not entirely human within the next few decades or centuries unless we expand the definition of what it means to be human. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want anybody to take this the wrong way. It is not about who you are or your situation in life but about the technology.
This second group although human today, the potential of the technology could push stuff to another extremity creating another demarcation. These processes are already obtainable in movies.
People are already adding chips to their bodies. Chiropractic practices are life savers today. Some companies are working on using the brain to control devices and stuff like that. Today it’s simple but tomorrow that same technology could be scary.
I don’t want to sound despondent. It does not really matter whether it’s on Earth or Mars, this niche of technology will continue to grow. I don’t even see how, for instance, human beings as we are today would survive somewhere like Mars which is frigid, probably with no oxygen, and no abundance of the form of water on Earth without adjusting the human processes we are used to.
The third group is pure machines also already existing. In all this, the question of what is important arises. When you subscribe to the importance of space exploration and having colonies on the moon and Mars because we have to protect human consciousness from global warming or any calamity knowing that some even stronger and bigger animals went extinct, then you have to understand the transformation involved.
If for that to happen your brain gets changed into wires and cables or as I wrote in my novel manuscript, the process of digestion changes, is the end product still human? Does it make sense to be nonhuman in order to save humanity? What do these terms mean anymore?
Seeing how technology always moves forward it will come to this and only God knows. Those who talk about human consciousness on the scale I mentioned earlier would feel vindicated because to them what’s more important is preserving the preeminent ability of humans to think and create things, they do not care if such ability that was naturally inherent in humans like you and I are now stored in chips that operate and alter, or in muscular and strong metallic objects that have the shape of human beings.
I want to stretch this topic a bit further. I have to do more research because already people have devoted time studying the origin of life, the origin of human beings, and the origin of the planets, stars, and the universe.
Some meaningful breakthroughs have been achieved through observation and experimentation. However, I don’t think that anybody knows for sure because life may have existed billions of years before the advent of communication and recorded history.
What species did human beings evolve from?
There is this school of thought that human beings came from fish, then reptiles, then birds, then the ancient man that hopped like chimpanzees. I also have watched this film about how the earliest human beings were upright from the start, walking around and hunting in the jungle like other animals, the only thing was that the hides and skins we wore then were not the refined fashion of today and of course our ancestors lived in the bush not skyscrapers and mansions.
This same idea also talks about life originating from a single source, like a unicellular organism that differentiated into plants and animals. The picture they try to paint is that Earth was a quiet place filled with dirt or matter however you want to look at it and then some part of that clay or loam particularly those close to water bodies or inside the ocean to be more specific began to wriggle then move and then went through evolution to have what now exists.
I find it difficult to believe that trees, human beings, lions, elephants, birds, fish, and all diverse life forms came from such a point and then evolved into different species that exist today. I wouldn’t ask what caused the dirt to have life, I rather say that is God.
However, when I think of evolution I always somehow think that since Earth is just one planet and there are zillions of things out there in space that every species, living, and nonliving things on Earth just existed.
Of course, when you smelt iron ore you get iron and stuff like that but on a basic scale, it is easier to believe that whatever created the oceans and the sky created you and I and the animals and trees that we see at the same time. I don’t know so don’t quote me.
It is necessary to think about the evolution of the past because the one coming in the future is already here. Many people do not think much about that because it is not their field and they have things to do but I think it is worth a thought.
As many science fiction authors have written if these robots wipe out human beings as we know and they continue to grow, there is also a possibility that the human consciousness that we fight to protect could be wiped off after many years of their existence. Not likely but possible and then Earth and even Mars would be filled by mechanic creatures who do not know much about their existence or what the future holds.
Could this be what happened before civilization when the earlier humans had smaller brains? I know that hardcore tech engineers would say we are the creators of these things if nothing else there will be some codes that would do this or that. I don’t argue that.
What I am doing is showing the different possibilities and outcomes. Thinking like that is akin to people who still define humanity as having empathy and feelings because I am sure advanced robots can have that.
