Tag Me as Human | Issue #13
Attempting to answer the simplest (hardest) question ever and why it is important.
5 MINS READ
Did you miss yesterday’s issue?
I am sorry. There was a power outage where I live and I couldn’t help it.
I owe you a bonus issue, OK?
Enjoy today’s read.
What/who is a human?
It is ironic, even bewildering, that we have defined the universe but haven’t defined who we are.
If you attempt a definition yourself, you might be confronted with the same difficulty.
The multiplicity of fields are our numerous attempts.
Philosophy says we’re self-aware beings. Biology says we’re just a highly ordered clump of cells.
The definitions branch out, taking account of our physical features (anatomy and morphology) and our shared characteristic elements.
Some base their definitions on humans as social beings. The kinships we form, from the most basic nuclear family, to the international societies separated by language and distance and all the intricate roleplays and systems across the length of this social spectrum.
Still others prize our “unusual” cognitive abilities and its products. From the wondrous heartwarming arts, literature and architecture to the cold efficiency of technological machines.
What makes us human, then?
This is a question that many would think is unnecessary. It is the kind of question that would elicit the unapologetic “I know one when I see one” type of answer from cynics and people who really haven’t thought this through.
However, the flaws of this simplistic “common sense” definition are beginning to grow obvious.
While we are engineering machines to exceed us at reasoning (DeepMind, Anthropic and OpenAI), or building brain-computer interfaces that blur the lines between the capabilities of both (Neuralink), the question of the essence of humanity is raised sky high.
There are two ways I could answer this, because I don’t know the answer:
1. We are humans because of some magic sauce:
Could be reasoning, empathy or technology.
Avid supporters of this group believe we have some unique trait that cannot be replicated.
Let’s take toolmaking and technology for an example.
Apes have started doing something strange. They make sticks out of tree branches and use the sticks to poke into anthills. Then, they draw the sticks out and lick off the ants crawling over the retracted stems.
They are using tools.
But if we are humans because we build tools, what happens if apes evolve to make tools in future?
What about if we encounter extraterrestrials with more advanced technology?
We could apply this to the other criteria and theoretically watch the foundation of humanness crumble.
OK. Maybe what makes us human is a combination of these or some factor we cannot objectively measure.
Maybe, a soul.
2. We are not really really humans
Now, this one is weird. It is a synthesis of the ideas in Darwin’s theory of evolution and transhumanism.
The theory of evolution presents today’s lifeforms as advanced accumulated iterations of nature over millennia.
Transhumanism is obsessed with using technology to improve humans.
Why let blind trial and error dictate the number of limbs we’d have in future, when we can give ourselves bionic arms?
In considering evolution, it is clear that species transform into others in a never-ending chain.
If species are ever-changing, could this then mean that there are no species at all?
Transhumanism, which some say is man taking evolution into his hands proposes modifications to the human condition that defy
One day, maybe we’d be able to upload our consciousnesses to a secure hard drive. And when we perfect mind-computer interfaces, we could download that consciousness into a robotic body stationed on Mars. We’d revel in the Martian experience then maybe zip to another body on the Moon.
Would you conveniently call a being that teleports like a file over the internet, and experiences the world through an indestructible, upgradable body, human?
For these closely related fields, it seems that humanness is not a state of being but rather a construct that we continue to define. That is, we will continue evolving into fuller expressions within constraints of our own definition.
We’d need to know how to treat intelligent humanoid robots. As willed slaves or as fellows.
Someone would come up on TV advocating for robot rights and we’d be forced to answer this question.
Are they what, or who?
All of this reminds me of Peter Quill from the Guardians of the Galaxy III, yelling at Rocket, his anthropomorphic raccoon friend and partner, to “ keep your grimy raccoon hands off my Zune!”.
Rocket protests that he is not a raccoon while casually sipping a drink. And that is because he doesn’t know any better. It is not until the end of the movie where he finds the litter that he was taken from clearly marked with the raccoon’s taxonomy that he proudly accepts who he was.
Think about it: do fish go singing, “we’re fishes”?
Maybe, we’re like Rocket.
We just don’t know who we are. We need someone else to tell us, but we haven’t found one yet.
Maybe, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know.
Let's keep tinkering and hope that one day answers will fall from the sky.
Prompt of the Day: Estimate Market Size
Copy and paste this into ChatGPT
Act as a data analyst, to help me estimate the market size for [specific PRODUCT/SERVICE] in [REGION/COUNTRY]. Product/Service = [PRODUCT/SERVICE] Region/Country = [REGION/COUNTRY] AI Tool of the Day:
Grammarly has a new AI feature, “Personalized voice detection and application”, that detects a person’s writing style and creates a ‘voice profile’ so that you can rewrite text in that style.
Did You Know:
28+ countries reached a landmark agreement yesterday termed, the Bletchley Declaration on AI Safety.
Well, it takes courage to post each issue. You are a perfectionist writer and you send out your first, unpolished drafts every midnight knowing that later you'd read those words and see that you should have said “impressive” rather than bland “beautiful”.
Nightmarish?
Or is there some fear? And courage is just it's mastery?
Thank you for reading.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
With love and ink,
Emmanuel