Four positions

Four common readings of augmentation. The test is a fifth.

The debate today has settled into four positions. The chapter places itself among them, not only against the bandwidth proposals.

The bioconservative position

It holds that the body’s natural build matters in itself. Some thresholds must never be crossed, whatever the person wants. Joining the nervous system to computing systems. Changes that reach the germline, the cells passed to children. Augmentations that extend your capacity past the body’s biological reach.

What it gets right: not every augmentation keeps the build whole. And the conditions the build must meet do not collapse into what the person prefers.

Where it falls short: it draws the line between biological and non-biological material. The test reads the build, not the material. Cochlear implants, pacemakers and working neural interfaces are not illegitimate for being non-biological.

The line is matching, not material.

The transhumanist position

It holds that the build should be extended in directions the body’s own growth would never have produced. Enhancement is the commitment. The larger structure’s role is to support the extension as far as technology allows.

What it gets right: the build is not tied to one material, and it can be extended. Augmentation can widen the corridor in directions that matter. What nature produced is not the ceiling on what the build can become.

Where it falls short: it treats extension as such as widening. The test reads what the extension does to your loop. Extensions the loop can take in are widening. Extensions beyond what the loop can take in break it. That holds whatever technology produced them, and whatever institution endorses them.

Extension as such is not widening. What matters is what it does to the loop.

The therapeutic-only position

It holds that augmentation is permitted where it restores what a person has lost, or never had, measured against the normal range for the species. It is illegitimate where it goes beyond that range.

What it gets right: restoring lost capacity runs cleanly through the test. Institutions have structural reasons to weigh therapy more heavily than enhancement. And the line between the two matters in practice.

Where it falls short: it makes the species baseline the test. The structure reads your control capacity, not the species baseline. An augmentation beyond the baseline that your modelling can take in runs cleanly through the test. An augmentation within the baseline that your modelling cannot take in does not.

The baseline is useful in practice. The baseline is not the test.

The autonomy-only position

It holds that your authority over your own build is complete. The larger structure’s role is only to supply access and to prevent harm that spills onto others.

What it gets right: authority over your own mind reaches the augmentation. Your authority over your own build is real. Below the boundary, the larger structure has no authority to refuse an augmentation you choose.

Where it falls short: it collapses the test into preference. The structure agrees that your authority carries weight. Then it reads further.

A preference for an augmentation whose drift rate exceeds your control is your authority acting on your prediction of what the augmentation will do. The prediction may not match what actually happens where the augmentation meets your build.

The test runs whether your preference matches its verdict or not.

At the level of the build, the verdict is the build’s, not the preference’s.

The fifth

Four positions. Four readings of what augmentation is. The structure gives a fifth.

Impedance matching, at the level of the build. Your control capacity is the ceiling on the augmentation’s drift rate. Your authority carries the weight below the boundary. The test carries the weight at the build.

The structure takes the strongest version of what each position gets right. It places each in the conditions Symmetry, Break, Record and Constraint produce where the augmentation meets your build.

Source. Ø Applications, Chapter 8 — Transhumanism and the Augmented Window. The book in full: the420code.org/Applications.pdf. The short edition: the420code.org/models/applications/08-transhumanism-and-the-augmented-window/. The film, Bandwidth does not upgrade you: the420code.org/films/applications/. Its kill switches: APP-8.1 to APP-8.5.