Cybernetics

I've been doing a bit of my own research and come to find out, it's hard to find any info available. I'm keeping this strictly jedi related.

Some Jedi chose not to have their limbs replaced with cybernetics because they felt it would hinder or diminish their connection to the force.
Some Jedi chose to have a limb replaced (ex Luke and Anakin(before he was vader))

So, what's the general consensus of the Jedi regarding Cybernetics? Is there a code or unwritten law regarding them?

If this is in the wrong spot, sorry.

Well, both Luke and Anakin didn't choose them, same way one really doesn't choose to fix their roof after it is caved in by a collapsing tree.

I think, should the option become available for non-hindering cybernetics became available, and I needed a new arm or leg (for example, the costs of living and all that ) I'd go with it. I don't see how it would be against our doctrine. If anything, it would be very Jedi-esque, dis-attachment of the body, knowing you only own your body, but your body is not you.

But, if one is doing it as a vanity project, I would have to consider that self-mutilation, something we have somewhat of a stance against.

BBuchanan wrote: Some Jedi chose not to have their limbs replaced with cybernetics because they felt it would hinder or diminish their connection to the force.
Some Jedi chose to have a limb replaced (ex Luke and Anakin(before he was vader))

Just because there are Jedi in the fiction who encounter these issues does not mean they are any more or less useful in informing us how when deciding how we act than other such fictional characters; Richard Nixon in Futurama and Adam Jenson from the Deus Ex games are equally good alternatives.

There is no one thing which can be said about cybernetics, because the areas of life they affect and the reasons for obtaining or abstaining from them are broad. One of the biggest distinctions about adoting cybernetics, or not, is between healing the sick and upgrading the healthy.

A pacemaker is a cybernetic enhancement. Similarly if one wears glasses to correct their vision, why not, when the technology is available, swap those glasses for a mechanical eye? If you can see perfectly fine, why not get the option to see in the dark as well so you don't have to spend money lighting your home?

If you're deaf why don't you get a device which creates sound through nerve induction? If you're healthy but your ears have deteriorated slightly over time because of your age then why not also do it so you can hear as well as you used to? If you're ears are absolutely fine, why not do it anyway so you can hear the greater intricacies involved in music? Or be able to hear an entirely new form of music created from wavelengths specifically designed to be listened to by people with cybernetic implants?

If you want to fact check what someone says, why not have a device in your brain which connects to the internet and can quickly scan ever peer reviewed scientific paper ever published on the subject and cross reference it with everything published on related subjects?

If you want to fight a war, why not become super strong and armoured to resist gun fire?

The reasons for and against are as infinite as the examples we can think of.

Neuralink and the neural lace: plugging our brains into computers... and the internet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6n26bBBr80

With Akkarin, we discuss this topic relatively often. It is not merely fleshy reticence that prompts me to reserve a shaky degree of doubt about cybernetics. I do believe very strongly in developing and using technology to enable the disabled, but to use this same technology to enhance the healthy seems to me that it would yield some wildly unpredictable - and perhaps unsavory - results.

Certainly, it is tempting to be able to "know" things by having nearly instantaneous, permanent Google (or some upcoming, "better" homologue) access directly in the brain, but would we be able to focus long enough on whatever we are "fact-checking" ? As it were, given the distraction that our smart phones and the quasi-constant "connectedness" we now enjoy produces, it may very well be that technological integration would put unenhanced humans on comparative par with the average house cat, but, in following the same metaphor, the house cat would have a longer attention span. Ah ! Shiny stuff ! :side:

It would get even more difficult to know what facts are to be checked. It is already - and has been for some time - of philosophical concern just how much our thoughts about reality are useful representations of how reality actually is. That is as simple as questioning the reliability of our sense perceptions, the memory of them and the meaning that we attribute to a very solid-seeming environment. How much more complicated the puzzle will become when the thinker is no longer sure which thoughts are one's own and what are interpretations supplied effortlessly by remote programming ?

At any rate, the rapidity with which this technology is developing makes these very pertinent questions to be exploring now. I won't even bring up moral philosophy at this juncture, but remain on the practical problems that may arise (as well as the practical benefits -- that is considerable too). It is almost as if we would condense the interval between the Wright Brothers and the Concord to just a few months. The convenience ought not be seductive enough to persuade us from thinking of the very likely dangers.

How irritated do we get even now, with our computers outside of us, when we experience lag, or an interruption in connection, or system crashes ? How much more troublesome when our computers are part of us ? What are the contingencies for when the enhancement becomes an unforeseen handicap ? Would the unenhanced faculties be exercised enough to compensate for enhancement failure ? Consider aeroplane crashes : they generally due to either pilot error or equipment failure. What do we do when pilot error and equipment failure are the same ?

Yet, I'll acquiesce that there are many sound arguments both for and against. It is not unexplored territory -- any time that technology has bred cultural changes (and it indeed has, considering the past 20 years, not to mention the past 200), it has provoked benefit and loss. And, the loss is usually of equal weight as the benefit. It seems to me that in order to consider this with Justice, one has to approach it from the present, unenhanced human point-of-view, rather than from what one hopes to enjoy once one gets one's bits replaced. Wishful thinking is a very poor way to take important decisions.

Cybernetics:

Sound argument for :



Sound argument against:

Powerful as adjuncts to self, but I'd be careful not to be sucked into using them to replace or even redefine self... as there are plenty of cases of new tech being adopted out of short sightedness (no pun intended, as person with vision impairment). Industry does not have your best interests at heart, and it starts to venture into consumerism which can gloss over long term health impacts which are generally negative.

So yea, as adjuncts they serve usefully in this role for things like disabled people, and so as force multipliers (note not capitalized!) also more widely, but personally as a pro-transhumanist I'd find myself sitting relatively alone far on the skeptical and slow uptake position. I don't even had a cell phone due to their high EM power densities