I for one welcome our new vaccines. I think the transhumanist angle to this has not been properly spelled out, so let's give it a shot. Humans come with two main parts of our immune system. You can watch the Kurzgesagt to get the basics. First is that there's a passive part that uses heuristics to try to guess which microbes, cells etc. in the body are harmful, and then kill them. Secondly, there's the adaptive immune system. This is the one that involves the creation of antibodies for a specific attacker, which is a very powerful but slow attack. Fortunately, the details of an invader can be memorized so that when it shows up again, you just activate the big guns immediately. It's no coincidence we used this system as the analogy for computer viruses. However, the human body is by default missing the key feature of computer antivirus programs, namely, the ability to update the catalog of bad guys without having to survive an attack first (well, not entirely, as
Vaccine transhumanism
Vaccine transhumanism
Vaccine transhumanism
I for one welcome our new vaccines. I think the transhumanist angle to this has not been properly spelled out, so let's give it a shot. Humans come with two main parts of our immune system. You can watch the Kurzgesagt to get the basics. First is that there's a passive part that uses heuristics to try to guess which microbes, cells etc. in the body are harmful, and then kill them. Secondly, there's the adaptive immune system. This is the one that involves the creation of antibodies for a specific attacker, which is a very powerful but slow attack. Fortunately, the details of an invader can be memorized so that when it shows up again, you just activate the big guns immediately. It's no coincidence we used this system as the analogy for computer viruses. However, the human body is by default missing the key feature of computer antivirus programs, namely, the ability to update the catalog of bad guys without having to survive an attack first (well, not entirely, as