8 ms·

Transhumanism: What's the Plan? (2020)

60 points by haltingproblem 6y ago

emteycz 6y ago
Very interesting article, thanks! Where can I find out more about this topic? Are there online communities?
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  There are, but this article isn't terribly accurate. (It's not bad, but it's not as good as the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism) Stuff like this: > Indeed, since we live in a post religious world now, they will become gods themselves. Transhumanism is a contemporary version of a modern project of human self-deification. is mostly just sensationalism; most transhumanists I know of don't think like that.
  - beaconstudios 6y ago
    depends on which transhumanists I guess. There's certainly a lot that are obsessed with the singularity and the God-AI, which seems to be to be a post-religious projection of Christian Rapture. Or mind-uploading, or cryonics, or other over-simplified approaches to something like immortality. But there's also those who are interested in things like the quantified self, human physical/cognitive enhancement, bioengineering, that sort of thing. It's a big tent.
    - ggreer 6y ago
      One big difference is that the Christian rapture only rewards believers and punishes nonbelievers with eternal torture. The goal of transhumanism is to allow everyone to live as long and as healthy of a life as possible. Also transhumanism doesn’t promise immortality. Best case, consciousness would persist until the heat death of the universe. A very long time, but infinitely less time than infinity.
      - ceilingcorner 6y ago
        Christian eschatology is much more complicated than what you’ve said. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology
        ggreer 6y ago
        I was using the simplified definition of the rapture that the parent poster was most likely referencing. I’m aware that different sects have different beliefs about what happens to nonbelievers. Still, the vast majority of Christians do not think that atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, or Scientologists will get into heaven. Also the article you linked to does not contradict me: > The rapture is an eschatological term used by certain Christians, particularly within branches of North American evangelicalism, referring to an end time event when all Christian believers—living and dead—will rise into Heaven and join Christ.
        ceilingcorner 6y ago
        Again, it is very complicated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_universalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_univers...
      - beaconstudios 6y ago
        > One big difference is that the Christian rapture only rewards believers and punishes nonbelievers with eternal torture. Isn't this basically the same as Roko's basilisk? It isn't really a big difference anyway. Both are pursuing an instant of uplifting immortality. The fact that the 'new' form is non-exclusionary is just like the fact that it's non-religious: unimportant. > Also transhumanism doesn’t promise immortality. Best case, consciousness would persist until the heat death of the universe. A very long time, but infinitely less time than infinity. sounds like a distinction without a difference.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      I'm very interested in the second group, especially in topics around mind. Do you have any tips where I could meet these people?
      - exdsq 6y ago
        The extropian mailing list has both groups on it, including some fairly 'big' names in the field. Hal Finney was a member before he died and is cryogenically preserved, I met Anders Sandburg on there once who works on things like whole-brain emulation.
  - pepperonipizza 6y ago
    Which is the most active community online outside of r/transhumanism?
  - rglullis 6y ago
    Could you provide any counterexample? What you call sensationalist I would call almost tautological: those who want to find a way to live forever reject natural order of life and all of its metaphysics.
    - hn8788 6y ago
      I think the sensational part is where it describes transhumanists as wanting to become deities, not just live long healthy lives. I personally think it's a natural path to go down, in a similar vein as clothing, tools, and air conditioning. There are definitely ethical issues, like poor people not being able to afford augmentations and compete in the world, but I think elective medical/mechanical enhancements are an inevitability.
      - rglullis 6y ago
        We had people with "long healthy lives" for millennia already, they were just the exception and not the norm. They were still human. A monk in the Middle Ages would live well into their seventies and eighties without wishing to find ways to live forever. A more contemporary example would be to talk about all the "natural life" followers or those closer to the temperance movement: equally interested in long healthy lives, but dismissive of the idea that "augmentations" or "enhancements" are something necessary or even desirable. So to me, this is still "human", they still want a long, healthy life, but their means to it is by via negativa: instead of adding things to your body hoping to increase the quality of life, they would avoid the things that are consider harmful. Contrast that with "transhumanism", whose idea is to be able to control the environment and elements of nature to the point where they can shape everything to their liking, even if it means adding whatever it takes to their bodies. If that's not some sign of trying to outmake our own Maker, what is?
        emteycz 6y ago
        > If that's not some sign of trying to outmake our own Maker, what is? I think most of transhumanist don't think there is a Maker. How could they take this view? I myself am a godless person - religion wasn't even a topic during my childhood, in school, etc. I wouldn't even think about this without you telling me the idea.
- morpheos137 6y ago
  https://hedweb.org https://hedweb.org Nothing has happened since 1996 or whenever; lets you know how impractical it all is. Fascinating sci-fi read though.
- mindcrime 6y ago
  https://transhumanism.reddit.com https://transhumanism.reddit.com
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fallingfrog 6y ago
Most of this stuff is silly, but I do feel very optimistic about medical science finding a way to prevent people from suffering from aging. I think it would really help us to be better at long term thinking if our lives weren’t so short; imagine if the human population was on average about 500 years old and you told them that climate change was going to wreak havoc in 50 years. Instead of looking like a distant problem for the next generation to deal with, it looks immanent. Plus, I would personally love to feel as vital and healthy as I did in my 20’s and early 30’s for longer. I’d love to learn to draw, to write a book, to do all the things I just didn’t have time to do.
morpheos137 6y ago
Transhumanism is impractical dystopian bullshit. When we can't make a taxi hailing app (uber) that is under 300 MB (because of "complexity," i.e. organisational failure), I find the idea of re-inventing the human being to be laughable.
- dinkleberg 6y ago
  How in the world do those have anything to do with each other? Is Uber the peak of human technology?
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    It's not about Uber, it's about the fact that we have a lot of experience with etching silicon while having almost no clue how to optimise our own behaviours for maximum collective intelligence. And until we do we're not going to be able to build lasting, stable systems for humans to live in. Hyper-upgrading human hardware without understanding our own psychology is going to to make our already dysfunctional systems even more hostile and aggressively un-survivable.
    - ta988 6y ago
      It is especially a concern for me as many of the more vocal proponents and moving forces of transhumanism overlap greatly with the people pushing completely inhuman and dysfunctional technologies.
    - XargonEnder 6y ago
      I've heard many transhumanists complain that that ignorance you're pointing to is holding back transhuman progress.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    They don't except perhaps some absurd stereotyping of the mythical "techbro" who exists in the doublethink superposition of antisocial loner loser who never even touched hands with a girl and a overgrown frat douchebag serial sexual harasser until one state is convenient to use as an attack. It is an ad hominem that shows they aren't even trying for logic just being a dumb emotion pump pushing one dimensional good and correct and bad and wrong axis to sway by association. He is ugly therefore he is likely to rob you kneejerk narcissistic 'logic'.That digression into sadly prevalent memes aside. "Cannot" fundamentally misunderstands the design goals. It is a mass market product where one of the major end goals is presentation so it propagates. One could go with a demoscene essentially CLI user interface with compressed maps but there wouldn't really be a user base for it defeating the point of a connection app.
hn8788 6y ago
Another example is Gabe Newell, who has taken a big interest in AI, VR, and Brain-Computer-Interface technology as he gets older. It's a different approach though, because instead of trying to keep your body healthy, you just control a virtual body that will always have perfect health.
- ta988 6y ago
  I love how people go to believe this is in any way possible with current technology. It is exactly like when people thought you could just make an intelligent agent with brass gears and pulleys.
  - gravypod 6y ago
    I'm not sure what timeline Gabe believes in but attempting to pour his time and money into something doesn't really matter, does it? It doesn't have to pay off tomorrow for it to be a worthy endeavor. Also, it's important to understand that our understanding of interfacing with the human nervous system is not as in the gutters as most people think. Right now you can find labs interfacing computers with nerves: A recent, of many, example: https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/health-tech/its-like-you-have-a-hand-again https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/health-tech/its-like-you-have... Going back slightly further, this is a company interfacing with your retina: https://secondsight.com/discover-argus/# https://secondsight.com/discover-argus/# Going back even further, this is a person interfacing with your visual cortex: http://web.archive.org/web/20050404225434/http://www.artificialvision.com/faq.html http://web.archive.org/web/20050404225434/http://www.artific... Here are some videos of the original prototypes in one of the first patients: http://web.archive.org/web/20050312143129/http://www.artificialvision.com:80/video.html http://web.archive.org/web/20050312143129/http://www.artific... What's very interesting is there's a breakdown of the costs/components of this system on this page: http://web.archive.org/web/20050312145543/http://www.artificialvision.com/wired.html http://web.archive.org/web/20050312145543/http://www.artific... 1 miniature camera mounted on eyeglasses 1 frame grabber 1 microcomputer 1 stimulus generation module 2 implanted electrode arrays with percutaneous pedestals 3 sets of rechargeable batteries and 1 charger (customer is responsible for replacement batteries as needed) It's essentially a phone + signal generator connected to 16 spots on the surface of the brain. This is from early 2000s computing so I don't think it's outrageous to say with a mix of FPGAs and modern signal generation chips something like this is more practical.
yurielt 6y ago
Plan?
topynate 6y ago
Not sure why "lindyman" is on the front page but it's not too surprising. He's talking about the transhumanist plan. Very well, let's talk about that. Hormones, anti-aging, even cryonics are not the plan, but rather short-terms tactics. The transhumanist plan is to change nature – to restructure reality so that morality becomes as intrinsic as gravitation. Death, per transhumanism, is an evil, or even the only true evil. So it follows morally that death must be excised from reality itself. That's the plan. (How's that for impracticality?) Everything else is just doing a hecking science. If that sounds cool then the places to find out about it and to talk about it are Less Wrong and Scott Alexander's substack. In no way do I consider myself affiliated to transhumanism as a movement, but I do, still strongly encourage exploring the ideas.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Is Scott Alexander into transhumanism? He's never seemed particularly focused on it to me. I guess it's part of that whole self-proclaimed rationalist milieu.
  - topynate 6y ago
    He was on LW for a good while, but it's not his focus, no. However, his substack is a good place to have a chat about it.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  I don't see what restructuring reality to make morality as intrinsic as gravity has to do with anything. If the plan is "to not die" then that does not have to be inspired by anything deeper than the basic human instinct that makes us not want to die.
  - topynate 6y ago
    This would make Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, a transhumanist. His fear of death had him seeking an immortality potion. This was about 2200 years ago. But this wasn't an "-ism" – just instinct, as you say.
Hnrobert42 6y ago
Yeah, so a lot of folks who take Adderall and Vyvanse actually need it just to function normally. The speculative b.s. does a real disservice to those folks.
grawprog 6y ago
I know this probably won't fly well here...but i'm fundamentally opposed to most of transhumanism. The basic premise of transhumanism rests on the idea that humans should transcend nature and shape the world and all life, including humanity, into a world shaped by humans. I really despise this idea for so many reasons... Humans, despite their arrogance are incapable of even basically managing this planet. We know basically nothing about its proper functioning and we arrogantly assume we should take responsibility of it all and shape it and all the life here as we choose. Humans have barely managed to keep a functioning society together in the brief 10000 years or so we've been trying to have one. 6000 years if we're going back to the beginnings of agriculture and such. To think we have even the slightest idea as to how to control nature and this world that's existed for billions of years is completely ridiculous. The fundamentals of transhumanism are no different than the fundamentals that led judeo-christian religions to exploit and destroy the world. The idea that somehow, either through divine gift or supreme intelligence, this world belongs to us and should be used and shaped how we please. We presume we should expand beyond life itself, yet all we manage to do on this earth is destroy and conquer.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  How did Judaism and/or Christianity exploit and destroy the world? I have no idea what you are referring to, genuinely curious. If you mean wars, then that seems more a generic human tendancy than a religious one
  - rabidrat 6y ago
    Genesis 1:28: > And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. This is foundational Judaism/Christianity, and is the evident subtext behind many of the movements that have led to its dominance. To wit: the Crusades, conquistadors, manifest destiny, catholic missions, modern evangelism. Domination and exploitation are consistent principles embedded within the culture and religious framework.
throw7 6y ago
The Elflord and the Mayfly https://existentialcomics.com/comic/353 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/353
- cortesoft 6y ago
  The flaw in the elf’s argument is that they imply that “things to know” and “things to do” are finite, that they are stuck with infinite time but finite activities and knowledge to fill that time with. Knowledge is infinite.
  - WJW 6y ago
    Is it? That remains to be seen. At the very least, it seems likely that "relevant" knowledge is not infinite. Sure, it seems likely that there will be an unending amount of knowledge about fictional universes like Star Wars or Middle Earth, because content creators "fill it up" with more lore faster than you can consume. But is that really worth spending eternity on?
    - cortesoft 6y ago
      If it is worth spending a percentage of a finite life on it, why would it suddenly not be worth spending the same percentage of an infinite life on?
      - rglullis 6y ago
        Because of diminishing returns. If you want to build some piece of electronics, it helps if you know the value of pi to a certain precision. But does it really matter for someone making a guitar amp what is the 100th digit of pi? How many times have you done a Google search and went beyond the first page to check if you find what you were looking for? If Michael Phelps were to live forever, how many Olympic Games and Gold medals would it take for him to say "you know what? I am tired of spending 30 hours per week on a swimming pool. Gimme a hit of that bong."? If historians had access to the recorded history of 1% of the population, we certainly would have a better understanding of the past. 10%, even more. But would this understanding change in any significant way if we had access to 50%, 80%, 100%?
naebother 6y ago
> We are the first society in which being an elder is not indicative of superior fitness. What? Old people have never been looked up to for their superior fitness.
- XargonEnder 6y ago
  I don't think they mean fitness in the athlete sense but fitness in the biology sense.
ajfjrbfbf 6y ago
> Let’s just think for a minute about what a 68ft hominin with a fairly large brain, possibly erectus-derived, with stone tools, that fought its way to Java from AfrAsia would have been doing with those insane crocodile jaws. A 68 ft human sure is scary!
ohiovr 6y ago
Sounds like the backstory to the forbidden planet.

emteycz 6y ago

Very interesting article, thanks! Where can I find out more about this topic? Are there online communities?

wizzwizz4 6y ago
There are, but this article isn't terribly accurate. (It's not bad, but it's not as good as the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism) Stuff like this: > Indeed, since we live in a post religious world now, they will become gods themselves. Transhumanism is a contemporary version of a modern project of human self-deification. is mostly just sensationalism; most transhumanists I know of don't think like that.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  depends on which transhumanists I guess. There's certainly a lot that are obsessed with the singularity and the God-AI, which seems to be to be a post-religious projection of Christian Rapture. Or mind-uploading, or cryonics, or other over-simplified approaches to something like immortality. But there's also those who are interested in things like the quantified self, human physical/cognitive enhancement, bioengineering, that sort of thing. It's a big tent.
  - ggreer 6y ago
    One big difference is that the Christian rapture only rewards believers and punishes nonbelievers with eternal torture. The goal of transhumanism is to allow everyone to live as long and as healthy of a life as possible. Also transhumanism doesn’t promise immortality. Best case, consciousness would persist until the heat death of the universe. A very long time, but infinitely less time than infinity.
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      Christian eschatology is much more complicated than what you’ve said. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology
      - ggreer 6y ago
        I was using the simplified definition of the rapture that the parent poster was most likely referencing. I’m aware that different sects have different beliefs about what happens to nonbelievers. Still, the vast majority of Christians do not think that atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, or Scientologists will get into heaven. Also the article you linked to does not contradict me: > The rapture is an eschatological term used by certain Christians, particularly within branches of North American evangelicalism, referring to an end time event when all Christian believers—living and dead—will rise into Heaven and join Christ.
        ceilingcorner 6y ago
        Again, it is very complicated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_universalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_univers...
    - beaconstudios 6y ago
      > One big difference is that the Christian rapture only rewards believers and punishes nonbelievers with eternal torture. Isn't this basically the same as Roko's basilisk? It isn't really a big difference anyway. Both are pursuing an instant of uplifting immortality. The fact that the 'new' form is non-exclusionary is just like the fact that it's non-religious: unimportant. > Also transhumanism doesn’t promise immortality. Best case, consciousness would persist until the heat death of the universe. A very long time, but infinitely less time than infinity. sounds like a distinction without a difference.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    I'm very interested in the second group, especially in topics around mind. Do you have any tips where I could meet these people?
    - exdsq 6y ago
      The extropian mailing list has both groups on it, including some fairly 'big' names in the field. Hal Finney was a member before he died and is cryogenically preserved, I met Anders Sandburg on there once who works on things like whole-brain emulation.
- pepperonipizza 6y ago
  Which is the most active community online outside of r/transhumanism?
- rglullis 6y ago
  Could you provide any counterexample? What you call sensationalist I would call almost tautological: those who want to find a way to live forever reject natural order of life and all of its metaphysics.
  - hn8788 6y ago
    I think the sensational part is where it describes transhumanists as wanting to become deities, not just live long healthy lives. I personally think it's a natural path to go down, in a similar vein as clothing, tools, and air conditioning. There are definitely ethical issues, like poor people not being able to afford augmentations and compete in the world, but I think elective medical/mechanical enhancements are an inevitability.
    - rglullis 6y ago
      We had people with "long healthy lives" for millennia already, they were just the exception and not the norm. They were still human. A monk in the Middle Ages would live well into their seventies and eighties without wishing to find ways to live forever. A more contemporary example would be to talk about all the "natural life" followers or those closer to the temperance movement: equally interested in long healthy lives, but dismissive of the idea that "augmentations" or "enhancements" are something necessary or even desirable. So to me, this is still "human", they still want a long, healthy life, but their means to it is by via negativa: instead of adding things to your body hoping to increase the quality of life, they would avoid the things that are consider harmful. Contrast that with "transhumanism", whose idea is to be able to control the environment and elements of nature to the point where they can shape everything to their liking, even if it means adding whatever it takes to their bodies. If that's not some sign of trying to outmake our own Maker, what is?
      - emteycz 6y ago
        > If that's not some sign of trying to outmake our own Maker, what is? I think most of transhumanist don't think there is a Maker. How could they take this view? I myself am a godless person - religion wasn't even a topic during my childhood, in school, etc. I wouldn't even think about this without you telling me the idea.
morpheos137 6y ago
https://hedweb.org https://hedweb.org Nothing has happened since 1996 or whenever; lets you know how impractical it all is. Fascinating sci-fi read though.
mindcrime 6y ago
https://transhumanism.reddit.com https://transhumanism.reddit.com

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fallingfrog 6y ago

Most of this stuff is silly, but I do feel very optimistic about medical science finding a way to prevent people from suffering from aging. I think it would really help us to be better at long term thinking if our lives weren’t so short; imagine if the human population was on average about 500 years old and you told them that climate change was going to wreak havoc in 50 years. Instead of looking like a distant problem for the next generation to deal with, it looks immanent. Plus, I would personally love to feel as vital and healthy as I did in my 20’s and early 30’s for longer. I’d love to learn to draw, to write a book, to do all the things I just didn’t have time to do.

morpheos137 6y ago

Transhumanism is impractical dystopian bullshit. When we can't make a taxi hailing app (uber) that is under 300 MB (because of "complexity," i.e. organisational failure), I find the idea of re-inventing the human being to be laughable.

dinkleberg 6y ago
How in the world do those have anything to do with each other? Is Uber the peak of human technology?
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  It's not about Uber, it's about the fact that we have a lot of experience with etching silicon while having almost no clue how to optimise our own behaviours for maximum collective intelligence. And until we do we're not going to be able to build lasting, stable systems for humans to live in. Hyper-upgrading human hardware without understanding our own psychology is going to to make our already dysfunctional systems even more hostile and aggressively un-survivable.
  - ta988 6y ago
    It is especially a concern for me as many of the more vocal proponents and moving forces of transhumanism overlap greatly with the people pushing completely inhuman and dysfunctional technologies.
  - XargonEnder 6y ago
    I've heard many transhumanists complain that that ignorance you're pointing to is holding back transhuman progress.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  They don't except perhaps some absurd stereotyping of the mythical "techbro" who exists in the doublethink superposition of antisocial loner loser who never even touched hands with a girl and a overgrown frat douchebag serial sexual harasser until one state is convenient to use as an attack. It is an ad hominem that shows they aren't even trying for logic just being a dumb emotion pump pushing one dimensional good and correct and bad and wrong axis to sway by association. He is ugly therefore he is likely to rob you kneejerk narcissistic 'logic'.That digression into sadly prevalent memes aside. "Cannot" fundamentally misunderstands the design goals. It is a mass market product where one of the major end goals is presentation so it propagates. One could go with a demoscene essentially CLI user interface with compressed maps but there wouldn't really be a user base for it defeating the point of a connection app.

hn8788 6y ago

Another example is Gabe Newell, who has taken a big interest in AI, VR, and Brain-Computer-Interface technology as he gets older. It's a different approach though, because instead of trying to keep your body healthy, you just control a virtual body that will always have perfect health.

ta988 6y ago
I love how people go to believe this is in any way possible with current technology. It is exactly like when people thought you could just make an intelligent agent with brass gears and pulleys.
- gravypod 6y ago
  I'm not sure what timeline Gabe believes in but attempting to pour his time and money into something doesn't really matter, does it? It doesn't have to pay off tomorrow for it to be a worthy endeavor. Also, it's important to understand that our understanding of interfacing with the human nervous system is not as in the gutters as most people think. Right now you can find labs interfacing computers with nerves: A recent, of many, example: https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/health-tech/its-like-you-have-a-hand-again https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/health-tech/its-like-you-have... Going back slightly further, this is a company interfacing with your retina: https://secondsight.com/discover-argus/# https://secondsight.com/discover-argus/# Going back even further, this is a person interfacing with your visual cortex: http://web.archive.org/web/20050404225434/http://www.artificialvision.com/faq.html http://web.archive.org/web/20050404225434/http://www.artific... Here are some videos of the original prototypes in one of the first patients: http://web.archive.org/web/20050312143129/http://www.artificialvision.com:80/video.html http://web.archive.org/web/20050312143129/http://www.artific... What's very interesting is there's a breakdown of the costs/components of this system on this page: http://web.archive.org/web/20050312145543/http://www.artificialvision.com/wired.html http://web.archive.org/web/20050312145543/http://www.artific... 1 miniature camera mounted on eyeglasses 1 frame grabber 1 microcomputer 1 stimulus generation module 2 implanted electrode arrays with percutaneous pedestals 3 sets of rechargeable batteries and 1 charger (customer is responsible for replacement batteries as needed) It's essentially a phone + signal generator connected to 16 spots on the surface of the brain. This is from early 2000s computing so I don't think it's outrageous to say with a mix of FPGAs and modern signal generation chips something like this is more practical.

yurielt 6y ago

Plan?

topynate 6y ago

Not sure why "lindyman" is on the front page but it's not too surprising. He's talking about the transhumanist plan. Very well, let's talk about that. Hormones, anti-aging, even cryonics are not the plan, but rather short-terms tactics. The transhumanist plan is to change nature – to restructure reality so that morality becomes as intrinsic as gravitation. Death, per transhumanism, is an evil, or even the only true evil. So it follows morally that death must be excised from reality itself. That's the plan. (How's that for impracticality?) Everything else is just doing a hecking science. If that sounds cool then the places to find out about it and to talk about it are Less Wrong and Scott Alexander's substack. In no way do I consider myself affiliated to transhumanism as a movement, but I do, still strongly encourage exploring the ideas.

ForHackernews 6y ago
Is Scott Alexander into transhumanism? He's never seemed particularly focused on it to me. I guess it's part of that whole self-proclaimed rationalist milieu.
- topynate 6y ago
  He was on LW for a good while, but it's not his focus, no. However, his substack is a good place to have a chat about it.
bondarchuk 6y ago
I don't see what restructuring reality to make morality as intrinsic as gravity has to do with anything. If the plan is "to not die" then that does not have to be inspired by anything deeper than the basic human instinct that makes us not want to die.
- topynate 6y ago
  This would make Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, a transhumanist. His fear of death had him seeking an immortality potion. This was about 2200 years ago. But this wasn't an "-ism" – just instinct, as you say.

Hnrobert42 6y ago

Yeah, so a lot of folks who take Adderall and Vyvanse actually need it just to function normally. The speculative b.s. does a real disservice to those folks.

grawprog 6y ago

I know this probably won't fly well here...but i'm fundamentally opposed to most of transhumanism. The basic premise of transhumanism rests on the idea that humans should transcend nature and shape the world and all life, including humanity, into a world shaped by humans. I really despise this idea for so many reasons... Humans, despite their arrogance are incapable of even basically managing this planet. We know basically nothing about its proper functioning and we arrogantly assume we should take responsibility of it all and shape it and all the life here as we choose. Humans have barely managed to keep a functioning society together in the brief 10000 years or so we've been trying to have one. 6000 years if we're going back to the beginnings of agriculture and such. To think we have even the slightest idea as to how to control nature and this world that's existed for billions of years is completely ridiculous. The fundamentals of transhumanism are no different than the fundamentals that led judeo-christian religions to exploit and destroy the world. The idea that somehow, either through divine gift or supreme intelligence, this world belongs to us and should be used and shaped how we please. We presume we should expand beyond life itself, yet all we manage to do on this earth is destroy and conquer.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
How did Judaism and/or Christianity exploit and destroy the world? I have no idea what you are referring to, genuinely curious. If you mean wars, then that seems more a generic human tendancy than a religious one
- rabidrat 6y ago
  Genesis 1:28: > And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. This is foundational Judaism/Christianity, and is the evident subtext behind many of the movements that have led to its dominance. To wit: the Crusades, conquistadors, manifest destiny, catholic missions, modern evangelism. Domination and exploitation are consistent principles embedded within the culture and religious framework.

throw7 6y ago

The Elflord and the Mayfly https://existentialcomics.com/comic/353 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/353

cortesoft 6y ago
The flaw in the elf’s argument is that they imply that “things to know” and “things to do” are finite, that they are stuck with infinite time but finite activities and knowledge to fill that time with. Knowledge is infinite.
- WJW 6y ago
  Is it? That remains to be seen. At the very least, it seems likely that "relevant" knowledge is not infinite. Sure, it seems likely that there will be an unending amount of knowledge about fictional universes like Star Wars or Middle Earth, because content creators "fill it up" with more lore faster than you can consume. But is that really worth spending eternity on?
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    If it is worth spending a percentage of a finite life on it, why would it suddenly not be worth spending the same percentage of an infinite life on?
    - rglullis 6y ago
      Because of diminishing returns. If you want to build some piece of electronics, it helps if you know the value of pi to a certain precision. But does it really matter for someone making a guitar amp what is the 100th digit of pi? How many times have you done a Google search and went beyond the first page to check if you find what you were looking for? If Michael Phelps were to live forever, how many Olympic Games and Gold medals would it take for him to say "you know what? I am tired of spending 30 hours per week on a swimming pool. Gimme a hit of that bong."? If historians had access to the recorded history of 1% of the population, we certainly would have a better understanding of the past. 10%, even more. But would this understanding change in any significant way if we had access to 50%, 80%, 100%?

naebother 6y ago

> We are the first society in which being an elder is not indicative of superior fitness. What? Old people have never been looked up to for their superior fitness.

XargonEnder 6y ago
I don't think they mean fitness in the athlete sense but fitness in the biology sense.

ajfjrbfbf 6y ago

> Let’s just think for a minute about what a 68ft hominin with a fairly large brain, possibly erectus-derived, with stone tools, that fought its way to Java from AfrAsia would have been doing with those insane crocodile jaws. A 68 ft human sure is scary!

ohiovr 6y ago

Sounds like the backstory to the forbidden planet.