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What ever happened to the transhumanists?

mensetmanusman 4y ago
“ Transhumanism made a lot of sense to me, as it seemed to represent the logical next step in our evolution, albeit an evolution guided by humans and not Darwinian selection.” Cringe-worthy misunderstanding of Darwinism…
marcosdumay 4y ago
With our current relationship with tech, nobody on their right mind would want to anticipate transhumanism. Fix tech first, then people will start to hype it again.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  This is the true and underappreciated answer. People do not trust technology and technology companies. And they are right in that thinking. Almost all of the big tech companies are straight up evil almost to the point of being impossible to satire and tech workers defend them due to the high compensation.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  Right, this is my sentiment exactly. Give me open-source, modular devices created by people operating outside the incentive structures of a capitalist mode of production and I'll take a look. As far as the devices of the current order, I keep that dirty bullshit as far away from my body (and home) as I reasonably can.
- svnt 4y ago
  Poverty auto-responder: I am aware of your message but unfortunately I can’t respond right now because I need to pay $25 through a series of corporate relationships to a small consortium of sociopaths to reactivate my retinas. If you would like to contribute to the restoration of my vision, please click the following link: give.me.money/icantseetoday
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  Imagine buying a Facebook neuralink and having then datamine your thoughts.
danjoredd 4y ago
Does anyone working in tech ACTUALLY thin transhumanism is a good idea? It seems like a field ripe for criminal exploitation and hacking, even in an optimistic future. Unless I lose a limb, or an eye, keep my body offline.
- elliotec 4y ago
  That's a pessimistic and myopic view of transhumanism. Where it becomes a good idea is a context that humanity is limited in its current (biological) form. There are lots and lots of things that could kill our species over the next several thousand years and the transhumanists simply think it is worth investing in looking into how we could potentially use technology to adapt to those threats or enhance the human experience.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Working in tech + have a pathologist for a father. Unequivocally yes, I think transhumanism is a good idea. Arguing against transhumanism is arguing that you believe either (a) the body was created perfectly or (b) that we'll do more harm than good if we tinker with it. The body is a machine. A bloody complicated machine, with many parts we don't understand, but a machine nonetheless. I don't believe in a future where substantial body modification doesn't make us better, in all objective senses. And we do it today: vaccinations, pacemakers, artificial hips and joints and valves, cochlear implants, the myriad of drugs to modify various bodily processes, limb replacements, mRNA drugs. The body is programmable: it's just very complex. But that hasn't stopped up as a species from achieving other equally difficult things.
    - jakzurr 4y ago
      Thanks, and well put. It's amazing how people who think, "I don't want to mess up my body," will come to a different conclusion, once they are facing death or disability. Perhaps experience really is the best teacher. ;)
  - danjoredd 4y ago
    My main area of concern is people who can exploit these augmentations for political, personal, and profit reasons. Even in the best scenario possible, these things are going to happen. All code is flawed in some fashion. Unless we plan on keeping these augmentations completely offline, they can and WILL be exploited by hackers. Imagine how giddy North Korea would be to be able to mess with the President's body, or having a competitor hack your eyes to see corporate secrets. Or a disgraced lover wanting revenge. These are already real threats with current technology to an extent...how much more deadly will these threats become when we can't just throw the tech out or modify them, because they are parts of ourselves? Even better yet, what happens when those parts of yours no longer get support? There are already people who were able to gain sight through robotics, but lost vision again once the company that sold them the eyes went out of business. We can't just blindly think about the best case scenario and call it good. We need to think of worst case scenarios to provide a safer future.
csdvrx 4y ago
I'd say just waiting for the possibility to be like actually possible? I don't know if I would call myself one, but I believe I'm just a (very advanced) piece of software. Whenever the possibility of hardware upgrade becomes available, count me in!
AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
daoist_shaman 4y ago
I used to identify as a transhumanist and believed that technology could do no harm. I was an adolescent donning rose-colored glasses, with a burning passion for science, technology, and improvement of our species. Only after an electrical engineering degree, 10-15 years of more wisdom, and dabbling in biohacking have I realized that we really have no clue about the massive deleterious impacts that technology has on the natural world. From mental health decay to environmental destruction, the unintended side effects of technology were completely lost on me as a child. I believe humanity needs to pump the brakes and take a critical step back to evaluate the damage we’ve caused. I hope that it isn’t too late to try to fix what we’ve destroyed. Edit: Brakes
- ftio 4y ago
  There is a great book (a tiny novella) called Psalm for the Wild Built[0] that explores these ideas very beautifully. Highly recommend it. 0. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40864002-a-psalm-for-the-wild-built https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40864002-a-psalm-for-the...
  - daoist_shaman 4y ago
    This looks like my cup of tea. Thanks for the recommendation!
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  There's a reason why literally every fiction work on transhumanism is a dystopia, even those were transhumanism is just a generic stand-in for technological advancement.
  - falcor84 4y ago
    Is the reason fear of the unknown?
    - pixl97 4y ago
      I mean that is a common trope, but why not fear of the known also. "Rich Capitalist optimizes future for themselves leaving the poor destitute and screwed"
f38zf5vdt 4y ago
All humans are actively engaged in various levels of transhumanism, especially from a medical standpoint. We all hope that medicine will help us achieve what is, to us presently, superhuman lifespans. Many of us are mentally altered through psychotropic medicine and prefer living this way. Transhumanism as a movement is just a vocal proponent of a process of technological adoption already happening on a regular basis.
- jsnk 4y ago
  This seems like the most appropriate description of transhumanism. I think for a long time in human history, technology simply wasn't there to alter the physical nature of humanity. But in recent decades, we understand much more about human physiology enough to alter human body in a drastic and permanent way. This is generating lots of contention between groups about what's acceptable to change and what's not acceptable to change. Also I think about how people think they are rational about their positions on these matters but they are more like strong cultural presumptions about what's right and wrong. Let's consider situation we already have. Consider sex change operation. There's one camp that's complete fine with people getting sex change operation, while there's another camp that condones and some, want to outlaw such operation. The liberal camp likes to say that a person should be able to do what they want to do with their body. However, at the same time, the both of the camp tends to dislike male steroid usage to change one's physique (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/108-2004/h226 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/108-2004/h226). For some reason, same reason to let people decide what they want to do with their body, doesn't apply when it comes to male physique. It's interesting to see how technology is challenging our preconceived notion of right and wrong and sheds lights to inconsistency in our rationale.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    >However, at the same time, the both of the camp tends to dislike male steroid usage to change one's physique I mean, yea with how often 'roid rage' happens, and some of the extreme negative side effects of steroid usage I don't want people blindingly going into modifying their bodies without understanding they massively increasing their risks of stroke and heart enlargement.
armchairhacker 4y ago
"Transhumanism" is already here, in a way. We have medications including some complex drugs, most people at least take multi-vitamins, we have surgeries and sometimes do weird stuff like transplant limbs or faces. Even simpler, we have knowledge of diet and health which lets us stay in better shape than before (though a lot of people are in worse shape due to junk food...we have access to high-protein diets and effective exercises though). On the other hand, "transhumanism" where we upload our consciousness or modify ourselves to the point where we don't resemble humans anymore, probably won't come for a long time. Even problems like aging and disease and significantly hard to solve. Most of what we know about the human brain is psychology and large-scale things like hormones. Because evolution is a process which doesn't favor simplicity or straightforwardness, and the brain and body have trillions of microscopic cells all working more or less simultaneously - we don't have nearly enough computational power or resources or technology to even remotely "thoroughly" understand this. I think in the near future we will gradually develop more bionic and cybernetic augmentations, like improving on those bionic arms and legs I heard about a few years ago, and implanted chips and medications. But it's going to be gradual and take a long time, and some things are just nearly impossible.
- pizzathyme 4y ago
  Agree. It seems like this article is just talking about trans humanism as a cultural topic that goes in and out of popularity. But real transhumanism occurring seems inevitable if technology continues to march forward. Is anyone in the year 2100 really going to be talking about genetic modification or wearables? No, they will be everywhere
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - slfnflctd 4y ago
    I think we're going to be talking about genetic modification as long as there are people around who are able to talk. The possibilities are infinite, and the religious opposition is strong. It could very plausibly lead to us becoming a different species-- or at the other extreme, wiping ourselves out. My parents are convinced it will lead to the Mark of the Beast, and there are millions of people who are raising their children to believe the same. Blood will be shed over this. It could easily lead to full blown war(s). The conversation is not going to be over in the year 2100 unless humanity as we know it has come to an end.
kanzure 4y ago
Reposting a comment of mine from 10 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28731696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28731696 Extropians are everywhere. Many names come to mind, like Assange, Hal Finney, Jurvetson, Carl Feynman, and many others. I hope that something like this group comes back, but with a vengeance. Call me an optimist, but if they had put their minds to it, they could have accomplished much more than a mailing list, which has unfortunately dwindled in the last 10 years. Cypherpunks write code- but what about the extropians?
- chejazi 4y ago
  > Cypherpunks write code- but what about the extropians? As Jim McCoy said, it takes Evil Geniuses to really get the job done.
  - pigeons 4y ago
    I was looking for the source of the quote as I had never heard it, but didn't realize my brain had assumed Leonard not Jim.
  - neilv 4y ago
    Circa 1999, the Zero Knowledge Systems (ZKS) startup had a group called Evil Geniuses.
    - schoen 4y ago
      There was also a cryptography startup later on called Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow (working on peer-to-peer stuff that I think is slightly akin to Filecoin).
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    Yuval Noah Harari’s speech on how control over one’s biometric data should be handed to the elites in order to hack the human animal was really inspirational.
- ArtofIndirect 4y ago
dekhn 4y ago
they rebranded as effective altruism
- EddySchauHai 4y ago
  I don't think so, there's overlap but the groups are separate. (Admittedly weak) Source: I lurk on the extropian mailing list && was fairly involved in EA.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  As someone who is relatively active in EA and was interested but not super active in transhumanist orgs outside of a brief volunteer stint many years ago, I think this is incorrect. I'd guess there's quite a lot of overlap in people who are interested in both, but I don't think there was an active merging of communities
- the8472 4y ago
  or became more concerned with AI alignment than thinking about potential upsides
  - EddySchauHai 4y ago
    Stuff like AI alignment is why I'm less interested in the EA groups nowadays tbh. Too much preference is given to these sci-fi ideas over rational known solutions to real issues. I also find it's not CS guys talking about these issues but philosophers and I don't believe you can weigh up risk/reward of issues in the mid-far future off of peoples views who don't understand (even theoretical) implementation details. I still fully agree with many other parts of EA though, like giving what we can and focusing on effective charities.
Kye 4y ago
Eagerly awaiting the pill that turns me into my fursona.
flancian 4y ago
Some became Flancians, I say.
neilv 4y ago
The article mentions Steve Mann. At the same time Mann was at the MIT Media Lab (as one of the first "Wearables" computing people, along with Thad Starner, Bradley Rhodes, and others), more conspicuously involved specifically in Transhumanism thought and discussion at MIT was Sascha Chislenko. Sascha was associated with Marvin Minsky and Pattie Maes, and (like Minsky's protege, Pushpinder "Push" Singh), was one of the few people who'd wander the halls of the Lab, at all hours, striking up impromptu intellectual conversations (new AI methods, transhumanism, philosophy, economics, etc.) with random students. (Basically, much of what I imagined MIT would be like, they were it.) Tragically, Sascha died way too soon. I don't know how much this impacted the future of Transhumanist thought, but I'm sure he'd have done more to advancing that and whatever he saw that thinking should be evolving into.
- neilv 4y ago
  I should add that Sasha seemed not just a talker, but a doer. He'd worked at Maes's startup, and, shortly before his untimely death, had joined a investment firm, to advise on tech directions, and vet companies.
- kragen 4y ago
  Like Push, and like my friend Aaron, Sasha killed himself: https://transhumanism.fandom.com/wiki/Alexander_Chislenko https://transhumanism.fandom.com/wiki/Alexander_Chislenko We need to figure out how we can have what you imagined MIT would be like without driving our best thinkers to suicide.
doctorhandshake 4y ago
Personally I think widespread use of a certain kind of mature augmented reality will make its users effectively transhuman.
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
Is there a pre-agricultural movement I could sign on to? It seems like every development post-hunter-gatherer has been in service of extending our lives while simultaneously making them (and the environment) worse. We talk about quality of life, but what kind of life is it to sit inside a box 2/3 of your life, or breaking your back in a factory, or on a farm? Most hunter-gatherers actually have more leisure time and work less, are healthy, don't pollute.
- pixl97 4y ago
  And were completely at the whims of nature around them. Yea, this is great when you live in a nice stable climate oasis, but most places on the planet are not like that (and that's even before we add in man made climate change). It's all fun and games until you stub your toe and get an infection that could be treated with antibiotics, well except by choice you don't have any and you get to watch your body rot until you die.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- eckmLJE 4y ago
  It would be nice to keep the technology/medicine that keeps mothers and babies alive through childbirth, though.
- Tenoke 4y ago
  I don't know how to break it to you but many if not most pre-technology hunter-gatherers lived horrible lives, full of pain and misery and died much younger, usually as babies.
  - 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
    Hunter-gatherers are still living today without technology and they don't have miserable lives. Infant mortality is probably a feature, not a bug, considering what happens when there's too many humans in a given area.
notsapiensatall 4y ago
IMHO it's in a trough on the hype curve. Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again. The promises of devices like neuralink are decades away from widespread voluntary adoption, at least. You can get small things done today, as you could 10 years ago, but they aren't ready for primetime. Anecdotally, I got a small coated neodymium magnet implanted in a finger during my youth. It was cool as a college student, I could feel strong AC currents/PWM/etc and I never lost small metal parts like screws. Those were small benefits though, and the risk was quite high. If the coating had breached, my immune system would have attacked the magnet. Accidentally smacking it into things was painful. I was always aware of the intrusive hardware in a mildly unsettling way. Etc. When I entered a more nature-y phase of my life, I got it removed by a local tattoo artist who dabbled in body mods. They mentioned that the newer versions were much smaller, and would require serious medical facilities to remove. At the end of the day, active body mods have too little going for them and too many awful failure modes. Passive ones can be fun - I've seen transdermal plastic beads put in some interesting places - but they're hardly transhumanist.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  I would really like to know more about this topic. Is there a forum that people who dabble in mods post to?
  - notRobot 4y ago
    https://forum.biohack.me/ https://forum.biohack.me/
- celdon25 4y ago
  > Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again. No, it doesn’t, and waiting for the iteration of tech-consumerism that resembles your childhood fantasies is everything that was wrong with the transhumanist movement. It attracted too many people who sat on the sidelines and did nothing to move the needle. It was a magnet for people who couldn’t cope with reality, which occasionally helped, but usually stirred chaos. It definitely needs a rebranding. In fact, a reasonably good attempt was made as early as the 1980s. https://metanexus.net/h-true-transhumanism/ https://metanexus.net/h-true-transhumanism/
seydor 4y ago
I didn't know it was a "movement", i thought it was the logical conclusion of our current technological trajectory. I didn't even know they went in hiding, we are closer to transhumanism today than ever. Some of the technologies are within the visible horizon now, for real, like neurotechnology and artificial wombs. We just injected half the population with an mRNA protein template, repeatedly. I don't expect to reach the end my life while still a human, hopefully.
bjt2n3904 4y ago
This guy is asking where the transhumanist movement went? We're using plastic surgery and chemicals to change people's gender, and he's asking where it went?
- knowaveragejoe 4y ago
  You sound like you're getting caught up on the prefix "trans" in conjunction with the current culture war zeitgeist. That's not what transhumanism is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
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  - api 4y ago
    Why not? Isn't part of transhumanism the idea that a person could control their own biology? Trans people (especially those who have actually transitioned) seem like early adopters to me. I think the histrionic overreaction to trans people shows one of the things that will hold any kind of real transhumanism back though. If you think we have a culture war now wait until we have extreme life extension, really powerful intelligence augmentation, and the ability to more deeply alter our physical form. A certain subset of the religious and social conservative sectors are going to crusade hard core against any of this stuff. You can already hear it on the far right and most of this stuff doesn't exist yet.
    - bjt2n3904 4y ago
      Right on point. TH encompasses TG, and is really it's spiritual essence. Yes, there will be political and religious pushback against this. But it is certainly not histrionics, or an overreaction. With regard to transgenderism, the brutal surgeries are a poor facsimile. Even atheists and those on the left are hesitant to pursue intimate relationships -- and the stories of physical suffering are just beginning to surface.
    - bluescrn 4y ago
concinds 4y ago
It was replaced by Virtual Reality. The transhumanist philosophy was transcendental. Man, armed with innovative genius and deep technological knowledge, could one day remake himself and transcend his limitations. It wasn't so much a "philosophy" as a prediction of an inevitable and obvious future, which they were simply impatient to reach. Freedom from all biological, physical, intellectual constraints! Today, people understand that technology isn't just a tool, it's a weapon. Corporations want to corral people into virtual worlds they control, and governments want perfect surveillance and infallible enforcement of all laws, and soon social rules. Your brain implant will have NSA/China backdoors, regular 0-days "observed in the wild" (sorry, no refunds), or will crash occasionally because the QA team got laid off. Smart technologists today can see that virtual reality (which is indissociable with brain implants and most other transhumanist tech except perhaps nanobots) just means far deeper corporate/elite control over people's psyches. Read "The Rise of Virtual Reality" by Anthony Napoleon. The replacement of "real reality" (governed by the laws of nature) with a reality fully governed by other humans (and their flaws). It's very hard to get giddy and impatient about that future.
- camdenlock 4y ago
  - trebbble 4y ago
    Zero progressives I know want that. Most distrust technology generally, and hate surveillance especially, government or otherwise. You've created a straw-man.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Tbf, it depends a lot on who you're labeling "progressive." If you go by people who label themselves progressive, you have to count the entire Democratic party, who generally love (and often operate) surveillance. Of course, Republicans love it too, but that's irrelevant to the question of whether a love of surveillance is widespread among progressives.
psyc 4y ago
I discovered transhumanism around the turn of the century. I thought I'd found a treasure trove of insight. I was all about it for 3 or 4 years. Told people who weren't interested all about it. It was really easy to believe in radical transformation of the status quo in those days. There was a feeling in the air that the advent of the Web would solve everybody's problems, end scarcity, make everyone rich (especially us) and propel the stock market upward from then on. Well, that feeling was short lived. It wasn't too long before I decided futurism in general was not an analysis of where the world is heading, but what certain communities of sci-fi nerds and techies wanted to happen, and believed they themselves could or would make happen. And that's fine I guess. But I was much more skeptical that their hockey-stick takeoffs would happen, at least in my lifetime. What's happened in my lifetime so far is you can get more stuff delivered to your door, and faster; and computers got smaller and better at the same time. Ok. Well, computers were already getting smaller when I was born. Maybe they can get smaller. I'm not sure what that looks like. The display is probably a light pair of reading glasses. Maybe the computer is a wristwatch. Or a nose ring. And then maybe later the computer goes inside you and injects into the optic nerve. And hey look at that, there's some transhumanism, I think. But I doubt anyone living knows how to do that. I'm just rambling now...
naillo 4y ago
What's the story of how gizmodo is still around? I thought Peter Thiel killed them off.
mindcrime 4y ago
For another perspective: https://www.reddit.com/r/transhumanism/ https://www.reddit.com/r/transhumanism/
kerblang 4y ago
I have no problem with enhancing our lives thru technology, but seeking eternal life in this universe is incredibly stupid because you're effectively seeking eternal damnation. Eventually someone captures you, locks you away and tortures you for thousands of years if not forever. Creating heaven is hard, but hell is well within reach.
- the_omegist 4y ago
  Some type of Dead man's switch [0] could make it safer, if it's your main worry. Of course, it's another source of bugs.. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man's_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man's_switch
- nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Considering transhumanism is one of the most, if not the most, egocentric philosophies out there, I'd say it's a near certainty to lead to authoritarian existence.
photochemsyn 4y ago
To become transhuman or posthuman, you'd first have to understand what it is to be human, and we're not anywhere near that. Some of the enthusiasm about the hopes for such a transition were raised by this: > "The Human Genome Project finally released a complete human genome sequence in 2003, in a project that took 13 years to complete." The most remarkable thing about that accomplishment was how little it resulted in. Almost all of the hopes about medical breakthroughs and finally gaining a complete understanding of human biology have not been realized. There are many reasons for this - for example, the genome edits itself as it develops in different cell types, so the genome of your nerve cells is not the genome of your immune cells, heart cells, liver cells etc. Communication between all these cell types is incredibly important and that's hard to get from the genomic sequence. It turns out the 3D structure of the genome is as important as the 3D structure of proteins is, as it is an active dynamic entity in all cell types. There are probably dozens of other reasons on top of those. As far as the notion of uploading one's consciousness into an artificial substrate while retaining one's sense of self, that seems highly implausible when we don't really understand the basic physical mechanism of consciousness, other than a vague idea that the brain is the most important component (even though nerves saturate the entire body). Hence the whole subject remains in the science fiction arena and will stay there for a good long while, perhaps a century or more.
- peteradio 4y ago
  You could potentially make a thing that acts like you, that's it. The only reason our existence is tolerable is that we agree with the guy that when he goes to bed he is dead and I take over in the morning and I make the same deal tomorrow.
  - nickff 4y ago
    I quite like that phrasing (in your second sentence); did you come up with it yourself, or did you catch it somewhere?
    - peteradio 4y ago
      I think I've read it somewhere but I never keep track of citations. Might have been Michael Keaton in that movie, moral of the story, if you copy yourself then your copy is gonna bang your wife.
ravenstine 4y ago
Transhumanism never left. It became mainstream.
deleted 4y ago
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hinkley 4y ago
> For Cameron, transhumanism looks as frightening as ever, and he honed in on a notion he refers to as the “hollowing out of the human,” the idea that “all that matters in Homo sapiens can be uploaded as a paradigm for our desiderata.” Jonathan Coulton, The Future Soon: Cause it's gonna be the future soon And I won't always be this way When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away It's gonna be the future soon I've never seen it quite so clear And when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes and it's already here It's important to note, if you're not familiar with JoCo, that he is a satirist and this is a song about someone accidentally becoming a cyborg supervillain who causes a robot uprising, all because a girl dissed his secret admirer note in high school. Do you want to be a transhumanist because you are embracing something, or because you are running away from something, like the fictional character in this song? The latter is deeply unhealthy, perhaps fatally (or in this case, genocidally) so.
Animats 4y ago
"Like so many others after 9/11, I felt spiritually and existentially lost. It’s hard to believe now, but I was a regular churchgoer at the time." Ah, the will to believe. In something. Anything. The believer crowd is usually not the group that makes it work. Today's "metaverse" enthusiasts and actual metaverse implementers have quite limited overlap.
formerkrogemp 4y ago
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Transhumanism should be about freedom and increased ability. But the future is about corporate authoritarian dystopia, extreme wealth inequality, and environmental armageddon. Pessimism for the future is beginning to take over. I mean, look at "Meta", and the fact it's tied to effing facebook and all the crappiness that entails. VR is a lot like transhumanism in many ways, and it's clear VR will be attached to megacorps and google-class lockout and non-customer service.
jandrewrogers 4y ago
As someone who was quite plugged into the transhumanist scene in the 1990s and well-acquainted with several of the people referenced, I have a perspective that I think explains it more succinctly. When I was introduced to it in the early 1990s, the movement was dominated by extremely technical doers and thinkers, with a culture that encouraged rigor. It was philosophical rather than political. In the late 1990s, transhumanism had its Eternal September moment, when it became fashionable and trendy to be "transhumanist". The discourse became dominated by people hijacking the transhumanist movement in service of their political and social agendas, with nary a nod toward rigor. The doers and serious people originally associated with the movement and which gave it its intellectual gravitas became greatly outnumbered and mostly moved on. Many of the early transhumanists stopped labeling themselves as such because they did not want to be associated with the kind of people that came to define it.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  This seems to be the progression with everything.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  I would like to draw attention to a classic transhumanist philosopher whose style has remained consistent for decades. https://www.hedweb.com/ https://www.hedweb.com/ The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture - a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event. Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice.
RappingBoomer 4y ago
transhumanism is a cult composed of defective biological machines, and I say that as a signed up cryonicist...
platz 4y ago
So, transhumanists are just techy progressives?
dr_dshiv 4y ago
I once went to an early 2000’s transhumanist party with Nick Bostrom. He had a transhumanist leadership position at that point, if I recall. (The party was rad) The most transhumanist thing in my life currently: getting into flow states writing academic papers with GPT-3. It is genuinely mind melting.
swayvil 4y ago
Self cultivation via meditation and related methods is where it's at. Smoother and deeper than mere machines. It's the old and good "transhumanism". It really is impressive stuff.
aaron695 4y ago
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
*waves hand* I have at certain points in life considered myself part of this movement. I think I'd still consider myself one, but with a lot more cynicism. At this point it's unquestionable to me that people will eventually do some version of "mind uploading." However I doubt we'll ever answer the question whether you'll be uploading "yourself" or not - my guess is not. Unless we somehow make a literal "Matrix" like the movies, it's just not going to happen and I see no reason we would or should build such a thing.
pc2g4d 4y ago
My disgust reaction is provoked by enough transhumanist ideas that it feels more dystopian than utopian to me. I guess I'm too... human... to trans-human too hard.
Tao3300 4y ago
They finished transitioning.
xvilka 4y ago
It's dangerous to modify something we don't know in details - risk breaking it is too high. The only sane action transhumanism could do is to throw money and working hands on the biomedical research, also biomedical engineering. Even nanotechnology is less relevant since those nanobots would need to know exactly what to modify. At the end, likely we will just design new proteins which are true nanobots already existing in our bodies.
xwdv 4y ago
I think transhumanists eventually just grew up, realized how silly the whole idea was, and then were never replaced by some younger generation that shared the same naive optimism about technology that they had in early years. We’ve learned to look at technology with a more cynical eye these days. It’s like for any technology you imagine, I can instantly see how to exploit it at the expense of the human experience.
jccalhoun 4y ago
I was hoping this would be more specific and do followups on people who were featured in places like Wired. For example they have a picture of Anders Sandberg wearing an eyepiece and carying around a computer. Does he still do that? I've heard about people implanting rfid chips in their hand. Do they still use them a few years later?
xvilka 4y ago
> face a new feudalism, as control of finance and the power that goes with it will be at the core of technological human enhancement, and democracy…will be dead in the water.” While there's a significant risk of it to happen, it's not a given. Brain augmentation connecting people to each other might give a rise to the direct democracy when hundreds of the collective decisions take place every day: from desiding if your local road needs an upgrade between community members to voting for the national parliament members.
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
https://youtu.be/vdBQU1pZxWQ https://youtu.be/vdBQU1pZxWQ
gcr 4y ago
oh believe me we're still around! you're just not gonna find a lot of that "above ground" so to speak. the good stuff happens in hushed tones or among small social circles. And in places you wouldn't otherwise think to look, like transgender people. 'Cause when you think about it, taking synthetic experimental hormones to give our bodies new capabilities and reconnect ourselves to our minds more deeply reflects the essence of "trans humanism," no? The overlap between the queer/furry community and the transhumanist/cyberpunk community is very strong and has always been. If you're looking for keywords to google for, check out the "Freedom of Form Foundation" and its research (this is both explicitly furry and explicitly transhumanist), some of the Korps RCG propaganda stories, the postfurry embassy, any of the plurality/tulpa/multiplicity/DiD recovery communities (a rare example of putting mind tech into practice today rather than fantasizing about it in the future), the people who make those full-body drone suits at hypnokink events, anything Naomi Wu touches, etc etc etc ...
- the_omegist 4y ago
toofy 4y ago
We currently have a massive chunk of society who are losing their collective minds about people engaging in the very early iterations of transhumanism—transgender folks. I still regularly encounter people who are spitting angry against transgender folks and then later in the conversation will completely unironically talk about how much they love the cyberpunk genre. Not many of them realize they would be the weird cultists in the background of the story holding signs preaching about unnatural technology.
- causality0 4y ago
  I don't think it's a one-dimensional line with pro/anti modification. For example, if you were against people integrating weapons into their bodies or upward-facing eyes into their feet for looking up skirts, that wouldn't make you anti-transhuman.
  - axblount 4y ago
    Right. But being able to live as your authentic self is a good thing, unlike your examples. Opposing good modifications is anti-transhumanist.
    - mkmk3 4y ago
      Idk, first the focus on body modifications in the context of what a transhumanist is is a bummer, I always thought imoroved thinking made more sense as the initial goal. And second, how do you determine what is someones authentic self, if theyre pursuing that or if theyre taking advantage of body mods to be pervy or manipulative or do xyz bad thing. Its entirely subjective. Not to say there arent solutions to separate safe mods from unsafe, just that the authentic self feels like too fuzzy a thing to use sincerely, at least I see it as some bundling of your personal values that could be cancerous as far as I know :)
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I'm a furry. Does "being a (cuddly) werewolf" count as a weapon?
Waterluvian 4y ago
I’m rather convinced, with really no evidence, mind you, that all the best future cyborg implants will be surficial and removable. Glasses. Skin patch. Etc. I’ve seen how good we are with tech. I don’t see why we’ll need to cut people open to apply it.
fallingfrog 4y ago
I mean Altos labs is out there trying to cure aging, so you might say it’s gone mainstream.
alfnor 4y ago
I think one reason transhumanism will never truly take off is because whenever something can be done more efficiently without potentially harming one's body, that's the winning piece of technology. Sure, we could try to make body mods that allow us to fly, but we already have helicopters and airplanes (not to mention jetpacks). Yes, we could make ourselves super smart by trying to integrate our minds with the Internet and AI, but we already have smartphones in our pockets.

“ Transhumanism made a lot of sense to me, as it seemed to represent the logical next step in our evolution, albeit an evolution guided by humans and not Darwinian selection.” Cringe-worthy misunderstanding of Darwinism…

marcosdumay 4y ago

With our current relationship with tech, nobody on their right mind would want to anticipate transhumanism. Fix tech first, then people will start to hype it again.

foobiekr 4y ago
This is the true and underappreciated answer. People do not trust technology and technology companies. And they are right in that thinking. Almost all of the big tech companies are straight up evil almost to the point of being impossible to satire and tech workers defend them due to the high compensation.
orthecreedence 4y ago
Right, this is my sentiment exactly. Give me open-source, modular devices created by people operating outside the incentive structures of a capitalist mode of production and I'll take a look. As far as the devices of the current order, I keep that dirty bullshit as far away from my body (and home) as I reasonably can.
svnt 4y ago
Poverty auto-responder: I am aware of your message but unfortunately I can’t respond right now because I need to pay $25 through a series of corporate relationships to a small consortium of sociopaths to reactivate my retinas. If you would like to contribute to the restoration of my vision, please click the following link: give.me.money/icantseetoday
emptyparadise 4y ago
Imagine buying a Facebook neuralink and having then datamine your thoughts.

danjoredd 4y ago

Does anyone working in tech ACTUALLY thin transhumanism is a good idea? It seems like a field ripe for criminal exploitation and hacking, even in an optimistic future. Unless I lose a limb, or an eye, keep my body offline.

elliotec 4y ago
That's a pessimistic and myopic view of transhumanism. Where it becomes a good idea is a context that humanity is limited in its current (biological) form. There are lots and lots of things that could kill our species over the next several thousand years and the transhumanists simply think it is worth investing in looking into how we could potentially use technology to adapt to those threats or enhance the human experience.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Working in tech + have a pathologist for a father. Unequivocally yes, I think transhumanism is a good idea. Arguing against transhumanism is arguing that you believe either (a) the body was created perfectly or (b) that we'll do more harm than good if we tinker with it. The body is a machine. A bloody complicated machine, with many parts we don't understand, but a machine nonetheless. I don't believe in a future where substantial body modification doesn't make us better, in all objective senses. And we do it today: vaccinations, pacemakers, artificial hips and joints and valves, cochlear implants, the myriad of drugs to modify various bodily processes, limb replacements, mRNA drugs. The body is programmable: it's just very complex. But that hasn't stopped up as a species from achieving other equally difficult things.
  - jakzurr 4y ago
    Thanks, and well put. It's amazing how people who think, "I don't want to mess up my body," will come to a different conclusion, once they are facing death or disability. Perhaps experience really is the best teacher. ;)
- danjoredd 4y ago
  My main area of concern is people who can exploit these augmentations for political, personal, and profit reasons. Even in the best scenario possible, these things are going to happen. All code is flawed in some fashion. Unless we plan on keeping these augmentations completely offline, they can and WILL be exploited by hackers. Imagine how giddy North Korea would be to be able to mess with the President's body, or having a competitor hack your eyes to see corporate secrets. Or a disgraced lover wanting revenge. These are already real threats with current technology to an extent...how much more deadly will these threats become when we can't just throw the tech out or modify them, because they are parts of ourselves? Even better yet, what happens when those parts of yours no longer get support? There are already people who were able to gain sight through robotics, but lost vision again once the company that sold them the eyes went out of business. We can't just blindly think about the best case scenario and call it good. We need to think of worst case scenarios to provide a safer future.

csdvrx 4y ago

I'd say just waiting for the possibility to be like actually possible? I don't know if I would call myself one, but I believe I'm just a (very advanced) piece of software. Whenever the possibility of hardware upgrade becomes available, count me in!

AlgorithmicTime 4y ago

daoist_shaman 4y ago

I used to identify as a transhumanist and believed that technology could do no harm. I was an adolescent donning rose-colored glasses, with a burning passion for science, technology, and improvement of our species. Only after an electrical engineering degree, 10-15 years of more wisdom, and dabbling in biohacking have I realized that we really have no clue about the massive deleterious impacts that technology has on the natural world. From mental health decay to environmental destruction, the unintended side effects of technology were completely lost on me as a child. I believe humanity needs to pump the brakes and take a critical step back to evaluate the damage we’ve caused. I hope that it isn’t too late to try to fix what we’ve destroyed. Edit: Brakes

ftio 4y ago
There is a great book (a tiny novella) called Psalm for the Wild Built[0] that explores these ideas very beautifully. Highly recommend it. 0. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40864002-a-psalm-for-the-wild-built https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40864002-a-psalm-for-the...
- daoist_shaman 4y ago
  This looks like my cup of tea. Thanks for the recommendation!
formerly_proven 4y ago
There's a reason why literally every fiction work on transhumanism is a dystopia, even those were transhumanism is just a generic stand-in for technological advancement.
- falcor84 4y ago
  Is the reason fear of the unknown?
  - pixl97 4y ago
    I mean that is a common trope, but why not fear of the known also. "Rich Capitalist optimizes future for themselves leaving the poor destitute and screwed"

f38zf5vdt 4y ago

All humans are actively engaged in various levels of transhumanism, especially from a medical standpoint. We all hope that medicine will help us achieve what is, to us presently, superhuman lifespans. Many of us are mentally altered through psychotropic medicine and prefer living this way. Transhumanism as a movement is just a vocal proponent of a process of technological adoption already happening on a regular basis.

jsnk 4y ago
This seems like the most appropriate description of transhumanism. I think for a long time in human history, technology simply wasn't there to alter the physical nature of humanity. But in recent decades, we understand much more about human physiology enough to alter human body in a drastic and permanent way. This is generating lots of contention between groups about what's acceptable to change and what's not acceptable to change. Also I think about how people think they are rational about their positions on these matters but they are more like strong cultural presumptions about what's right and wrong. Let's consider situation we already have. Consider sex change operation. There's one camp that's complete fine with people getting sex change operation, while there's another camp that condones and some, want to outlaw such operation. The liberal camp likes to say that a person should be able to do what they want to do with their body. However, at the same time, the both of the camp tends to dislike male steroid usage to change one's physique (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/108-2004/h226 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/108-2004/h226). For some reason, same reason to let people decide what they want to do with their body, doesn't apply when it comes to male physique. It's interesting to see how technology is challenging our preconceived notion of right and wrong and sheds lights to inconsistency in our rationale.
- pixl97 4y ago
  >However, at the same time, the both of the camp tends to dislike male steroid usage to change one's physique I mean, yea with how often 'roid rage' happens, and some of the extreme negative side effects of steroid usage I don't want people blindingly going into modifying their bodies without understanding they massively increasing their risks of stroke and heart enlargement.

armchairhacker 4y ago

"Transhumanism" is already here, in a way. We have medications including some complex drugs, most people at least take multi-vitamins, we have surgeries and sometimes do weird stuff like transplant limbs or faces. Even simpler, we have knowledge of diet and health which lets us stay in better shape than before (though a lot of people are in worse shape due to junk food...we have access to high-protein diets and effective exercises though). On the other hand, "transhumanism" where we upload our consciousness or modify ourselves to the point where we don't resemble humans anymore, probably won't come for a long time. Even problems like aging and disease and significantly hard to solve. Most of what we know about the human brain is psychology and large-scale things like hormones. Because evolution is a process which doesn't favor simplicity or straightforwardness, and the brain and body have trillions of microscopic cells all working more or less simultaneously - we don't have nearly enough computational power or resources or technology to even remotely "thoroughly" understand this. I think in the near future we will gradually develop more bionic and cybernetic augmentations, like improving on those bionic arms and legs I heard about a few years ago, and implanted chips and medications. But it's going to be gradual and take a long time, and some things are just nearly impossible.

pizzathyme 4y ago
Agree. It seems like this article is just talking about trans humanism as a cultural topic that goes in and out of popularity. But real transhumanism occurring seems inevitable if technology continues to march forward. Is anyone in the year 2100 really going to be talking about genetic modification or wearables? No, they will be everywhere
- deleted 4y ago
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- slfnflctd 4y ago
  I think we're going to be talking about genetic modification as long as there are people around who are able to talk. The possibilities are infinite, and the religious opposition is strong. It could very plausibly lead to us becoming a different species-- or at the other extreme, wiping ourselves out. My parents are convinced it will lead to the Mark of the Beast, and there are millions of people who are raising their children to believe the same. Blood will be shed over this. It could easily lead to full blown war(s). The conversation is not going to be over in the year 2100 unless humanity as we know it has come to an end.

kanzure 4y ago

Reposting a comment of mine from 10 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28731696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28731696 Extropians are everywhere. Many names come to mind, like Assange, Hal Finney, Jurvetson, Carl Feynman, and many others. I hope that something like this group comes back, but with a vengeance. Call me an optimist, but if they had put their minds to it, they could have accomplished much more than a mailing list, which has unfortunately dwindled in the last 10 years. Cypherpunks write code- but what about the extropians?

chejazi 4y ago
> Cypherpunks write code- but what about the extropians? As Jim McCoy said, it takes Evil Geniuses to really get the job done.
- pigeons 4y ago
  I was looking for the source of the quote as I had never heard it, but didn't realize my brain had assumed Leonard not Jim.
- neilv 4y ago
  Circa 1999, the Zero Knowledge Systems (ZKS) startup had a group called Evil Geniuses.
  - schoen 4y ago
    There was also a cryptography startup later on called Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow (working on peer-to-peer stuff that I think is slightly akin to Filecoin).
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Yuval Noah Harari’s speech on how control over one’s biometric data should be handed to the elites in order to hack the human animal was really inspirational.
ArtofIndirect 4y ago

dekhn 4y ago

they rebranded as effective altruism

EddySchauHai 4y ago
I don't think so, there's overlap but the groups are separate. (Admittedly weak) Source: I lurk on the extropian mailing list && was fairly involved in EA.
atlasunshrugged 4y ago
As someone who is relatively active in EA and was interested but not super active in transhumanist orgs outside of a brief volunteer stint many years ago, I think this is incorrect. I'd guess there's quite a lot of overlap in people who are interested in both, but I don't think there was an active merging of communities
the8472 4y ago
or became more concerned with AI alignment than thinking about potential upsides
- EddySchauHai 4y ago
  Stuff like AI alignment is why I'm less interested in the EA groups nowadays tbh. Too much preference is given to these sci-fi ideas over rational known solutions to real issues. I also find it's not CS guys talking about these issues but philosophers and I don't believe you can weigh up risk/reward of issues in the mid-far future off of peoples views who don't understand (even theoretical) implementation details. I still fully agree with many other parts of EA though, like giving what we can and focusing on effective charities.

Kye 4y ago

Eagerly awaiting the pill that turns me into my fursona.

flancian 4y ago

Some became Flancians, I say.

neilv 4y ago

The article mentions Steve Mann. At the same time Mann was at the MIT Media Lab (as one of the first "Wearables" computing people, along with Thad Starner, Bradley Rhodes, and others), more conspicuously involved specifically in Transhumanism thought and discussion at MIT was Sascha Chislenko. Sascha was associated with Marvin Minsky and Pattie Maes, and (like Minsky's protege, Pushpinder "Push" Singh), was one of the few people who'd wander the halls of the Lab, at all hours, striking up impromptu intellectual conversations (new AI methods, transhumanism, philosophy, economics, etc.) with random students. (Basically, much of what I imagined MIT would be like, they were it.) Tragically, Sascha died way too soon. I don't know how much this impacted the future of Transhumanist thought, but I'm sure he'd have done more to advancing that and whatever he saw that thinking should be evolving into.

neilv 4y ago
I should add that Sasha seemed not just a talker, but a doer. He'd worked at Maes's startup, and, shortly before his untimely death, had joined a investment firm, to advise on tech directions, and vet companies.
kragen 4y ago
Like Push, and like my friend Aaron, Sasha killed himself: https://transhumanism.fandom.com/wiki/Alexander_Chislenko https://transhumanism.fandom.com/wiki/Alexander_Chislenko We need to figure out how we can have what you imagined MIT would be like without driving our best thinkers to suicide.

doctorhandshake 4y ago

Personally I think widespread use of a certain kind of mature augmented reality will make its users effectively transhuman.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

Is there a pre-agricultural movement I could sign on to? It seems like every development post-hunter-gatherer has been in service of extending our lives while simultaneously making them (and the environment) worse. We talk about quality of life, but what kind of life is it to sit inside a box 2/3 of your life, or breaking your back in a factory, or on a farm? Most hunter-gatherers actually have more leisure time and work less, are healthy, don't pollute.

pixl97 4y ago
And were completely at the whims of nature around them. Yea, this is great when you live in a nice stable climate oasis, but most places on the planet are not like that (and that's even before we add in man made climate change). It's all fun and games until you stub your toe and get an infection that could be treated with antibiotics, well except by choice you don't have any and you get to watch your body rot until you die.
- deleted 4y ago
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eckmLJE 4y ago
It would be nice to keep the technology/medicine that keeps mothers and babies alive through childbirth, though.
Tenoke 4y ago
I don't know how to break it to you but many if not most pre-technology hunter-gatherers lived horrible lives, full of pain and misery and died much younger, usually as babies.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  Hunter-gatherers are still living today without technology and they don't have miserable lives. Infant mortality is probably a feature, not a bug, considering what happens when there's too many humans in a given area.

notsapiensatall 4y ago

IMHO it's in a trough on the hype curve. Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again. The promises of devices like neuralink are decades away from widespread voluntary adoption, at least. You can get small things done today, as you could 10 years ago, but they aren't ready for primetime. Anecdotally, I got a small coated neodymium magnet implanted in a finger during my youth. It was cool as a college student, I could feel strong AC currents/PWM/etc and I never lost small metal parts like screws. Those were small benefits though, and the risk was quite high. If the coating had breached, my immune system would have attacked the magnet. Accidentally smacking it into things was painful. I was always aware of the intrusive hardware in a mildly unsettling way. Etc. When I entered a more nature-y phase of my life, I got it removed by a local tattoo artist who dabbled in body mods. They mentioned that the newer versions were much smaller, and would require serious medical facilities to remove. At the end of the day, active body mods have too little going for them and too many awful failure modes. Passive ones can be fun - I've seen transdermal plastic beads put in some interesting places - but they're hardly transhumanist.

koheripbal 4y ago
I would really like to know more about this topic. Is there a forum that people who dabble in mods post to?
- notRobot 4y ago
  https://forum.biohack.me/ https://forum.biohack.me/
celdon25 4y ago
> Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again. No, it doesn’t, and waiting for the iteration of tech-consumerism that resembles your childhood fantasies is everything that was wrong with the transhumanist movement. It attracted too many people who sat on the sidelines and did nothing to move the needle. It was a magnet for people who couldn’t cope with reality, which occasionally helped, but usually stirred chaos. It definitely needs a rebranding. In fact, a reasonably good attempt was made as early as the 1980s. https://metanexus.net/h-true-transhumanism/ https://metanexus.net/h-true-transhumanism/

seydor 4y ago

I didn't know it was a "movement", i thought it was the logical conclusion of our current technological trajectory. I didn't even know they went in hiding, we are closer to transhumanism today than ever. Some of the technologies are within the visible horizon now, for real, like neurotechnology and artificial wombs. We just injected half the population with an mRNA protein template, repeatedly. I don't expect to reach the end my life while still a human, hopefully.

bjt2n3904 4y ago

This guy is asking where the transhumanist movement went? We're using plastic surgery and chemicals to change people's gender, and he's asking where it went?

knowaveragejoe 4y ago
You sound like you're getting caught up on the prefix "trans" in conjunction with the current culture war zeitgeist. That's not what transhumanism is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
- deleted 4y ago
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- api 4y ago
  Why not? Isn't part of transhumanism the idea that a person could control their own biology? Trans people (especially those who have actually transitioned) seem like early adopters to me. I think the histrionic overreaction to trans people shows one of the things that will hold any kind of real transhumanism back though. If you think we have a culture war now wait until we have extreme life extension, really powerful intelligence augmentation, and the ability to more deeply alter our physical form. A certain subset of the religious and social conservative sectors are going to crusade hard core against any of this stuff. You can already hear it on the far right and most of this stuff doesn't exist yet.
  - bjt2n3904 4y ago
    Right on point. TH encompasses TG, and is really it's spiritual essence. Yes, there will be political and religious pushback against this. But it is certainly not histrionics, or an overreaction. With regard to transgenderism, the brutal surgeries are a poor facsimile. Even atheists and those on the left are hesitant to pursue intimate relationships -- and the stories of physical suffering are just beginning to surface.
  - bluescrn 4y ago

concinds 4y ago

It was replaced by Virtual Reality. The transhumanist philosophy was transcendental. Man, armed with innovative genius and deep technological knowledge, could one day remake himself and transcend his limitations. It wasn't so much a "philosophy" as a prediction of an inevitable and obvious future, which they were simply impatient to reach. Freedom from all biological, physical, intellectual constraints! Today, people understand that technology isn't just a tool, it's a weapon. Corporations want to corral people into virtual worlds they control, and governments want perfect surveillance and infallible enforcement of all laws, and soon social rules. Your brain implant will have NSA/China backdoors, regular 0-days "observed in the wild" (sorry, no refunds), or will crash occasionally because the QA team got laid off. Smart technologists today can see that virtual reality (which is indissociable with brain implants and most other transhumanist tech except perhaps nanobots) just means far deeper corporate/elite control over people's psyches. Read "The Rise of Virtual Reality" by Anthony Napoleon. The replacement of "real reality" (governed by the laws of nature) with a reality fully governed by other humans (and their flaws). It's very hard to get giddy and impatient about that future.

camdenlock 4y ago
- trebbble 4y ago
  Zero progressives I know want that. Most distrust technology generally, and hate surveillance especially, government or otherwise. You've created a straw-man.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Tbf, it depends a lot on who you're labeling "progressive." If you go by people who label themselves progressive, you have to count the entire Democratic party, who generally love (and often operate) surveillance. Of course, Republicans love it too, but that's irrelevant to the question of whether a love of surveillance is widespread among progressives.

psyc 4y ago

I discovered transhumanism around the turn of the century. I thought I'd found a treasure trove of insight. I was all about it for 3 or 4 years. Told people who weren't interested all about it. It was really easy to believe in radical transformation of the status quo in those days. There was a feeling in the air that the advent of the Web would solve everybody's problems, end scarcity, make everyone rich (especially us) and propel the stock market upward from then on. Well, that feeling was short lived. It wasn't too long before I decided futurism in general was not an analysis of where the world is heading, but what certain communities of sci-fi nerds and techies wanted to happen, and believed they themselves could or would make happen. And that's fine I guess. But I was much more skeptical that their hockey-stick takeoffs would happen, at least in my lifetime. What's happened in my lifetime so far is you can get more stuff delivered to your door, and faster; and computers got smaller and better at the same time. Ok. Well, computers were already getting smaller when I was born. Maybe they can get smaller. I'm not sure what that looks like. The display is probably a light pair of reading glasses. Maybe the computer is a wristwatch. Or a nose ring. And then maybe later the computer goes inside you and injects into the optic nerve. And hey look at that, there's some transhumanism, I think. But I doubt anyone living knows how to do that. I'm just rambling now...

naillo 4y ago

What's the story of how gizmodo is still around? I thought Peter Thiel killed them off.

mindcrime 4y ago

For another perspective: https://www.reddit.com/r/transhumanism/ https://www.reddit.com/r/transhumanism/

kerblang 4y ago

I have no problem with enhancing our lives thru technology, but seeking eternal life in this universe is incredibly stupid because you're effectively seeking eternal damnation. Eventually someone captures you, locks you away and tortures you for thousands of years if not forever. Creating heaven is hard, but hell is well within reach.

the_omegist 4y ago
Some type of Dead man's switch [0] could make it safer, if it's your main worry. Of course, it's another source of bugs.. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man's_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man's_switch
nathanaldensr 4y ago
Considering transhumanism is one of the most, if not the most, egocentric philosophies out there, I'd say it's a near certainty to lead to authoritarian existence.

photochemsyn 4y ago

To become transhuman or posthuman, you'd first have to understand what it is to be human, and we're not anywhere near that. Some of the enthusiasm about the hopes for such a transition were raised by this: > "The Human Genome Project finally released a complete human genome sequence in 2003, in a project that took 13 years to complete." The most remarkable thing about that accomplishment was how little it resulted in. Almost all of the hopes about medical breakthroughs and finally gaining a complete understanding of human biology have not been realized. There are many reasons for this - for example, the genome edits itself as it develops in different cell types, so the genome of your nerve cells is not the genome of your immune cells, heart cells, liver cells etc. Communication between all these cell types is incredibly important and that's hard to get from the genomic sequence. It turns out the 3D structure of the genome is as important as the 3D structure of proteins is, as it is an active dynamic entity in all cell types. There are probably dozens of other reasons on top of those. As far as the notion of uploading one's consciousness into an artificial substrate while retaining one's sense of self, that seems highly implausible when we don't really understand the basic physical mechanism of consciousness, other than a vague idea that the brain is the most important component (even though nerves saturate the entire body). Hence the whole subject remains in the science fiction arena and will stay there for a good long while, perhaps a century or more.

peteradio 4y ago
You could potentially make a thing that acts like you, that's it. The only reason our existence is tolerable is that we agree with the guy that when he goes to bed he is dead and I take over in the morning and I make the same deal tomorrow.
- nickff 4y ago
  I quite like that phrasing (in your second sentence); did you come up with it yourself, or did you catch it somewhere?
  - peteradio 4y ago
    I think I've read it somewhere but I never keep track of citations. Might have been Michael Keaton in that movie, moral of the story, if you copy yourself then your copy is gonna bang your wife.

ravenstine 4y ago

Transhumanism never left. It became mainstream.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hinkley 4y ago

> For Cameron, transhumanism looks as frightening as ever, and he honed in on a notion he refers to as the “hollowing out of the human,” the idea that “all that matters in Homo sapiens can be uploaded as a paradigm for our desiderata.” Jonathan Coulton, The Future Soon: Cause it's gonna be the future soon And I won't always be this way When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away It's gonna be the future soon I've never seen it quite so clear And when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes and it's already here It's important to note, if you're not familiar with JoCo, that he is a satirist and this is a song about someone accidentally becoming a cyborg supervillain who causes a robot uprising, all because a girl dissed his secret admirer note in high school. Do you want to be a transhumanist because you are embracing something, or because you are running away from something, like the fictional character in this song? The latter is deeply unhealthy, perhaps fatally (or in this case, genocidally) so.

Animats 4y ago

"Like so many others after 9/11, I felt spiritually and existentially lost. It’s hard to believe now, but I was a regular churchgoer at the time." Ah, the will to believe. In something. Anything. The believer crowd is usually not the group that makes it work. Today's "metaverse" enthusiasts and actual metaverse implementers have quite limited overlap.

formerkrogemp 4y ago

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Transhumanism should be about freedom and increased ability. But the future is about corporate authoritarian dystopia, extreme wealth inequality, and environmental armageddon. Pessimism for the future is beginning to take over. I mean, look at "Meta", and the fact it's tied to effing facebook and all the crappiness that entails. VR is a lot like transhumanism in many ways, and it's clear VR will be attached to megacorps and google-class lockout and non-customer service.

jandrewrogers 4y ago

As someone who was quite plugged into the transhumanist scene in the 1990s and well-acquainted with several of the people referenced, I have a perspective that I think explains it more succinctly. When I was introduced to it in the early 1990s, the movement was dominated by extremely technical doers and thinkers, with a culture that encouraged rigor. It was philosophical rather than political. In the late 1990s, transhumanism had its Eternal September moment, when it became fashionable and trendy to be "transhumanist". The discourse became dominated by people hijacking the transhumanist movement in service of their political and social agendas, with nary a nod toward rigor. The doers and serious people originally associated with the movement and which gave it its intellectual gravitas became greatly outnumbered and mostly moved on. Many of the early transhumanists stopped labeling themselves as such because they did not want to be associated with the kind of people that came to define it.

MichaelZuo 4y ago
This seems to be the progression with everything.
orangepurple 4y ago
I would like to draw attention to a classic transhumanist philosopher whose style has remained consistent for decades. https://www.hedweb.com/ https://www.hedweb.com/ The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture - a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event. Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice.

RappingBoomer 4y ago

transhumanism is a cult composed of defective biological machines, and I say that as a signed up cryonicist...

platz 4y ago

So, transhumanists are just techy progressives?

dr_dshiv 4y ago

I once went to an early 2000’s transhumanist party with Nick Bostrom. He had a transhumanist leadership position at that point, if I recall. (The party was rad) The most transhumanist thing in my life currently: getting into flow states writing academic papers with GPT-3. It is genuinely mind melting.

swayvil 4y ago

Self cultivation via meditation and related methods is where it's at. Smoother and deeper than mere machines. It's the old and good "transhumanism". It really is impressive stuff.

aaron695 4y ago

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

*waves hand* I have at certain points in life considered myself part of this movement. I think I'd still consider myself one, but with a lot more cynicism. At this point it's unquestionable to me that people will eventually do some version of "mind uploading." However I doubt we'll ever answer the question whether you'll be uploading "yourself" or not - my guess is not. Unless we somehow make a literal "Matrix" like the movies, it's just not going to happen and I see no reason we would or should build such a thing.

pc2g4d 4y ago

My disgust reaction is provoked by enough transhumanist ideas that it feels more dystopian than utopian to me. I guess I'm too... human... to trans-human too hard.

Tao3300 4y ago

They finished transitioning.

xvilka 4y ago

It's dangerous to modify something we don't know in details - risk breaking it is too high. The only sane action transhumanism could do is to throw money and working hands on the biomedical research, also biomedical engineering. Even nanotechnology is less relevant since those nanobots would need to know exactly what to modify. At the end, likely we will just design new proteins which are true nanobots already existing in our bodies.

xwdv 4y ago

I think transhumanists eventually just grew up, realized how silly the whole idea was, and then were never replaced by some younger generation that shared the same naive optimism about technology that they had in early years. We’ve learned to look at technology with a more cynical eye these days. It’s like for any technology you imagine, I can instantly see how to exploit it at the expense of the human experience.

jccalhoun 4y ago

I was hoping this would be more specific and do followups on people who were featured in places like Wired. For example they have a picture of Anders Sandberg wearing an eyepiece and carying around a computer. Does he still do that? I've heard about people implanting rfid chips in their hand. Do they still use them a few years later?

xvilka 4y ago

> face a new feudalism, as control of finance and the power that goes with it will be at the core of technological human enhancement, and democracy…will be dead in the water.” While there's a significant risk of it to happen, it's not a given. Brain augmentation connecting people to each other might give a rise to the direct democracy when hundreds of the collective decisions take place every day: from desiding if your local road needs an upgrade between community members to voting for the national parliament members.

shrimp_emoji 4y ago

https://youtu.be/vdBQU1pZxWQ https://youtu.be/vdBQU1pZxWQ

gcr 4y ago

oh believe me we're still around! you're just not gonna find a lot of that "above ground" so to speak. the good stuff happens in hushed tones or among small social circles. And in places you wouldn't otherwise think to look, like transgender people. 'Cause when you think about it, taking synthetic experimental hormones to give our bodies new capabilities and reconnect ourselves to our minds more deeply reflects the essence of "trans humanism," no? The overlap between the queer/furry community and the transhumanist/cyberpunk community is very strong and has always been. If you're looking for keywords to google for, check out the "Freedom of Form Foundation" and its research (this is both explicitly furry and explicitly transhumanist), some of the Korps RCG propaganda stories, the postfurry embassy, any of the plurality/tulpa/multiplicity/DiD recovery communities (a rare example of putting mind tech into practice today rather than fantasizing about it in the future), the people who make those full-body drone suits at hypnokink events, anything Naomi Wu touches, etc etc etc ...

the_omegist 4y ago

toofy 4y ago

We currently have a massive chunk of society who are losing their collective minds about people engaging in the very early iterations of transhumanism—transgender folks. I still regularly encounter people who are spitting angry against transgender folks and then later in the conversation will completely unironically talk about how much they love the cyberpunk genre. Not many of them realize they would be the weird cultists in the background of the story holding signs preaching about unnatural technology.

causality0 4y ago
I don't think it's a one-dimensional line with pro/anti modification. For example, if you were against people integrating weapons into their bodies or upward-facing eyes into their feet for looking up skirts, that wouldn't make you anti-transhuman.
- axblount 4y ago
  Right. But being able to live as your authentic self is a good thing, unlike your examples. Opposing good modifications is anti-transhumanist.
  - mkmk3 4y ago
    Idk, first the focus on body modifications in the context of what a transhumanist is is a bummer, I always thought imoroved thinking made more sense as the initial goal. And second, how do you determine what is someones authentic self, if theyre pursuing that or if theyre taking advantage of body mods to be pervy or manipulative or do xyz bad thing. Its entirely subjective. Not to say there arent solutions to separate safe mods from unsafe, just that the authentic self feels like too fuzzy a thing to use sincerely, at least I see it as some bundling of your personal values that could be cancerous as far as I know :)
- ben_w 4y ago
  I'm a furry. Does "being a (cuddly) werewolf" count as a weapon?

Waterluvian 4y ago

I’m rather convinced, with really no evidence, mind you, that all the best future cyborg implants will be surficial and removable. Glasses. Skin patch. Etc. I’ve seen how good we are with tech. I don’t see why we’ll need to cut people open to apply it.

fallingfrog 4y ago

I mean Altos labs is out there trying to cure aging, so you might say it’s gone mainstream.

alfnor 4y ago

I think one reason transhumanism will never truly take off is because whenever something can be done more efficiently without potentially harming one's body, that's the winning piece of technology. Sure, we could try to make body mods that allow us to fly, but we already have helicopters and airplanes (not to mention jetpacks). Yes, we could make ourselves super smart by trying to integrate our minds with the Internet and AI, but we already have smartphones in our pockets.