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Transhumanism applies to basic everyday things like glasses, crutches, chairs, cars, etc. Some have even suggested (with basis) that sharable ideas can be a for

Transhumanism applies to basic everyday things like glasses, crutches, chairs, cars, etc. Some have even suggested (with basis) that sharable ideas can be a form of transhumanism. I'm curious what the authors' true position is. They talk about the ideal being a "natural state". How "natural" are we talking about? No medicine? No farm equipment? No language? Just a bunch of primates grunting at each other ineffectively? Maybe I should be more critical of how technology is evolving our species, but attacking transhumanism as an idea is reminiscent of the luddites.

csdvrx 3y ago
> How "natural" are we talking about? After rereading the whole piece, I think the author must be philosophically close to Kazinsky weird philosophical position.
xg15 3y ago
> Transhumanism applies to basic everyday things like glasses, crutches, chairs, cars, etc. Come on, that's a bit of a motte/bailey argument. Yes, technically, we already have transhumanism since glasses were invented. (or you can go back even further if you like. Are wooden legs transhumanism? How about clothing? Tool use?) However, all of those are clearly a huge difference in (at least) degree to someone having brain implants, voluntarily replacing parts of their body with synthetics, changing their entire identity with the use of tech, spending significant parts of their life in virtual reality, etc. Also, I think there are different kinds of criticism you can apply to the ideas of "scifi transhumanism": There is the basic argument that humans should just not tinker with themselves, because then they "stop being humans"/stray from the life the god/nature/whoever else intended for them. I find that pretty dumb, to be honest, and often rooted in religious or cultural objections. (Ok, I'd be down to counter that argument with the point that we've always tinkered with our bodies to some extent) There are other arguments though, asking about the resulting power dynamics and the kind of society that transhumanism wants to create, which I find more interesting: First, who actually gets access to all the cool bio implants/genetic enhancement tech/etc? Are we just going to distribute access the same way we distribute wealth today - i.e. the more wealth and/or power you have, the more access you get? At the end of that road lies a world where our current problem of inequality escalates and different classes eventually become different species. This honestly doesn't sound like a good world to live in. The other question is who controls all the tech. Ok, so some ultra-altruistic billionaire devides to offer neural implants and cybernetic body enhancements for the masses, for free. Does everyone get full access to the code abd functionality of their implants? Or will they be like today's smartphones, with half of the device locked down and the other tethered to the billionaire's cloud infrastructure? A world where you don't even have practical ownership over your own body honestly sounds even more frightening. So yeah, I too would love to live in some cyberpunk world and go crazy with body enhancements. But I think until we have solved the problem of power dynamics, we can't have nice things. And Elon&co right now seem to mostly confirm the fears around this than to address them.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  > Are we just going to distribute access the same way we distribute wealth today - i.e. the more wealth and/or power you have, the more access [to cool bio implants] you get? Wealth is (to an economist) all the goods and services in the world that we provide to each other. So to them this would be a sort of circular question. Yes it'd be distributed the same way as we distribute wealth, because cool bio implants are wealth, along with every other aspect of healthcare. And then they'd point out that wealth isn't distributed zero-sum, wealth is created by the act of trading. So if I buy a cool implant from you, then the act of engaging in this trade is in some sense creating the wealth at that very moment. As after all, if you build widgets nobody cares about and they rot in a warehouse unloved and unwanted, you didn't really increase the wealth of society.
- minerva23 3y ago
  > motte/bailey argument If you say so. The point was that the transhumanism is just a fact: technology changes us. The people attacking transhumanism are generally more pro status quo than they are anti-technology, whether they realize it or not.

csdvrx 3y ago

> How "natural" are we talking about? After rereading the whole piece, I think the author must be philosophically close to Kazinsky weird philosophical position.

xg15 3y ago

> Transhumanism applies to basic everyday things like glasses, crutches, chairs, cars, etc. Come on, that's a bit of a motte/bailey argument. Yes, technically, we already have transhumanism since glasses were invented. (or you can go back even further if you like. Are wooden legs transhumanism? How about clothing? Tool use?) However, all of those are clearly a huge difference in (at least) degree to someone having brain implants, voluntarily replacing parts of their body with synthetics, changing their entire identity with the use of tech, spending significant parts of their life in virtual reality, etc. Also, I think there are different kinds of criticism you can apply to the ideas of "scifi transhumanism": There is the basic argument that humans should just not tinker with themselves, because then they "stop being humans"/stray from the life the god/nature/whoever else intended for them. I find that pretty dumb, to be honest, and often rooted in religious or cultural objections. (Ok, I'd be down to counter that argument with the point that we've always tinkered with our bodies to some extent) There are other arguments though, asking about the resulting power dynamics and the kind of society that transhumanism wants to create, which I find more interesting: First, who actually gets access to all the cool bio implants/genetic enhancement tech/etc? Are we just going to distribute access the same way we distribute wealth today - i.e. the more wealth and/or power you have, the more access you get? At the end of that road lies a world where our current problem of inequality escalates and different classes eventually become different species. This honestly doesn't sound like a good world to live in. The other question is who controls all the tech. Ok, so some ultra-altruistic billionaire devides to offer neural implants and cybernetic body enhancements for the masses, for free. Does everyone get full access to the code abd functionality of their implants? Or will they be like today's smartphones, with half of the device locked down and the other tethered to the billionaire's cloud infrastructure? A world where you don't even have practical ownership over your own body honestly sounds even more frightening. So yeah, I too would love to live in some cyberpunk world and go crazy with body enhancements. But I think until we have solved the problem of power dynamics, we can't have nice things. And Elon&co right now seem to mostly confirm the fears around this than to address them.

nvm0n2 3y ago
> Are we just going to distribute access the same way we distribute wealth today - i.e. the more wealth and/or power you have, the more access [to cool bio implants] you get? Wealth is (to an economist) all the goods and services in the world that we provide to each other. So to them this would be a sort of circular question. Yes it'd be distributed the same way as we distribute wealth, because cool bio implants are wealth, along with every other aspect of healthcare. And then they'd point out that wealth isn't distributed zero-sum, wealth is created by the act of trading. So if I buy a cool implant from you, then the act of engaging in this trade is in some sense creating the wealth at that very moment. As after all, if you build widgets nobody cares about and they rot in a warehouse unloved and unwanted, you didn't really increase the wealth of society.
minerva23 3y ago
> motte/bailey argument If you say so. The point was that the transhumanism is just a fact: technology changes us. The people attacking transhumanism are generally more pro status quo than they are anti-technology, whether they realize it or not.