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No, wearing glasses doesn't make you the adept of any ideological current, such as transhumanism. At best you could say it precludes you from being an adept of
by simiones 2y ago
No, wearing glasses doesn't make you the adept of any ideological current, such as transhumanism. At best you could say it precludes you from being an adept of certain ideologies that would oppose wearing glasses, such as very strict "naturalism" (i.e. people who believe it's important to only eat or wear all-natural products), if you want to be self-consistent.
You could also say that wearing glasses or having an insulin pump installed makes you a transhuman, but it can't make you a transhumanist. And plenty of people are perfectly happy to be slightly ideologically inconsistent, or follow more nuanced ideologies, where, say, certain artificial enhancements are allowed and others are not. After all, even the biggest anti-drug crusaders accept coffee or at least tea as acceptable substances.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoTranshumanism is the belief that we can and should do things to make our bodies work better. Full stop. End of ideology. That includes believing that wearing glasses is a good idea worth pursuing.
- zaphar 2y agoStrange how a number of Transhumanists are claiming significantly more than you list here as their ideology.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoWhy do you think it's strange that people don't describe themselves with precision? People can be transhumanist and also other things. That doesn't make the other things part of transhumanism.
- zaphar 2y agoThat is not what I said though. I said that a lot of people who claim they are transumanist claim that transhumanism is those things. Which is not the same as what you are describing.
- simiones 2y agoNo, you've just got the causality backwards. It's like saying "socialism is the ideology that workers should own the means of production. That literally includes being a worker at a company, not an owner.", and then concluding that anyone who works for a company rather than owning one is a socialist. That is, wearing glasses is consistent with transhumanism, absolutely true. But one can wear glasses for other reasons, and even oppose transhumanism and still wear glasses, while still being perfectly self-consistent. For example, believers of the Jehovah's Witnesses cult (or sect if you prefer) don't accept blood transfusions, but still wear glasses. They believe that certain modifications of your body and its abilities are acceptable, and others are not, and that this decision is not what makes our bodies work better, but based on what some god allows his followers to do. So, they are not transhumanists, even when happily wearing glasses.
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- gabruoy 2y agoDo you believe that humans improving themselves or their society through technological advancement is always a good thing? Or do you think that glasses are a good technological advancement, but maybe nuclear weapons or a theoretical totalitarian AI-ran government are not good advancements in technology?
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago> Do you believe that ... improving ... is always a good thing? "Improving" is good by definition. Otherwise it would be called something else. The questions become what you personally consider to be improvement and what scales and scopes you personally choose to consider when determining whether a change improves things.
- gabruoy 2y agoThen we need a moral belief system to determine what improvement is and isn’t. This will eventually lead to a codified set of beliefs that look a lot like religion. And I don’t really like most of the moral statements I’ve heard from self proclaimed transhumanists. That’s why I’m not a one of them, even though I wear glasses.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoIt could look a lot like religion, but also a lot like philosophy, science, or ethics. Making value judgments and projecting them into the future is fundamental to conscious being operating in a causal world. Beliefs like "dont murder people" show up in religion, but that is far from the only belief set that supports the recommendation.
- dcow 2y agoI don’t think you fundamentally understand what makes a transhumanist. The differentiating line is not improve vs harm. Everyone wants to improve life with tech save maybe the Amish. It’s human vs not. A transhumanist is willing to entertain technology that enhances (carefully chosen term) some conscious experience even if it replaces our humanity. Others generally don’t take that stance axiomatically. A transhumanist would support replacing our dna with nanobots programmed to do things that keep a body alive if it means we can reduce the replication error rate and avoid cancer. Good outcome, dubious means. A transhumanist wouldn’t debate this and accept the nanobot outcome. Most others would at least debate this tech, even if we ultimately collectively come to the shared conclusion we can humanely replace parts of our DNA to cure cancer. The point is the transhumanist wouldn’t care about retaining our humanity, as evolving into “machines” is an acceptable outcome.
- defen 2y ago> Transhumanism is the belief that we can and should do things to make our bodies work better. Full stop. Instead of a benign example like eyeglasses, let's say I murder someone so that I can harvest his organs and replace my failing ones with his. According to you that makes me a transhumanist.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoDesiring to replace your failing organs, yes, but how you get the organs is a completely orthogonal moral issue. To wit, approximately 100% of all transhumanists are not murderers.