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You've completely missed the argument and tried to turn it into a No True Scotsman. Transhumanism is not about human augmentation, it's about a misty-eyed view

You've completely missed the argument and tried to turn it into a No True Scotsman. Transhumanism is not about human augmentation, it's about a misty-eyed view of human augmentation experienced through a haze of hand-me-down religiosity. I spent some time following these people in the early 00s and they were talking about replacing nerves with Cat 5 - and other obvious nonsense. Complete lunacy. It's a fundamentalist millenarian movement which is inherently faith-based, contemptuous of physical and psychological reality, and irrational. As the article says - it's just another in a long, long cycle of similar movements with similar dynamics. The only thing that changes is the set dressing. The play is always the same, and always ends in horror and tragedy. No, this time will not be different. Affirming that it will be is part of the sales pitch. But somehow - for reasons that are unsurprising to anyone who knows a little psychology - that never quite seems to happen.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
And yet, your comment looks to me like a great temple, whose bricks are made of false equivalences and bound with ad hominem in place of mortar; a temple so large it casts shadow over the entire land. Yes, for some, transhumanism is basically millenarianism with different set dressing. And yes, some of the things transhumanists say pattern-match to popular religious themes, especially if you're willing to bend or simplify some things a bit to force the analogy. But that doesn't mean that those transhumanist ideas and predictions actually are religious in nature, nor does it mean that most people agreeing with them are just operating on faith. And it especially doesn't mean that "the play is always the same, and always ends in horror and tragedy" (like what does that even mean, where does it ever apply?). (Also, some critics have no sensitivity to jokes, or purposefully ignore humor. Replacing nerves with Cat 5, really?) I don't deny there is a thick shell of fraudsters and pseudoscientific entertainment around this. I've seen that, and was disgusted by it, but unfortunately it happens for everything. This one is a real pattern - specific ideology is the set dressing, the underlying phenomena is just a bunch of scoundrels selling outlandish ideas to naive people. But that's not actual transhumanism, not any more than New Age bullshit about quantum this and magnetic that makes physics itself a faith-based movement. I wish people would engage with specific ideas coming from transhumanism (and adjacent fields/communities), instead of trying to dismiss them with "your other ideas look like repainted Christianity, therefore they're wrong, you're wrong, and whatever you're saying here must be wrong too".

TeMPOraL 2y ago

And yet, your comment looks to me like a great temple, whose bricks are made of false equivalences and bound with ad hominem in place of mortar; a temple so large it casts shadow over the entire land. Yes, for some, transhumanism is basically millenarianism with different set dressing. And yes, some of the things transhumanists say pattern-match to popular religious themes, especially if you're willing to bend or simplify some things a bit to force the analogy. But that doesn't mean that those transhumanist ideas and predictions actually are religious in nature, nor does it mean that most people agreeing with them are just operating on faith. And it especially doesn't mean that "the play is always the same, and always ends in horror and tragedy" (like what does that even mean, where does it ever apply?). (Also, some critics have no sensitivity to jokes, or purposefully ignore humor. Replacing nerves with Cat 5, really?) I don't deny there is a thick shell of fraudsters and pseudoscientific entertainment around this. I've seen that, and was disgusted by it, but unfortunately it happens for everything. This one is a real pattern - specific ideology is the set dressing, the underlying phenomena is just a bunch of scoundrels selling outlandish ideas to naive people. But that's not actual transhumanism, not any more than New Age bullshit about quantum this and magnetic that makes physics itself a faith-based movement. I wish people would engage with specific ideas coming from transhumanism (and adjacent fields/communities), instead of trying to dismiss them with "your other ideas look like repainted Christianity, therefore they're wrong, you're wrong, and whatever you're saying here must be wrong too".