It is difficult to define, but its a growing movement. Transhumanism has its own central organization (Humanity+), its own demographic base (Silicon Valley), even its own political formation (the Longevity Party).

On one level the movements goals appear benign. One of its key documents, Principles of Extropy, sums up the basic values of transhumanism: perpetual progress, self-transformation, practical optimism, intelligent technology, open society, self-direction, and rational thinking. The local Rotary Club would not object.

But the fundamental ambition of transhumanism is more problematic. Its architects champion a use of technology to accelerate the evolution of humanity so radically that at the end of the process humanity as such would disappear. A superior posthuman being would emerge. According to Wikipedia, Transhumanism is the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available knowledge to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. From its inception, the abolition of human death and aging has been one of the goals of transhumanism as it engineers a new being freed from the biological constraints of the current human condition.

Two of the movements philosophers, Max More and David Pearce, have developed eloquent apologies for the transhumanist creed. But they also indicate the movements more ominous philosophical themes.

The very concept of human nature disappears in much transhumanist literature. The human body is dismissed as something of secondary, accidental importance. Mr. More argues that the self has to be instantiated in some physical medium but not necessarily one that is biologically humanor biological at all. Once again in the history of philosophy, the body has become a mere container for the human mind. The body is perceived as an impediment to the minds development rather than humanitys natural site for thought. Tellingly, in this new version of anthropological dualism, the soul has disappeared; it is the sovereign self, a liberated will yearning for omniscience and omnipotence, that remains. Unsurprisingly, Ayn Rand is one of the movements favorite novelists.

Not only is humanity freed from its biological finitude in the transhumanist dream; it no longer enjoys any unique status as a subject of rights. Max More claims that creatures with similar levels of sapience, sentience, and personhood are accorded similar status no matter whether they are humans, animals, cyborgs, machine intelligences, or aliens. The religious claim that human beings are made in Gods image and the political claim that humans deserve respect because of their transcendental status crumble. Little of Renaissance humanism remains in a movement that glorifies the posthuman being to come and considers current humanity a fleeting phenomenon with no particular, intrinsic dignity.

The moral philosophy of the transhumanist movement is broadly utilitarian. One cannot judge the morality of a particular act in isolation; its goodness depends on whether it contributes to the global pleasure of a future humanity and ultimately a posthumanity.

David Pearce has developed an influential version of this transhumanist utilitarianism in his book The Hedonistic Imperative. For Mr. Pearce, the greatest ethical task of humanity is to eliminate all suffering in the world. Just as medical science has eliminated physical suffering through anesthetics, we should now use technology to conquer all psychic suffering. Mr. Pearce endorses a vigorous use of genetic engineering and pharmacology to achieve this goal of an anguish-free humanity and posthumanity. He even supports the use of such technology to abolish pain in wild animals.

Mr. Pearces ethics represent the perfectionist side of the transhumanist project. He describes the mission to eliminate suffering as paradise engineering and the naturalization of Heaven. The state of a properly engineered posthumanity in the future is nothing less than paradisal: Our descendants may live in a civilization of serenely motivated high achievers, animated by gradients of bliss.

It is a strange utopia. Our current opioid epidemic is a cautionary tale against the dream of a sedated humanity. We are still reeling from the totalitarian dream where millions perished in the name of a radiant future that required some lethal cutting of ethical corners in the meantime. The enthusiastic transhumanist revival of eugenics is a cause for alarm. Is there any place for people with disabilities in this utopia? Why would we want to abolish aging and dying, essential constituents of the human drama, the fountainhead of our art and literature? Can there be love and creativity without anguish? Who will flourish and who will be eliminated in this construction of the posthuman? Does nature itself have no intrinsic worth? Finally, isnt the transhumanist dream of liberating humanity from its biological and psychic creaturehood simply a high-tech surrender to an ancient temptation, Ye shall be as gods?

Whos afraid of transhumanism? I am. We all should be.

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Who's afraid of transhumanism? (We all should be) - America Magazine

Luis Manuel Tapia Bolivar/DreamstimeA fight over whether or not transhumanism can be libertarian broke out over at The American Conservative. The contretemps began with an article by Zoltan Istvan, author of The Transhumanist Wager. Istvan is also seeking to become the Libertarian Party candidate for governor of California.

In "The Growing World of Libertarian Transhumanism," Istvan optimistically asserts that "freedom from the government will allow radical science to go on undisturbed."

Zoltan defines transhumanism as "the international movement of using science and technology to radically change the human being and human experience. Its primary goal is to deliver and embrace a utopian techno-optimistic world." Due to rapid technological progress "the world is shifting under our feetand libertarian transhumanism is a sure way to navigate the chaos to make sure we arrive at the best future possible."

Kai Weiss, a researcher at the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute in Vienna, Austria, swiftly denounced the piece. "Transhumanism should be rejected by libertarians as an abomination of human evolution," he wrote.

Clearly there is some disagreement.

Weiss is correct that Istvan doesn't expend much intellectual effort linking transhumanism with libertarian thinking. Istvan largely assumes that people seeking to flourish should have the freedom to enhance their bodies and minds and those of their children without much government interference. So what abominable transhumanist technologies does Weiss denounce?

Weiss includes defeating death, robotic hearts, virtual reality sex, telepathy via mind-reading headsets, brain implants, ectogenesis, artificial intelligence, exoskeleton suits, designer babies, and gene editing tech. "At no point [does Istvan] wonder if we should even strive for these technologies," Weiss thunders.

While Istvan may not wonder, Weiss fails to make a single argument against these technological developments: It is apparently self-evident to him that they are evil.

As with all new technologies, unintended consequences are inevitable and people can and will surely misuse them. Libertarians know all too well that vigilance against government abuse of modern technologies is vital. These worries do not, however, constitute preemptive arguments for preventing people from voluntarily seeking to use the fruits of innovation to work out how to live the best lives that they can.

Oddly, as a riposte against libertarian transhumanism, Weiss cites Christian conservative Rod Dreher's assertion that "choice matters more than what is chosen. The Technological Man is not concerned with what he should desire; rather, he is preoccupied with how he can acquire or accomplish what he desires." This is a non-sequitur. Of course, libertarians (and one hopes most other folks) are concerned about what it is that we should desire. The central question is who, if anyone, has the right to stop us from pursuing our private and non-aggressive desires once we've applied our intellects and moral imaginations to figuring out what it is that we want?

Progressives and conservatives believe government has extensive authority to tell citizens how to live their lives. Libertarians do not. On that count, Weiss is entirely correct to call out Istvan for succumbing to authoritarianism when he advocates for licensing reproduction as a way to prevent overpopulation.

As someone who evidently thinks he is committed to enlarging human liberty, Weiss would do well to ponder this observation from economics Nobelist Friedrich Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty:

Nowhere is freedom more important than where our ignorance is greatestat the boundaries of knowledge, in other words, where nobody can predict what lies a step ahead.the ultimate aim of freedom is the enlargement of those capacities in which man surpasses his ancestors and to which each generation must endeavor to add its shareits share in the growth of knowledge and the gradual advance of moral and aesthetic beliefs, where no superior must be allowed to enforce one set of views of what is right or good and where only further experience can decide what should prevail. It is wherever man reaches beyond his present self, where the new emerges and assessment lies in the future, that liberty ultimately shows its value.

Hayek's point is that human beings are terrible at foresight. Engaging in a robust process of trial, error, and correction is how nearly all moral and technological progress has ever been made.

As I have earlier argued:

The highest expression of human nature and dignity is to strive to overcome the limitations imposed on us by our genes, our evolution and our environment. Future generations will look back at the beginning of the 21st century and be astonished that some well-meaning and intelligent people actually wanted to stop bio-nano-infotech research and deployment just to protect their cramped and limited vision of human nature. If transhumanism is allowed to progress, I predict that our descendants will look back and thank us for making their world of longer, healthier and abler lives possible.

While Weiss asserts "it is time for libertarians to argue against the notion of extreme transhumanism," he ultimately concedes "the state shouldn't prohibit it." So long as he leaves government power out it, Weiss is, of course, free to argue as much as he likes that transhumanism is an abomination contrary to libertarian thinking. But I suspect that few people, especially folks committed to liberty and the development of technologies that enable them and their progeny to have better chances to lead flourishing lives, will heed his Luddite counsel.

For those interested in libertarian arguments in favor of transhumanism, you may be interested in my essay, "The Case for Enhancing People" and my book, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution.

Disclosure: I was on a panel with Istvan at FreedomFest in Las Vegas a month ago discussing the much dreaded prospect of designer babies. I am generally in favor of allowing parents to use modern biotechnologies with the goal of improving the prospects that their children will enjoy flourishing lives.

Read more here:
Transhumanism and Libertarianism Are Entirely Compatible - Reason (blog)

In Jackson, Minnesota, there is a man making Massey Ferguson tractors. He works for Agco. Which is huge, apparently: making billions. Tractors are very big business. And now they are making roughly another billion every year, because the guy who is making the tractors is wearing a pair of glasses.

The thing is, they are smart glasses, with a blueprint of the tractor built in to the lens, with instructions about which bit connects to which. He never has to pick up a manual with his greasy hands. They may not even be that greasy, but you can see how its an improvement on the old system. (Suggestion to Ikea: maybe you could consider including a pair of smart glasses with the next bookcase or bed I buy from you).

So its a guy with a very small tool (glasses) making a very big tool (tractor). But eventually he will take the glasses off and go home, job done. Now imagine if he had the lens built in to his eye, maybe like contacts, and he didnt have to take them off any more. Then you would be modifying the human too, you would have created what is popularly known as a transhuman. Not long ago an art student in London was experimenting with a third thumb which she had attached to one hand. Could it speed up tractor making? Its doubtful but if youre already making billions it might be worth a try.

Somewhere out there is a guy with a chip in his head (or neural implant) that enables him to know whether there is any broccoli left in the fridge without ever opening the door.

It sounds trivial but there is something fundamental happening here. I am a great fan of the almond (and other nuts). But I have only recently discovered (thank you, Tony Kuklinski in New Zealand), that the best almond trees are actually grafted on to the back of a peach tree. The peach tree has more resistant roots, I gather. And the almonds are great (I know, I checked). Transhumanism is a bit like that: we are grafting one thing on to another to produce an improvement, in this case the graft is inorganic and the recipient of the graft is organic, namely one of the species we laughingly or in a hopeful, aspirational way (rather like saying Good dog! to a dog that is manifestly not good at all) refer to as Homo sapiens. The point is to make the homo more fully sapient than it (s/he?) was to begin with.

I think it was Jules Verne, in his prescient way, who first predicted the rise of the internet. He also brilliantly predicted newspapers that would be made out of chocolate and you could eat them when you finished reading them. Im sorry that one never quite made it through the reality checkpoint. Verne wrote hymns to technology, which was relatively unusual in the second half of the 19th century. I recall he had serious doubts about bicycles (he actually made a speech to a girls school denouncing them as a threat to civilisation), but on the other hand was very enthusiastic about the submarine.

A Glass apart: Googles foray into eye technology was a bit of a flop (Getty)

Captain Nemo (who appears in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island) is one of the first characters in literature to dramatise the merging of man and machine. A curious scientist asks him how his wonderful machine is powered: By a cunning system of levers, he replies. It should be obvious it is his organ playing that powers his vehicle (he really is an accomplished organist), which is to say it is the man himself. There is a perfect reciprocity: Nemo is the Nautilus, the Nautilus is Nemo. They are indivisible (far more so than Iron Man, for example, and his suit: you can always take the suit off again). But to make a mere human fully trans now in the underwater realm you would need to give them gills. Maybe a tail too, I guess.

The transhuman is a chimera, a fusion of two forms, one (as I remember human beings being described from an alien point of view) an ugly bag of water and the other a nice clean circuit board inscribed on silicon (or similar). Its like taking the Nautilus and miniaturising it right down and sticking it in your head so you can go cruising 20,000 leagues (or whatever) without any apparent vehicle. You become the vehicle. Which would be cool. Except I dont know if tractor drivers really want to turn into a tractor and have a little plough sticking out of their rear end, I guess that is never going to catch on.

Having just got hopelessly lost on the road from Wellington to Waipukurau when my phone conked out, I wouldnt have minded having a map app installed in my head (had there been a decent atlas of New Zealand in the car this thought would never have occurred to me but rather like the tractor guy I would then be hands-free and wouldnt have to stop to look at the map). You become a functioning GPS system, in other words, with a screen inside your brain, and will never get lost again (which now I come to think of it, I would regret). Homo sapiens are, at last, on the verge of getting smart.

But, hold on a second, says the philosopher, what ever happened to Socratic ignorance? According to Plato, Socrates had a habit (which could be annoying, depending on your point of view, and of course he was ultimately sentenced to death) of going about checking on people who were supposed to know stuff (tractor makers and suchlike) and concluding that really they knew nothing. Neither did he but at least he knew that he knew nothing, and that was his edge over everyone else. Ignorant, yes, but avowedly, self-consciously ignorant. He at least had the knowledge of ignorance.

Many other philosophers have made similar claims, not excluding ace deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, as Bernard Stiegler has pointed out. Stiegler was a student of Derridas who, as one should, derided the old master. All philosophy, argued Stiegler (having done his time in prison, I recall, for armed robbery), has been anti-tekhn. The guys who were making tractors or the BC500 equivalent (Socrates mentions shoemakers, for example) really did know something and Socrates was just being a bit of a pompous ass for cocking a snook at them. And Derrida was doing something similar by raving on all the time about the text and ignoring (in his Socratic ignorance) anything that smacked of science or technology. Just as anti-tekhn as all the others. Which is ironic considering that writing is a form of technology, just so commonplace (unless you happen to be illiterate) that we have forgotten thats what it is.

Dani Clode, a Royal College of Art student, created a third thumb as part of her MA dissertation project (Dani Clode)

This should have been obvious after the invention of the printing press, what Marshall McLuhan called the Gutenberg Galaxy, and the typewriter. If you ever went into a newsroom of old, you will know what I mean: it was like a factory, with the sound of clacking machines, and printed paper coming off the far end of the assembly line. This may explain why, even when it was parchment or stone tablets, Socrates disdained writing and stuck rather religiously to the oral (and relied on Plato to be his Dr Watson). He understood that the written would have compromised and corrupted the purity of his austere anti-tekhn discipline. Somehow Stiegler managed to get Derrida discussing computers and television, which of course he maintained were all just variations on the text.

There is no polarity between the human and the technological. We are naturally prosthetic beings, says Stiegler. The process of hybridisation simply means that we are becoming more engineered. I can think of a few spare parts I wouldnt mind having right now. Its a phenomenon that Derrida refers to as the logic of supplementarity: writing is a supplement to speech, for example. A guy with a leaf blower is supplementing his ability (extremely limited) to blow leaves around. The odd thing about Desmond Morriss old concept of humankind as the naked ape on account of our relative hairlessness is that it omits the crucial fact that we generally are not naked: we are constantly kitting ourselves out with accessories of one kind or another, perpetually dissatisfied as we are with the initial denuded state. The smart glasses are an advanced type of fig leaf.

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari suggests that, with the multiplication and extension of our virtual skills, we are now approaching a final state of secular divinity. It is true that it is possible to imagine (or not even imagine) enhancements to our knowledge such that, for all practical purposes, we are effectively omniscient. I already have students in the classroom correcting me, about two seconds after I have come out with some clearly inadequate answer to a tricky question: But my phone says You too can become a transhumanly annoying fact checker.

As seen on screen: could RoboCop become a reality? (Rex)

Add to that additional supplements: happiness, you only have to press a button, or rather your brain would press the button for you, releasing a rush of endorphins or endocannabinoids, just as soon as there is a hint of boredom creeping up on you. And, for an added bonus, intolerable beauty too, combined with a dash of immortality. A full-body engineering makeover, physical and mental, bionic and cognitive: the temptation to become a Hollywood superhero will surely become irresistible. In the realm of the Matrix, humans will become simulacra of themselves, but very good at running up walls and firing guns upside down. The physicist Frank Tipler, in The Physics of Immortality, reckoned that we will have to wait till the universe collapses in on itself a form of the Big Crunch that he refers to as the Omega Point until we attain godhood (admittedly, we would have to be boiled down into pure silicon). But perhaps we wont have to wait that long.

And alongside the homo deus would presumably stand the homo stultus, the village idiot or holy fool who remains regressively or aggressively unenhanced. Smartness versus dumbness who will win? The knowledge-based economy has only one answer. But somewhere in the interstices of all this information must remain at least the possibility of the kind of creative madness, an inspired stupidity, that lies beyond mere digital shuffling. Ignorance is probably not bliss, it probably contains an almost unbearable sadness and discontent, but it also allows the possibility of innovation in a form that mere knowledge (by definition) cannot know. Jules Verne, having described how a giant gun could shoot a missile at the moon, ridiculed his rival HG Wells for dreaming up an anti-gravity paint, for in effect, cheating: Mais il invente! Stupid dreamers can invent things that the smart guys can only deride.

Back in the Garden of Eden, Yahweh (a classic transhuman, if ever there was one, fully tooled and enhanced, and spending most of his time stored in a cloud, moreover) felt the same way about the humans he was soon sorry he had conjured up: not only were they ignorant (despite tasting of the tree of knowledge), it was impossible to guess what they were going to do next. If a god does not exist, maybe we can invent one.

Andy Martin is the author of Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me. He teaches at the University of Cambridge.

Read more:
Transhumanism: The final chapter in humanity's perpetual quest to be kitted out in comforting accessories - The Independent

In a 2011 New Yorker profile, Peter Thiel, tech-philanthropist and billionaire, surmised that probably the most extreme form of inequality is between people who are alive and people who are dead. While he may not be technically wrong, Thiel and other eccentric, wealthy tech-celebrities, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, have taken the next step to counteract that inequality by embarking on a quest to live forever.

Thiel and many like him have been investing in research on life extension, part of transhumanism. Drawing on fields as diverse as neurotechnology, artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering and philosophy, transhumanists believe that the limitations of the human body and mortality can be transcended by machines and technology. The ultimate aim is immortality.Some believe thisis achievable by 2045.

Of course, humans have long harnessed technology, from vaccinations to smartphones, to improve and extend our lives. But that doesnt admit you into the transhumanist club. Wanting to live forever, and possessing vast sums of money and time to research, does.

The hows and whens of transhumanism are matters of debate. Some advocatethe "Singularity" a form of artificial super-intelligence which will encompass all of humanity's knowledge, that our brains will then be uploaded to.Others believe in anti-ageing methods like cryonics, freezing your body after death until such a time when you can be revived.

Transhumanism is no longer a fringe movement either. Darpa, the US governments research arm into advanced weaponry, created a functional prototype of a super soldier exoskeleton in 2014, which will be fully functional in 2018, and is researching the possibility of an artificial human brain.

"Transhumanism doesn't have much to say about social questions. To the extent that they see the world changing, it's nearly always in a business-as-usual way techno-capitalism continues to deliver its excellent bounties, and the people who benefit from the current social arrangement continue to benefit from it," says Mark O'Connell, the author of To be a Machine, who followed various transhumanists in Los Angeles."You basically can't separate transhumanism from capitalism. An idea that's soenthusiastically pursued by Musk and Peter Thiel, and by the founders of Google, is one that needs to be seen as a mutationof capitalism, not a cure for it."

Silicon Valley is characterised by ablind belief in technological progress,a disregard for social acceptability and an emphasis on individual success. It's no surprise, then, that it is here that the idea of living forever seems most desirable.

Musk has publicly declared that we have to merge withartificially intelligent machines that overtake humanityin order to survive. Ray Kurzweil, the inventor and futurist who pioneered the Singularity, is now an engineer at Google. O'Connell points out that "you'd have to be coming from a particularly rarefied privilege to look at the world today and make the assessment, as someone like Thiel does, that the biggest problem we face as a species is the fact that people die of old age".

On an even more basic level,a transhumanist society would undoubtedly be shaped by the ideals of those who created it and those who came before it. Zoltan Istvan, the transhumanist candidate for governor of California,toldTech Insiderthat a lot of the most important work in longevity is coming from a handful of the billionaires...around six or seven of them.

Immortality as defined by straight, white men could draw out cycles of oppression. Without old attitudes dying off and replaced by the impatience of youth, social change might become impossible. Artificial intelligence has already been shown to absorb the biases of itscreators. Uploading someones brain into a clone of themselves doesnt make them less likely to discriminate. Thiel andMusk, for example, identify as libertarians and have frequently suggested that taxes are obsolete and that governmental military spending needs to be curbed (and put into life-enhancing technologies).

Thiel himself is a Donald Trump supporter. A one-timeassociateMichael Anissimov, previousmedia officer at Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a Thiel-funded AI think tank, has published a white nationalist manifesto. In a 2013 interview, Anissimov said that there were already significant differences in intelligence between the races, and that a transhumanist society would inevitably lead to people lording it over others in a way that has never been seen before in history. It doesnt take much to guess who would be doing the "lording".

"The first enhanced humans will not be ordinary people;they'll be the people who have already made those ordinary people economically obsolete through automation. They'll be tech billionaires," says O'Connell.

If those who form society in the age of transhumanism aremen like Musk and Thiel, its probable that thissociety will have few social safety nets. There will be an uneven rate of technological progress globally; even a post-human society can replicate the unequal global wealth distribution which we see today. In some cities and countries, inhabitants maylive forever, while in others the residents die of malnutrition.If people dont die off, the environmental consequences from widespread natural resource devastation to unsustainable energy demands would be widespread.

It would be remiss to tar all transhumanists with one brush. In 2014, Istvan claimed inThe Huffington Postthat the membership of transhumanist societies and Facebook groups has started to expand in number and in diversity, drawing in young and old people of all political persuasions and nationalities.

There are some prominent transhumanists who dont fit into the Silicon Valley mould. Natasha Vita-More, the former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Humanity+ , the globaltranshumanist organisation, has spoken about the potential for a posthuman society to address issues of economic justice. Other academics and philosophers have even spoken about the need to explicitly ground diversity and tolerance within posthumanism, such as Nick Bostrom, the head of the Future of Humanity institute and one of the original modern transhumanist thinkers.

It remains the case, though, that the majority of the money invested inmaking transhumanism a reality comes from rich, white men. As the descendants of a species with a tendency to exploit thedowntrodden, any posthumans must guard against replicating thosesame biases in a new society. For some, potentially in the near future, death might become optional. For others, death will remain inevitable.

Read more from the original source:
The first men to conquer death will create a new social order a terrifying one - New Statesman

With all its morbid decadence, the richly-layered Gothic imagination and cosmic horror of Bloodborne tends to overshadow some of its more (post)modern influences. Bloodborne isnt a traditionalist, after all, but a punk: or to be more precise, a cyberpunk. It may not havesinister corporations or hackers, yet this sci-fi renegade still conjures the rebellious ghost in the machine.

Most obviously, theres the overpowering presence of that looming megalopolis Yharnam as dependent on monumental, almost brutalist architecture as any good futuristic urban sprawl. The social dynamics within Yharnam echo the politics of cyberpunk, the hegemonic power of the Healing Church pitted against the social outcasts roaming the grimy streets. Dangerous social experiments and unchecked technological advancements have led to a Victorian dystopia. There are even cyberspaces, simulated, subordinate worlds in the form of the Dreams, which can be accessed and even hacked by those who are privy to secret knowledge.

Yharnham:

Ridley Scott'sBlade Runner:

And just like cyberpunk, the world of Bloodborne is held captive by the promise of transhumanism the idea that humankind will, one day, be able to transcend our fleshlylimitations and become something more. Whether it is Deus Ex or Bloodborne, the tool for this quasi-religious endeavour is cutting edge research and technology. In Deus Ex, that means body modification through nanotech or even merging consciousnesses with an omnipresent AI. In Bloodborne, its the Healing Church and Byrgenwerth researching into the old ones and their blood that drives this change: aiming to transform humans, in theory, into celestial beings that have entirely discarded their humanity. Not unlike in Blade Runner, the eye becomes an omnipresent symbol of self-directed evolution and the dangerous knowledge necessary to pursue it.

However, Bloodborneisa punk that refuses to slavishly follow in the tracks of those that came before. The differences are the most fascinating thing here. The futuristic vision of transhumanism, whether it is presented as a utopian promise or a dystopian threat, is seen as an evolutionary culmination or perhaps even singularity that severs the umbilical cord that connects us to our evolutionary history. The human is a product of natural processes, distant cousin of the apes. The posthuman the product of transhumanism is something different (strangely, it is our human arrogance that leads to this fallacy of teleological evolution.)

Blade Runner

Eye of a Blood-Drunk Hunter

Bloodbornes idea of transhumanism is recognisable, but different. Its still a morally complex idea, both pursued by individuals and institutions while also causing societal upheaval, but its vector is in the opposite direction. The path to transcendence doesnt lead the inhabitants of Yharnam away from humankinds evolutionary history, but confronts it head-on in a retrogressive journey. The first enemies our hunter encounters are beastmen, many of them recognisably human but some, like the werewolves or Vicar Amelia, almost devoid of human characteristics. Theyre hairy and canine, clearly mammalian despite their deformities. So far, this is in keeping with stories like Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or H.P. Lovecrafts tales of human degeneracy, such as Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, in which a British nobleman burns himself alive after discovering that one of his ancestors was an ape goddess from the Congo. These stories play with our post-Darwinian revulsion at being the offspring of mere animals.

But as you progress through Bloodborne, the hunter descends deeper down the evolutionary ladder. Soon, enemies resemble snakes, insects, arachnids. Later, they become more alien still, strange variations of squids, snails, slugs (that is, molluscs) or even fungi. They have names like Celestial Emissary, or Celestial Child and are closely related to the Great Ones, some of whom, like Ebrietas or Kos, share similarities with the games mollusc-like creatures. Bloodborne displays a special fascination with mushrooms and molluscs, as well as the creatures of the ocean (especially in The Old Hunters DLC). These creatures are associated with the primordial, the early origins of life on earth, and their strange forms, both beautiful and disturbing, gives them a semblance of otherworldliness. And since they dont seem to belong to this world, perhaps they originally visited earth from unknown regions of the cosmos?

Kos

Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos

Celestial Child

Nudibranch, Nembrotha Kubaryana. Photo by Nick Hobgood

Nudibranch, Nembrotha Cristata. Photo by Chriswan Sungkono.

Nudibranch, Tritoniopsis Elegans. Photo by Sean Murray.

From this anthropocentric perspective, becoming like these creatures means getting closer to the miraculous origins of life, when the earth and the cosmos had yet to be disentangled. The transhumanism of Bloodborne thus turns the usual teleological view of human evolution on its head; the forces of evolution, whether natural or self-directed, will not bring humans closer to the gods, but have instead distanced them from the celestial spring of life. To fulfil their atavistic yearning to return to the lap of the cosmos, the inhabitants of Yharnam must regress to earlier evolutionary stages. The horror and tragedy of turning into wolf-like beasts, therefore, isnt just due to a revulsion to our animal ancestors or the destruction they cause, but the knowledge that those beastmen didnt regress far enough. If only they hadnt gotten lost in this evolutionary valley, they could have emerged on the other side as transcendental beings, as kin not of the earth, but the cosmos. At least, thats one way of looking at the complex picture Bloodborne paints.

The transcended hunter as slug-like Great One in Bloodbornes true ending

The beautiful thing about this is that it doesnt just fly in the face of transhumanism as it is usually understood, but the most problematic aspects of Lovecrafts work, too. The ugly concept of degeneracy, with all its overt racism, was an integral part of Lovecrafts fictional worlds. The ancient and unambiguously evil powers of the Great Old Ones is tied to primitives and mongrels, marginalised humans seen as genetically impure and degraded. They are easily manipulated by the old gods and worship them in the hidden and remote corners of the earth.

In Bloodborne, the blame of Yharnams ruin is dramatically shifted. The hidden corners of worship arent foreign jungles or secluded villages, but the sacred spaces of a church that is the backbone and centre of a sprawling megalopolis; the mysteries of the Great Ones are still secret knowledge, but secrets of a powerful, manipulative elite (as you would expect in the conspiracy-filled worlds of cyberpunk stories). But while this elites endeavours clearly lead to a horrific dystopia, the moral issues of this regressive transhumanism stay ambiguous throughout. The degenerate beastmen are hapless, unfortunate victims rather than villains. The experiment of transcendence through reverse evolution seems doomed to fail, but it is not at all clear whether that goal is inherently misguided. After all, the Great Ones seem amoral rather than evil (not unlike the people of Yharnam), and the hunter is no stranger to the allure these celestial beings exert through their disturbing kind of beauty. Perhaps their apparent darkness stems purely from the human minds failing to comprehend their true nature? Either way, Lovecrafts ideas of degeneracy doesnt entirely fit into Bloodbornes world.

Being kin to both the Lovecraftian as well as cyberpunk, Bloodborne, too, is a kind of mongrel. But this impurity is precisely what enables it to distinguish itself and comment meaningfully on its ancestral genres. It reshapes its influences by letting disparate ideas collide and creates something fresh from the wreckage. Its not unique in its subversion of transhumanist idealism or Lovecraftian racist tropes, but the way it combines these separate issues in a seamless if ambiguous whole is entirely original.

Bloodborne is both a cyberpunk dystopia in which the end point of self-directed evolution is not a disembodied mind, but a slug or a squid, as well as a tale of cosmic horror where that dubious degeneracy stems not from shady outsiders or social outcasts, but squarely from within organised mainstream religion and science. It shares with cyberpunk an awareness and distaste for the unequal power dynamics in a world governed by the amoral ambitions of hegemonies, but, like Lovecraft, looks backwards to our distant origins rather than to the future. And soBloodborne transcends its influences, and challenges us on new planes of existence.

The rest is here:
Bloodborne, Transhumanism and Cosmic Cyberpunk - Kotaku UK (blog)

Last week in TAC, Zoltan Istvan wrote about The Growing World of Libertarian Transhumanism linking the transhumanist movement with all of its featureslike cyborgs, human robots and designer babiesto the ideas of liberty. To say Mr. Istvan is mistaken in his assessment is an understatement. Transhumanism should be rejected by libertarians as an abomination of human evolution.

We begin with Mr. Istvans definition of transhumanism:

transhumanism is the international movement of using science and technology to radically change the human being and experience. Its primary goal is to deliver and embrace a utopian techno-optimistic worlda world that consists of biohackers, cyborgists, roboticists, life extension advocates, cryonicists, Singularitarians, and other science-devoted people.

The ultimate task, however, is nothing less than overcoming biological human death and to solve all humanitys problems. Throughout much of Mr. Istvans work on this issue, he seems to think these ideas are perfectly compatible with libertarianismself-evident evenso he doesnt care to elaborate for his befuddled readers.

While most advocates of liberty could be considered, as Matt Ridley coined it, rational optimistsmeaning that generally we are optimistic, but not dogmatic, about progressit is easy to get into a state in which everything that is produced by the market is good per se and every new technology is hailed as the next step on the path of progress. In this sense, these libertarians become what Rod Dreher has called Technological Men. For them, choice matters more than what is chosen. [The Technological Man] is not concerned with what he should desire; rather, he is preoccupied with how he can acquire or accomplish what he desires.

Transhumanists including Mr. Istvan are a case in point. In his TAC article he not only endorses such things as the defeat of death, but even robotic hearts, virtual reality sex, and telepathy via mind-reading headsets. Need more of his grand ideas? How about brain implants ectogenesis, artificial intelligence, exoskeleton suits, designer babies, gene editing tech? At no point he wonders if we should even strive for these technologies.

When he does acknowledge potential problems he has quick (and crazy) solutions at hand: For example, what would happen if people never die, while new ones are coming into the world in abundance? His solution to the fear of overpopulation: eugenics. It is here where we see how libertarian Mr. Istvan truly is. When his political philosophythe supposedly libertarian onecomes into conflict with his idea of transhumanism, he suddenly drops the former and argues in favor of state-controlled breeding (or, as he says, controlled breeding by non-profit organizations such as the WHO, which is, by the way, state financed). I cautiously endorse the idea of licensing parents, a process that would be little different than getting a drivers licence. Parents who pass a series of basic tests qualify and get the green light to get pregnant and raise children.

The most frustrating thing is how similar he sounds to communists and socialists in his arguments. In most articles you read by transhumanists, you can see the dream of human perfection. Mr. Istvan says so himself: Transhumanists want more guarantees than just death, consumerism, and offspring. Much More. They want to be better, smarter, strongerperhaps even perfect and immortal if science can make them that way.

Surely it is the goal of transhumanists that, in their world, the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. You can just edit the genes of the embryo in the way that they are as intelligent as Aristotle, as poetic as Goethe, and as musically talented as Mozart. There are two problems, though: First, the world would become extremely boring, consisting only of perfect human beings who are masters at everything (which perhaps would make human cooperation superfluous). Second, that quote was famously uttered by the socialist Leon Trotsky.

As Ludwig von Mises wrote sarcastically, the socialist paradise will be the kingdom of perfection, populated by completely happy supermen. This has always been the mantra of socialists, starting with utopian thinkers like Charles Fourier, but also being embraced by the scientific ones like Marx, who derived his notion of history in which communism is the final stage of humanity from Hegel. Hegel himself believed in the man-godnot in the way that God became man through Jesus, but that man could become God one day. Intentionally or not, transhumanists sound dangerously similar to that. What they would actually create would be the New Soviet Man through bio-engineering and total environmental control as the highest social goal. In other words, you get inhuman ideological tyranny taken to a whole new level.

It should be noted that sometimes transhumanists recognize this themselvesbut if they do, their solutions only make things worse (much worse). Take Adam Zaretsky as example, who says that these new human beings shouldnt be perfect: Its important to make versions of transgenic human anatomy that are not based on idealism. But his solution is frightening: The idea is that you take a gene, say for pig noses, or ostrich anuses, or aardvark tongue, and you paste that into a human sperm, a human egg, a human zygote. A baby starts to form. And: We could let it flow into our anatomy, and these peoplewho yes, are humansshould be appreciated for who and what they are, after they are forced to be born in a really radically strange way. Its no surprise that Rod Dreher calls Mr. Zaretsky a sick monster, because he truly seems to be one when it comes to his transhumanist vision. He wants to create handicapped human beings on purpose.

If this were what libertarians think should happen, it would be sad (thankfully its mostly not). As Jeff Deist notes, it is important to remember that liberty is natural and organic and comports with human action. It doesnt require a new man. Transhumanists may say that the introduction of their idea is inevitable (in Istvans words, Whether people like it or not, transhumanism has arrived) but that is not true. And in this sense, it is time for libertarians to argue against the notion of extreme transhumanism. Yes, the market has brought it about and yes, the state shouldnt prohibit it (though giving your baby a pig nose could certainly be a violation of rights), but still, one shouldnt be relativist or even nihilist about such frightening developments. It would be a shame if the libertarian maxim of Everyone should be able to do whatever one wants to (as long as no one is hurt by it) becomes Everyone should do whatever one can do just because it is possible.

Finally, it comes as no surprise that transhumanists are largely, if not all, atheists (or as Mr. Istvan says: Im an atheist, therefore Im a transhumanist. This just proves what the classical liberal historian Lord Acton talked about when he said, Progress, the religion of those who have none. In the end, transhumanism is the final step to get God out of the way. It would be the continuation of what Richard Weaver wrote about in Ideas Have Consequences: Instead of seeing nature, the world and life overall as a means to get to know God, humans in the last centuries have become accustomed to seeing the world as something that is only there for humans to take and use for their own pleasures. Transhumanism would be the final step of this process: the conquest of death.

You dont have to be religious to find this abhorrent. As we have seen, it would be the end to all religion, to human cooperation overall, in all likelihood to liberty itself, and even the good-bye to humanity. It would be the starting point of the ultimate dystopia.

Kai Weiss is an International Relations student and works for the Austrian Economics Center and Hayek Institute, two libertarianthink tanks based in Vienna, Austria.

See the article here:
Transhumanism Is Not Libertarian, It's an Abomination - The American Conservative

Zoltan Istvan is launching his campaign to become Libertarian governor of the American state of California with two signature policies. First, hell eliminate poverty with a universal basic income that will guarantee US$5,000 per month for every Californian household for ever. (Hell do this without raising taxes, he promises.)

The next item in his in-tray is eliminating death. He intends to divert trillions of dollars into life-extending technologies robotic hearts, artificial exoskeletons, genetic editing, bionic limbs and so on in the hope that each Californian man, woman and AI (artificial intelligence) will eventually be able to upload their consciousness to the Cloud and experience digital eternity.

What we can experience as a human being is going to be dramatically different within two decades, Istvan says, when we meet at his home in Mill Valley, California. We have five senses now. We might have thousands in 30 or 40 years. We might have very different bodies, too.

I have friends who are about a year away from cutting off their arm and replacing it with a prosthetic version. And sure, pretty soon the robotic arm really will be better than a biological one. Lets say you work in construction and your buddy can lift a thousand times what you can. The question is: do you get it?

For most people, the answer to this question is likely to be, Erm, maybe Ill pass for the moment. But to a transhumanist such as Istvan, 44, the answer is, Hell, yes! A former National Geographic reporter and property speculator, Istvan combines the enthusiasm of a child whos read a lot of Marvel comics with a parodically presidential demeanour. Hes a blond-haired, blue-eyed father of two with an athletic build, a firm handshake and the sort of charisma that goes down well in TED talks.

Like most transhumanists (there are a lot of them in California), Istvan believes our species can, and indeed should, strive to transcend our biological limitations. And he has taken it upon himself to push this idea out of the Google Docs of a few Silicon Valley dreamers and into the American political mainstream.

Twenty-five years ago, hardly anybody was recycling, he explains. Now, environmentalism has conditioned an entire generation. Im trying to put transhumanism on a similar trajectory, so that in 10, 15 years, everybody is going to know what it means and think about it in a very positive way.

What were saying is that over the next 30 years, the complexity of human experience is going to become so amazing, you ought to at least see it

Zoltan Istvan

I meet Istvan at the home he shares with his wife, Lisa an obstetrician and gynaecologist with Planned Parenthood and their two daughters, six-year-old Eva, and Isla, who is three. I had been expecting a gadget-laden cyber-home; in fact, he resides in a 100-year-old loggers house built from Californian redwood, with a converted stable on the ground floor and plastic childrens toys in the yard. If it werent for the hyper-inflated prices in the Bay Area (Its sort of Facebook yuppie-ville around here, says Istvan) youd say it was a humble Californian homestead.

Still, there are a few details that give him away, such as the forbidding security warnings on his picket fence. During his unsuccessful bid for the presidency last year he stood as the Transhumanist Party candidate and scored zero per cent a section of the religious right identified him as the Antichrist. This, combined with Lisas work providing abortions, means they get a couple of death threats a week and have had to report to the FBI.

Christians in America have made transhumanism as popular as its become, says Istvan. They really need something that they can point their finger at that fulfils Revelations.

Istvan also has a West Wing box set on his mantelpiece and a small Meccano cyborg by the fireplace. Its named Jethro, after the protagonist of his self-published novel, The Transhumanist Wager (2013). And there is an old Samsung phone attached to the front door, which enables him to unlock the house using the microchip in his finger.

A lot of the Christians consider my chip a mark of the beast, he says. Im like, No! Its so I dont have to carry my keys when I go out jogging.

Istvan hopes to chip his daughters before long for security purposes and recently argued with his wife about whether it was even worth saving for a university fund for them, since by the time they reach university age, advances in artificial intelligence will mean they can just upload all the learning they need. Lisa won that argument. But hes inclined not to freeze his sperm and Lisas eggs, since if they decide to have a third child, 10 or 20 or 30 years hence, theyll be able to combine their DNA.

Even if theres a mischievous, fake-it-till-you-make-it quality to Istvan, theres also a core of seriousness. He is genuinely troubled that we are on the verge of a technological dystopia that the mass inequalities that helped fuel US President Donald Trumps rise will only worsen when the digital revolution really gets under way. And he despairs of the retrogressive bent of the current administration: Trump talks all the time about immigrants taking jobs. Bulls**t. Its technology thats taking jobs. We have about four million truck drivers who are about to lose their jobs to automation. This is why capitalism needs a basic income to survive.

And hes not wrong in identifying that emerging technologies such as AI and bio-enhancement will bring with them policy implications, and its probably a good idea to start talking about them now.

Stephen Hawkings question to China: will AI help or destroy the human race?

Certainly, life extension is a hot investment in Silicon Valley, whose elites have a hard time with the idea that their billions will not protect them from an earthly death. Google was an early investor in the secretive biotech start-up Calico, the California Life Company, which aims to devise interventions that slow ageing and counteract age-related diseases. Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel has invested millions in parabiosis: the process of curing ageing with transfusions of young peoples blood.

Another biotech firm, United Therapeutics, has unveiled plans to grow fresh organs from DNA. Clearly, it is possible, through technology, to make death optional, the firms founder, Martine Rothblatt, told a recent gathering of the National Academy of Medicine in Los Angeles.

In attendance were Google co-founder Sergey Brin, vegan pop star Moby and numerous venture capitalists. Istvan fears that unless we develop policies to regulate this transition, the Thiels of this world will soon be hoarding all the young blood for themselves.

Clearly, it is possible, through technology, to make death optional

Martine Rothblatt

Istvan was born in Oregon in 1973, the son of Hungarian immigrants who fled Stalins tanks in 1968. He had a comfortable middle-class upbringing his mother was a devout Catholic and sent him to Catholic school and an eye for a story. After graduating from Columbia University, he embarked on a solo round-the-world yachting expedition, during which, he says, he read 500 works of classic literature. He spent his early career reporting for the National Geographic channel from more than 100 countries, many of them conflict zones, claiming to have invented the extreme sport of volcano boarding along the way.

One of the things he shares in common with Americas current president is a fortune accrued from real estate. While he was making films overseas in the noughties, his expenses were minimal, so he was able to invest all of his pay cheques in property.

AlphaGos China showdown: Why its time to embrace artificial intelligence

So many people in America were doing this flipping thing at the time, explains Istvan. I realised very quickly, Wow! I could make enough money to retire. It was just quite easy and lucrative to do that.

At his peak, he had a portfolio of 19 fixer-upper houses, most of which he managed to sell before the crash of 2008. He now retains nine as holiday rentals and uses the proceeds to fund his political campaigns (he is reluctant to name his other backers). Still, he insists hes not part of the 1 per cent; the most extravagant item of furniture is a piano, and his groceries are much the same as you find in many liberal, middle-class Californian households.

Istvan cant think of any particular incident that prompted his interest in eternal life, other than perhaps a rejection of Catholicism.

Fifty per cent of me thinks after we die we get eaten by worms, and our body matter and brain return unconsciously to the cosmos [] The other half subscribes to the idea that we live in a holographic universe where other alien artificial intelligences have reached the singularity, he says, referring to the idea, advanced by Google engineer Ray Kurzweil, that pretty soon we will all merge with AI in one transcendental consciousness.

However, when Istvan first encountered transhumanism, at university via an article on cryonics (the practice of deep-freezing the recently dead in the hope that they can be revived at some point), he was sold. Within 90 seconds, I realised thats what I wanted to do in my life.

After a near-death experience in Vietnam he came close to stepping on a landmine Istvan decided to return to America and make good on this vow. I was nearing 30 and Id done some great work, but after all that time Id spent in conflict zones, seeing dead bodies, stuff like that, I thought it would be a good time to dedicate myself to conquering death.

He spent four years writing his novel, which he proudly claims was rejected by more than 600 agents and publishers. Its a dystopian story that imagines a Christian nation outlawing transhumanism, prompting all the billionaires to retreat to an offshore sea-stead where they can work on their advances undisturbed (Thiel has often threatened to do something similar).

Istvan continued to promote transhumanism by writing free columns for Huffington Post and Vice, chosen because they have strong Alexa rankings (ie, they show up high in Google search results).

I wrote something like 200 articles, putting transhumanism through the Google algorithm again and again, he says. I found it a very effective way to spread the message. I covered every angle that I could think of: disability and transhumanism; LGBT issues and transhumanism; transhumanist parenting.

Hes proud to say hes the only mainstream journalist who is so devoted to the cause. A lot of people write about transhumanism, but I think Im the only one who says, This is the best thing thats ever happened!

Why your biological age may hold the key to reversing the ageing process

Istvans presidential campaign was an attempt to take all of this up a level. It sounds as if he had a lot of fun. He toured Rust Belt car parks and Deep South mega-churches in a coffin-shaped immortality bus inspired by the one driven by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to promote LSD in the 1960s.

His platform Make America Immortal Again earned a fair amount of publicity, but Americans seemed ill-prepared for such concepts as the AI imperative (the idea that the first nation to create a true AI will basically win everything, so America had better be the first) and the singularity. At one point, he and his supporters were held at gunpoint by some Christians in Alabama.

The experience taught him a salutary lesson: unless you are a billionaire, it is simply impossible to make any kind of dent in the system. Hence his defection to the Libertarian Party, which vies with the Greens as the third party in American politics. Every town I go to, theres a Libertarian meet-up. With the Transhumanists, Id have to create the meet-up. So theres more to work with.

The Libertarian presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, received 3.27 per cent of the votes last year, including half a million votes in California. About seven or eight million are likely to vote in the California governor race, in which context, half a million starts to become a lot of votes, Istvan explains.

His own politics are somewhere between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, he admits, and he has a hard time converting the right wing of his new party to causes such as basic income. (The general spirit of libertarian America is, Hands off!) But he believes transhumanism shares enough in common with libertarianism for the alliance to be viable; the core precepts of being able to do what you like as long as you dont harm anyone else are the same. And the gubernatorial campaign serves as a primary for the 2020 presidential election, when he believes the Libertarian candidate will have a feasible chance of participating in the television debates.

But whats wrong with death? Dont we need old people to die to make space for new people? And by extension, we need old ideas and old regimes to die, too. Imagine if William Randolph Hearst or Genghis Khan were still calling the shots now. And imagine if Mark Zuckerberg and Vladimir Putin were doing so in 200 years. Innovation would cease, the species would atrophy, everyone would get terribly bored. Isnt it the ultimate narcissism to want to live forever?

Istvan does concede that transhumanism is a very selfish philosophy. However, he has an answer for most of the other stuff.

Im a believer in overpopulation Ive been to Delhi and its overcrowded, he says. But if we did a better job of governing, the planet could hold 15 billion people comfortably. Its really a question of better rules and regulations.

And when discussing the desirability of eternal life, he turns into a sort of holiday rep for the future.

What were saying is that over the next 30 years, the complexity of human experience is going to become so amazing, you ought to at least see it, Istvan says. A lot of people find that a lot more compelling than, say, dying of leukaemia.

Still, it comes as little surprise that hes finding live for ever an easier sell than give money to poor people in 21st-century America.

I cant imagine basic income not becoming a platform in the 2020 election, he insists. And if not then, at some point, someone is going to run and win on it. The Republicans should like it because it streamlines government. The Democrats should like it because it helps poor people. Right now, Americans dont like it because it sounds like socialism. But it just needs a little reframing.

Basic-income experiments are already under way in parts of Canada, Finland and the Netherlands, but how would he fund such an idea in the US? He cant raise taxes libertarians hate that. And he doesnt want to alienate Silicon Valley.

If we did a better job of governing, the planet could hold 15 billion people comfortably

Zoltan Istvan

How do you tell the 1 per cent youre going to take all this money from them? It wouldnt work, he says. They control too many things. But Istvan has calculated that 45 per cent of California is government-controlled land that the state could monetise.

A lot of environmentalists are upset at me for that, saying, Woah, Zolt, you want to put a shopping mall in Yosemite? Well, the reality is that the poor people in America will never be able to afford to go to Yosemite. Im trying to be a diplomat here.

And he insists that if Americans miss those national parks when theyve been turned into luxury condos and Taco Bells, theyll be able to replenish them some day if they want.

Theres nanotechnology coming through that would enable us to do that, Istvan argues. We have GMOs [genetically modified organisms] that can regrow plants twice as quick. In 50 or 100 years, were not even going to be worried about natural resources.

Such is his wager that exponential technological growth is around the corner and we may as well hurry it along, because its our best chance of clearing up the mess weve made of things thus far.

The safety of genetically-modified crops is backed by science

Didnt the political developments of 2016 persuade him that progress can be slow and sometimes go backwards? Actually, Istvan argues that what were witnessing are the death throes of conservatism, Christianity, even capitalism.

Everyone says the current pope is the best one weve had for ages, that hes so progressive and whatever. Actually, Catholicism is dying, says Istvan. Nobodys giving it any money any more, so the pope had better moderate its message. As for capitalism, all of this nationalism and populism are just the dying moments.

Its a system that goes against the very core of humanitarian urges. And while its brought us many wonderful material gains, at some point we can say, Thats enough. In the transhumanist age, we will reach utopia. Crime drops to zero. Poverty will end. Violence will drop. At some point, we become a race of individuals who are pretty nice to each other.

But now weve talked for so long that Istvan needs to go and pick up his daughters from childcare. He insists that I join him. What do his family make of all of this?

My wife is a bit sceptical of a lot of my timelines, he says. Lisa comes from practical Wisconsin farming stock, and its a fair bet that her work with Planned Parenthood keeps her pretty grounded. They met on dating website match.com. Does she believe in all this stuff?

I dont want to say shes not a transhumanist, he says, but I dont think shed cryogenically freeze herself tomorrow. I would. Im like, If you see me dying of a heart attack, please put me in a refrigerator. She thinks thats weird.

We arrive at the community centre where Istvans daughters are being looked after. They come running out in summer dresses, sweet and sunny and happy to be alive. Both of them want to be doctors when they grow up, like their mum.

The Times/The Interview People

More here:
Immortality: Silicon Valley's latest obsession ushers in the transhumanist era - South China Morning Post

Right Wing Bonus Tracks: Get Ready For Satanic Gay Human/Animal Transhumanism Right Wing Watch President Trump is warning that any attack from North Korea will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. Wayne Allyn Root says that liberals are the biggest racists in the world. Liberty Counsel claims that, as a result of ...

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Right Wing Bonus Tracks: Get Ready For Satanic Gay Human/Animal Transhumanism - Right Wing Watch

Transhuman or trans-human is the concept of an intermediary form between human and posthuman.[1] In other words, a transhuman is a being that resembles a human in most respects but who has powers and abilities beyond those of standard humans.[2] These abilities might include improved intelligence, awareness, strength, or durability. Transhumans sometimes appear in science-fiction as cyborgs or genetically-enhanced humans.

The use of the term "transhuman" goes back to French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote in his 1949 book The Future of Mankind:

Liberty: that is to say, the chance offered to every man (by removing obstacles and placing the appropriate means at his disposal) of 'trans-humanizing' himself by developing his potentialities to the fullest extent.[3]

And in a 1951 unpublished revision of the same book:

In consequence one is the less disposed to reject as unscientific the idea that the critical point of planetary Reflection, the fruit of socialization, far from being a mere spark in the darkness, represents our passage, by Translation or dematerialization, to another sphere of the Universe: not an ending of the ultra-human but its accession to some sort of trans-humanity at the ultimate heart of things.[4]

In 1957 book New Bottles for New Wine, English evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley wrote:

The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature. "I believe in transhumanism": once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.[5]

One of the first professors of futurology, FM-2030, who taught "new concepts of the Human" at The New School of New York City in the 1960s, used "transhuman" as shorthand for "transitional human". Calling transhumans the "earliest manifestation of new evolutionary beings", FM argued that signs of transhumans included physical and mental augmentations including prostheses, reconstructive surgery, intensive use of telecommunications, a cosmopolitan outlook and a globetrotting lifestyle, androgyny, mediated reproduction (such as in vitro fertilisation), absence of religious beliefs, and a rejection of traditional family values.[6]

FM-2030 used the concept of transhuman as an evolutionary transition, outside the confines of academia, in his contributing final chapter to the 1972 anthology Woman, Year 2000.[7] In the same year, American cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger contributed to conceptualization of "transhumanity" in his book Man into Superman.[8] In 1982, American Natasha Vita-More authored a statement titled Transhumanist Arts Statement and outlined what she perceived as an emerging transhuman culture.[9]

Jacques Attali, writing in 2006, envisaged transhumans as an altruistic vanguard of the later 21st century:

Vanguard players (I shall call them transhumans) will run (they are already running) relational enterprises in which profit will be no more than a hindrance, not a final goal. Each of these transhumans will be altruistic, a citizen of the planet, at once nomadic and sedentary, his neighbor's equal in rights and obligations, hospitable and respectful of the world. Together, transhumans will give birth to planetary institutions and change the course of industrial enterprises.[10]

In March 2007, American physicist Gregory Cochran and paleoanthropologist John Hawks published a study, alongside other recent research on which it builds, which amounts to a radical reappraisal of traditional views, which tended to assume that humans have reached an evolutionary endpoint. Physical anthropologist Jeffrey McKee argued the new findings of accelerated evolution bear out predictions he made in a 2000 book The Riddled Chain. Based on computer models, he argued that evolution should speed up as a population grows because population growth creates more opportunities for new mutations; and the expanded population occupies new environmental niches, which would drive evolution in new directions. Whatever the implications of the recent findings, McKee concludes that they highlight a ubiquitous point about evolution: "every species is a transitional species".[11]

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Transhuman - Wikipedia

The rapid development of so-called NBIC technologies nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science are giving rise to possibilities that have long been the domain of science fiction.

Disease, ageing and even death are all human realities that these technologies seek to end.

They may enable us to enjoy greater morphological freedom we could take on new forms through prosthetics or genetic engineering.

Or advance our cognitive capacities.

We could use brain-computer interfaces to link us to advanced artificial intelligence (AI).

Nanobots could roam our bloodstream to monitor our health and enhance our emotional propensities for joy, love or other emotions.

Advances in one area often raise new possibilities in others, and this convergence may bring about radical changes to our world in the near-future.

Transhumanism is the idea that humans should transcend their current natural state and limitations through the use of technology that we should embrace self-directed human evolution.

If the history of technological progress can be seen as humankinds attempt to tame nature to better serve its needs, transhumanism is the logical continuation: the revision of humankinds nature to better serve its fantasies.

As David Pearce, a leading proponent of transhumanism and co-founder of Humanity+, says:

If we want to live in paradise, we will have to engineer it ourselves.

If we want eternal life, then well need to rewrite our bug-ridden genetic code and become god-like only hi-tech solutions can ever eradicate suffering from the world.

Compassion alone is not enough.

But there is a darker side to the naive faith that Pearce and other proponents have in transhumanism one that is decidedly dystopian.

There is unlikely to be a clear moment when we emerge as transhuman.

Rather technologies will become more intrusive and integrate seamlessly with the human body.

Technology has long been thought of as an extension of the self.

Many aspects of our social world, not least our financial systems, are already largely machine-based.

There is much to learn from these evolving human/machine hybrid systems.

Yet the often Utopian language and expectations that surround and shape our understanding of these developments have been under-interrogated.

The profound changes that lie ahead are often talked about in abstract ways, because evolutionary advancements are deemed so radical that they ignore the reality of current social conditions.

In this way, transhumanism becomes a kind of techno-anthropocentrism, in which transhumanists often underestimate the complexity of our relationship with technology.

They see it as a controllable, malleable tool that, with the correct logic and scientific rigour, can be turned to any end.

In fact, just as technological developments are dependent on and reflective of the environment in which they arise, they in turn feed back into the culture and create new dynamics often imperceptibly.

Situating transhumanism, then, within the broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts within which it emerges is vital to understanding how ethical it is.

Max More and Natasha Vita-More, in their edited volume The Transhumanist Reader, claim the need in transhumanism for inclusivity, plurality and continuous questioning of our knowledge.

Yet these three principles are incompatible with developing transformative technologies within the prevailing system from which they are currently emerging: advanced capitalism.

One problem is that a highly competitive social environment doesnt lend itself to diverse ways of being.

Instead it demands increasingly efficient behaviour.

Take students, for example.

If some have access to pills that allow them to achieve better results, can other students afford not to follow?

This is already a quandary.

Increasing numbers of students reportedly pop performance-enhancing pills.

And if pills become more powerful, or if the enhancements involve genetic engineering or intrusive nanotechnology that offer even stronger competitive advantages, what then?

Rejecting an advanced technological orthodoxy could potentially render someone socially and economically moribund (perhaps evolutionarily so), while everyone with access is effectively forced to participate to keep up.

Going beyond everyday limits is suggestive of some kind of liberation.

However, here it is an imprisoning compulsion to act a certain way.

We literally have to transcend in order to conform (and survive).

The more extreme the transcendence, the more profound the decision to conform and the imperative to do so.

The systemic forces cajoling the individual into being upgraded to remain competitive also play out on a geo-political level.

One area where technology R&D has the greatest transhumanist potential is defence.

DARPA (the US defence department responsible for developing military technologies), which is attempting to create metabolically dominant soldiers, is a clear example of how vested interests of a particular social system could determine the development of radically powerful transformative technologies that have destructive rather than Utopian applications.

The rush to develop super-intelligent AI by globally competitive and mutually distrustful nation states could also become an arms race.

In Radical Evolution, novelist Verner Vinge describes a scenario in which superhuman intelligence is the ultimate weapon.

Ideally, mankind would proceed with the utmost care in developing such a powerful and transformative innovation.

There is quite rightly a huge amount of trepidation around the creation of super-intelligence and the emergence of the singularity the idea that once AI reaches a certain level it will rapidly redesign itself, leading to an explosion of intelligence that will quickly surpass that of humans (something that will happen by 2029 according to futurist Ray Kurzweil).

If the world takes the shape of whatever the most powerful AI is programmed (or reprograms itself) to desire, it even opens the possibility of evolution taking a turn for the entirely banal could an AI destroy humankind from a desire to produce the most paperclips for example?

Its also difficult to conceive of any aspect of humanity that could not be improved by being made more efficient at satisfying the demands of a competitive system. It is the system, then, that determines humanitys evolution without taking any view on what humans are or what they should be.

One of the ways in which advanced capitalism proves extremely dynamic is in its ideology of moral and metaphysical neutrality.

As philosopher Michael Sandel says: markets dont wag fingers.

In advanced capitalism, maximising ones spending power maximises ones ability to flourish hence shopping could be said to be a primary moral imperative of the individual.

Philosopher Bob Doede rightly suggests it is this banal logic of the market that will dominate:

If biotech has rendered human nature entirely revisable, then it has no grain to direct or constrain our designs on it.

And so whose designs will our successor post-human artefacts likely bear?

I have little doubt that in our vastly consumerist, media-saturated capitalist economy, market forces will have their way.

So the commercial imperative would be the true architect of the future human.

Whether the evolutionary process is determined by a super-intelligent AI or advanced capitalism, we may be compelled to conform to a perpetual transcendence that only makes us more efficient at activities demanded by the most powerful system.

The end point is predictably an entirely nonhuman though very efficient technological entity derived from humanity that doesnt necessarily serve a purpose that a modern-day human would value in any way.

The ability to serve the system effectively will be the driving force.

This is also true of natural evolution technology is not a simple tool that allows us to engineer ourselves out of this conundrum.

But transhumanism could amplify the speed and least desirable aspects of the process.

For bioethicist Julian Savulescu, the main reason humans must be enhanced is for our species to survive.

He says we face a Bermuda Triangle of extinction: radical technological power, liberal democracy and our moral nature.

As a transhumanist, Savulescu extols technological progress, also deeming it inevitable and unstoppable.

It is liberal democracy and particularly our moral nature that should alter.

The failings of humankind to deal with global problems are increasingly obvious.

But Savulescu neglects to situate our moral failings within their wider cultural, political and economic context, instead believing that solutions lie within our biological make up.

Yet how would Savulescus morality-enhancing technologies be disseminated, prescribed and potentially enforced to address the moral failings they seek to cure?

This would likely reside in the power structures that may well bear much of the responsibility for these failings in the first place.

Hes also quickly drawn into revealing how relative and contestable the concept of morality is:

We will need to relax our commitment to maximum protection of privacy.

Were seeing an increase in the surveillance of individuals and that will be necessary if we are to avert the threats that those with antisocial personality disorder, fanaticism, represent through their access to radically enhanced technology.

Such surveillance allows corporations and governments to access and make use of extremely valuable information.

In Who Owns the Future, internet pioneer Jaron Lanier explains:

Troves of dossiers on the private lives and inner beings of ordinary people, collected over digital networks, are packaged into a new private form of elite money

It is a new kind of security the rich trade in, and the value is naturally driven up. It becomes a giant-scale levee inaccessible to ordinary people.

Crucially, this levee is also invisible to most people.

Its impacts extend beyond skewing the economic system towards elites to significantly altering the very conception of liberty, because the authority of power is both radically more effective and dispersed.

Foucaults notion that we live in a panoptic society one in which the sense of being perpetually watched instils discipline is now stretched to the point where todays incessant machinery has been called a superpanopticon.

The knowledge and information that transhumanist technologies will tend to create could strengthen existing power structures that cement the inherent logic of the system in which the knowledge arises.

This is in part evident in the tendency of algorithms toward race and gender bias, which reflects our already existing social failings.

Information technology tends to interpret the world in defined ways: it privileges information that is easily measurable, such as GDP, at the expense of unquantifiable information such as human happiness or well-being.

As invasive technologies provide ever more granular data about us, this data may in a very real sense come to define the world and intangible information may not maintain its rightful place in human affairs.

Existing inequities will surely be magnified with the introduction of highly effective psycho-pharmaceuticals, genetic modification, super intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, nanotechnology, robotic prosthetics, and the possible development of life expansion.

They are all fundamentally inegalitarian, based on a notion of limitlessness rather than a standard level of physical and mental well-being weve come to assume in healthcare.

Its not easy to conceive of a way in which these potentialities can be enjoyed by all.

Sociologist Saskia Sassen talks of the new logics of expulsion, that capture the pathologies of todays global capitalism.

The expelled include the more than 60,000 migrants who have lost their lives on fatal journeys in the past 20 years, and the victims of the racially skewed profile of the increasing prison population.

In Britain, they include the 30,000 people whose deaths in 2015 were linked to health and social care cuts and the many who perished in the Grenfell Tower fire.

Their deaths can be said to have resulted from systematic marginalisation.

Unprecedented acute concentration of wealth happens alongside these expulsions.

Advanced economic and technical achievements enable this wealth and the expulsion of surplus groups.

At the same time, Sassen writes, they create a kind of nebulous centrelessness as the locus of power:

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Transhumanism could lead to immortality for the elite - Gears Of Biz