Transhumanism has received significant media attention in recent times not in the least because the one of the movements leaders, Zoltan Istvan, ran for president in 2016 US elections.

But a British PhD candidate has warned of the darker side of a transhumanist future.

Sociologist Alex Thomas of East London University believes that transhumanism will further enforce a societal obsession with progress and efficiency at the expense of social justice and environmental sustainability. In an article published this week in The Conversation, Thomas argues that unbridled technological progress, in which technology become more intrusive and integrate seamlessly with the human body, could lead to a loss of basic societal values such as compassion and a concern for the environment.

Thomas interweaves examples ranging from new military technologies to powerful enhancement medications, arguing that, rather than assisting humanity, these technologies could potentially lead to a mechanisation of humanity and facilitate a subtle form of authoritarian control.

The rest is here:
The risk of a transhumanist future - BioEdge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The rapid development of so-called NBIC technologiesnanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive scienceare giving rise to possibilities that have long been the domain of science fiction. Disease, aging and even death are all human realities that these technologies seek to end.

They may enable us to enjoy greater morphological freedomwe 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).

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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 technologythat 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 transhumanismone 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.

Artificial intelligence GLAS-8/Flickr

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 dynamicsoften 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.

A customs officer in Bulgaria displays Captagon pills in Sofia, 12, 2007. Pills could give advantages to peoplebut only those who can afford them. Reuters/Nikolay Doychinov

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 defense 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.

U.S. army soldiers in a joint military drill together with Serbian and Bulgarian soldiers, at Koren military training ground, Bulgaria, July 15, 2017. DAPRA is currently working to create metabolically dominant soldiers. Stoyan Nenov/Reuters

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 singularitythe 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 programed (or reprograms itself) to desire, it even opens the possibility of evolution taking a turn for the entirely banalcould 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 evolutionwithout 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, maximizing ones spending power maximizes ones ability to flourishhence 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 nonhumanthough very efficienttechnological 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 evolutiontechnology 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 democracyand particularly our moral naturethat 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 societyone in which the sense of being perpetually watched instills disciplineis 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.

A man moves his finger toward a robotic hand at the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots in Madrid on November 19, 2014. AFP

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 marginalization.

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 centerlessness as the locus of power:

The oppressed have often risen against their masters. But today the oppressed have mostly been expelled and survive a great distance from their oppressors The oppressor is increasingly a complex system that combines persons, networks, and machines with no obvious centre.

Surplus populations removed from the productive aspects of the social world may rapidly increase in the near future as improvements in AI and robotics potentially result in significant automation unemployment. Large swaths of society may become productively and economically redundant. For historian Yuval Noah Harari the most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: what should we do with all the superfluous people?

We would be left with the scenario of a small elite that has an almost total concentration of wealth with access to the most powerfully transformative technologies in world history and a redundant mass of people, no longer suited to the evolutionary environment in which they find themselves and entirely dependent on the benevolence of that elite. The dehumanizing treatment of todays expelled groups shows that prevailing liberal values in developed countries dont always extend to those who dont share the same privilege, race, culture or religion.

In an era of radical technological power, the masses may even represent a significant security threat to the elite, which could be used to justify aggressive and authoritarian actions (perhaps enabled further by a culture of surveillance.)

In their transhumanist tract, The Proactionary Imperative, Steve Fuller and Veronika Lipinska argue that we are obliged to pursue techno-scientific progress relentlessly, until we achieve our god-like destiny or infinite powereffectively to serve God by becoming God. They unabashedly reveal the incipient violence and destruction such Promethean aims would require: replacing the natural with the artificial is so key to proactionary strategy at least as a serious possibility if not a likelihood [it will lead to] the long-term environmental degradation of the Earth.

The extent of suffering they would be willing to gamble in their cosmic casino is only fully evident when analysing what their project would mean for individual human beings:

A proactionary world would not merely tolerate risk-taking but outright encourage it, as people are provided with legal incentives to speculate with their bio-economic assets. Living riskily would amount to an entrepreneurship of the self [proactionaries] seek large long-term benefits for survivors of a revolutionary regime that would permit many harms along the way.

Progress on overdrive will require sacrifices.

The economic fragility that humans may soon be faced with as a result of automation unemployment would likely prove extremely useful to proactionary goals. In a society where vast swaths of people are reliant on handouts for survival, market forces would determine that less social security means people will risk more for a lower reward, so proactionaries would reinvent the welfare state as a vehicle for fostering securitised risk taking while the proactionary state would operate like a venture capitalist writ large.

At the heart of this is the removal of basic rights for Humanity 1.0," Fullers term for modern, non-augmented human beings, replaced with duties towards the future augmented Humanity 2.0. Hence the very code of our being can and perhaps must be monetised: personal autonomy should be seen as a politically licensed franchise whereby individuals understand their bodies as akin to plots of land in what might be called the genetic commons.'"

The neoliberal preoccupation with privatization would extend to human beings. Indeed, the lifetime of debt that is the reality for most citizens in developed advanced capitalist nations, takes a further step when you are born into debtsimply by being alive you are invested with capital on which a return is expected."

Socially moribund masses may thus be forced to serve the technoscientific super-project of Humanity 2.0, which uses the ideology of market fundamentalism in its quest for perpetual progress and maximum productivity. The only significant difference is that the stated aim of godlike capabilities in Humanity 2.0 is overt, as opposed to the undefined end determined by the infinite progress of an ever more efficient market logic that we have now.

Some transhumanists are beginning to understand that the most serious limitations to what humans can achieve are social and culturalnot technical. However, all too often their reframing of politics falls into the same trap as their techno-centric worldview. They commonly argue the new political poles are not left-right but techno-conservative or techno-progressive (and even techno-libertarian and techno-sceptic). Meanwhile Fuller and Lipinska argue that the new political poles will be up and down instead of left and right: those who want to dominate the skies and became all powerful, and those who want to preserve the Earth and its species-rich diversity. It is a false dichotomy. Preservation of the latter is likely to be necessary for any hope of achieving the former.

Transhumanism and advanced capitalism are two processes which value progress and efficiency above everything else. The former as a means to power and the latter as a means to profit. Humans become vessels to serve these values. Transhuman possibilities urgently call for a politics with more clearly delineated and explicit humane values to provide a safer environment in which to foster these profound changes. Where we stand on questions of social justice and environmental sustainability has never been more important. Technology doesnt allow us to escape these questionsit doesnt permit political neutrality. The contrary is true. It determines that our politics have never been important. Savulescu is right when he says radical technologies are coming. He is wrong in thinking they will fix our morality. They will reflect it.

Alexander Thomasis aPhD Candidate at theUniversity of East London.

See the original post:
AI and Transhumanism: Could Quest for Super-intelligence and Eternal Life Lead to a Dystopian Nightmare? - Newsweek

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.

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, trans-humanism 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:

The oppressed have often risen against their masters. But today the oppressed have mostly been expelled and survive a great distance from their oppressors The oppressor is increasingly a complex system that combines persons, networks, and machines with no obvious centre.

Surplus populations removed from the productive aspects of the social world may rapidly increase in the near future as improvements in AI and robotics potentially result in significant automation unemployment. Large swaths of society may become productively and economically redundant. For historian Yuval Noah Harari the most important question in 21st-century economics may well be: what should we do with all the superfluous people?

We would be left with the scenario of a small elite that has an almost total concentration of wealth with access to the most powerfully transformative technologies in world history and a redundant mass of people, no longer suited to the evolutionary environment in which they find themselves and entirely dependent on the benevolence of that elite. The dehumanising treatment of todays expelled groups shows that prevailing liberal values in developed countries dont always extend to those who dont share the same privilege, race, culture or religion.

In an era of radical technological power, the masses may even represent a significant security threat to the elite, which could be used to justify aggressive and authoritarian actions (perhaps enabled further by a culture of surveillance).

In their transhumanist tract, The Proactionary Imperative, Steve Fuller and Veronika Lipinska argue that we are obliged to pursue techno-scientific progress relentlessly, until we achieve our god-like destiny or infinite power effectively to serve god by becoming god. They unabashedly reveal the incipient violence and destruction such Promethean aims would require: replacing the natural with the artificial is so key to proactionary strategy at least as a serious possibility if not a likelihood [it will lead to] the long-term environmental degradation of the Earth.

The extent of suffering they would be willing to gamble in their cosmic casino is only fully evident when analysing what their project would mean for individual human beings:

A proactionary world would not merely tolerate risk-taking but outright encourage it, as people are provided with legal incentives to speculate with their bio-economic assets. Living riskily would amount to an entrepreneurship of the self [proactionaries] seek large long-term benefits for survivors of a revolutionary regime that would permit many harms along the way.

Progress on overdrive will require sacrifices.

The economic fragility that humans may soon be faced with as a result of automation unemployment would likely prove extremely useful to proactionary goals. In a society where vast swaths of people are reliant on handouts for survival, market forces would determine that less social security means people will risk more for a lower reward, so proactionaries would reinvent the welfare state as a vehicle for fostering securitised risk taking while the proactionary state would operate like a venture capitalist writ large.

At the heart of this is the removal of basic rights for Humanity 1.0, Fullers term for modern, non-augmented human beings, replaced with duties towards the future augmented Humanity 2.0. Hence the very code of our being can and perhaps must be monetised: personal autonomy should be seen as a politically licensed franchise whereby individuals understand their bodies as akin to plots of land in what might be called the genetic commons.

The neo-liberal preoccupation with privatisation would so extend to human beings. Indeed, the lifetime of debt that is the reality for most citizens in developed advanced capitalist nations, takes a further step when you are born into debt simply by being alive you are invested with capital on which a return is expected.

Socially moribund masses may thus be forced to serve the technoscientific super-project of Humanity 2.0, which uses the ideology of market fundamentalism in its quest for perpetual progress and maximum productivity. The only significant difference is that the stated aim of godlike capabilities in Humanity 2.0 is overt, as opposed to the undefined end determined by the infinite progress of an ever more efficient market logic that we have now.

Some transhumanists are beginning to understand that the most serious limitations to what humans can achieve are social and cultural not technical. However, all too often their reframing of politics falls into the same trap as their techno-centric worldview. They commonly argue the new political poles are not left-right but techno-conservative or techno-progressive (and even techno-libertarian and techno-sceptic). Meanwhile Fuller and Lipinska argue that the new political poles will be up and down instead of left and right: those who want to dominate the skies and became all powerful, and those who want to preserve the Earth and its species-rich diversity. It is a false dichotomy. Preservation of the latter is likely to be necessary for any hope of achieving the former.

Transhumanism and advanced capitalism are two processes which value progress and efficiency above everything else. The former as a means to power and the latter as a means to profit. Humans become vessels to serve these values. Transhuman possibilities urgently call for a politics with more clearly delineated and explicit humane values to provide a safer environment in which to foster these profound changes.

Where we stand on questions of social justice and environmental sustainability has never been more important. Technology doesnt allow us to escape these questions it doesnt permit political neutrality. The contrary is true. It determines that our politics have never been important. Savulescu is right when he says radical technologies are coming. He is wrong in thinking they will fix our morality. They will reflect it.

Alexander Thomas, PhD Candidate, University of East London.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

View original post here:
Transhumanism: Can technology help mankind transcend its natural limitations? - Scroll.in

Super humans created by design will be a reality in the near future.

Imagine if we could create the perfect President Trump by simply upgrading him a little from a "Of the people, for the people" ethical point of view. Throw in an anti-collusion, Don Jr. malware system and weve already got ourselves a better America.

This is not fake news, so saddle up: It's called Transhumanism. If you're thinking, "Wow, this sounds like a new culture whose goal is to evolve humans physically and intellectually in order to create life extension through genetic engineering with eternal life at the core," then you are correct. Good job!

Tranhumanistic thinking means you believe that you can upgrade yourself with a little help from nanotech, which honestly sounds good to meI already bought the headphones! (I wouldn't frown at a little time management and decision making skills improvements. I freely admit I have a list of complaints for my brain's manufacturer. I'm ready for some upgrades.)

The MetroSpiritual: Does your DNA code prove youre part alien?

The general public believes we are a good 100 years away from this type of technology, but surprisewe are already there. They can already genetically create superior human beings.

One way, but not the only way, is by using CRISPR Cas- 9 kits. It is a fairly inexpensive, already available system for genome editing. The bare-bones for beginners explanation: It targets and modifies gene sequences and can be used for cloning and reproducing preferred traits as well as reprogramming our current DNA to seek out and destroy traits we don't like.

Transhumanism manipulates energy waves, which is what we and everything and anything at its core is made up of, the entire universe included. For example, running weak electrical currents through certain areas of the brain speeds up reaction time. It's called transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS, and is already used by the U.S. military to train snipers.

As a Metro-Spiritual, there's a layered but unique perspective that comes to mind. What if higher beings are already using a form of Transhumanism on millions of humans already and have been for some time?

The MetroSpiritual: Make meditation part of your daily journey

Scientists from the Human Genome project say that our DNA was not written on this planet and is a complex mathematical code. What if we have the ability to upgrade, but haven't in a while because we didn't know that we even could?

Without updating the How to be Human software, life would be more confusing and run much slower, don't you think? Perhaps many of us were born with semi- superhuman abilities by virtue of our past but still can't warp our minds around the system upgrades. Stay with me

If advanced entities and let's face it, there are smarter ones then us in this galaxy and universe have already encoded our DNA to allow for upgrades, unarguably this seems like a good anti- corruption software program.

But if available technology for human advancement is just a matter of simple software, is humanity better or worse off? There is likely a built-in level of accountability that is necessary for spiritual growth. I assume expecting anything less always needs to be updated.

The MetroSpiritual: 10 ways to stay spiritually balanced in 2017

Curiously, in the oldest of texts, extraterrestrials have had this Transhumanism thing down since forever ago. Biblical texts even talk about ancient Abraham having his first child when he was 80 years old, because humans supposedly lived for upwards of 200 years way back then. Eternal life might just be sophisticated technology which history, and now science, supports.

Erich von Dniken, who wrote Chariots of the Gods, was one of the first to talk about the ancient alien theory. His research and studies state that thousands of years ago space travelers from other planets visited Earth and taught humans about technology, and influenced their beliefs on religion.

The late Zecharia Sitchin was the first to decode the most ancient texts from the Sumerians. According to his translations, a race of extraterrestrials called the Anunnaki, which means those who are from heaven, came to Earth from a planet beyond Neptune called Nibiru. They have been here long before humans and are the ones responsible for creating the human race. Or so they say

The Greeks, Indians, Mayans, Romans the list goes on all believed in gods who visited Earth and advanced humanity. Their recorded history supports the ancient alien theory. (Are those who learned how to live forever considered gods? Lord help us!)

The MetroSpiritual: How to connect with extraterrestrials

Perhaps the Anunnaki were space travelers. Some believe their home planet was destroyed and their race was dying and so they began to interbreed with humans way, way back then ago. Some believe they created humans. Biblical texts support all this. There are cave drawings dating back more than 5,000 years of alien beings with tall bodies, big heads and big hands interacting with humans. An unnamed source says one looks just like Trump too. Fake news?

Ancient texts talk about the Lyrian Wars and today you can see actual NASA footage of modern day space wars on the internet. Perhaps times don't change that much when it comes to history repeating itself.

Let's skip thousands of years ahead and go to the 1930s to the 1980s. UFO sightings were at an all-time high. The scoop was hundreds of everyday common folk being abducted by aliens. Roswell helped top it off with a cherry.

Scientific evidence from notable cases where taken seriously by the general public and for the first time in ages, the taboo subject began to regain acceptance. Abductees usually described little grey humanoids with skinny bodies and big heads with bug-looking eyes. Sound familiar? They seemed to be most interested in the human reproductive organs.

The MetroSpiritual: Why finding your true soulmate is so hard

Biblical texts do talk about the fallen angels always mating with female humans. Even Enoch, Noah's great grandfather, talked about being abducted by higher beings, but he said that it was spectacular.

But that was then and this is now, and you don't really hear about those scary abduction stories anymore, right? It's more of an Enoch connection these days. So why?

Did they complete interbreeding their DNA with ours? Are they back with upgraded models of their creations, aka, us? Help from ETs is not a new thing, but it seems to be back on a familiar rise these days.

Maybe the little grey aliens we always here about are the result of robotic Transhumanism from eons ago, and humans will make similar versions in the future. We are well on our way, if not already there. Maybe the result of yesterdays abductions are the currently updated versions of human hybrid star-seeds, and maybe you are one of them!

Humanitys advancement might be included in our DNA. It does not mean you will be richer or smarter, it only means you can download universal information, once you figure it out. Maybe that will lead to your desires, but there is always a catch!

Many of the ETs are currently described as looking like us and not like the grey, bug-eyed beings described in the past. So is the future now? Time seems all messed up these days. It might be due to the modern day form of Transhumanism from the past that some of us are currently experiencing.

Downloading our brains into a computer and growing body parts for replacement is happening today in all sorts of forms. Google it! To live forever is in the works, but do we want everyone to live forever? What about the mean people?

Maybe higher intelligences are a step ahead of us, using ET-made natural selection via DNA. You can only upgrade if you get it and are worthy. Personally, I might have some cosmic figuring out to do.

If we could live forever how would most people even react? If you can get around to doing anything tomorrow, luxury nap facilities would certainly become popular establishments: the anti-Starbucks!

Then again, even forever would eventually become a race against time. Who will get there first? I doubt me. I'll be too busy daydreaming about where the finish line is at one of the many napping facilities I hopefully have some stock in.

Maija Polsley began having otherworldly experiences at a young age and began attending metaphysics classes with her mother at age 12. She has since been dedicated to finding the truth and has not stopped exploring. Co-producer of the ghost investigation web series "Paranormal Pursuit" and founder of TheMetroSpiritual.com, Maija is a natural-born, city-dwelling, soul-seeking, independent former teen mom and single woman who is also a dimensionally educated, spiritually empathic writer, actor, poet, standup comic, tarot card reader, Earth lover and quintessential MetroSpiritual.

For more DAILY VIEWS, The News' contributor network, click here. nydailynews.com/tags/daily-views

Originally posted here:
The MetroSpiritual: Creating super-humans through Transhumanism is becoming a reality - New York Daily News

From left: Chris Conatser, Allison Page, Kevin Whittinghill, Zoltan Istvan and Allen Saakyan

Zoltan Istvan ran for President of the US as a "Transhumanist" with a campaign that called for massive government funding to eliminate human mortality. Donald Trump won with a much crazier campaign.

Earlier this week on the Eureka science show he talked about Transhumanism and his campaign to become California Governor in 2018.

The hosts Allen Saakyan and Kevin Whittinghill were joined by comedians Chris Conatser and Allison Page. The show uses comedy to educate its audience about important scientific issues.

No foodies...

You can tell by the expressions on their faces (photo above) that Istvan's description of Transhumanism and the chance to live hundreds of years wasn't very appealling. Especially the part when he said that we won't need sex or food in a future Transhumanist world.

Istvan looks like a TV presenter because he used to be one -- at National Geographic. And it was on assignment in Vietnam when he almost stepped on a landmine that he vowed to work on ending human mortality.

Excerpts from Istvan's talk:

- Initially we'll be able to extend our lifespans by 500 years or so. [Like Zeno's paradox we won't catch up with our mortality]

- Ageing will be treated and eliminated like any other chronic disease.

- Our organs will be replaced with fresh ones grown from our own cells so there is no rejection and no lifetime medications.

- Machines of various types and sizes will be embedded in our bodies to protect, heal and augment our senses.

- A bionic eye will replace one of our natural eyes and allow us to see beyond the tiny 1% of the light spectrum so that we can see things like carbon monoxide gas - useful for avoiding pollution.

- CRISPR will allow people to change their DNA to look like the people in the Star Wars bar scene - with tails and fur. [Costume shops - the disruption is coming.]

- Sex won't be anything like as we know it and might not even require other people.

- Eating and food won't be the same. Some Transhumanists want skin with chlorophyll. Lunchtime won't require a sandwich -- slip your shirt off and take a walk in the sun.

- Life extending technologies will come down in price and trickle down to the poorest of the poor.

I asked Istvan what will we be doing during our extra 500 years of life especially since our prime motivators of food and sex won't be present. He said this is the million dollar question, "We don't know."

I rephrased it and asked how will you spend the time? He said he would head back to school and pick up four doctorates and also learn how to play a bunch of musical instruments. That leaves 470 years to go...

Life is cheap...

As the last people were leaving the event a 42 year old man was shot dead outside the club. Transhumanism needs to address morality as well as mortality.

What an ironic commentary: we talk about the need for expensive transhumanist technologies to extend a person's life -- but a bullet bought for pennies has the final say. Stopping gun violence extends lives.

- - -

More info:

http://www.zoltanistvan.com/

600 Miles in a Coffin-Shaped Bus, Campaigning Against Death Itself

Eureka show

Eureka Youtube channel

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Salvation in Transhumanism: Humanity merges with machines and lives for ever - ZDNet

by Adrian Calderone

Mr. Adrian Calderone provides a thorough explanation of transhumanism, which attempts to free mankind from its biological limitations by employing such methods as genetic engineering. Calderone traces its foundations back to secular humanism the modern religion of the Western world.

Homiletic & Pastoral Review

28 31 & 41 43

Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA, June 2008

The political philosopher Francis Fukuyama called it the world's most dangerous idea.1 He was talking about transhumanism.

Just what is transhumanism and why is it so dangerous?

Like many other ideas, it can imply different things to different people. But generally, transhumanism refers to an attempt to free humanity from its biological limitations. Today, transhumanists advocate the use of various types of rapidly developing technology, especially bioengineering, to accomplish this purpose. Some transhumanists imagine the creation of a new type of human being. That is, a human being with biological features so far removed from natural human biology as to warrant classification as "post-human."

Transhumanists hold firmly to Darwinian materialism. We know that Darwinian evolution is predicated upon the assumptions of random variation and natural selection. But suppose, through genetic engineering, we can create our own genetic variations perhaps with inheritable traits. The transhumanists hope to achieve an artificial, human-guided evolution, at least on the level of microevolution, as well as the creation of "post humans."

Ask a person what he considers to be the most dangerous thing in the world and most probably the answer would be atomic weapons they can eradicate several hundred thousand human beings in a flash. But with transhumanism, you can displace nature with technology and subvert natural human biology.

Sir Julian Huxley is credited with coining the term transhumanism in 1957.2 He wrote:

As we shall see later, use of the term transhumanism predates Sir Julian Huxley by several centuries. Nevertheless, we can credit Sir Julian with putting the name to a modern movement that seeks to modify human beings through technological manipulation in order to transcend human biology. The technology can include genetic engineering and interfaces between the human body and machines.

One definition offered by the World Transhumanist Association3 is this:

Transhumanists see it as an ethical imperative to use technology to transcend physical barriers to human potentials, and to proceed with their project of humanly guided evolution.

What has happened in the past century is the development of science and technology at a pace so fast and in so many different specialties that one scarcely has the opportunity to understand one development before it is made obsolete by another development.

There are four areas especially in which we've seen such rapid advancement in the past twenty to thirty years: biotechnology, information technology, wireless technology and nanotechnology.

In biotechnology we see the genetic manipulation of life. In information technology we see the ever-expanding reach of digital information processing to the point where hardly any household in the developed world is without some type of personal computer. Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables computers to "learn" from experience and modify their own operational procedures without human intervention.

As for wireless, the Internet is accessible without land lines or physical hook-ups. Everywhere you turn there is someone talking on a cell phone. Nanotechnology deals with the manufacture and use of very small particles, which can include simple materials or even tiny machines with interacting parts machines, for example, that can be introduced into the human body to cut away arterial plaque or perform operations on a submicroscopic level. We still don't know all of the potentials of nanotechnology. Keep in mind, also, that these technologies can be merged.

These technologies enable us to do things inconceivable even a few decades ago. These new potentials present new dimensions of ethical dilemmas.

Suppose you can insert portions of the genetic material of one type of being into the genetic material of another type of being. In fact, this has been done. Who would have thought to introduce the genes of fireflies into a tobacco plant to create a plant that glows in the dark? Yet this was done over twenty years ago. The cloning of animals, transgenic plants and a host of other developments are historical events, not futuristic speculations. A U.S. patent application is on file detailing the creation of an artificial life form.4

Genetic engineering enables us to use living organisms bacteria for example as miniature drug factories to manufacture pharmaceuticals that otherwise could not be produced. Genetically modified viruses can be used to introduce modified DNA into target organisms.

But suppose one merges portions of human genetic material with portions of the genetic material of an animal an animal, say, with the genetic instructions for growth of human organs, or humans with animal features. What have we produced? And suppose that the chimerical being we've created can reproduce itself. What is the moral status of such beings? What is one to think about the deliberate creation of "subhuman beings" or "superhuman beings" through genetic engineering? We believe that the human soul does not arise from matter but that God creates and infuses a rational soul into a human being at conception. This is clear enough from human procreation. But what of the prospect of artificially assembling DNA, inserting that DNA into a cell, and letting that cell grow into an organism? How close do we have to be to the DNA characteristic of human beings for the organism to be considered human? Suppose a gorilla body can be combined with a human brain. Does God implant a human soul into it? How do we know unless we let the organism grow and see if it matures into a rational being? Does the possibility of salvation apply to homo artificialis as it does to homo Sapiens?

Yet genetic engineering can have legitimate therapeutic purposes, for example, to overcome naturally occurring genetic abnormalities, or to provide new cancer therapies.5 Genetic engineering and other technologies also might be used to enhance the genetic potential of healthy people, for example, to increase lifespan.

There is also now the possibility of implanting computer chips in the human brain. Neural implants, human-computer interfaces these are concepts that just a few years ago were the subjects of science fiction. Today, they are the subjects of U.S. patents.6 One should also consider the possibility of wireless communication between a neural computer implant and some remote control center. How do Catholic moral principles apply to such things? Until now, we've not had to think about a coherent moral position in the face of such possibilities. That's changed.

It's not only personal morality that needs to be addressed. We also have to think about social and political effects. One of the criticisms of all this genetic enhancement is that it will be available only to the wealthy. Will we have society stratified into classes of the "genetically enhanced" and the "genetically deprived"? What new weapons will be unleashed upon us in future wars?

As I stated earlier, Sir Julian was not the first person to conceive of a process of transhumanization. Let's go back several centuries. Before there was a Julian Huxley there was a Dante Alighieri. Dante expressed the idea of transhumanization in Canto I of Paradiso, written sometime in the early 1300s. Dante wrote, "Transhumanizing cannot be signified in words therefore let the example suffice him for whom grace reserves the experience."

Transhumanization is something ineffable, something beyond the ability of words to encompass. It can only be experienced, and that is a matter of grace. One can also refer to the Epistles, where St. Paul often talks about being a new creation in Christ and being sons of God through faith in Christ.7

Transhumanization is not a concept alien to Christianity. Quite the contrary, it is our Christian hope. But in Christianity transhumanization is a matter of God's grace. Although we can begin the process of transhumanization in this life by living in the state of God's grace, completion of the process is meant for a future life, an eternal life, of intimacy with God. In our present life in this world, grace does not destroy or change human nature, but works through human nature and perfects it. Through grace we are transformed into images of Christ. But we must await our resurrection for final transformation in the world to come. In the journey of our lives we must take as our companions the Christian virtues of patience and perseverance.

How, then, did we get from Christian transhumanization to biological transhumanism?

I want to offer a very cursory review of certain philosophical developments that have led up to secular humanism, which has become the de facto religion of the Western world. Transhumanism is an extension of secular humanism. If we use the image of a tree, secular humanism is the trunk, transhumanism one of the branches and the roots are planted in the soil of unbelief. This unbelief is not just ordinary atheist materialism. That's been around for millennia. Rather, it is something just a few centuries old. It is not so much a non-God view as it is an anti-God view. More particularly, it is an anti-Christianity percolating through modern culture.

First, let's turn to the Enlightenment, which is a foundation of modern secular humanism. The Enlightenment embraced a turning away from religion in general and Christianity in particular. The Enlightenment thinkers weren't all atheists. Many were deists who believed in a creator, but one not personally involved with creation on an ongoing basis.

However, the question arises: if you don't put your trust in a God who takes a personal interest in the world, then in what do you put your trust? Throughout history there runs the theme of salvation and the hope of it. In what do we place our trust? Where is our hope?

The Enlightenment thinker places his trust in the human potential to remake society by human reasoning and human will.8 The basis for hope is science and technology. Remember that the Enlightenment period of the 1700s was also a period of the rapid growth of scientific discovery. It must have been intoxicating. Here was the way to truth in the scientific method. One aspect, then, of the Enlightenment is positivism, a philosophy based upon sense experience and relying only on scientific observations for knowledge about the external world. Concomitantly, Enlightenment thought rejects tradition, the supernatural and revelation.

Now, social order cannot be achieved without values. So, where do values come from? The scientific method doesn't provide values, only data. Also, for some time philosophy in Europe had been turning inward, away from the objectively knowable external world into the subjective operations of the mind. Eventually, there came from this a subjectivity with respect to values, or moral relativism.

A post-Enlightenment philosopher, Nietzsche, saw inherent weaknesses in Enlightenment liberalism. But, instead of turning back to the pre-modern, common sense philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas, he followed the thread of modern philosophy to a logical end point. God is dead. What's more, according to Nietzsche, we killed him. God and religion became our enemies by limiting our freedom. In the end there is nothing but will to power. We are what we will to be.

The twentieth century atheistic philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was very influential in promoting existentialism.9 He was not an optimistic person. The concluding observation in one of his plays was, "Hell is other people." Sartre defined existentialism by asserting the principle that existence precedes essence. This was the reversal of centuries of philosophical understanding that held that essence was first. This may seem like an academic issue of concern only to ivory tower philosophers, perhaps arguing over the matter at two o'clock in the morning in some cafe. But ideas have consequences, and one of the consequences of this idea is the slaughter of millions of unborn children each year.

Pro-lifers, for example, argue that the fertilized human ovum is, from the moment of conception, in essence, a human being. The attributes and powers we normally associate with fully developed humans a nervous system, the ability to move and think, self awareness, etc. are present in the human embryo as potentialities that, in the course of natural development, unfold or outwardly express themselves. In an ontological ordering essence precedes existence.

The pro-choice position, at least among some, is that an unborn child does not have the attributes and powers of a human being and is therefore not morally equivalent to a human being. In other words, existence precedes essence.

The dictum that existence precedes essence means that there is no human nature. According to Sartre, we invent and make ourselves. Sartre, like Aquinas, held that there can be no human nature unless there is a God who designs it. But Sartre took his atheism to its logical conclusion and denied the objective existence of human nature. If we do not believe that there is a human nature created by God, there is no level of dehumanization to which we cannot fall in our headlong rush to engineer human evolution.

We are running up against a wall of misconceptions, prejudices, faulty valuations and linguistic confusions firmly cemented together by existentialism. It takes great ingenuity and effort to render a population oblivious to common sense and reality. But our educational institutions, mass media and public officials have proven up to the task.

Modern humanism, founded upon Enlightenment thought and modified by the influence of Nietzsche and Sartre, has several important features.

Add to these features of secularism the powers given to us by technology, and the result is transhumanism. Transhumanism is the new face of eugenics, with this difference: in the older conception of eugenics human biological reproduction is limited by law or social pressure to those deemed to have the physical and intellectual qualifications defined by the ruling elite. It is like breeding horses or dogs. But the biology of reproduction remains natural. With transhumanism the biology is engineered.

The Church has begun to deal with transhumanism. The 2002 document of the International Theological Commission entitled Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God addresses some of the issues I have mentioned. This document warns against mankind usurping the role of God. "Neither science nor technology are ends in themselves; what is technically possible is not necessarily also reasonable or ethical."11 The document also deals with cloning, germ line genetic engineering, enhancement genetic engineering and therapeutic interventions.12

But there is an ethical labyrinth to journey through that becomes ever more complex. In trying to help students find their way through complex philosophical ideas, one philosophy teacher used the metaphor of the golden string given by Ariadne to Theseus to find his way through the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur.'13

What's our golden thread? How do we find our way through the ethical labyrinth of transhumanism? It has to be the fundamental principles derived from our religion. What does it mean to be a human person? What is our mission and destiny as human beings? If you exclude God from consideration there is no way through the labyrinth, even for well-meaning secularist philosophers such as Fukuyama who do see the dangers ahead.

Through it all we have to remember that the world has lost sight of something precious a vision seen only through the eyes of faith the vision of something supernatural and eternal.14 There will always be a little flame of faith shining in the wilderness of this world. The spirits of darkness are afraid of it and try to snuff it out, because as long as it shines there is the potential for the world to catch fire and for the grace of God to illuminate everything. As Catholics we have to keep this vision always in sight for ourselves and continually present it to the world.

End Notes

Mr. Adrian Calderone graduated from Manhatten College with B. Ch. E. and M. E. degrees in chemical engineering. He spent more than three years living and traveling in Asia. Having earned his Juris Doctorate from New York Law School, he now practices intellectual property law. He and his wife Jo live in Brooklyn, New York and have three daughters. His last article in HPR appeared in October 2007.

Ignatius Press

This item 8384 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org

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Library : Transhumanism | Catholic Culture

This is what we should live for, Danlo: the heightening of our sensibilities, the rarefying of our desire, the deepening of our purpose, the vastening of our selves. The power to overcome ourselves. To be more. Or rather, to become more. Who hasn't dreamed of such becoming? - David Zindell: "The Broken God".

Lord Martin Rees, member of the Oxford Martin School Advisory Council, Fellow of Trinity College and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, giving the 10 year anniversary lecture for the Oxford Martin School.

Transhumanisme is mainstream geworden.

In den beginne had je het Extropy-Institute. Toen ik mij aansloot bij dit instituut, ca 1997/98, was het een gezelschap met een zeer hoogwaardige mailinglist. In Nederland was toen Transcedo in oprichting, transhumanisme met een Nederlandse couleur locale. Een klein groepje van zes leden, die eens per maand op het centraal station in Utrecht bij elkaar kwamen om te discussiren over zaken waarvan iedereen indertijd dacht dat het sciencefiction was, maar waarvan sommige inmiddels gerealiseerd zijn en de meeste andere zodanig binnen bereik liggen dat vrijwel niemand meer twijfelt aan de toekomstige mogelijkheid ervan.

Grootste wapenfeit van Transcedo: het organiseren in 1998 van de eerste Transvision: de bijeenkomst van Europese Transhumanisten, in Weesp. Een initiatief dat daarna jaarlijks herhaald werd in repectievelijk Stockholm (1999), Londen (2000) en Berlijn (2001), waarna in 2002 Nederland weer aan de beurt had moeten zijn. We kregen het in dat jaar echter niet meer voor elkaar. Waarom niet? Iedereen gaf inmiddels zijn eigen invulling aan het begrip transhumanisme en daarmee aan hoe zo'n symposium ingevuld zou moeten worden. Transcedo bestaat inmiddels eigenlijk alleen nog in naam; de leden die cryogene suspensie als de belangrijkste activiteit van Transcedo zagen, hebben een nieuwe vereniging opgericht, de DCO (Dutch Cryonics Organisation).

Inmiddels zijn er meerdere verenigingen en organisaties opgericht met een min of meer transhumanistische doelstelling en, door het veranderen van het karakter van het internet, vinden de meeste activiteiten plaats via Facebook en Google+, al zijn er natuurlijk nog steeds websites. Zoals bijvoorbeeld deze :-), al wordt hij dan ook onregelmatig bijgehouden 🙁 want, zoals gezegd, het meeste nieuws - als dat er al is - wordt gebracht via de social media.

Bij gebrek aan nieuws worden er dan wel eens stukjes geschreven (en gerecycled!) die misschien wat meer navelstaarderig zijn, zoals deze: "Transhumanism: there are [at least] ten different philosophical categories; which one(s) are you?" door Hank Pellissier op het forum van het Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Pellissier onderscheidt tien soorten transhumanisme en wel:

Extropianism

Singularitarianism

The Hedonistic Imperative

Democratic Transhumanism

Survivalist Transhumanism

Libertarian Transhumanism

Religious Transhumanism

Cosmopolitan Transhumanism

Cosmism

en

Anarcho-Transhumanism

Uiteraard wordt in het artikel uitgelegd welk label voor welk type transhumanist staat, maar om de zaak overzichtelijk te houden zijn er mengvormen. Pellissier daagt de lezer dan ook uit kleur te bekennen en op het forum aan te geven welk type transhumanist hij of zij is en, interessant dit te doen aan de hand van een Pie-Chart, die je hier kunt maken.

In 2004 heb ik mijn positie binnen het transhumanisme al eens bepaald; voor het grootste gedeelte gebaseerd op de toen al verouderde principes van het Extropy-Institute. Maar goed, ik heb ook zo'n pie-chart gemaakt en ik kwam er, niet geheel tot mijn verbazing achter, dat mijn ideen de laatste jaren wat zijn gaan verschuiven, je ontwikkelt je natuurlijk, en het zou zomaar kunnen dat deze chart over vijf jaar, vijf maanden of zelfs over vijf dagen al niet meer klopt.

Goed, op het gevaar af dat ik erop vastgepind ga worden, is hier mijn pie-chart.

Allemaal angst. Doom and Gloom. Zelf kan ik niet wachten....

Via Singularity Weblog.

Mooie film van Richard Mans.

In this breathtaking science fiction spectacle, a strange mechanical device lands on a desolate world and uses the planet to undergo a startling transformation, that has profound implications for an entire galaxy.

abiogenesisfilm.com facebook.com/abiogenesisfilm

Abiogenese is het ontstaan van leven uit niet-levende materie.

An Oxford philosophy professor who has studied existential threats ranging from nuclear war to superbugs says the biggest danger of all may be superintelligence.

Superintelligence is any intellect that outperforms human intellect in every field, and Nick Bostrom thinks its most likely form will be a machine -- artificial intelligence.

There are two ways artificial intelligence could go, Bostrom argues. It could greatly improve our lives and solve the world's problems, such as disease, hunger and even pain. Or, it could take over and possibly kill all or many humans. As it stands, the catastrophic scenario is more likely, according to Bostrom, who has a background in physics, computational neuroscience and mathematical logic.

"Superintelligence could become extremely powerful and be able to shape the future according to its preferences," Bostrom told me. "If humanity was sane and had our act together globally, the sensible course of action would be to postpone development of superintelligence until we figure out how to do so safely."

Bostrom, the founding director of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, lays out his concerns in his new book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. His book makes a harrowing comparison between the fate of horses and humans:

Horses were initially complemented by carriages and ploughs, which greatly increased the horse's productivity. Later, horses were substituted for by automobiles and tractors. When horses became obsolete as a source of labor, many were sold off to meatpackers to be processed into dog food, bone meal, leather, and glue. In the United States, there were about 26 million horses in 1915. By the early 1950s, 2 million remained.

The same dark outcome, Bostrom said, could happen to humans once AI makes our labor and intelligence obsolete.

Lees meer.

Een nieuw boek over transhumanisme komt binnenkort uit: "Religion and Transhumanism. The Unknown Future of Human Enhancement". Een fraaie cover van een biddende post-human:

die gelijk ook een ernstige vraag opwerpt: religie en transhumanisme, is dat niet in tegenspraak met elkaar?

Sebastian Seung, schreef in 2013 het boek "Connectome: how the brains wiring makes us who we are". Zo'n beetje de Amerikaanse tegenhanger van Dick Swaab's "Wij zijn ons brein". In tegenstelling tot Swaab staat Seung niet helemaal afwijzend tegenover cryonics en bespreekt in hoofdstuk 14 van zijn boek de kansen voor het slagen van cryogene suspensie als zijn model van het brein klopt. Dat is de reden dat het boek door veel transhumanisten gelezen is. Het boek eindigt min of meer (er volgt nog een epiloog) met de volgende bijzondere uitspraak:

The bible said that God made man in his own image. The German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said that man made God in his own image. The transhumanists say that humanity will make itself into God.

Zoals uit de tagline van deze website (een citaat uit "Don Juan und Faust" van Christian Dietrich Grabbe) blijkt, is dat ook hoe ik het transhumanisme interpreteer.

De uitgever rechtvaardigt het boek als volgt:

"Transhumanism" or "human enhancement" is an intellectual and cultural movement that advocates the use of emerging technologies to change human traits. Although they may sound like science fiction, the possibilities suggested by transhumanism are very real, and the questions they raise have no easy answers. If these enhancementsespecially major ones like the indefinite extension of healthy human lifebecome widely available, they would arguably have a more radical impact on humankind than any other development in history.

This book comprises essays that explore transhumanism and the issues that surround it, addressing numerous fascinating questions posed by scholars of religion from various traditions. How will "immortality" or extreme longevity change our religious beliefs and practices? How might phamaceuticals enhance spiritual experiences? Will "post-human" technologies be available to all persons, or will a superior "post-human race" arise to dominate the human species? The discussions are as intriguing as the future they suggest.

De redacteurs van "Religion and Transhumanism", Calvin Mercer, "professor of religion" en Tracy J. Trothen, "associate professor of ethics and theology" hebben duidelijk het accent gelegd op de ethische kant van het transhumanisme:

Gaap. Die discussies zijn inmiddels al heel vaak gevoerd en op zijn minst doet het boek ongeveer hetzelfde als het op deze website eerder besproken boek Human Being @ Risk van Mark Coeckelbergh, behalve dat "Religion and Transhumanism" door meerdere auteurs bij elkaar is geschreven, waaronder Anders Sandberg, dus mijn hoop is dat dit boek daar iets nieuws aan gaat toevoegen, mogelijk - maar het boek moet nog uitkomen, dus ik moet het nog lezen - in ieder geval meer een "dialogue" gaat opleveren. Het boek is ook iets aangenamer geprijsd: 46 voor 472 pagina's, en verschijnt in november 2014.

Via The British Institute of Posthuman Studies - A Critical Forum for Transhumanist Thought. Written by: Peter Brietbart and Marco Vega

We investigate three dominant areas of transhumanism: super longevity, super intelligence and super wellbeing, and briefly cover the ideas of thinkers Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil and David Pearce.

PostHuman: An Introduction to Transhumanism is the first of our planned video series on transhumanism, titled PostHuman.

Interessant artikel in Wired.co.uk in de afdeling Transhumanism: Sleep replacement and 3D-printed shapeshifting: a bodyhacker's wish list. Daaruit de volgende WishList:

2013 to 2014 Wireless file storage Subdermal navigation system Brain-only control of temperature of my house

Five to ten years Replacement of heart Sensors on remaining major organs Proximity sensors Internal alarms Enriched blood (enriched with oxygen)

10 to 20 years Replacement of most major organs Maths coprocessor (OMG I want this so bad) Replacement and entire brain system (audio cortex maybe?) Toxin filtration Replacement of hands B2C (brain to computer) wireless interface with internet Emotional "volume" B2B (brain to brain) wireless interface

20 to 40 years Majority of body replaced 50 percent plus of brain replaced Back up "brain" Levitation tech Self-repair No need for food or oxygen Temporal tuning (slow the perception of time)

See original here:
Transhumanisme | Don Juan: Wozu bermenschlich, wenn du ...

Let's face it: the only real justification for using vaccines to "immunize" ourselves against disease is derived from the natural fact that when challenged our immune systems launch a successful response. Were it not for the elegance, proficiency, and mostly asymptomatic success of our recombinatorial (antibody-based) immune systems in dealing so well with infectious challenges, vaccination would have no cause, no scientific explanation, no justification whatsoever.*

In fact, ever since the adaptive, antigen-specific immune system evolved in early vertebrates 500 million years ago, our bodies have been doing a pretty good job of keeping us alive on this planet without need for synthetic, vaccine-mediated immunity. Indeed, infectious challenges are necessary for the development of a healthy immune system and in order to prevent autoimmune conditions from emerging as a result of TH2 dominance.

In other words, take away these natural infectious challenges, and the immune system can and will turn upon itself; take way these infectious challenges and lasting immunity against tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pathogens we are exposed to throughout our lives, would not be possible.

Can vaccines really co-opt, improve upon, and replace natural immunity with synthetic immunity?

How many will this require?

Are we not already at the critical threshold of vaccine overload?

By "improving" on our humanness in this way, are we not also at the same moment departing dramatically from it?

Presently, compliance with the CDC's immunization schedule for children from birth through 6 years of age requires 60+ vaccines* be administered, purportedly to make them healthier than non-vaccinated or naturally immunized ones.** Sixty vaccines, while a disturbingly high amount (for those who retain the complementary human faculties of reason and intuition), does not, however, correctly convey just how many antigenic challenges these children face in total...

A new paper published in the journal Lupus entitled, "Mechanisms of aluminum adjuvant toxicity and autoimmunity in pediatric populations," points out that as many as 125 antigenic compounds, along with high amounts of aluminum (AI) adjuvants are given to children by the time they are 4 and 6 years old, in some "developed" countries.

The authors also state: "Immune challenges during early development, including those vaccine-induced, can lead to permanent detrimental alterations of the brain and immune function. Experimental evidence also shows that simultaneous administration of as little as two to three immune adjuvants can overcome genetic resistance to autoimmunity."

Vaccine adjuvants are agents that accelerate, enhance or prolong the antigen-specific immune responses vaccines intend to elicit. In essence, they enhance vaccine "efficacy," which is defined by the ability to raise antibody titers. A vaccine's "effectiveness," on the other hand -- and which is the real-world measure of whether a vaccine works or not -- is not ascertainable through the number of antibodies produced. Whether or not a vaccine or vaccine adjuvant boosts antibodies that have actual affinity with the intended pathogen is what counts in the real world, i.e. antibody-antigen affinity, (and not the sheer volume of antibodies produced) determines whether a vaccine will be effective or not.

The semantic confusion between "vaccine efficacy" and "vaccine effectiveness" ensures that vaccines which disrupt/harm/hypersensitize the immune system by stimulating unnaturally elevated antibody titers may obtain FDA approval, despite the fact that they have never been shown to confer real-world protection. *** Some vaccine researchers have even suggested that breastfeeding, which may reduce vaccine-induced elevations in antibody titers in infants, i.e. its iatrogenic disease-promoting effects, should temporarily be delayed in order not to interfere with the vaccine's so-called "efficacy."

Common adjuvants include: aluminum, mineral oil, detergent stabilized squalene-in-water, pertactin, formaldehyde, viral DNA, phosphate, all of which are inherently toxic, no matter what the route of exposure.

Many parents today do not consider how dangerous injecting adjuvants directly into the muscle (and sometimes blood, due to incorrect and/or non-existent aspiration techniques), especially in non-infected, healthy offspring whose immune systems are only just learning to launch effective responses to the innumerable pathogens already blanketing their environment.

Adequate breastfeeding, in fact, is the most successful strategy in the prevention of morbidity and mortality associated with infectious challenges, and is so distinctively mammalian (i.e. obtaining nourishment and immunity through the mammary glands), that without adequate levels (only 11.3% of infants in the US were exclusively breastfed through the first six months of life (Source: CDC, 2004)) infants become much more readily susceptible to illness.

Not only have humans strayed from their mammalian roots, by creating and promoting infant formula over breast milk, and then promoting synthetic immunity via vaccines over the natural immunity conferred through breastfeeding and sunlight exposure, for instance, but implicit within the dominant medical model to replace natural immunity with a synthetic one, is a philosophy of transhumanism, a movement which intends to improve upon and transcend our humanity, and has close affiliation with some aspects of eugenics.***

The CDC's immunization schedule reflects a callous lack of regard for the 3 billion years of evolution that brought us to our present, intact form, without elaborate technologies like vaccination -- and likely only because we never had them at our disposal to inflict potentially catastrophic harm to ourselves.

The CDC is largely responsible for generating the mass public perception that there is greater harm in not "prophylactically" injecting well over 100 distinct disease-promoting and immune-disruptive substances into the bodies of healthy children. They have been successful in instilling the concept into the masses that Nature failed in her design, and that medical and genetic technologies and interventions can be used to create a superior human being.

Continue to Page 2

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.

Read the rest here:
Vaccination Agenda: An Implicit Transhumanism / Dehumanism

by Eric Steinhart Department of Philosophy William Paterson University Journal of Evolution and Technology

Vol. 20 Issue 1 - pgs 1-22

December 2008

from JournalOfEvolutionAndTechnology Website

Omega Point Theology Being Used As Framework For 'Christian' Transhumanism

Tomorrow's Nephilim As Spiritual Leaders Of New Global Order

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was among the first to give serious consideration to the future of human evolution. His work advocates both biotechnologies (e.g., genetic engineering) and intelligence technologies. He discusses the emergence of a global computation-communication system (and is said by some to have been the first to have envisioned the Internet).

He advocates the development of a global society.

Teilhard is almost surely the first to discuss the acceleration of technological progress to a Singularity in which human intelligence will become super-intelligence. He discusses the spread of human intelligence into the universe and its amplification into a cosmic intelligence. More recently, his work has been taken up by Barrow and Tipler; Tipler; Moravec; and Kurzweil.

Of course, Teilhards Omega Point Theory is deeply Christian, which may be difficult for secular transhumanists.

But transhumanism cannot avoid a fateful engagement with Christianity. Christian institutions may support or oppose transhumanism. Since Christianity is an extremely powerful cultural force in the West, it is imperative for transhumanism to engage it carefully.

A serious study of Teilhard can help that engagement and will thus be rewarding to both communities.

1. Introduction Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a Jesuit paleontologist.[1] He combined his scientific study of the fossil record with his Christian faith to produce a general theory of evolution. Teilhards body of work has much to offer transhumanists, who advocate the use of technology to enhance human capacities and see current human beings as in transition to posthuman forms.

There are several specific reasons for transhumanists to study Teilhards work.

The first reason is that Teilhard was one of the first to articulate transhumanist themes. Transhumanists advocate the ethical use of technology for human enhancement. Teilhard's writing likewise argues for the ethical application of technology in order to advance humanity beyond the limitations of natural biology. Teilhard explicitly argues for the use of both bio-technologies (e.g., genetic engineering) and intelligence technologies, and develops several other themes often found in transhumanist writings.

He discusses the emergence of a global computation-communication system, and is said by some to have been the first to have envisioned the Internet (Kreisberg, 1995). He advocates the development of an egalitarian global society. He was almost certainly the first to discuss the acceleration of technological progress to a kind of Singularity in which human intelligence will become super-intelligence.

He discusses the spread of human intelligence into the universe and its amplification into a cosmic-intelligence.

The second reason for transhumanists to study Teilhard is that his thought has influenced transhumanism itself. In particular, Teilhard develops an Omega Point Theory.

An Omega Point Theory (OPT) claims that the universe is evolving towards a godlike final state.

Teilhards OPT was later refined and developed by Barrow and Tipler (1986) and by Tipler alone (1988; 1995).

Ideas from the Barrow-Tipler OPT were, in turn, taken up by many transhumanists (see, for example, Moravec (1988; 2000) and Dewdney (1998)). Kurzweil also articulates a somewhat weaker OPT.

He says:

evolution moves inexorably toward our conception of God, albeit never reaching this ideal

(2005: 476; see also 375, 389-390)

Many transhumanists work within the conceptual architecture of Teilhards OPT without being aware of its origins. Indeed, Teilhard is mostly ignored in the histories of transhumanism; e.g., he is mentioned once and only in passing in Bostroms (2005) detailed history of the transhumanist movement.

The third reason for transhumanists to study Teilhard is that he develops his transhumanist ideas within a Christian context. Teilhard shows how one might develop a Christian transhumanism. Although some secular transhumanists may be inclined to react negatively to any mention of Christianity, such hostility may prove politically costly.

Transhumanism and Christianity are not essentially enemies.

They share some common themes (Hopkins, 2005). Of course, it is understandable that many transhumanists reject the superstitious aspects of Christian doctrine and the authoritarian aspects of Christian institutions. Likewise, Teilhard wants to abandon those aspects of Christianity. He argues that Christ is at work in evolution, that Christ is at work in technology, and that the work of Christ ultimately aims at the perfection of human biology. Christianity is a complex network of doctrines and institutions.

A study of Teilhard can help transhumanists to locate and carefully cultivate friends in that network and to locate, and carefully defend against, opponents.

The fourth reason for transhumanists to study Teilhard is that they are likely to need to defend themselves against conservative forms of Christianity. The dominant forms of Christianity today (at least in the USA) are conservative. As the cultural visibility of transhumanism grows, conservative Christians will increasingly pay it their attention.

They may feel increasingly threatened by transhumanism and come to see it as a heresy (Bainbridge, 2005). Various conservative Christians have already opposed transhumanism (Wiker, 2003; Hook, 2004; Daly, 2004; Hart, 2005). Since Christianity is an extremely powerful cultural force in the West, it is imperative for transhumanism to engage it carefully.

Conservative Christian forces have already opposed various biotechnologies (such as embryonic stem cell research and cloning) and may oppose all the enhancement techniques that transhumanists advocate. Conservative Christianity currently has the political power to effectively shut transhumanism down in the West.

Teilhard was attacked by conservative Catholics, and transhumanists may have to fight similar battles over similar issues. And yet Teilhard gained a surprisingly large following both within and beyond the church.[2]

A study of his work can help transhumanists develop nuanced strategies for defending against attacks from conservative Christians.

The fifth reason for transhumanists to study Teilhard is that they may want to build bridges to liberal and progressive forms of Christianity. Teilhard believed that science and technology have positive roles to play in building the City of God in this world.

A study of Teilhards work may help transhumanists to explore the ways that transhumanism can obtain support:

from Christian millenarianism (see Bozeman, 1997; Noble, 1999)

from Irenaean and neo-Irenaean theodicies (see Hick, 1977; Walker, Undated)[3]

from liberal Protestantism (see Arnow, 1950)

from process theology (see Cobb and Griffin, 1976)

Teilhard believed that everyone has a right to enter the kingdom of heaven it isnt reserved for any special sexual, racial, or economic elite.

A study of Teilhards writings can help transhumanism embrace a deep conception of social justice and expand its conception of social concern (see Garner, 2005). A study of Teilhard can help transhumanists make beneficial conceptual, and even political, connections to progressive Christian institutions.

My goal in this paper is to present the thought of Teilhard de Chardin in a way that is defensible and accessible to transhumanists.

Teilhard was working in the early twentieth century, at a time when biology was primitive and computer science non-existent. Many of his ideas are presented in a nineteenth-century vocabulary that is now conceptually obsolete.

My method is to present these ideas in a charitable way using a contemporary conceptual vocabulary, and to show how they have been refined by transhumanists such as Tipler, Moravec, and Kurzweil. One might say this paper offers a transhumanist reading of Teilhard or even a Teilhardian transhumanism. Since I make extensive use of computational ideas, I am offering a computational model of Teilhards thought.

I thereby hope to make his ideas accessible and to encourage further study of Teilhard among transhumanists.

Teilhard produced an extensive body of work that may be of interest to them;[4] there is also an enormous secondary literature on Teilhard, much of which may be of great interest to transhumanists.[5]

2. Teilhard and computation

2.1 Complexity and logical depth Physical things can be compared in terms of their size, mass, and so on. But they can also be compared in terms of their complexity. Complexity is an objective physical property and the scale of complexities is an objective physical scale.

Teilhard says:

the complexity of a thing... [is] the quality the thing possesses of being composed (a) of a larger number of elements, which are (b) more tightly organized among themselves.... [Complexity depends] not only on the number and diversity of the elements included in each case, but at least as much on the number and correlative variety of the links formed between these elements.

(Teilhard, 1959, The Future of Man, page 98; henceforth abbreviated FUT.)

A first refinement of Teilhards thought requires that we update his definition of complexity.

We can define the complexity of an object as the amount of computational work it takes to simulate the object. It takes a more powerful computer to simulate a more complex object. Bennett (1990) makes this idea more precise by defining complexity as logical depth.

He says:

Logical depth = Execution time required to generate the object in question by a near-incompressible universal computer program, i.e., one not itself computable as output of a significantly more concise program.... Logically deep objects... contain internal evidence of having been the result of a long computation or slow-to-simulate dynamical process.

(Bennett, 1990: 142.)

Teilhard observes that increasingly complex systems are emerging in our universe over time.

We can plot this emergence on a graph with two axes: a time axis and a complexity axis (Teilhard, 1973, My fundamental vision in Towards the Future, page 166; henceforth abbreviated MFV). Teilhard refers to the emergence of increasingly complex systems as complexification. Today we are more likely to talk about self-organization. But the idea is the same.

According to Bennett, we should expect more complex objects to appear later in any evolutionary process.

Teilhard would agree.

More:
Teilhard de Chardin and Transhumanism

What idea, if embraced, would pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity? This was the question posed by the editors of Foreign Policy in the September/October issue to eight prominent policy intellectuals, among them Francis Fukuyama, professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and member of the Presidents Council on Bioethics.

And Fukuyamas answer? Transhumanism, a strange liberation movement whose crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gay-rights advocates. This movement, he says, wants nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints.

More precisely, transhumanists advocate increased funding for research to radically extend healthy lifespan and favor the development of medical and technological means to improve memory, concentration, and other human capacities. Transhumanists propose that everybody should have the option to use such means to enhance various dimensions of their cognitive, emotional, and physical well-being. Not only is this a natural extension of the traditional aims of medicine and technology, but it is also a great humanitarian opportunity to genuinely improve the human condition.

According to transhumanists, however, the choice whether to avail oneself of such enhancement options should generally reside with the individual. Transhumanists are concerned that the prestige of the Presidents Council on Bioethics is being used to push a limiting bioconservative agenda that is directly hostile to the goal of allowing people to improve their lives by enhancing their biological capacities.

So why does Fukuyama nominate this transhumanist ideal, of working towards making enhancement options universally available, as the most dangerous idea in the world? His animus against the transhumanist position is so strong that he even wishes for the death of his adversaries: transhumanists, he writes, are just about the last group that Id like to see live forever. Why exactly is it so disturbing for Fukuyama to contemplate the suggestion that people might use technology to become smarter, or to live longer and healthier lives?

Fierce resistance has often accompanied technological or medical breakthroughs that force us to reconsider some aspects of our worldview. Just as anesthesia, antibiotics, and global communication networks transformed our sense of the human condition in fundamental ways, so too we can anticipate that our capacities, hopes, and problems will change if the more speculative technologies that transhumanists discuss come to fruition. But apart from vague feelings of disquiet, which we may all share to varying degrees, what specific argument does Fukuyama advance that would justify foregoing the many benefits of allowing people to improve their basic capacities?

Fukuyamas objection is that the defense of equal legal and political rights is incompatible with embracing human enhancement: Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project.

His argument thus depends on three assumptions: (1) there is a unique human essence; (2) only those individuals who have this mysterious essence can have intrinsic value and deserve equal rights; and (3) the enhancements that transhumanists advocate would eliminate this essence. From this, he infers that the transhumanist project would destroy the basis of equal rights.

The concept of such a human essence is, of course, deeply problematic. Evolutionary biologists note that the human gene pool is in constant flux and talk of our genes as giving rise to an extended phenotype that includes not only our bodies but also our artifacts and institutions. Ethologists have over the past couple of decades revealed just how similar we are to our great primate relatives. A thick concept of human essence has arguably become an anachronism. But we can set these difficulties aside and focus on the other two premises of Fukuyamas argument.

The claim that only individuals who possess the human essence could have intrinsic value is mistaken. Only the most callous would deny that the welfare of some non-human animals matters at least to some degree. If a visitor from outer space arrived on our doorstep, and she had consciousness and moral agency just like we humans do, surely we would not deny her moral status or intrinsic value just because she lacked some undefined human essence. Similarly, if some persons were to modify their own biology in a way that alters whatever Fukuyama judges to be their essence, would we really want to deprive them of their moral standing and legal rights? Excluding people from the moral circle merely because they have a different essence from the rest of us is akin to excluding people on basis of their gender or the color of their skin.

Moral progress in the last two millennia has consisted largely in our gradually learning to overcome our tendency to make moral discriminations on such fundamentally irrelevant grounds. We should bear this hard-earned lesson in mind when we approach the prospect of technologically modified people. Liberal democracies speak to human equality not in the literal sense that all humans are equal in their various capacities, but that they are equal under the law. There is no reason why humans with altered or augmented capacities should not likewise be equal under the law, nor is there any ground for assuming that the existence of such people must undermine centuries of legal, political, and moral refinement.

The only defensible way of basing moral status on human essence is by giving essence a very broad definition; say as possessing the capacity for moral agency. But if we use such an interpretation, then Fukuyamas third premise fails. The enhancements that transhumanists advocate longer healthy lifespan, better memory, more control over emotions, etc. would not deprive people of the capacity for moral agency. If anything, these enhancements would safeguard and expand the reach of moral agency.

Fukuyamas argument against transhumanism is therefore flawed. Nevertheless, he is right to draw attention to the social and political implications of the increasing use of technology to transform human capacities. We will indeed need to worry about the possibility of stigmatization and discrimination, either against or on behalf of technologically enhanced individuals. Social justice is also at stake and we need to ensure that enhancement options are made available as widely and as affordably as possible. This is a primary reason why transhumanist movements have emerged. On a grassroots level, transhumanists are already working to promote the ideas of morphological, cognitive, and procreative freedoms with wide access to enhancement options. Despite the occasional rhetorical overreaches by some of its supporters, transhumanism has a positive and inclusive vision for how we can ethically embrace new technological possibilities to lead lives that are better than well.

The only real danger posed by transhumanism, it seems, is that people on both the left and the right may find it much more attractive than the reactionary bioconservatism proffered by Fukuyama and some of the other members of the Presidents Council.

[For a more developed response, see In Defense of Posthuman Dignity, Bioethics, 2005, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 202-214.]

Continue reading here:
Transhumanism: The World's Most Dangerous Idea?