What ever happened to the transhumanists?

https://gizmodo.com/what-happened-to-transhumanism-in-2022-life-extension-1849199492

158 407 4 years ago

danjoredd5• 4 years ago

Does anyone working in tech ACTUALLY thin transhumanism is a good idea? It seems like a field ripe for criminal exploitation and hacking, even in an optimistic future.

Unless I lose a limb, or an eye, keep my body offline.

elliotec• 4 years ago

That's a pessimistic and myopic view of transhumanism. Where it becomes a good idea is a context that humanity is limited in its current (biological) form.

There are lots and lots of things that could kill our species over the next several thousand years and the transhumanists simply think it is worth investing in looking into how we could potentially use technology to adapt to those threats or enhance the human experience.

ethbr0• 4 years ago

Working in tech + have a pathologist for a father.

Unequivocally yes, I think transhumanism is a good idea.

Arguing against transhumanism is arguing that you believe either (a) the body was created perfectly or (b) that we'll do more harm than good if we tinker with it.

The body is a machine. A bloody complicated machine, with many parts we don't understand, but a machine nonetheless.

I don't believe in a future where substantial body modification doesn't make us better, in all objective senses.

And we do it today: vaccinations, pacemakers, artificial hips and joints and valves, cochlear implants, the myriad of drugs to modify various bodily processes, limb replacements, mRNA drugs.

The body is programmable: it's just very complex. But that hasn't stopped up as a species from achieving other equally difficult things.

danjoredd5• 4 years ago

My main area of concern is people who can exploit these augmentations for political, personal, and profit reasons. Even in the best scenario possible, these things are going to happen. All code is flawed in some fashion. Unless we plan on keeping these augmentations completely offline, they can and WILL be exploited by hackers. Imagine how giddy North Korea would be to be able to mess with the President's body, or having a competitor hack your eyes to see corporate secrets. Or a disgraced lover wanting revenge. These are already real threats with current technology to an extent...how much more deadly will these threats become when we can't just throw the tech out or modify them, because they are parts of ourselves?

Even better yet, what happens when those parts of yours no longer get support? There are already people who were able to gain sight through robotics, but lost vision again once the company that sold them the eyes went out of business. We can't just blindly think about the best case scenario and call it good. We need to think of worst case scenarios to provide a safer future.

seanmcdirmid• 4 years ago

Does anyone working in tech ACTUALLY think transhumanism is a good idea?

No but...as long as technology advancement proceeds at a faster pace than evolution, human obsolescence is bound to happen someday. Transhumanism was an optimistic movement that humans could somehow stay in control as cyborgs (when it is much more likely that artificial life replace humans without human components).

coenhyde3• 4 years ago

I'll be keeping my body offline. But I think fusion with AGI is inevitable if we want to remain somewhat in control of our future. Otherwise we will be super ceded by super intelligent AI and become their pets.

jakzurr2• 4 years ago

Which actually might not be all that bad.

Or we could go all conspiracy theory and suggest that we already are pets. ;)

jazzyjackson• 4 years ago

where do people get this idea that a flat plane of silicon can ever out-compete the chemical interconnectivity of fractally-folded grey matter (don't get me started on performance-per-watt)

AI's greatest risk is people assuming it's superior while being little more than a charismatic magic 8-ball

trasz4• 4 years ago

We wouldn’t even notice we’ve become pets of any kind of superintelligence; one can’t notice intelligence vastly superior to their own, same way your cat can’t even remotely grasp what the code on your screen is for.

dekervin• 4 years ago

There was a span of 14 years between an implant allowi g control of an artficial hand, in 2005 , and an implant allowing speech synthesis from brain signals , in 2019 [0]. I am not sure the pace of innovation is accelerating drastically. (Edit: Sorry, I posted the wrong url in the previous version of my reply)

[0] https://roboticsbiz.com/the-history-of-brain-computer-interf...

taco_emoji• 4 years ago

Does anyone working in tech actually think it's a PLAUSIBLE idea? The idea of a computer being able to work AT ALL similarly to a human brain is laughable to me. The brain is a physical organ that we barely understand. Simulating a human mind would probably require simulating interactions at a molecular level, which may not ever be possible.

spywaregorilla• 4 years ago

It's also not just your brain. Like... what are you without your stomach?

frostwarrior• 4 years ago

IMHO Technology has the potential to be awesome.

It's just that we're focusing most of the engineering effort on selling ads and generating dark patterns in phones.

danjoredd5• 4 years ago

My main area of concern is hacking. Imagine how easy it would be to jack someone's life up because they bought a "smart arm" or got AR eyes. Where technology exists, bad actors will exploit it.

wongarsu• 4 years ago

In a way I already use my smartphone as an extension of my body. Compared to the pre-smartphone era I remember fewer facts, knowing that I can easily look them up. I outsource even moderate arithmetic to my smartphone instead of calculating it myself. I use pictures and notes to aid short-term memory.

Of course that's dangerous (just imagine the gaslighting potential), but also very useful. The only real drag is the awfully low bandwidth between my brain and my phone. The display-to-brain connection over the visual cortex is ok-if-wasteful, but the input with touch is a real drag. How cool would it be to just have a math-coprocessor implanted that I can communicate with at the speed of thought. Or a knowledge database that I can query with my inner voice?

Is it incredibly dangerous? Yes. But many things are, and hopefully we will learn to mitigate the dangers.

delecti• 4 years ago

Agreed. The smartphone market ruined the idea of cybernetic augmentation for me. It made it clear that any augmentation would inevitably have to be sold and maintained by some company, and I couldn't think of any companies I'd trust to support hardware in my body.

pixl979• 4 years ago

People are already transhuman now. I have two pieces of technology glued to the outside of my body as we speak, they are monitoring my blood glucose levels and adjusting the amount of insulin my body receives in near real time.

Could someone hack it and attempt to overdose me with insulin. Yes, it is a risk.

But it is a risk I'm a thousand percent willing to take because life before it was chore where you risk falling to sleep and never waking up again.

danjoredd5• 4 years ago

Yes, but would you have it if you didn't need it? That was my point. I can see using transhuman augmentations to help those in need...give the blind sight, amputees limbs, etc. But my concern is when it becomes a vanity issue over a needs-based issue. Replacing body parts should not be a light decision unless it is something needful.

csdvrx• 4 years ago

I'd say just waiting for the possibility to be like actually possible?

I don't know if I would call myself one, but I believe I'm just a (very advanced) piece of software.

Whenever the possibility of hardware upgrade becomes available, count me in!

daoist_shaman7• 4 years ago

I used to identify as a transhumanist and believed that technology could do no harm. I was an adolescent donning rose-colored glasses, with a burning passion for science, technology, and improvement of our species.

Only after an electrical engineering degree, 10-15 years of more wisdom, and dabbling in biohacking have I realized that we really have no clue about the massive deleterious impacts that technology has on the natural world. From mental health decay to environmental destruction, the unintended side effects of technology were completely lost on me as a child.

I believe humanity needs to pump the brakes and take a critical step back to evaluate the damage we’ve caused. I hope that it isn’t too late to try to fix what we’ve destroyed.

Edit: Brakes

ftio• 4 years ago

There is a great book (a tiny novella) called Psalm for the Wild Built[0] that explores these ideas very beautifully. Highly recommend it.

0. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40864002-a-psalm-for-the...

daoist_shaman7• 4 years ago

This looks like my cup of tea. Thanks for the recommendation!

formerly_proven• 4 years ago

There's a reason why literally every fiction work on transhumanism is a dystopia, even those were transhumanism is just a generic stand-in for technological advancement.

falcor84• 4 years ago

Is the reason fear of the unknown?

okasaki• 4 years ago

What's the reason? I guess because it's easier to write?

matthewmacleod3• 4 years ago

That is absolutely not true – Iain M. Banks' Culture novels are probably some of the most well-known works of fiction with themes of transhumanism, and would hardly be called dystopian.

rowanG077• 4 years ago

Isn't that just because it wouldn't be interesting to write about a utapian transhuman society? I really wouldn't put much stock into what a few story writers came up with.

kragen5• 4 years ago

There's a reason why Batman is fighting costumed supervillains in literally every fiction work on him, but it isn't because costumed supervillains are a real thing, or because Batman would really be fighting them if he existed.

nemo44x5• 4 years ago

I wonder if Ted Kaczynski will be hailed as a great philosopher in the future and humans 100 years from now will condemn our time for our treatment of him while justifying his actions as that of a desperate man on the right side of history. It's ironic writing this on a website.

daoist_shaman7• 4 years ago

Rewilding is an extreme answer, but an answer nonetheless. Could humanity ever have the discipline to only allow “some technology?” Maybe, but the extreme answer will always be there waiting for us.

That his ideas were undermined by his actions is just as sad as the actions themselves. They weren’t terrible ideas. As you’ve pointed out, we might be on the path to a dystopian future where we’ll look back and say, “Damn, Ted was right.”

mellosouls• 4 years ago

No. He is only famous because of the callous methods he used to get his paper published.

Banana6995• 4 years ago

What do you mean the future ? I hail my Ted as a hero on the right side of history now.

filoeleven2• 4 years ago

From the manifesto:

But it is obvious that modern [REDACTED] philoso- phers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psycho- logical needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satis- fies the drive for power. More importantly, the [REDACTED] hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior).

Without looking, what should [REDACTED] be replaced by?

upupandup• 4 years ago

what i found peculiar of all these identity movements is how much corporate fingerprints is behind them.

a holistic, humane, and spiritual approach to elevating our collective awareness is written off as voodoo from "others" yet the rich, affluent in the West are increasingly gravitating towards it while the rest attack each other.

human advancement need not be digitally/pharmaceutically driven but good luck telling this to giants.

vorpalhex• 4 years ago

Corporatism is taking what people want (whether it's a shiny phone, or oneness, or meditative creds) and then selling that.

Optimistically you would say they are selling expertise. You can try to figure out meditation on your own - but there's a lot of cranks and nonsense and some stuff that works. Or you can give headspace $20/mo and they will give you a good experience.

Of course no mass produced experience can ever meet the true need. You can't mass market meditation - and we know this! Ask the Buddhists!

mysterydip• 4 years ago

I believe humanity needs to pump the breaks and take a critical step back to evaluate the damage we’ve caused.

I agree, but I don't think this will happen as long as the money continues to be made. And as long as those with the money keep employing psychologists to essentially hack their customers into compliance, there won't be any resistance from that side, either.

yuuu• 4 years ago

brakes

daoist_shaman7• 4 years ago

Thanks

austinl• 4 years ago

Speaking of pumping the breaks, I really enjoyed the recent documentary, The Year Earth Changed, which explores how the lockdowns from COVID had a significant positive impact on the natural world. The message is optimistic—essentially, it is still possible to make an impact if we're able to change our behavior.

One of the more moving stories is the that Himalayas were visible for the first time 30 years in Jalandhar, which were previously hidden due to air pollution. Infant mortality rates amongst a number of species improved substantially as well (whales, penguins, dolphins, and cheetahs are among a few the documentary covered).

hinkley3• 4 years ago

After 3 years of tai chi I learned that most of us are pretty oblivious to the limits of the human body. And that as someone who was previously an endurance athlete.

Sports medicine is optimizing the effort/return of such pursuits, but we also have islands of information that could be normalized as well, in particular looking for missed opportunities for complementary interactions. If you took Wim Hoff and made him a master of yoga and tai chi, would he be even more 'alien' to the rest of us? Maybe we need to set the minimum bar higher?

justinator• 4 years ago

Now I'm curious about the lessons you learned from tai chi!

FFRefresh• 4 years ago

I think I agree with the thrust of what you are saying, in that we do need to think about the negative externalities of different technologies before scaling them out as a species.

I am getting a little tripped up on your usage of 'the natural world' and 'environmental destruction' though. Aren't humans 'natural'? And if we are natural, shouldn't anything that springs from us also be 'natural'? We are subject to the 'laws of nature'. Is a beaver dam a natural thing? An ant hill? A bee hive? A bird's nest?

It's obviously nitpicking semantics and word usage, but I think people often use 'natural world' to refer to their own human preferences for how the world should look (often just as it looked as they were growing up), and by using the term 'nature', it carries a sense of absolute purity, and anything that goes against it must be wrong.

'Natural' arguments have been used throughout history, and still get frequently used today as a cudgel to dismiss any sort of social/technological change happening.

Now this is not to say that there can't be arguments against certain changes or that all change is the same, but the invocation of what's 'natural' always feels like a cheap rhetorical tactic in place of a stronger argument about why one state of the world is inferior to another state of the world.

revolvingocelot7• 4 years ago

Are you serious?

An ant hill or a beaver dam are mere reorganizations of known matter types, and could be analogized to humans building things like walls. Stone, and even some types of mortar, participate in the great cosmic dance of Gaia [0], just like the works of the animals cited above. They decay, they are broken down by various processes over time, they are fashioned of things found in the environment.

PFAS, by comparison, does not, cannot, and is not, respectively. It doesn't break down, and was never present in any ecosystem nor any part of the water cycle until a few decades ago -- an fraction of an eyeblink in the sort of evolutionary time it'll take for PFAS' presence to be integrated into the cosmic dance of Gaia, and until then it's just gonna cause cancer.

I can agree that invoking the naturalistic fallacy isn't good argumentative practice, but some things are decidedly unnatural. Creating novel waterproofing chemicals that don't have naturally-occurring ways to break down and then dumping them into the water supply isn't something beavers, or ants, or birds, can do. Humans have transcended the natural world. I can tell because of all the new types of things we're adding to it.

[0] should be read less as some pseudoreligious thing and more a handwave about the ancient, stable systems that repurpose atoms from moribund things into newer, more vital things: microbes, fungus, rot, uptake of substances by plants, etc

daoist_shaman7• 4 years ago

I guess when I say “natural,” what I truly mean is “that which is not made by man.” Any substance which is found in the natural environment and mechanically altered does not count in my definition of man-made; this is essentially the same notion of natural that revolvingocelot points out.

I think the crusade against “natural bias” is unfounded. Of course there are plenty of natural things that are not good for us—such as viruses— but the painful and uncomfortable truth about natural maladies like viruses is that they represent nature working as intended (protecting us from the ills of overpopulation, for example).

The bottom line is that changing everything we dislike about nature can lead to our demise. She’s already thought a million steps ahead of whatever we hope to accomplish.

magpi3• 4 years ago

You're just playing with semantics. If everything humans do is natural than everything is natural: computers, plastics, concrete, etc. The purpose of using the word natural is to distinguish from what is unnatural, and without grabbing a dictionary, for me that generally means something that does not "naturally" occur (i.e. without human intervention specifically) in the natural world.

Chemical engineers create unnatural things, things that don't exist in the natural world.

taylorius2• 4 years ago

I would define "natural" as meaning something that has evolved on this planet, and through that process has reached a sustainable, though arbitrarily complex balance in the ecosystem.

seydor2• 4 years ago

Transhumanism , like all trans- movements is not about maintaining the "natural" order of things, whatever that is. Nature is not better in absolute

red75prime• 4 years ago

I hope that it isn’t too late to try to fix what we’ve destroyed.

It will be like pumping the brakes and critically thinking, while staying in a landslide (caused by you, but blame assignment will not do much at the moment). Climate change will not wait. Extinct species will not pop up back into existence. Asteroids on impact course (if any) will not stop moving for that matter. We need to run faster than ever to have a chance to fix at least some things.

alexvoda12• 4 years ago

With regards to asteroids, the question is when, not if.

The probability that none of the known or unknown space objects will ever collide with Earth until the sun exhausts it's fuel is incredibly slim.

Of course, an asteroid collision is perfectly natural.

celdon255• 4 years ago

You must have missed out on the 2014 Technoprogressive declaration, which was co-signed by a number of prominent transhumanists (including the author of the OP).

https://web.archive.org/web/20170203004407/http://ieet.org/i...

Emerging technologies could make things dramatically better or worse. Unfortunately too few people yet understand the dimensions of both the threats and rewards that humanity faces. It is time for technoprogressives, transhumanists and futurists to step up our political engagement and attempt to influence the course of events.

the_omegist12• 4 years ago

I believe humanity needs to pump the brakes and take a critical step back to evaluate the damage we’ve caused. I hope that it isn’t too late to try to fix what we’ve destroyed.

What are you talking about ? You mention your engineering degree and experience to give you some authority but then you ruin this by saying what a 5yrs old kid could have said (sorry if it's harsh).

Humanity won't "pump the brakes" because it never did it & never will. No one wants to go live back in caves. Do you really imagine 1000 yrs from now technology staying at its current level? Would it be a nice thing ? No. Not for me.

I don't see mankind as beavers : we can and should aim for the highest achievements and progress. If in the way damages are made, they will be repaired later on. That's my view.

Of course, during this journey, the less damage made the better. But this kind of Luddite mentality is only seen in privileged western societies.

rsync2• 4 years ago

There are different ways to “pump the brakes”.

The Jewish sabbath comes to mind.

How beneficial, and at what cost, would it be to block air travel or discretionary car trips, say, once monthly ?

antifa4• 4 years ago

Transhumanism was cool before we realized it was going to be cheap shoddy products that overheat under your skin and required Facebook accounts.

f38zf5vdt• 4 years ago

All humans are actively engaged in various levels of transhumanism, especially from a medical standpoint. We all hope that medicine will help us achieve what is, to us presently, superhuman lifespans. Many of us are mentally altered through psychotropic medicine and prefer living this way.

Transhumanism as a movement is just a vocal proponent of a process of technological adoption already happening on a regular basis.

jsnk• 4 years ago

This seems like the most appropriate description of transhumanism.

I think for a long time in human history, technology simply wasn't there to alter the physical nature of humanity. But in recent decades, we understand much more about human physiology enough to alter human body in a drastic and permanent way.

This is generating lots of contention between groups about what's acceptable to change and what's not acceptable to change. Also I think about how people think they are rational about their positions on these matters but they are more like strong cultural presumptions about what's right and wrong.

Let's consider situation we already have.

Consider sex change operation. There's one camp that's complete fine with people getting sex change operation, while there's another camp that condones and some, want to outlaw such operation. The liberal camp likes to say that a person should be able to do what they want to do with their body.

However, at the same time, the both of the camp tends to dislike male steroid usage to change one's physique (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/108-2004/h226). For some reason, same reason to let people decide what they want to do with their body, doesn't apply when it comes to male physique.

It's interesting to see how technology is challenging our preconceived notion of right and wrong and sheds lights to inconsistency in our rationale.

pixl979• 4 years ago

However, at the same time, the both of the camp tends to dislike male steroid usage to change one's physique

I mean, yea with how often 'roid rage' happens, and some of the extreme negative side effects of steroid usage I don't want people blindingly going into modifying their bodies without understanding they massively increasing their risks of stroke and heart enlargement.

zajio1am2• 4 years ago

I think there is clear philosophical division between 'humanist' medical position, which tries to fix what is broken, but considers healthy human body and mind as ideal, and 'transhumanist' medical position, which considers improvements important regardless whether they just fix what is broken, or improve beyond natural abilities.

gcr2• 4 years ago

See that's the thing! You're looking for the furry (and especially trans) / queer communities, especially the Freedom of Form Foundation or the "digital self-identity" simulacra folks. All of these communities are grounded in imagining existing the ideal versions of ourselves, and making that work actually happen

armchairhacker• 4 years ago

"Transhumanism" is already here, in a way. We have medications including some complex drugs, most people at least take multi-vitamins, we have surgeries and sometimes do weird stuff like transplant limbs or faces. Even simpler, we have knowledge of diet and health which lets us stay in better shape than before (though a lot of people are in worse shape due to junk food...we have access to high-protein diets and effective exercises though).

On the other hand, "transhumanism" where we upload our consciousness or modify ourselves to the point where we don't resemble humans anymore, probably won't come for a long time. Even problems like aging and disease and significantly hard to solve. Most of what we know about the human brain is psychology and large-scale things like hormones. Because evolution is a process which doesn't favor simplicity or straightforwardness, and the brain and body have trillions of microscopic cells all working more or less simultaneously - we don't have nearly enough computational power or resources or technology to even remotely "thoroughly" understand this.

I think in the near future we will gradually develop more bionic and cybernetic augmentations, like improving on those bionic arms and legs I heard about a few years ago, and implanted chips and medications. But it's going to be gradual and take a long time, and some things are just nearly impossible.

pizzathyme• 4 years ago

Agree. It seems like this article is just talking about trans humanism as a cultural topic that goes in and out of popularity. But real transhumanism occurring seems inevitable if technology continues to march forward.

Is anyone in the year 2100 really going to be talking about genetic modification or wearables? No, they will be everywhere

slfnflctd• 4 years ago

I think we're going to be talking about genetic modification as long as there are people around who are able to talk. The possibilities are infinite, and the religious opposition is strong. It could very plausibly lead to us becoming a different species-- or at the other extreme, wiping ourselves out.

My parents are convinced it will lead to the Mark of the Beast, and there are millions of people who are raising their children to believe the same. Blood will be shed over this. It could easily lead to full blown war(s). The conversation is not going to be over in the year 2100 unless humanity as we know it has come to an end.

pixl979• 4 years ago

I have small portable machines stuck to my body that monitor my blood sugar and inject insulin as needed. In this sense for me transhumanism is here. This stuff keeps me alive and keeps me healthy.

I think we'll start seeing a lot more genetic modification that will go hand in hand with biological/machine modification. Just sticking technology in us quite often triggers immune responses that our body fights, these things will have to grow hand in hand.

pessimizer2• 4 years ago

"Transhumanism" is already here, in a way. We have medications including some complex drugs, most people at least take multi-vitamins, we have surgeries and sometimes do weird stuff like transplant limbs or faces. Even simpler, we have knowledge of diet and health which lets us stay in better shape than before

This reminds me of the religious claim that the the second coming of Christ and the judgement isn't an upcoming event, but actually already happened in 70 A.D.. It's entirely a rationalization around the fact that Jesus predicted (written in Matthew, Mark, and Luke) that the apocalypse would happen during the lifetime of the audience he was talking to.

koheripbal3• 4 years ago

The biggest example is our cell phones. They may not be implanted (yet), but we keep them physically with us 24x7 and they have significantly altered our behavior.

alfnor2• 4 years ago

As with most technology, there are more pros of keeping phones out of our bodies, so that "yet" might just need to be replaced with a big "if".

mensetmanusman3• 4 years ago

I never knew the bar was so low as to include taking vitamins. Once we are all transhumanist no one is a transhumanist.

nathanaldensr2• 4 years ago

We used to just call this "evolution." In today's climate of labels-over-substance, however, it's not fashionable to do that.

the_omegist12• 4 years ago

“The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet” (Gibson, but not sure)

For a tribe in the Amazon forest, Shanghai or Tokyo could be from a scifi movie set 500 years in their future. For a villager in a small-sized town in Belgium perhaps only 5 or 10yrs in the future.

So transhumanism is not something that will be : it always was and currently is. It just a word for a mindset that embraces these changes and want them to happen faster and sooner.

kanzure• 4 years ago

Reposting a comment of mine from 10 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28731696

Extropians are everywhere. Many names come to mind, like Assange, Hal Finney, Jurvetson, Carl Feynman, and many others.

I hope that something like this group comes back, but with a vengeance. Call me an optimist, but if they had put their minds to it, they could have accomplished much more than a mailing list, which has unfortunately dwindled in the last 10 years.

Cypherpunks write code- but what about the extropians?

chejazi• 4 years ago

Cypherpunks write code- but what about the extropians?

As Jim McCoy said, it takes Evil Geniuses to really get the job done.

neilv3• 4 years ago

Circa 1999, the Zero Knowledge Systems (ZKS) startup had a group called Evil Geniuses.

pigeons• 4 years ago

I was looking for the source of the quote as I had never heard it, but didn't realize my brain had assumed Leonard not Jim.

rgrieselhuber• 4 years ago

Yuval Noah Harari’s speech on how control over one’s biometric data should be handed to the elites in order to hack the human animal was really inspirational.

ArtofIndirect• 4 years ago

Extropians hack reality versus a purpose built man made machine: https://youtu.be/XheAMrS8Q1c

Ideas like designer drugs and therapy to embed experience and knowledge is way more interesting than VR apps

dekhn• 4 years ago

they rebranded as effective altruism

EddySchauHai2• 4 years ago

I don't think so, there's overlap but the groups are separate.

(Admittedly weak) Source: I lurk on the extropian mailing list && was fairly involved in EA.

atlasunshrugged• 4 years ago

As someone who is relatively active in EA and was interested but not super active in transhumanist orgs outside of a brief volunteer stint many years ago, I think this is incorrect. I'd guess there's quite a lot of overlap in people who are interested in both, but I don't think there was an active merging of communities

the8472• 4 years ago

or became more concerned with AI alignment than thinking about potential upsides

EddySchauHai2• 4 years ago

Stuff like AI alignment is why I'm less interested in the EA groups nowadays tbh. Too much preference is given to these sci-fi ideas over rational known solutions to real issues. I also find it's not CS guys talking about these issues but philosophers and I don't believe you can weigh up risk/reward of issues in the mid-far future off of peoples views who don't understand (even theoretical) implementation details. I still fully agree with many other parts of EA though, like giving what we can and focusing on effective charities.

Kye• 4 years ago

Eagerly awaiting the pill that turns me into my fursona.

flancian• 4 years ago

Some became Flancians, I say.

neilv3• 4 years ago

The article mentions Steve Mann. At the same time Mann was at the MIT Media Lab (as one of the first "Wearables" computing people, along with Thad Starner, Bradley Rhodes, and others), more conspicuously involved specifically in Transhumanism thought and discussion at MIT was Sascha Chislenko.

Sascha was associated with Marvin Minsky and Pattie Maes, and (like Minsky's protege, Pushpinder "Push" Singh), was one of the few people who'd wander the halls of the Lab, at all hours, striking up impromptu intellectual conversations (new AI methods, transhumanism, philosophy, economics, etc.) with random students. (Basically, much of what I imagined MIT would be like, they were it.)

Tragically, Sascha died way too soon. I don't know how much this impacted the future of Transhumanist thought, but I'm sure he'd have done more to advancing that and whatever he saw that thinking should be evolving into.

neilv3• 4 years ago

I should add that Sasha seemed not just a talker, but a doer. He'd worked at Maes's startup, and, shortly before his untimely death, had joined a investment firm, to advise on tech directions, and vet companies.

kragen5• 4 years ago

Like Push, and like my friend Aaron, Sasha killed himself: https://transhumanism.fandom.com/wiki/Alexander_Chislenko

We need to figure out how we can have what you imagined MIT would be like without driving our best thinkers to suicide.

doctorhandshake• 4 years ago

Personally I think widespread use of a certain kind of mature augmented reality will make its users effectively transhuman.

0xbadcafebee2• 4 years ago

Is there a pre-agricultural movement I could sign on to? It seems like every development post-hunter-gatherer has been in service of extending our lives while simultaneously making them (and the environment) worse. We talk about quality of life, but what kind of life is it to sit inside a box 2/3 of your life, or breaking your back in a factory, or on a farm? Most hunter-gatherers actually have more leisure time and work less, are healthy, don't pollute.

pixl979• 4 years ago

And were completely at the whims of nature around them. Yea, this is great when you live in a nice stable climate oasis, but most places on the planet are not like that (and that's even before we add in man made climate change).

It's all fun and games until you stub your toe and get an infection that could be treated with antibiotics, well except by choice you don't have any and you get to watch your body rot until you die.

eckmLJE• 4 years ago

It would be nice to keep the technology/medicine that keeps mothers and babies alive through childbirth, though.

Tenoke• 4 years ago

I don't know how to break it to you but many if not most pre-technology hunter-gatherers lived horrible lives, full of pain and misery and died much younger, usually as babies.

0xbadcafebee2• 4 years ago

Hunter-gatherers are still living today without technology and they don't have miserable lives. Infant mortality is probably a feature, not a bug, considering what happens when there's too many humans in a given area.

jholman4• 4 years ago

My understanding of the research is that the "horrible, pain and misery" is mostly wrong. My understanding is that pre-tech hunter-gatherers lived fairly pleasant lives, without a lot of pain and misery, with less work, less stress, more leisure, more play. However, it was much more possible to have an accident that leads to immediate or near-term death. And yes, the infant mortality rate was much, much higher. Higher quality of life while you're alive, but lower security (although higher individual security than pre-modern agriculture societies).

The real problem with wanting that lifestyle is that it has a huge footprint in terms of relatively-good land required to support a small group. That's even true for the best land (places where fish just come to you, like parts of California or British Columbia), and it's even more true other places. So agriculturists can raise 100x the population, and thus 100x the army, on the same land. And they do so, and then they take your land.

So to me, the answer to 0xbadcafebee is:

nope, not unless you have a way to buy a lot of land and keep the surrounding culture at bay

pessimizer2• 4 years ago

died much younger, usually as babies

This is of course because they were pretty long-lived, but had a high infant/childhood mortality rate. It's certainly a way to look at it, but if you counted every miscarriage as a negative lifespan, you could make the average lifespan even shorter.

When hunter-gatherers lived past childhood, they lived almost as long as we live.

mindcrime2• 4 years ago

Maybe Anarcho-Primitivism? Not sure how many advocates / activists are out there proselytizing for this these days, but I'm sure there are at least a few.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

TheOtherHobbes• 4 years ago

It looks like we're going to get a pre-agricultural culture soon, whether we want one or not.

A species that spends more time living in a techno/economic LARP fantasy world than dealing with very obvious and real problems has extremely limited survival prospects.

From that POV the transhumanists already won.

Practically - here we are, self-defined as a huge success while our cities flood and/or burn.

solveit2• 4 years ago

For the same reason that I think it's good for people to live in a different culture for a while, I wish it were possible for people to live in a different era for a while.

There was a time when it wasn't smoking and obesity that killed people, but smallpox, plague, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases. When a single epidemic could kill a double-digit percentage of the entire population of whatever unlucky region got it. For reference, COVID killed maybe 0.2% and HIV killed 0.4% over forty years.

To quote Munroe, our heroes have slain one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and here you are complaining about sitting in a cubicle.

Forty percent of the people in your office would have died before the age of five. Many of the rest would have died young of now completely avertable causes. Perhaps something as small as a cut that got infected, or fucking diarrhoea.

The natural maternal mortality rate is something like 1.5%. That's per birth. Because half your children will die, most women will have half a dozen children (modern estimates for hunter gatherer fertility rates). Do you feel lucky? Another reason women had half a dozen children because reliable birth control wasn't a thing.

You know what else wasn't a thing? A working justice system. You may fantasize about a just and noble justice system that runs on tight-knit personal connections in a small village where everyone knows each other, but everything we know about criminal justice tells us that small insular groups of people are actually terrible at justice. My people mete out justice, your people punish on whims and gut feelings, they are extrajudicial lynchers. Actually we're all extrajudicial lynchers, because no judicial system, remember?

I could go on, but I have to finish reading my printed book teaching me the fruit of thousands of years of accumulated wisdom. (I'm a grad student and I'm trying to learn quantum field theory). It took me two hours of my underpaid grad student labour to make enough money to buy the book. I bought it because I like reading paper books. I could actually just download it and read it on my LCD display connected to the entire world's knowledge. That laptop was a bit more expensive. Maybe two weeks wages. For reference, it took maybe ~500 hours labour to make a shirt in medieval times. When they had division of labour and looms. Hope you don't mind wearing the same animal hide for years on end.

jholman4• 4 years ago

You think that smallpox, plague, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases were major killers of pre-technological hunter-gatherers? I don't think that's correct.

But you're certainly right about the problems with child mortality, maternal mortality, birth control, and infected cuts. I think it's not a given whether or not these are necessarily deal-breakers (personally I think the maternal-mortality-plus-birth-control combo is the most horrifying, but YMMV), but they're certainly very huge problems. Very huge problems.

But I am not so sure you're right about problems with the justice. Again, GP didn't talk about the wonders of 15th-C England or 3rd-C Rome (never mind the really bad eras), they talked about pre-technological hunter-gatherer societies. Since "justice" is just a fiction we've come up with to try to match our evolved intuitions, my guess is that we'd be happier with the justice of that era than we are with the justice of the present era (and I agree that the present-day first-world situation is much better than pretty much all of the alternatives in the last 10,000 years). But you made a particular claim here, that "everything we know about criminal justice tells us that small insular groups of people are actually terrible at justice", and so maybe you have some references you'd care to share that could help me understand how right you are. I'd appreciate that.

Personally, I, too, am a pretty big fan of printed books and (the output of) looms. (I mean, I'm actually a big fan of LCDs, too, but I think that's a less obvious win.) But I think that your final paragraph is basically begging the question. My understanding is that existing hunter-gatherers (the very very few of them that there are) are actually happier.

notsapiensatall2• 4 years ago

IMHO it's in a trough on the hype curve. Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again.

The promises of devices like neuralink are decades away from widespread voluntary adoption, at least. You can get small things done today, as you could 10 years ago, but they aren't ready for primetime.

Anecdotally, I got a small coated neodymium magnet implanted in a finger during my youth. It was cool as a college student, I could feel strong AC currents/PWM/etc and I never lost small metal parts like screws.

Those were small benefits though, and the risk was quite high. If the coating had breached, my immune system would have attacked the magnet. Accidentally smacking it into things was painful. I was always aware of the intrusive hardware in a mildly unsettling way. Etc.

When I entered a more nature-y phase of my life, I got it removed by a local tattoo artist who dabbled in body mods. They mentioned that the newer versions were much smaller, and would require serious medical facilities to remove.

At the end of the day, active body mods have too little going for them and too many awful failure modes. Passive ones can be fun - I've seen transdermal plastic beads put in some interesting places - but they're hardly transhumanist.

koheripbal3• 4 years ago

I would really like to know more about this topic. Is there a forum that people who dabble in mods post to?

notRobot• 4 years ago

https://forum.biohack.me/

celdon255• 4 years ago

Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again.

No, it doesn’t, and waiting for the iteration of tech-consumerism that resembles your childhood fantasies is everything that was wrong with the transhumanist movement. It attracted too many people who sat on the sidelines and did nothing to move the needle. It was a magnet for people who couldn’t cope with reality, which occasionally helped, but usually stirred chaos.

It definitely needs a rebranding. In fact, a reasonably good attempt was made as early as the 1980s.

https://metanexus.net/h-true-transhumanism/

mlinksva2• 4 years ago

Just curious, what 1980s attempt are you referring to?

antifa4• 4 years ago

It attracted too many people who sat on the sidelines and did nothing to move the needle.

You'd have to be capable of pushing the boundaries of science and engineering to really push this needle. Plus the money is in oil/adtech and AFAIK this isn't low hanging fruit that anyone can just grab.

kragen5• 4 years ago

What did you coat the magnet in, and how big was it?

notsapiensatall2• 4 years ago

I didn't make it, but IIRC it was coated in a biocompatible polymer or wax. It was a cylinder maybe 3mm tall, 5mm diameter?

2muchcoffeeman• 4 years ago

IMHO it's in a trough on the hype curve. Tech needs to improve before it'll rise again.

You're assuming that the technology will still be attractive even as other technologies improve in parallel or as we learn more about how the use of technology effects people.

The article mentions RNA vaccines are partially transhuman, but I'm not sure I buy that. Maybe my concept is wrong, but the perception I got was always more cyborg than biological.

The magnet implants always seemed to have a very, very low benefit to me. Making interfacing with computers even easier seems to have a similarly low benefit. We are already at the point where people go on tech cleanses, your technology gives you screen time reports so you can make sure you are not using it too much, people are abandoning social networks. We are literally trying to use computers less.

kbenson3• 4 years ago

We are already at the point where people go on tech cleanses, your technology gives you screen time reports so you can make sure you are not using it too much, people are abandoning social networks. We are literally trying to use computers less.

That's just it though, those screen time reports are because people are forced to consume things through tech that forces them to be immobile and looking at a small screen next to them, and people go on tech cleanses not because of the problems of microchips and the conveniences of instant coffee from cheap appliances, but because constant bombardment of the thoughts and opinions of everyone, everywhere, all at once becomes problematic and draining very quickly, even as it's addictive.

Transhumanist doesn't have to mean jacked into the internet in new and horrible ways. The GP comment itself notes how a simple magnet exposed a new sense they did not have previously. Nothing about magnet under the skin seems to be like something someone would necessarily look to be free from in a tech cleanse. Some people would likely think it brings them closer to nature.

maj0rhn• 4 years ago

I've seen transdermal plastic beads put in some interesting places - but they're hardly transhumanist.

Transdermal metal beads, in the form of little bells, were put in "interesting places" in India in the 1500s.

seydor2• 4 years ago

I didn't know it was a "movement", i thought it was the logical conclusion of our current technological trajectory. I didn't even know they went in hiding, we are closer to transhumanism today than ever. Some of the technologies are within the visible horizon now, for real, like neurotechnology and artificial wombs. We just injected half the population with an mRNA protein template, repeatedly. I don't expect to reach the end my life while still a human, hopefully.

bjt2n39042• 4 years ago

This guy is asking where the transhumanist movement went?

We're using plastic surgery and chemicals to change people's gender, and he's asking where it went?

knowaveragejoe• 4 years ago

You sound like you're getting caught up on the prefix "trans" in conjunction with the current culture war zeitgeist. That's not what transhumanism is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

api• 4 years ago

Why not? Isn't part of transhumanism the idea that a person could control their own biology? Trans people (especially those who have actually transitioned) seem like early adopters to me.

I think the histrionic overreaction to trans people shows one of the things that will hold any kind of real transhumanism back though. If you think we have a culture war now wait until we have extreme life extension, really powerful intelligence augmentation, and the ability to more deeply alter our physical form.

A certain subset of the religious and social conservative sectors are going to crusade hard core against any of this stuff. You can already hear it on the far right and most of this stuff doesn't exist yet.

concinds4• 4 years ago

It was replaced by Virtual Reality.

The transhumanist philosophy was transcendental. Man, armed with innovative genius and deep technological knowledge, could one day remake himself and transcend his limitations. It wasn't so much a "philosophy" as a prediction of an inevitable and obvious future, which they were simply impatient to reach. Freedom from all biological, physical, intellectual constraints!

Today, people understand that technology isn't just a tool, it's a weapon. Corporations want to corral people into virtual worlds they control, and governments want perfect surveillance and infallible enforcement of all laws, and soon social rules. Your brain implant will have NSA/China backdoors, regular 0-days "observed in the wild" (sorry, no refunds), or will crash occasionally because the QA team got laid off.

Smart technologists today can see that virtual reality (which is indissociable with brain implants and most other transhumanist tech except perhaps nanobots) just means far deeper corporate/elite control over people's psyches. Read "The Rise of Virtual Reality" by Anthony Napoleon. The replacement of "real reality" (governed by the laws of nature) with a reality fully governed by other humans (and their flaws). It's very hard to get giddy and impatient about that future.

bufferoverflow2• 4 years ago

No, it was not replaced by VR. I am a trans humanist. As soon as there's a better than natural artificial heart proven to work for decades and with low risks, I will happily undergo surgery. Major cause of death avoided.

My eyes are good for now, but I imagine in 20 years they will start really going downhill. If there's an artificial option, I will switch.

Same goes for most organs.

Unfortunately all these advances are decades away. Connecting to the nervous system isn't a solved problem, so no comparable arms or hands any time soon, even though they may be much more durable, strong, fast very soon. You still need the skin to feel. OK, maybe not "need", but really want.

concinds4• 4 years ago

Transhumanism isn't just advanced medicine. The idea isn't to replace a human heart with an artificial heart that's mostly functionally identical (current-day technology). The whole idea is to transcend biological limits using technology, i.e. develop eyes, ears, and brains that are functionally different and superior.

Prolonging human longevity is just one of the (many) goals of the transhumanist movement). Its core definition (according to Oxford dictionary) is: "the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology."

The original transhumanist dream was that we would each gain more control over our biology (that sounds like freedom to me); the realities of today's world mean that we would instead gain marginally more control, while corporations and governments gain exponentially more control (that sounds like tyranny to me).

adastra222• 4 years ago

Am I being dense? What does VR have to do with transhumanism? Seems like a total non-sequitur.

concinds4• 4 years ago

See my answer to bufferoverflow.

Also: virtual reality isn't just a heads-up display or an iPhone camera feature. Augmented ears that can hear things normal humans can't hear, augmented eyes, or an augmented brain inherently means you lose sovereignty over your own mind since there is a necessary and irreducible degree of trust you need to have in your government and in corporations: trust that they are not interfering with what you hear, see, or think.

I count that as virtual reality, just as movie theaters (where, early on, people screamed when they saw a train driving towards the camera, i.e. towards them, though that may be apocryphal) were a very primitive and early form of virtual reality. Ok, duh, movie theaters aren't dystopian. But the frontier is soon going to breach the boundaries of our bodies and skulls. There are clear dangers involved.

Neither the Free Software movement, nor any "cognitive sovereignty" legislation as proposed by some transhumanists, would solve this. There's a fundamental trust issue that seems unsolvable.

I am trying to provoke thought; to me, the core issue with transhumanism is that other humans will be capable of subtly, undetectably and plausibly-deniably change your perception of reality and of yourself. Even people who focus on the "politically dystopian" aspects of transhumanism tend to ignore this; and instead focus on inequality, discrimination, and so on, which in my view are secondary.

tsss• 4 years ago

That's bullshit. Transhumanism is about overcoming the human condition. Ibuprofen, penicillin and even ancient technology like animal husbandry or irrigation are more important to transhumanism than VR goggles and pointless magnet implants.

Ironically, this comment is the perfect example for the real reason for the downfall of transhumanism: It has become popular and thus poisoned by clueless tech pornographers with zero understanding of the philosophy.

psyc• 4 years ago

I discovered transhumanism around the turn of the century. I thought I'd found a treasure trove of insight. I was all about it for 3 or 4 years. Told people who weren't interested all about it. It was really easy to believe in radical transformation of the status quo in those days. There was a feeling in the air that the advent of the Web would solve everybody's problems, end scarcity, make everyone rich (especially us) and propel the stock market upward from then on.

Well, that feeling was short lived. It wasn't too long before I decided futurism in general was not an analysis of where the world is heading, but what certain communities of sci-fi nerds and techies wanted to happen, and believed they themselves could or would make happen. And that's fine I guess. But I was much more skeptical that their hockey-stick takeoffs would happen, at least in my lifetime.

What's happened in my lifetime so far is you can get more stuff delivered to your door, and faster; and computers got smaller and better at the same time. Ok. Well, computers were already getting smaller when I was born. Maybe they can get smaller. I'm not sure what that looks like. The display is probably a light pair of reading glasses. Maybe the computer is a wristwatch. Or a nose ring.

And then maybe later the computer goes inside you and injects into the optic nerve. And hey look at that, there's some transhumanism, I think. But I doubt anyone living knows how to do that. I'm just rambling now...

naillo• 4 years ago

What's the story of how gizmodo is still around? I thought Peter Thiel killed them off.

mindcrime2• 4 years ago

For another perspective:

https://www.reddit.com/r/transhumanism/

kerblang• 4 years ago

I have no problem with enhancing our lives thru technology, but seeking eternal life in this universe is incredibly stupid because you're effectively seeking eternal damnation. Eventually someone captures you, locks you away and tortures you for thousands of years if not forever.

Creating heaven is hard, but hell is well within reach.

the_omegist12• 4 years ago

Some type of Dead man's switch [0] could make it safer, if it's your main worry. Of course, it's another source of bugs..

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man's_switch

nathanaldensr2• 4 years ago

Considering transhumanism is one of the most, if not the most, egocentric philosophies out there, I'd say it's a near certainty to lead to authoritarian existence.

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

To become transhuman or posthuman, you'd first have to understand what it is to be human, and we're not anywhere near that. Some of the enthusiasm about the hopes for such a transition were raised by this:

"The Human Genome Project finally released a complete human genome sequence in 2003, in a project that took 13 years to complete."

The most remarkable thing about that accomplishment was how little it resulted in. Almost all of the hopes about medical breakthroughs and finally gaining a complete understanding of human biology have not been realized. There are many reasons for this - for example, the genome edits itself as it develops in different cell types, so the genome of your nerve cells is not the genome of your immune cells, heart cells, liver cells etc. Communication between all these cell types is incredibly important and that's hard to get from the genomic sequence. It turns out the 3D structure of the genome is as important as the 3D structure of proteins is, as it is an active dynamic entity in all cell types. There are probably dozens of other reasons on top of those.

As far as the notion of uploading one's consciousness into an artificial substrate while retaining one's sense of self, that seems highly implausible when we don't really understand the basic physical mechanism of consciousness, other than a vague idea that the brain is the most important component (even though nerves saturate the entire body).

Hence the whole subject remains in the science fiction arena and will stay there for a good long while, perhaps a century or more.

peteradio3• 4 years ago

You could potentially make a thing that acts like you, that's it. The only reason our existence is tolerable is that we agree with the guy that when he goes to bed he is dead and I take over in the morning and I make the same deal tomorrow.

nickff• 4 years ago

I quite like that phrasing (in your second sentence); did you come up with it yourself, or did you catch it somewhere?

maroonblazer• 4 years ago

What, or where, is the "I" in this deal?

stubish3• 4 years ago

Salami tactics (Yes Minister) would work around this. Replace and extend your brain and nervous system small parts at a time. Until one day you are entirely hardware, and thus your consciousness entirely software. Continuity of consciousness remains uninterrupted.

jholman4• 4 years ago

To become transhuman or posthuman, you'd first have to understand what it is to be human

What? Why?

I'm post-adolescent (at least biologically, please don't bring up all of my emotional immaturity), and I still don't (and definitely didn't then) understand what it is to be adolescent.

I live in a post-feudal society, and while I think we understand a few things about what it means to be feudal, I wouldn't bet on us having a full and complete understanding.

There's a plant on my balcony that's post-living, and as far as I know it never understood anything at all, much less understood what it was to be living.

Why is transhuman-ness or posthuman-ness a special exception to the general rule that surpassing (or at least passing) something does not in fact require understanding it?

tomhoward3• 4 years ago

You didn’t have to create a new technology that enabled you to transition to post-adolescent.

I think your parent commenter meant “_we_ would have to understand”, as a species, rather than all or any of us individually.

In practice just the people creating the technology. But it’s a big leap.

zizee• 4 years ago

I am interpreting the parent as saying before we can say something is post-human, we have to define (understand) what "human" is. If we cannot agree on what it is to be human, how can anyone be post-human? I.e. you can't define a "noun with modifier" until you define the noun.

the_omegist12• 4 years ago

Came to say the same thing with the same post-adolescent argument ;)

ravenstine• 4 years ago

Transhumanism never left. It became mainstream.

hinkley3• 4 years ago

For Cameron, transhumanism looks as frightening as ever, and he honed in on a notion he refers to as the “hollowing out of the human,” the idea that “all that matters in Homo sapiens can be uploaded as a paradigm for our desiderata.”

Jonathan Coulton, The Future Soon:

    Cause it's gonna be the future soon
    And I won't always be this way
    When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away
    It's gonna be the future soon
    I've never seen it quite so clear
    And when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes and it's already here

It's important to note, if you're not familiar with JoCo, that he is a satirist and this is a song about someone accidentally becoming a cyborg supervillain who causes a robot uprising, all because a girl dissed his secret admirer note in high school.

Do you want to be a transhumanist because you are embracing something, or because you are running away from something, like the fictional character in this song? The latter is deeply unhealthy, perhaps fatally (or in this case, genocidally) so.

marcosdumay• 4 years ago

With our current relationship with tech, nobody on their right mind would want to anticipate transhumanism. Fix tech first, then people will start to hype it again.

foobiekr• 4 years ago

This is the true and underappreciated answer.

People do not trust technology and technology companies.

And they are right in that thinking. Almost all of the big tech companies are straight up evil almost to the point of being impossible to satire and tech workers defend them due to the high compensation.

orthecreedence• 4 years ago

Right, this is my sentiment exactly. Give me open-source, modular devices created by people operating outside the incentive structures of a capitalist mode of production and I'll take a look.

As far as the devices of the current order, I keep that dirty bullshit as far away from my body (and home) as I reasonably can.

svnt3• 4 years ago

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emptyparadise• 4 years ago

Imagine buying a Facebook neuralink and having then datamine your thoughts.

Animats• 4 years ago

"Like so many others after 9/11, I felt spiritually and existentially lost. It’s hard to believe now, but I was a regular churchgoer at the time."

Ah, the will to believe. In something. Anything. The believer crowd is usually not the group that makes it work. Today's "metaverse" enthusiasts and actual metaverse implementers have quite limited overlap.

AtlasBarfed• 4 years ago

Transhumanism should be about freedom and increased ability.

But the future is about corporate authoritarian dystopia, extreme wealth inequality, and environmental armageddon.

Pessimism for the future is beginning to take over.

I mean, look at "Meta", and the fact it's tied to effing facebook and all the crappiness that entails. VR is a lot like transhumanism in many ways, and it's clear VR will be attached to megacorps and google-class lockout and non-customer service.

jandrewrogers• 4 years ago

As someone who was quite plugged into the transhumanist scene in the 1990s and well-acquainted with several of the people referenced, I have a perspective that I think explains it more succinctly.

When I was introduced to it in the early 1990s, the movement was dominated by extremely technical doers and thinkers, with a culture that encouraged rigor. It was philosophical rather than political. In the late 1990s, transhumanism had its Eternal September moment, when it became fashionable and trendy to be "transhumanist". The discourse became dominated by people hijacking the transhumanist movement in service of their political and social agendas, with nary a nod toward rigor. The doers and serious people originally associated with the movement and which gave it its intellectual gravitas became greatly outnumbered and mostly moved on.

Many of the early transhumanists stopped labeling themselves as such because they did not want to be associated with the kind of people that came to define it.

MichaelZuo2• 4 years ago

This seems to be the progression with everything.

orangepurple• 4 years ago

I would like to draw attention to a classic transhumanist philosopher whose style has remained consistent for decades.

https://www.hedweb.com/

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life.

        The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture - a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event.

        Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice.

RappingBoomer• 4 years ago

transhumanism is a cult composed of defective biological machines, and I say that as a signed up cryonicist...

platz• 4 years ago

So, transhumanists are just techy progressives?

mensetmanusman3• 4 years ago

“ Transhumanism made a lot of sense to me, as it seemed to represent the logical next step in our evolution, albeit an evolution guided by humans and not Darwinian selection.”

Cringe-worthy misunderstanding of Darwinism…

dr_dshiv• 4 years ago

I once went to an early 2000’s transhumanist party with Nick Bostrom. He had a transhumanist leadership position at that point, if I recall. (The party was rad)

The most transhumanist thing in my life currently: getting into flow states writing academic papers with GPT-3. It is genuinely mind melting.

swayvil• 4 years ago

Self cultivation via meditation and related methods is where it's at. Smoother and deeper than mere machines. It's the old and good "transhumanism".

It really is impressive stuff.

AndrewKemendo• 4 years ago

*waves hand*

I have at certain points in life considered myself part of this movement. I think I'd still consider myself one, but with a lot more cynicism.

At this point it's unquestionable to me that people will eventually do some version of "mind uploading." However I doubt we'll ever answer the question whether you'll be uploading "yourself" or not - my guess is not.

Unless we somehow make a literal "Matrix" like the movies, it's just not going to happen and I see no reason we would or should build such a thing.

pc2g4d• 4 years ago

My disgust reaction is provoked by enough transhumanist ideas that it feels more dystopian than utopian to me. I guess I'm too... human... to trans-human too hard.

Tao3300• 4 years ago

They finished transitioning.

xvilka3• 4 years ago

It's dangerous to modify something we don't know in details - risk breaking it is too high. The only sane action transhumanism could do is to throw money and working hands on the biomedical research, also biomedical engineering. Even nanotechnology is less relevant since those nanobots would need to know exactly what to modify. At the end, likely we will just design new proteins which are true nanobots already existing in our bodies.

xwdv• 4 years ago

I think transhumanists eventually just grew up, realized how silly the whole idea was, and then were never replaced by some younger generation that shared the same naive optimism about technology that they had in early years. We’ve learned to look at technology with a more cynical eye these days. It’s like for any technology you imagine, I can instantly see how to exploit it at the expense of the human experience.

jccalhoun• 4 years ago

I was hoping this would be more specific and do followups on people who were featured in places like Wired. For example they have a picture of Anders Sandberg wearing an eyepiece and carying around a computer. Does he still do that? I've heard about people implanting rfid chips in their hand. Do they still use them a few years later?

xvilka3• 4 years ago

face a new feudalism, as control of finance and the power that goes with it will be at the core of technological human enhancement, and democracy…will be dead in the water.”

While there's a significant risk of it to happen, it's not a given. Brain augmentation connecting people to each other might give a rise to the direct democracy when hundreds of the collective decisions take place every day: from desiding if your local road needs an upgrade between community members to voting for the national parliament members.

shrimp_emoji• 4 years ago

https://youtu.be/vdBQU1pZxWQ

gcr2• 4 years ago

oh believe me we're still around! you're just not gonna find a lot of that "above ground" so to speak. the good stuff happens in hushed tones or among small social circles.

And in places you wouldn't otherwise think to look, like transgender people. 'Cause when you think about it, taking synthetic experimental hormones to give our bodies new capabilities and reconnect ourselves to our minds more deeply reflects the essence of "trans humanism," no?

The overlap between the queer/furry community and the transhumanist/cyberpunk community is very strong and has always been. If you're looking for keywords to google for, check out the "Freedom of Form Foundation" and its research (this is both explicitly furry and explicitly transhumanist), some of the Korps RCG propaganda stories, the postfurry embassy, any of the plurality/tulpa/multiplicity/DiD recovery communities (a rare example of putting mind tech into practice today rather than fantasizing about it in the future), the people who make those full-body drone suits at hypnokink events, anything Naomi Wu touches, etc etc etc ...

toofy• 4 years ago

We currently have a massive chunk of society who are losing their collective minds about people engaging in the very early iterations of transhumanism—transgender folks.

I still regularly encounter people who are spitting angry against transgender folks and then later in the conversation will completely unironically talk about how much they love the cyberpunk genre.

Not many of them realize they would be the weird cultists in the background of the story holding signs preaching about unnatural technology.

causality0• 4 years ago

I don't think it's a one-dimensional line with pro/anti modification. For example, if you were against people integrating weapons into their bodies or upward-facing eyes into their feet for looking up skirts, that wouldn't make you anti-transhuman.

axblount2• 4 years ago

Right. But being able to live as your authentic self is a good thing, unlike your examples. Opposing good modifications is anti-transhumanist.

ben_w2• 4 years ago

I'm a furry. Does "being a (cuddly) werewolf" count as a weapon?

agileAlligator2• 4 years ago

I still regularly encounter people who are spitting angry against transgender folks and then later in the conversation will completely unironically talk about how much they love the cyberpunk genre.

There is a difference between messing with your body and augmenting it. Transhumanists generally believe in augmenting the human body with cybernetic parts, not changing the body's internal chemistry.

axblount2• 4 years ago

Then how do you explain common transhumanist ideas like nootropics and biohacking? I think the line you've drawn is a bit arbitrary.

yarg13• 4 years ago

I really don't feel that's a fair comparison.

The transgender community needs to stop pushing the notion that it's healthy and desirable; it's not - it's a devastating hormonal/fertility disorder.

We can't even look into the extent to which the androgenisation of humanity is the consequence of the pollutants that we've introduced into the environment.

Now, comparing this to trans-humanist body mods - how many of those result in sterility?

The changes that trans-humans want are intended to extend the capabilities of the human; but a sex change leaves an individual in a physically compromised super-position of the body that they were born with, and the body that fits the mind.

jeremysalwen• 4 years ago

trans people make body modifications that don't prioritize my values (fertility)

Doesn't seem like a very strong argument that it doesn't fit into the cyberpunk ethos. Modifying your body for reasons you care about seems very cyberpunk, and exactly the sort of thing that other people would have moral qualms over, especially if they don't share your values. Certainly the technology could be improved for people who do care about fertility, but, well, newer, improved versions of body modification technology is also very cyberpunk.

Rodeoclash2• 4 years ago

You mention sterility. As a thought experiment, what if the science was perfected that you could change gender perfectly (ala The Culture novels). Would you still feel the same way about it?

fzeroracer6• 4 years ago

There are a million things more dangerous to the continuation of the human race than a few people willingly becoming sterile to solve other issues with their body. For decades we were shoving lead into gasoline and poisoning an entire generation for the sake of more money, for example. And the 'androgenization of humanity' seems like some nonsense, considering there's zero data or otherwise to back that up.

0dayz2• 4 years ago

I mean you're quite frankly arguing with a straw man, and being vague with the word "healthy", no trans community is advocating that taking opposite hormones is physically healthy.

They push for it because that's the only viable option for them to appear as the opposite gender which helps them mentally.

Although it is funny you're in a way talking about how men are turning into femboy meme.

wardedVibe• 4 years ago

Oh, so the reason conservatives are concerned about the birth rate is so they have ammo against gay, trans, and women on the pill. Got it. I was wondering why an issue that won't be a major concern until after 2100 was becoming popular.

mise_en_place2• 4 years ago

That's arguing with bad faith and framing the argument incorrectly IMO. Nobody is " against trans " people, whatever that means. Many are against children joining that lifestyle, which may result in irreparable harm to the child.

As an adult, I am on androgen replacement therapy but I am also very careful with it, regularly checking my labs to make sure I don't torch my liver in the process. I can make informed decisions about it because I've read the research and understand the risks. A child or even a teenager doesn't understand the risks of taking hormones. Not fully anyway, as the brain doesn't fully develop until 25 or so.

dragonwriter2• 4 years ago

. Nobody is " against trans " people, whatever that means

What it means is “actively seeking to eliminate trans people, including by the simple expedient of killing them by means such as prohibiting care that is proven to greatly reduce suicidality in, especially, young trans people.”

And lots of people—indeed, entire state governments in the US—are “against trans people”.

viraptor2• 4 years ago

Nobody is " against trans " people, whatever that means.

Have you ever been on twitter? It will take you a couple of minutes to find people who think that's unnatural, sinful, should be forbidden, they're mentally ill, they're sexual predators by default. I know there are some more moderate ideas, but people completely against do exist.

fzeroracer6• 4 years ago

That's arguing with bad faith and framing the argument incorrectly IMO. Nobody is " against trans " people

I don't know how you can say that unironically when places like my current state (Texas) have been doing everything in their power to be against trans people. These lifestyle arguments remind me a lot of the exact same stuff people said about anyone gay, that they thought it caused irreparable harm and spread disease.

nyanpasu642• 4 years ago

Going through natal puberty causes irreparable harm to children.

adrianN2• 4 years ago

I think a big fraction of the anti-transgender movement is not against adults modifying their bodies, but against a) children modifying their bodies, b) persons with modified bodies claiming to be the opposite gender thanks to their modifications (or indeed, before any modification). They probably would have much less of a problem with an adult replacing one of their eyes with an x-ray camera or whatever.

lostgame• 4 years ago

I wish that were the case - but it’s a significantly smaller fraction than it needs to be.

The largest fraction of the anti-transgender movement is clearly the American conservative Christian right, who has completely chosen to ignore human rights in favour of Old Testament values.

(Source: I’m transgender, and I’m terrified what’s going on in the USA.)

ianbicking2• 4 years ago

Putting aside the debate and controversy around transgender folks, if I just step back and think about the act itself, it is truly an incredible act of will over self... redefining yourself, redefining your relationship to society, acting so strongly against the defaults of your life... I'm not sure I could do it.

As an act of tremendous will over self I genuinely respect it.

inawarminister• 4 years ago

Sounds like a religious conversion to me.

Especially those that require body modification, such as Jewish and Islam's adult circumcision.

raffraffraff• 4 years ago

One can exercise tremendous change over ones self, but one cannot redefine ones relationship with society since relationships aren't one-way. That's always going to be a potential source of friction.

jl66• 4 years ago

I think if transhumans with augmentations wanted to compete with humans in sports, or if parents wanted to give their children irreversible experimental augmentations, you would find very similar concerns.

kuschku11• 4 years ago

Parents aren't giving their children any irreversible modifications though, that's not even legal.

All that's done is pausing puberty until the children are old enough to legally consent to changes, if they do want them. If they do not, puberty can be resumed at any time without any harm (puberty blockers are used significantly more often on cis kids whose puberty started too early than on trans kids).

No child is taking any hormone medication or getting any surgery to transition. Actually, hormones and surgery are frequently given to cis kids who are close to the line to inter, to better align them with their AGAB. But in trans healthcare,this is not a thing.

Usually at 14 or 16 trans teenagers can choose to take hormones, but still, no surgeries below the age of 18 for trans children.

The only surgeries parents can do to children legally are circumcision in cis children and heavy genital modification in inter children to pretend they're not inter.

concordDance3• 4 years ago

I still regularly encounter people who are spitting angry against transgender folks

Would those people still be angry at transgender people if they went in the bathrooms (and other sex segregated spaces) they used to go into and didn't complain about being called using their original names, sex and pronouns? I expect the most they'd get in that case is nose wrinkling in disgust.

kuschku11• 4 years ago

They would be just as angry in that situation. Have you seen how trans masculine people get treated?

The bathroom laws forbid them from going into the male bathroom (because they're AFAB), bit if they go into the female bathroom while looking like a bodybuilder, they'll also have the cops called on them.

Bathrooms were never sex segregated, and that's not the point of these laws either: the goal of these laws is to make it so uncomfortable to be visibly trans, that it becomes impossible.

That's why this usually goes hand in hand with bans on even teaching about the existence of LGBT people in schools, the goal is eradication.

bart_spoon• 4 years ago

Cyberpunk as a genre generally depicts as a technologically advanced dystopia. One can find the setting interesting but not desirable, just as people find post-apocalyptic zombie plagues fascinating but wouldn’t actually want to experience it.

Waterluvian• 4 years ago

I’m rather convinced, with really no evidence, mind you, that all the best future cyborg implants will be surficial and removable. Glasses. Skin patch. Etc.

I’ve seen how good we are with tech. I don’t see why we’ll need to cut people open to apply it.

fallingfrog3• 4 years ago

I mean Altos labs is out there trying to cure aging, so you might say it’s gone mainstream.

alfnor2• 4 years ago

I think one reason transhumanism will never truly take off is because whenever something can be done more efficiently without potentially harming one's body, that's the winning piece of technology. Sure, we could try to make body mods that allow us to fly, but we already have helicopters and airplanes (not to mention jetpacks). Yes, we could make ourselves super smart by trying to integrate our minds with the Internet and AI, but we already have smartphones in our pockets.

What ever happened to the transhumanists?

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