Bear with me, please - I'm about to make a brief feminist case for transhumanism. As recently as the past century, it was common for born-female humans to die while bearing big-brained babies....
Bear with me, please - I'm about to make a brief feminist case for transhumanism.
As recently as the past century, it was common for born-female humans to die while bearing big-brained babies. Like, 30+% of women died young from immediate complications of pregnancy, childbirth, infections contracted while birthing, and so on. That leaves aside the immense morbidity and loss of productive healthy life due to birthing injuries, untimed pregnancies, perpetual anemia, STDs, etc. Historians (e.g. Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel) have argued that this extraordinary (by comparison with other placental mammals) mortality/morbidity is the primary source of women's inferior status throughout history.
Caesarian sections, antisepsis, and birth control were great strides, but they're just ameliorating the human evolutionary biology of incomplete selection for the ability to bear big-brained babies. I can very comfortably contemplate a world of extra-corporeal incubation, ungendered pregnancy, and other technological interventions to equalize and minimize the burdens of procreating.
I'm always surprised when people are anti-transhumanism. We know science and technology can approxomately double the human lifespan, why would we stop? Who doesn't want to be 30 for a thousand...
I'm always surprised when people are anti-transhumanism. We know science and technology can approxomately double the human lifespan, why would we stop? Who doesn't want to be 30 for a thousand years? I do disagree with the idea of 'curing death'. All finite things end, and even if you live to be 10,000,000,000 years old, you will still end.
Under capitalism transhumanism only applies to the rich. The working class will be left behind - or even worse, forced to transform against their will. I don't want to end up in a Morlock/Eloi...
Under capitalism transhumanism only applies to the rich. The working class will be left behind - or even worse, forced to transform against their will. I don't want to end up in a Morlock/Eloi dystopia.
I do have similar fears, but I will say that my understanding of the current trans-humanist movement is that it is fairly anarchist. I am worried that as soon as something big happens in...
I do have similar fears, but I will say that my understanding of the current trans-humanist movement is that it is fairly anarchist. I am worried that as soon as something big happens in trans-humanism that capitalist gold-diggers will swarm it and try and commodify it. Either way, the potential benefits of trans-humanism outweigh my own concerns about its potential misuse; I really would love to be able to live to 1000 years.
There are definitely some weirdo right wing libertarian types and worse in the transhumanist community already, and prominent ones at that. For everyone that read the Culture novels and got them,...
There are definitely some weirdo right wing libertarian types and worse in the transhumanist community already, and prominent ones at that. For everyone that read the Culture novels and got them, there's an Elon Musk that clapped and laughed at the funny ships with the funny names while absorbing approximately 0% of the politics, and then you've got actual fascists like Peter Thiel.
Don't get me wrong, there's definitely an anarchist undercurrent to transhumanism, and it's something that could vastly transform and improve the human condition, but the exact same things could've been said even fifteen years ago about social media, and we all know how that's turned out so far. While I would still call myself a transhumanist as well, I frankly think there's a much more compelling case for pessimism than optimism.
What would it mean to “get” the politics of the Culture novels? They seem morally ambiguous to me. Events happen at such a huge scale that it seems pretty irrelevant to life as we know it....
What would it mean to “get” the politics of the Culture novels? They seem morally ambiguous to me. Events happen at such a huge scale that it seems pretty irrelevant to life as we know it. Planet-scale atrocities are basically background noise. They are often about bizarre people making bizarre decisions.
Granted that it isn't particularly heavy handed outside maybe Player of Games or Surface Detail, and the novels are plenty entertaining anyway, but they pretty explicitly embrace and promote a far...
Granted that it isn't particularly heavy handed outside maybe Player of Games or Surface Detail, and the novels are plenty entertaining anyway, but they pretty explicitly embrace and promote a far left, broadly anarcho-communist worldview. With regard to Musk, he embraces the aesthetic without realizing he'd be a villain in the setting, and would fight tooth and nail against something like the Culture coming about.
I think the governance of the Culture itself is so far removed from human experience that I don’t see it as advocacy for anything in particular. How much control do the Minds really have? Nobody...
I think the governance of the Culture itself is so far removed from human experience that I don’t see it as advocacy for anything in particular. How much control do the Minds really have? Nobody knows. They are like the Greek gods, interfering with people’s lives and in other planets’ affairs as they see fit. Their interventions are often coercive and inscrutable. They might very well support Musk if the Minds thought it would work out well in the end.
I find Use of Weapons, in particular, hard to interpret as leftist. We are given a theory of how civilizations work that excuses just about any atrocity. The ends justify the means, and the ends are unknown to us.
I never know what people mean when they talk about nature that way. Are beaver dams 'unnatural', are the gigantic ant colonies? We are animals like any other, so all we do is natural, no? I guess...
I never know what people mean when they talk about nature that way. Are beaver dams 'unnatural', are the gigantic ant colonies? We are animals like any other, so all we do is natural, no?
I guess I should have been more clear. I do understand the reasons that many people, in particular non-materialists, i.e. technology that directly challenges their world-view. I don't ?internally? understand how someone would have an abstract problem with cybernetics/mind uploading. Sure, if we research them and they have some intrinsic issue, I get; I don't get disliking the idea before the implementation.
Don't get me wrong, I want to be able to live as long as I want, be that 1000 years or 10 billion years. My point is more that I dislike the framing that some trans-humanists use. It comes off as pseudo-religious, which I personally have issues with.
I guess I should say this explicitly, but my support is for trans-humanism as the idea that technology can fundamentally transform what being a human means. For me that doesn't actually have a...
I guess I should say this explicitly, but my support is for trans-humanism as the idea that technology can fundamentally transform what being a human means. For me that doesn't actually have a moral or ethical elements. Of course, there could be bad ways that humans are transformed, i.e. super-soldiers with no empathy. There could also be very good things, making humans live to be 1000 years old and being able to see ultraviolet light. Imagine seeing a new color for the first time and how fucking dope that would be. There can be bad anything, and everything can be misused; however that is not, IN THE ABSTRACT, a reason not to explore and try new things. Trans-humanism, for me, is above any 1 technology and about a movement towards something new.
There is a genre of fun ethical debates along the lines of “what would you do if you had a lot of power.” Maybe it’s “what I would do if I had a billion dollars” or “what would I do if I were...
There is a genre of fun ethical debates along the lines of “what would you do if you had a lot of power.” Maybe it’s “what I would do if I had a billion dollars” or “what would I do if I were President” but fantasy and science fiction authors come up with more interesting and weirder questions. It’s also part of the appeal of superhero movies. Many stories have an element of power fantasy to them.
I see transhumanism as a similar sort of thing. People are fantasizing over having powers that they don’t actually have, based on technological advances that haven’t happened yet and might not happen that way at all. I’m generally in favor of progress, but I don’t think there’s much at stake when we imagine what it might be like. If it happens for real the ethical questions will be different, and we probably won’t be the people making the decisions.
That's my take too, transhumanism is a fun thought experiment, not something to take seriously. What are we going to do, make laws now based on our currently moral calculations to limit or control...
That's my take too, transhumanism is a fun thought experiment, not something to take seriously.
What are we going to do, make laws now based on our currently moral calculations to limit or control technology which hasn't happened yet?
Future humans won't be deterred by those laws. They'll ignore or change them, provided they even end up being relevant. If augmentation or extended life is available, people are going to do it, it won't matter what anyone thinks about human purity or god's will or whatever else.
I do think it's interesting to consider how economics would play a part. As with everything else, the best options will be exclusively available to only a small percentage of people. Once those people have their enhancements, they'll start to gatekeep. They'll try to make sure their kids have a competitive advantage. Same story as ever, with better tech.
Maybe tech upgrades will become one of the motivations to contribute to a future society where all basic needs are met by default. Food, shelter and education are covered for all, but if you want wings, you'll need a side gig.
From my reading, I’m not sure philosophy works that way when it comes to ethics, but maybe I haven’t read the right things or we have a different idea of rigor.
From my reading, I’m not sure philosophy works that way when it comes to ethics, but maybe I haven’t read the right things or we have a different idea of rigor.
Because philosophy is a field where there have been many elaborate arguments over thousands of years, but little agreement about what’s true. In particular, there are multiple kinds of ethics...
Because philosophy is a field where there have been many elaborate arguments over thousands of years, but little agreement about what’s true. In particular, there are multiple kinds of ethics (which you can read about in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy) but no agreement on which is best. Or at least, that’s my impression.
You say “of course” but that’s not an argument, and anyway it’s okay to disagree. I was hoping to learn what you had in mind, but if you don’t want to say that’s okay too.
I don’t want to criticize philosophy in general. I didn’t actually say “philosophy is not rigorous” and I wouldn’t use the word “rigor” in this context because it seems rather vague. That’s your...
I don’t want to criticize philosophy in general. I didn’t actually say “philosophy is not rigorous” and I wouldn’t use the word “rigor” in this context because it seems rather vague. That’s your word and I was wondering what you meant when you used it.
Vagueness is, I think, a big problem in discussions like this one. “Transhumanism” covers a lot of ground. If someone wanted to think about the problems that come from people living longer, for example, it might be better just to talk about longevity. (And even that covers a lot of different medical advances.)
And yet, saying that a paper lacks rigor would tell us little about what you think is wrong with it or how it might be improved. That’s okay, it’s just an adjective. One word can only do so much.
And yet, saying that a paper lacks rigor would tell us little about what you think is wrong with it or how it might be improved. That’s okay, it’s just an adjective. One word can only do so much.
(It's looking like we might not get back to transhumanism. I hope you're having fun!) Examples can be very useful for clarifying what you mean. How do you know what a chair is? Clearly it's not...
(It's looking like we might not get back to transhumanism. I hope you're having fun!)
Examples can be very useful for clarifying what you mean. How do you know what a chair is? Clearly it's not from a definition; it's from seeing lots of chairs and seeing them used. This doesn't mean everyone would agree on edge cases, but that's okay; nothing depends on the edge cases.
I believe abstract words should be treated with suspicion because people agree on them less. Is Hungary still a democracy? This isn't a simple question, and people could decide differently based on what they think a democracy is. Discussions using abstract words often degenerate because people have different ideas about what they mean.
It's not that such words are entirely useless, but you should be ready to clarify what you mean using other words and not get stuck on one word's specific meaning. It can be useful to temporarily ban a word and see if you can explain what you mean without it. Also, asking for an example is a good strategy to use when you're not sure if you know what someone is talking about.
David Chapman often writes about the inevitability of nebulosity and how it's often not a problem in practice. There are unenumerable ways to refer to things that are good enough in a specific context. Universal statements tend to be trickier.
Bear with me, please - I'm about to make a brief feminist case for transhumanism.
As recently as the past century, it was common for born-female humans to die while bearing big-brained babies. Like, 30+% of women died young from immediate complications of pregnancy, childbirth, infections contracted while birthing, and so on. That leaves aside the immense morbidity and loss of productive healthy life due to birthing injuries, untimed pregnancies, perpetual anemia, STDs, etc. Historians (e.g. Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel) have argued that this extraordinary (by comparison with other placental mammals) mortality/morbidity is the primary source of women's inferior status throughout history.
Caesarian sections, antisepsis, and birth control were great strides, but they're just ameliorating the human evolutionary biology of incomplete selection for the ability to bear big-brained babies. I can very comfortably contemplate a world of extra-corporeal incubation, ungendered pregnancy, and other technological interventions to equalize and minimize the burdens of procreating.
I'm always surprised when people are anti-transhumanism. We know science and technology can approxomately double the human lifespan, why would we stop? Who doesn't want to be 30 for a thousand years? I do disagree with the idea of 'curing death'. All finite things end, and even if you live to be 10,000,000,000 years old, you will still end.
Under capitalism transhumanism only applies to the rich. The working class will be left behind - or even worse, forced to transform against their will. I don't want to end up in a Morlock/Eloi dystopia.
I do have similar fears, but I will say that my understanding of the current trans-humanist movement is that it is fairly anarchist. I am worried that as soon as something big happens in trans-humanism that capitalist gold-diggers will swarm it and try and commodify it. Either way, the potential benefits of trans-humanism outweigh my own concerns about its potential misuse; I really would love to be able to live to 1000 years.
There are definitely some weirdo right wing libertarian types and worse in the transhumanist community already, and prominent ones at that. For everyone that read the Culture novels and got them, there's an Elon Musk that clapped and laughed at the funny ships with the funny names while absorbing approximately 0% of the politics, and then you've got actual fascists like Peter Thiel.
Don't get me wrong, there's definitely an anarchist undercurrent to transhumanism, and it's something that could vastly transform and improve the human condition, but the exact same things could've been said even fifteen years ago about social media, and we all know how that's turned out so far. While I would still call myself a transhumanist as well, I frankly think there's a much more compelling case for pessimism than optimism.
What would it mean to “get” the politics of the Culture novels? They seem morally ambiguous to me. Events happen at such a huge scale that it seems pretty irrelevant to life as we know it. Planet-scale atrocities are basically background noise. They are often about bizarre people making bizarre decisions.
Granted that it isn't particularly heavy handed outside maybe Player of Games or Surface Detail, and the novels are plenty entertaining anyway, but they pretty explicitly embrace and promote a far left, broadly anarcho-communist worldview. With regard to Musk, he embraces the aesthetic without realizing he'd be a villain in the setting, and would fight tooth and nail against something like the Culture coming about.
I think the governance of the Culture itself is so far removed from human experience that I don’t see it as advocacy for anything in particular. How much control do the Minds really have? Nobody knows. They are like the Greek gods, interfering with people’s lives and in other planets’ affairs as they see fit. Their interventions are often coercive and inscrutable. They might very well support Musk if the Minds thought it would work out well in the end.
I find Use of Weapons, in particular, hard to interpret as leftist. We are given a theory of how civilizations work that excuses just about any atrocity. The ends justify the means, and the ends are unknown to us.
I was subconsciously just thinking of the body-hacking community. Yes, trans-humanism more generally is more split politically.
I never know what people mean when they talk about nature that way. Are beaver dams 'unnatural', are the gigantic ant colonies? We are animals like any other, so all we do is natural, no?
I guess I should have been more clear. I do understand the reasons that many people, in particular non-materialists, i.e. technology that directly challenges their world-view. I don't ?internally? understand how someone would have an abstract problem with cybernetics/mind uploading. Sure, if we research them and they have some intrinsic issue, I get; I don't get disliking the idea before the implementation.
Don't get me wrong, I want to be able to live as long as I want, be that 1000 years or 10 billion years. My point is more that I dislike the framing that some trans-humanists use. It comes off as pseudo-religious, which I personally have issues with.
I guess I should say this explicitly, but my support is for trans-humanism as the idea that technology can fundamentally transform what being a human means. For me that doesn't actually have a moral or ethical elements. Of course, there could be bad ways that humans are transformed, i.e. super-soldiers with no empathy. There could also be very good things, making humans live to be 1000 years old and being able to see ultraviolet light. Imagine seeing a new color for the first time and how fucking dope that would be. There can be bad anything, and everything can be misused; however that is not, IN THE ABSTRACT, a reason not to explore and try new things. Trans-humanism, for me, is above any 1 technology and about a movement towards something new.
There is a genre of fun ethical debates along the lines of “what would you do if you had a lot of power.” Maybe it’s “what I would do if I had a billion dollars” or “what would I do if I were President” but fantasy and science fiction authors come up with more interesting and weirder questions. It’s also part of the appeal of superhero movies. Many stories have an element of power fantasy to them.
I see transhumanism as a similar sort of thing. People are fantasizing over having powers that they don’t actually have, based on technological advances that haven’t happened yet and might not happen that way at all. I’m generally in favor of progress, but I don’t think there’s much at stake when we imagine what it might be like. If it happens for real the ethical questions will be different, and we probably won’t be the people making the decisions.
It can be fun to talk about, though.
That's my take too, transhumanism is a fun thought experiment, not something to take seriously.
What are we going to do, make laws now based on our currently moral calculations to limit or control technology which hasn't happened yet?
Future humans won't be deterred by those laws. They'll ignore or change them, provided they even end up being relevant. If augmentation or extended life is available, people are going to do it, it won't matter what anyone thinks about human purity or god's will or whatever else.
I do think it's interesting to consider how economics would play a part. As with everything else, the best options will be exclusively available to only a small percentage of people. Once those people have their enhancements, they'll start to gatekeep. They'll try to make sure their kids have a competitive advantage. Same story as ever, with better tech.
Maybe tech upgrades will become one of the motivations to contribute to a future society where all basic needs are met by default. Food, shelter and education are covered for all, but if you want wings, you'll need a side gig.
What sort of rigorous theory do you have in mind?
From my reading, I’m not sure philosophy works that way when it comes to ethics, but maybe I haven’t read the right things or we have a different idea of rigor.
Because philosophy is a field where there have been many elaborate arguments over thousands of years, but little agreement about what’s true. In particular, there are multiple kinds of ethics (which you can read about in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy) but no agreement on which is best. Or at least, that’s my impression.
You say “of course” but that’s not an argument, and anyway it’s okay to disagree. I was hoping to learn what you had in mind, but if you don’t want to say that’s okay too.
I don’t want to criticize philosophy in general. I didn’t actually say “philosophy is not rigorous” and I wouldn’t use the word “rigor” in this context because it seems rather vague. That’s your word and I was wondering what you meant when you used it.
Vagueness is, I think, a big problem in discussions like this one. “Transhumanism” covers a lot of ground. If someone wanted to think about the problems that come from people living longer, for example, it might be better just to talk about longevity. (And even that covers a lot of different medical advances.)
And yet, saying that a paper lacks rigor would tell us little about what you think is wrong with it or how it might be improved. That’s okay, it’s just an adjective. One word can only do so much.
I find that discussing examples works better.
(It's looking like we might not get back to transhumanism. I hope you're having fun!)
Examples can be very useful for clarifying what you mean. How do you know what a chair is? Clearly it's not from a definition; it's from seeing lots of chairs and seeing them used. This doesn't mean everyone would agree on edge cases, but that's okay; nothing depends on the edge cases.
I believe abstract words should be treated with suspicion because people agree on them less. Is Hungary still a democracy? This isn't a simple question, and people could decide differently based on what they think a democracy is. Discussions using abstract words often degenerate because people have different ideas about what they mean.
It's not that such words are entirely useless, but you should be ready to clarify what you mean using other words and not get stuck on one word's specific meaning. It can be useful to temporarily ban a word and see if you can explain what you mean without it. Also, asking for an example is a good strategy to use when you're not sure if you know what someone is talking about.
Further reading: an anonymous person writing as @literalbanana on Twitter has written amusingly about problems using abstract nouns in the social sciences, in particular with surveys.
David Chapman often writes about the inevitability of nebulosity and how it's often not a problem in practice. There are unenumerable ways to refer to things that are good enough in a specific context. Universal statements tend to be trickier.
Certainly some abstractions are useful. I warn against them partly because I also engage in them too much.
This is the stuff from Dan Brown's Inferno right.