Talk:Transhumanism/Archive 1

message: The arguments of Joy and De Garis are interesting - the analysis parallels but the solution does not.  De Garis seems to think a billion dead humans in a struggle to achieve transhuman status for some post-humans is "worth it"... a good demonstration of the completely insane amoral stances of the idiots who preach this crap.
:Personally, I think the first thing AI will do is train Unabombers to kill AI researchers... that the entire program is suicidal by definition, body-hating, and a great way to say "humans suck, extinct us please".  No need for Unabombers to volunteer, they'll be zombied into the job by AI-generated-advertising-believing television junkies and video gamers.    - 24
::I'm not at all familiar with transhumanism, but the above description has some interesting parallels with some forms of early gnosticism, which also believed that our human bodies were evil, but our souls were good, or would be if they could ever get rid of their pesky bodies. The search for a way to transfer a human mind or consciousness into a machine or computer seems very similar on the surface, just without the 'mysticism' of a spiritual afterlife for the soul. Wesley 21:58 Sep 23, 2002 (UTC)
:::A transhumanist, though, would see nothing inherently "pure" about the present state of the "soul" either; after uploading oneself into a computer-mind, the first thing a transhuman would do is continue upgrading--more memory, faster processing, more senses, more connections with other uploads. And perhaps even mechanical "body" parts to help exercise one's will in the rest of the universe.  Indeed, it is an explicit goal of many to transform as much of the universe's matter as possible into computronium on which to run ourselves.  --LDC
::::Oh, I don't know about that. I consider myself transhumanist. I'm also a spiritualist. I don't think any arrangement of data, or any special algorithm, will mystically result in awareness. And yes, I do "experience" "awareness". The transhumanism comes in at the part where I think we're going to make new bodies and brains for ourselves, regardless of whether mechanical or organic. At any rate: I'm getting ready to slap on a big "Not NPOV" on the page... There's nothing in Transhumanism that says you can't be a spiritualist. If the transhumanists reject the possibility, then there will be schizm. We'll have to have something called "Spiritualist Transhumanism," or something like that. -- Lion Kimbro
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Hugo de Garis is not a transhumanist. The fact that he advocates the deliberate creation of AI that will wipe out the human race should be a dead giveaway (note the word "human" in "transhumanist"). As far as non-moral opinions go, de Garis's views are similar to that of many transhumanists, yes, but he shares none of the moral philosophy.
Many of the statements regarding de Garis's opinions previously appearing in the criticisms section here are simply wrong. Everything that I have read of his regarding his "gigadeath war" indicates that it is a battle between those supporting the creation of superintelligent "artilects" (artificial intellects; he loves neologisms) and those opposed to such creation. His comments should not be generalized to the transhumanist movement as a whole. Googling his personal website, I find virtually no mention of transhumanism.
If there are no objections, I'm going to remove de Garis from this section, as he is neither a transhumanist nor a vocal critic of the transhumanist movement. His opinions regarding the future of AI are somewhat relevant to transhumanism (although more so to the Singularity) and can be included elsewhere in the article perhaps. If anyone can provide quotations where he actually claims to be a transhumanist, or specifically criticises tranhumanism, then by all means insert them in the article, but I don't think such things exist. -- Schaefer 08:55, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joy, de Garis, gnosticism, soul, spiritualist 

message: JRR Trollkien, unless you provide some clarification, I have and will continue to edit out the mention of "Marxists" and "nihilism" in the Critics and Opponents of Transhumanism section of the article because they render the statements, which they were part of, biased and inaccurate. Loremaster 23:43, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: EuroTom has provided the proper clarification surrounding this issue with his edits. Loremaster 01:18, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marxism and nihilism in critics section 

message: "the pace of technological development is steadily increasing,"
This is opinion, not fact; it should be noted as such and attributed.  I personally dispute it;  there was a great impulse with the "discovery" of quantum mechanics in the early 20th C., this is followed by a slow down in fundamental discovery.  Current technological development is largely incremental improvement and even that is showing some signs of slowing (a la Jet engine..)  Mozzerati 21:03, 2004 Aug 14 (UTC)
*Good point. I rephrased it. Loremaster 21:26, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Disputed phrase

message: This page is rather long and I'd like to either move the WTA and Extropy manifestos to a separate page or just link to them externally. By the time a reader gets to that portion of the article, he should have a fair idea of what transhumanism is about and shouldn't need two manifestos to hammer it in. Is anyone strongly opposed to this? -- Schaefer 12:20, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Loremaster 16:07, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Transhumanist manifestos