Monthly Archives: June 2016

transhumanism, n.

trans hu man ism

an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.

Wikipedia

That's the definition of "transhumanism" the Web offers up. It's true in a sort of reductionist sense, but I'm not sure it's a terribly useful definition.

If I were to define transhumanism, I'd say that it's an idea whose premise is that human nature is not some fixed quantity, forever unalterable; it's something that is a consequence of our biology and our environment, and it can be changed. Furthermore, advances in technology and in our understanding of biology, chemistry, and physics, give us the power to change it as we wish--to take evolution from a blind, undirected process to a process that we can make choices about. It's predicated on the idea that we can, if we so desire, choose what it means to be human.

A great deal of conventional thought has always held on to the idea that "human nature" is something that's a fundamental part of who we are, forever unalterable. Certain aspects of the human condition, from mortality to aggression, from disease to territoriality, have always been thought of as fixtures of the human condition; no matter how our society changes, no matter what we learn, these things have been assumed to be an immutable part of us.

Transhumanist thought holds that this isn't so. We are physical entities, whose nature comes from an extraordinarily complex dance of biochemical processes happening in our bodies. The way we respond to stress, the way we behave, the way our bodies suffer gradually increasing debility, all these things are the consequence of the physical processes happening inside our bodies and brains.

And they can change. Improved diet has made us qualitatively different from our neolithic ancestors--taller, longer-lived. Thousands of generations living in large numbers have made us more able to function in complex social environments; we have, in a sense, domesticated ourselves.

Right now, advances in biotechnology offer to revolutionize our view of who we are. What if aging and death were no longer inevitable? What if we could invent ways to repair genetic disorders? What if the human brain, which is a physical organ, could be modeled inside a computer? What if we could develop techniques to make our brains operate more efficiently? These sound like science fiction to a lot of people, but every single one of them is the subject of active research in labs around the world right now.

Transhumanism is a highly rationalist idea. It rejects the notion that human beings are corrupt, doomed to suffer and die as a result of a fall from grace. Rather, it postulates that the things that make us who we are are knowable and comprehensible; that the state of being human is a fit subject for scientific inquiry; and that as we learn more about ourselves, our ability to shape who we are increases.

The implications of these ideas are deeply profound. Transhumanist philosophy is built from the notion that things like indefinite lifespan, brain modeling, and improvement of human physical and intellectual capacity are both possible and desirable. Transhumanism, therefore, is profoundly optimistic.

It is not, however, Utopian. Like all new technologies, these things all have potential consequences whose outlines we can't see clearly yet. Therefore, transhumanism tends to be concerned not only with the possibility of biomedical technology but also its ethics; the study of transhumanism is, in large part, the study of bioethics. Who controls the direction of new, disruptive biomedical technology? What does it mean to be a "person;" is an artificial intelligence a person? How should new biomedical technology be introduced into society? How can it be made available democratically, to everyone who wishes it? What role is available to people who for whatever reason don't choose to benefit from new advances in medical understanding?

At its core, transhumanism is deeply pragmatic. Since it seems likely that biotechnology is going to improve over time whether we think about the implications of it or not, transhumanists think about things like bioethics, immortality, and the nature of consciousness in concrete, real-world terms, rather than as philosophical exercises. One of the things I most like about transhumanism is its drive to ask questions like "How can we maximize the benefit of what we are learning while maintaining human agency, dignity, and the right to choose?" Transhumanists are invited to be skeptical about everything, including the premises of transhumanism. It is quite likely that whatever views of the future we dream up will be flawed, as most prognostication tends to be. But by getting into the habit of examining these ideas now, and of considering the moral and ethical dimensions of our accelerating understanding of biology, we can at least train ourselves to get into the habit of asking the right questions as new breakthroughs come.

Read more:

ThinkBeyond.us | What Is Transhumanism?

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

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

Transhumanisme is mainstream geworden.

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

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

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

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

Extropianism

Singularitarianism

The Hedonistic Imperative

Democratic Transhumanism

Survivalist Transhumanism

Libertarian Transhumanism

Religious Transhumanism

Cosmopolitan Transhumanism

Cosmism

en

Anarcho-Transhumanism

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

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

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

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

Via Singularity Weblog.

Mooie film van Richard Mans.

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

abiogenesisfilm.com facebook.com/abiogenesisfilm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lees meer.

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

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

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

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

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

De uitgever rechtvaardigt het boek als volgt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Transhumanisme | Don Juan: Wozu bermenschlich, wenn du ...