From: Nicholas Bostrom (bostrom@mail.ndirect.co.uk)
Date: Thu Oct 23 1997 - 10:56:42 MDT
Dave Chalmers wrote to me:
>p.s. "transhumanism" is a slightly unfortunate name in some ways, in
>that it is reminiscent of "transpersonal psychology" -- not really
>the sort of association you want.
Is this a general problem? My guess would be that most educated
people don't even know what transpersonal psychology is.
The term "transhumanism" is surely not ideal -- it smacks too much of
classical humanism, transsexualism, transvestitism, religious trance
experiences etc., and has too little of hard-core science and
high-tech flavour to it. But I think it is too late to do anything
about it now --and it's not so bad, really. I think we are already in
the process of impressing the cool connotations on the term that
characterize our outlook.
Nick Bostrom
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb
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