Some >H working ideas

Delvieron@aol.com
Tue, 16 Mar 1999 23:53:05 EST

Here are some current musings of mine.

Transhumanism - The philosophy which advocates achieving complete control over myself and my environment in order to improve (as I define improvement) myself.

Some Transhuman philosophical challenges:

1)  Who am I? (the defining of the self)
2)  How do I determine if another entity in my environment has a self?
3)  How do I interact with others with a self who are in the same environment?

Obviously, working toward the first definition wouldn't be ethically difficult if it weren't for the fact that there seems to be other beings with a sense of self in my environment, and this leads to the question, "If I have the right to control myself and my environment, don't they? But if they are in my environment, then they are a part of my environment, so don't I need to control them? And if they are in my environment, aren't I in their environment, and thus something they need to control? Maybe if I left out that part about my environment and focused on myself....but wait, I am rather strongly embedded in my environment, in fact on some levels it is difficult to discern where I stop and the environment starts, and it is awefully hard to totally control my life without at least some control of my environment....uh oh.

Extropianism - a broad theory of how best to achieve >H goals based on the concept that rationality, extreme decentralization, and maximization of free and copious flows of information and resources provides the best environment to foster Transhumanism.

These are just some working ideas....I would love some feedback.

Glen