[p2p-research] Fwd: trashing transhumanism

Wed May 6 12:50:28 CEST 2009

Thanks for that Ryan,

Though I agree and symphatize with  many of Dale's political arguments, I
also think that retaining a dialogue with transhumanists is interesting, and
I do believe that today, there are many progressive elements in the
movement, and it is no longer dominated by extremist libertarians as it was
say 10 years ago,

The WTA is now mostly center-left, a pluralist in its diverse political
options.

Guys like Bryan, are both very p2p and very transhumanist, they are our
friends,

But, despite the rhetorical excesses of Dale, I think it is necessary to
read him for a valuable political critique,

You have to remember that his zeal is also the result of himself being a
transhumanist for many years, so he is also critiquing his own former self,
I presume,

Michel

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am deeply interested in the transhumanist dialogue for a number of
> reasons.  I respect the criticism and acknowledge the tendency to hyperbole,
> but I would also note it amongst all ideological groups.  Superlatives are a
> rhetorical device.  Those taking difficult positions rely on them to create
> heat.  Heat leads to debate, and debate moves us forward...inevitably.  (And
> I do believe there is a forward.)  Without that moral underpinning, I would
> probably be nihilist enough to be a Gaia theorist.
>
> I spent a couple of years in an AI laboratory and remain deeply skeptical
> of what can and cannot be done.  I remember many discussions I've had with
> the now deeply controversial Jorn Barger on the topic in the late 1980s when
> we worked in the same lab.
> My own view is that people like Michael Anissimov are asking great
> questions, and posing great and interesting answers--though admittedly
> sometimes laced with superlatives.
>
> I also read Dale Carrico, understand his arguments, and deeply disagree
> with most of them and would offer Michel Anissimov as my proxy in the
> debate; I rarely disagree with his writings.  Dale is a smart guy and he's
> worth listening to.  Right now, I don't find his complaints compelling.
>
> That said, I believe the world of P2P is giving rise to spontaneous pockets
> of learning capacity that are not well understood, and that may have
> significant implications.  I am a "geek."  I like futurism, and I think
> planning is worth doing.  I do not believe planning is pre-ordaning a
> future.
>
> I believe systems like Wolfram's Alpha (as much as I understand it) have
> the capacity to greatly enhance human more action.  I also believe that the
> web is already a deeply transhumanist tool...anyone who believes that they
> are not transformed and extended by the use of Wiki's, search engines, etc.
> is not very old.
>
> Ray Kurzweil received 1500 applications to his Singularity University.
> I wrote a recommendation for someone who applied.  The person I recommended
> was formible, and he didn't even get to the second level.  That means a lot
> of good minds are headed in that direction.  I also follow the world of
> nutrition and supplementation closely.  I am diabetic.  Like Kurzweil, I
> hope that technology can help my health, and I believe it has.  I see the
> moral need to do more in developing worlds, etc., but I am selfish about my
> hopes to live and see my children grow up.  Transhumanism to me represents a
> far more exciting vision of prospects than anything I've ever heard from
> physicians or medical professionals and ethicists in general.  Do I believe
> it is true?  No.  But I do believe that futurism and visioning based on
> scientific fact and prospect is essential.
>
> If P2P were not deeply tied to technology I think it would be just another
> pie-in-the-sky idealism with little hope of authentic transformation.  I'm
> all for changing the world however we can.  But I'm mostly for clear
> visions, experiments, trials and tough assessments.  I see little evidence
> that such standards are not emerging.  And I do think de Grey is likeable
> too.
>
> I left the study of Government because I heard the same ideological
> babbling I could read in books 150 years old.  Perhaps my great moral
> failing is that I believe in action and momentum.  I despise armchair
> theorizing that goes nowhere almost as much as I despise hurting peoples
> lives in the name of some theoretical right.  We are approaching times when
> technology can transform and help transform us.  We ought to remain open to
> that...while still being skeptical and critical.
>
> Ryan Lanham
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 6:12 AM, marc fawzi <marc.fawzi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Since I was banned from the Open Manufacturing list, which has at least
>> one very vocal 19 year old who is a self-proclaimed transhumanists, I would
>> hope someone forwards this to them.
>>
>> Not that it would change anything, but maybe prevent the easily
>> impressionable from drinking their coolaid.
>>
>>
>>   On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 3:50 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> From: <samfar at gmail.com>
>>> Date: Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 5:01 PM
>>> Subject: Do not ask and ye shall receive...
>>>
>>>  Amor Mundi trashing Transhumanists (not mere transhumanism). This is
>>> great stuff!  Reminds me of my own lost writings<http://www.openintegral.net/blog/?p=135>
>>> :
>>>
>>>
>>> http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2009/04/superlativity-and-its-bigger-picture.html
>>>
>>> (ALL emphasis added)
>>>
>>> "That shared superlative futurological identification tends to come at
>>> the cost in the present of an ambivalent dis-identification with their
>>> worldly peers -- *hence all the glib talk of "post"-humanity -- but this
>>> cost typically seems to them negligible if not actively desirable given that
>>> the Robot Cultist's desire for transcendence via superlative imaginarytechnodevelopments
>>> * (superintelligence, superlongevity, superabundance) expresses the
>>> ambivalence, or even loathing hostility, here and now, of the Robot Cultists
>>> with the frustrations of an error-prone passionate thoroughly social
>>> embodied *intelligence*, with the frustrations of a disease-prone
>>> demanding vulnerable socially legible embodied mortal *life*, with the
>>> frustrations of the stakeholder *politics* of reconciling the
>>> ineradicable diversity of aspirations of peers with whom we share the world
>>> and the fragility of the *freedom* bodied forth through that
>>> interminable reconciliation.
>>>
>>> "Quite apart from the "technical" implausibility of the imagined outcomes
>>> and developmental timelines proposed by superlative futurologists -- hence
>>> their utter marginality from scientific consensus in the actual fields they
>>> superficially, selectively, and opportunistically graze for "signs" that
>>> their wishes might finally come true for them -- *the Robot Cultists
>>> divest the concepts of intelligence, life, progress, and freedom of their
>>> social/embodied substance and then invest them in a compensatory
>>> amplification of blind, brute instrumental force, first rendering them
>>> meaningless and then adding insult to injury and confusing this with
>>> "emancipation."* This in my view is what Superlativity's "wider picture"
>>> finally amounts to, really, an obliteration here and now through dumb
>>> robotic insensitivity of the open futurity inhering in the collaboration and
>>> contestation of the diversity of worldly peers with whom we share the world
>>> and history, all in the name of transcendence via the One True Way -- an
>>> arrival at "The Future" -- in which Robot Gods clash meaninglessly and
>>> inhumanly through the eternal dead night."
>>>
>>> *BONUS! (THE WHOLE FRONT PAGE IS SCROLLING WITH GREAT ANTI-EXTROPIA
>>> SENTIMENT):*
>>>
>>> "I hate to break it to you but these figures Kurzweil, Drexler, Moravek,
>>> even enormously likable fellows like de Grey (and don't even get me started
>>> on that atrocity exhibition Yudkowsky) and so on you like to cite as your
>>> authorities are quite simply not taken seriously outside the small circle of
>>> superlative futurology itself -- at least not for the claims you are
>>> investing with superlative-endorsing significance."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
>>> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
>>> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>>
>>> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
>>> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
>>> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>>>
>>> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>>>
>>> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
>>> http://www.shiftn.com/
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Marc Fawzi
>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Marc-Fawzi/605919256
>> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcfawzi
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> p2presearch mailing list
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>>
>>
>

-- 
Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com

Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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