[p2p-research] Fwd: trashing transhumanism

Wed May 6 20:40:43 CEST 2009

Michel:

They always say the most bitter anti-communists were communists in their
youth.  Perhaps it is true of transhumanists.  As usual, your opinion is
measured and fair.

I will continue to read Dale Carrico's work, and I see he lists p2p
prominently in his blogrole.  He has a really sharp quill that is too funny
not to read.

I have gone round and round myself with the radical libertarians--it is an
argument I now loathe.  But again, NOT reading someone like a Will Wilkenson
is too hard.  Will is sharp and as worth reading as he is wrong (most of the
time.)

I'll confess to a perverse game where I will force myself to listen to my
rhetorical oponents with the continual internal query of "can I agree to
that?" That's pretty wierd.

My desires to be a troll in their comments are now long gone years ago.
Still, once a troll...

Ryan Lanham

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 5:50 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>>>> imaginary technodevelopments* (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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>>>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>>>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Marc Fawzi
>>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Marc-Fawzi/605919256
>>> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcfawzi
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> p2presearch mailing list
>>> p2presearch at listcultures.org
>>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> 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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