[p2p-research] Fwd: trashing transhumanism

Thu May 7 05:30:13 CEST 2009

Hi Ryan,

listening to your opponents, to see the part of truth in their positions, is
a very good thing to do, I admit I'm not doing it enough ...

Michel

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 1:40 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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/
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> p2presearch mailing list
>>>>> 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/
>>
>
>

-- 
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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