From: Richard Steven Hack (richardhack@pcmagic.net)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 10:07:00 MST
At 03:45 PM 3/7/02 +0100, you wrote:
>It is your game, and you may do with it as you like, but I think leaving
>out issues like this would make it less interesting and actually less
>likely to spread the positive memes you would like to spread. We already
>have enough games and scenarios around where technological development
>is pursued for its own sake, and far too few that dares to look at how
>society interacts with technology.
>
>This is one of the most obvious weaknesses of transhumanism today, and
>many of our critics latch on to it: we do not integrate our
>technological visions with social visions, and that either suggests that
>we do not care the least about the rest of humanity, that we naively
>think technology is the only thing that matters or that we have unsavory
>social visions we do not reveal. All three views are wrong, but we have
>to show them untrue ourselves.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
Untrue for Extropians, perhaps, but not necessarily for Transhumanists.
I *don't* (particularly) care about the rest of humanity, I *do* believe
that technology is all that matters (not absolutely, of course, but as our
primary means of advancement), and being an anarchist I already have social
visions that most people consider unsavory.
It has always amused me that libertarians (not accusing you of being one,
just using this as an example of a point) that are members of the Lib Party
tend to want to distance themselves from anarchism because they're afraid
of being considered "kooks". The problem is - they already ARE considered
kooks by the mainstream. They will never NOT be considered kooks by the
mainstream. Transhumanists are in the same boat. No matter how you try to
hide it, the basic worldview of Transhumanism is and never will be
acceptable to the vast majority of the population - at least until actual
concrete positive results of Transhumanist technology (especially
substantial life extension) are actually available at a reasonable price to
everyone. Those who wish to preserve the "humanism" "in" Transhumanism (as
I implied with my Gnostic reference in another post, there isn't any
humanism in it, despite whatever 1930's social movements existed) are
doomed to failure, because Transhumanism is at its heart a philosophy - and
especially an attitude - of *transcending* human nature to a *non-human*
nature. And as I pointed out in my "fight or flight" comments, human
nature (for most people) *cannot* accept the idea that *anyone* is better
able to survive than they. It is a primitive, I suspect hard-wired (for
most people) response in the brain based on our primate competitive
heritage and our evolved reaction to our ability to imagine and
conceptually understand our own death (which I don't believe animals can do).
Somebody mentioned an "autoimmune system for memes" in a post in the last
day or so. That's any interesting concept. But I think it's based on what
I have said - people are afraid of death, and they have in their brains a
primitive notion that the "gods" dole out life and you have to both placate
the gods and attract their attention and make the gods give *you* more life
because there's only so much of life to go around. How this notion
represents itself in *conceptual* terms may vary between people based on
their personal and cultural history, but the notion itself seems to be
ingrained in the vast majority of the population - including many otherwise
very educated, intelligent, philosophically sophisticated, and even jaded
and skeptical people.
Transhumanists are people who, for some reason, either don't have that
reaction (because our genes skipped that one maybe) or have consciously
identified and overcome it. Such people are at absolute odds with the rest
of the human race. And trying to change those odds will not work (barring
nanotech to directly change everybody else's brain structure - which could
happen, I suppose.)
Richard Steven Hack
richardhack@pcmagic.net
--- Outgoing e-mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.325 / Virus Database: 182 - Release Date: 2/19/02
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:12:49 MST