From: Delvieron@aol.com
Date: Tue Mar 16 1999 - 21:53:05 MST
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
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