From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Mar 17 1999 - 13:53:27 MST
Delvieron@aol.com writes:
> 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.
Is really total control the goal? While I certainly want to control my
aging or mental states, I don't really need or want control over the
details of my intestines most of the time. I think it is better to
think in terms of influence: how can you get the desired results?
> 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.
Wouldn't extropianism in this context also be linked to the view that
>H can be achieved in an useful way if you and other selves do not try
to control each other or each other's proximal environments (where
they can be defined), and instead set up cooperative systems? Or
should we come up with another term for that idea to distinguish it,
like "translibertarianism" or something similar?
Interesting musings.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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