The Audacity of Transhumanism

[Extropian]

http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/jpbonsen ... anism.html

EXTROPY -- A measure of intelligence, information, energy, vitality, experience, diversity, opportunity, and growth.
EXTROPIANISM -- The philosophy that seeks to increase extropy.

THE EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES 2.5
( Full v. 2.5 appears in Extropy #11, 2nd Half 1993)

BOUNDLESS EXPANSION: Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an unlimited lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities. Expanding into the universe and advancing without end.

SELF-TRANSFORMATION: Affirming continual psychological, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, through reason and critical thinking, personal responsibility, and experimentation. Seeking biological and neurological augmentation.

DYNAMIC OPTIMISM: Positive expectations fueling dynamic action. Adopting a rational, action-based optimism, shunning both blind faith and stagnant pessimism.

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY: Applying science and technology creatively to transcend "natural" limits imposed by our biological heritage, culture, and environment.

SPONTANEOUS ORDER: Supporting decentralized, voluntaristic social coordination processes. Fostering tolerance, diversity, foresight, personal responsibility and individual liberty.
Extropianism is a transhumanist philosophy: Like humanism, it values reason and humanity and sees no grounds for belief in unknowable, supernatural forces externally controlling our destiny, but transhumanism goes further in urging us to push beyond the merely human stage of evolution. As physicist Freeman Dyson has said: "Humanity looks to me like a magnificent beginning but not the final word."

E X T R O P Y:  
THE JOURNAL OF TRANSHUMANIST THOUGHT
Transhumanism, futurist philosophy
Life extension, immortalism, and biostasis
Smart drugs and other intelligence-intensifying technologies
Machine intelligence, personality uploading, and artificial life
Nanocomputers and molecular nanotechnology
Memetics (ideas as replicating agents)
Experimental free communities in space, on the oceans, & in cyberspace
Effective thinking, information-filtering, life management
Self-transformative psychology
Spontaneous order (free markets, neural networks, evolutionary processes, genetic algorithms, etc)
Privacy technologies, electronic markets, digital money
Critical analysis of environmentalism
Explorations of the ultimate limits of physics
Since 1988, Extropy has provided a unique forum for intriguing and inspiring explorations of advanced and future technologies, focusing on their potential for overcoming present human limits, enabling us to create a posthuman future. If you're tired of shallow, trendy, or uncritical thinking on the technological frontier, Extropy will satisfy, startle, and stimulate you.
----------------------------------------
I've been an advocate of extropianism for around ten years now.

Non-biological units have been extending or correcting functions of our bodies for a surprisingly long time. Currently we are using Cochlear implants, heart pacemakers, kidney dialysis machines and external blood circulators in operating rooms, just to identify a few of the more obvious.

It is inevitable that nanotechnology and new materials will extend our lives considerably before this century is ended.

Extropian

[fester30]

Just take away his glasses, blackberry, aol account, computer, clothes, vaccines, etc... then drop him in the middle of the jungle.

How many of us could truly survive without all of our augmentation (both internal and external).

Man has been tampering with evolution for centuries, and the line is just getting more blurred.

Transhumanism will happen.  It's only a matter of time, creativity, and investment.

That's exactly what I want to do to some of the most extreme environmentalists.  I mean the ones who protest coal power plants because of greenhouse gasses, nuclear power plants because of radioactive waste, and solar, wind, and hydroelectric power plants because of how they may change ecological systems or inhibit migrations of animals.  There are some environmentalists who protest every method of generating electricity.  Just don't take away their I-pads, otherwise you won't see their protests in their blogs.

I'm excited about transhumanism.  I can't wait to see Ted Williams' head on a robotic body hitting home runs at the new Fenway Park on Mars in the year 2236.

[terranus]

That's exactly what I want to do to some of the most extreme environmentalists. I mean the ones who protest coal power plants because of greenhouse gasses, nuclear power plants because of radioactive waste, and solar, wind, and hydroelectric power plants because of how they may change ecological systems or inhibit migrations of animals. There are some environmentalists who protest every method of generating electricity. Just don't take away their I-pads, otherwise you won't see their protests in their blogs.

I'm excited about transhumanism. I can't wait to see Ted Williams' head on a robotic body hitting home runs at the new Fenway Park on Mars in the year 2236.

Ahem. As an environmentalist, I can tell you that

1. Nuclear Power is fine, as long as it's managed properly and proper precautions are taken to make sure meltdowns can be averted in the wake of a natural disaster (see Japan). However,
2. There is no such thing as "clean coal", and if you think coal-powered plants are not contributing to the demise of our natural environment, then you sir, are living under a rock.

[fester30]

That's exactly what I want to do to some of the most extreme environmentalists. I mean the ones who protest coal power plants because of greenhouse gasses, nuclear power plants because of radioactive waste, and solar, wind, and hydroelectric power plants because of how they may change ecological systems or inhibit migrations of animals. There are some environmentalists who protest every method of generating electricity. Just don't take away their I-pads, otherwise you won't see their protests in their blogs.

I'm excited about transhumanism. I can't wait to see Ted Williams' head on a robotic body hitting home runs at the new Fenway Park on Mars in the year 2236.

Ahem. As an environmentalist, I can tell you that

1. Nuclear Power is fine, as long as it's managed properly and proper precautions are taken to make sure meltdowns can be averted in the wake of a natural disaster (see Japan). However,
2. There is no such thing as "clean coal", and if you think coal-powered plants are not contributing to the demise of our natural environment, then you sir, are living under a rock.

I never said coal was clean.  My point is that there are environmentalists who will argue against every method of generating electricity because it affects the environment somehow.  Those are the ones we should strip naked and drop off in the Amazon.  Or perhaps to be more fair, just make them live in an Amish community.

[terranus]

Then as a technology-geek, I will agree with you.

[Extropian]

I see it almost as a given that inorganic chemistry should complement organic chemistry............that inorganic technology should complement organic technology.............that inorganic machines should complement shorter-lived organic machines.

What should prevail in the long run is our mind, our identy, interaction and intercourse and the physical ability to ensure we live comfortably.

This will not necessarily be done as we envisage it today.

Extropian

[fester30]

I see it almost as a given that inorganic chemistry should complement organic chemistry............that inorganic technology should complement organic technology.............that inorganic machines should complement shorter-lived organic machines.

What should prevail in the long run is our mind, our identy, interaction and intercourse and the physical ability to ensure we live comfortably.

This will not necessarily be done as we envisage it today.

Extropian

Yeah... until inorganic takes over organic on judgment day with the rise of the machines.  At that point we'll hope for some John or another to come along and give us hope of salvation.  Gotta go to work for now but I'll be back.

[Ultima22689]

I see it almost as a given that inorganic chemistry should complement organic chemistry............that inorganic technology should complement organic technology.............that inorganic machines should complement shorter-lived organic machines.

What should prevail in the long run is our mind, our identy, interaction and intercourse and the physical ability to ensure we live comfortably.

This will not necessarily be done as we envisage it today.

Extropian

Yeah... until inorganic takes over organic on judgment day with the rise of the machines.  At that point we'll hope for some John or another to come along and give us hope of salvation.  Gotta go to work for now but I'll be back.

Except we'll be the machines...

[Extropian]

I see it almost as a given that inorganic chemistry should complement organic chemistry............that inorganic technology should complement organic technology.............that inorganic machines should complement shorter-lived organic machines.

What should prevail in the long run is our mind, our identy, interaction and intercourse and the physical ability to ensure we live comfortably.

This will not necessarily be done as we envisage it today.

Extropian

Yeah... until inorganic takes over organic on judgment day with the rise of the machines.  At that point we'll hope for some John or another to come along and give us hope of salvation.  Gotta go to work for now but I'll be back.

Except we'll be the machines...

There will be certain biological functions that would be considered irreplaceable if we wish to retain our individuality.

First we need to understand what comprises an individual that makes him/her separate from another and preserve that as a digital code and/or perhaps as a DNA sequence. DNA combinations are not infinite so unless we can learn new ways then we must learn how to preserve and store these combinations and recreate the individual. The consequence otherwise is oblivion for humankind.

If we are to succeed then a kind of immortality for the individual is the inevitable result if DNA combinations are mathematically finite.

In conjunction with this we must consider the possibility of parallel universes or learn how to reverse the entropy of the one we inhabit.

It may be that the four fundamental forces of physics must accommodate a fifth. What is our Universe expanding into?