In a recent article, "Why Transhumanism Won't Work," New Atlantis author Mark Gubrud declares transhumanism problematic and seems distressed by its growing public acceptability. Gubrud believes that mind uploading is impossible (which it may be) and triumphantly points out the dualistic implications of Hans Moravec's pattern identity position. Of course, Moravec never denied being a dualist (though grounded in materialism) and Kurzweil calls himself a "patternist," which isn't a lot different (though it is tougher to say). A lot of the criticism of Moravec's position revolves around the fact that such a copied pattern (if technically feasible) would be a copy of me, not me...and would be little consolation for me personally as I reached the end of my life. This is probably why the so-called Moravec Operation involves the body and brain being dissected in order to produce the copy (it's now the only one and you don't have to worry about whether you will die in the future).
There's nothing new in the New Atlantis criticism (which the author admits), but it does point toward the increasingly mainstream nature of transhumanism (which is one of the things that this blog purports to document). That mainstreaming, Gubrud says, might come at the expense of more radical transhumanist ideas, like mind uploading, prompting Italian transhumanist Giulio Prisco to reiterate his agenda:
"YES! Let's form hard-core transhumanist splinter groups yearning for cyber-heaven. Let's put some vision, imagination and FUN back into transhumanism. Let's re-affirm the bold, fresh, uncompromising and energizing transhumanism of Hans Moravec and Max More. Let's not appease critics and PC idiots, but ignore them. Not kissing ass, but kicking ass."
(the entire blog post can be seen here)
Prisco has been one of the most open advocates of religious transhumanism over the past decade and I am very curious to see how the debates between religious transhumanism and philosophical transhumanism (which is still religious, it's just in the closet) will unfold. Two possible strategies for the religious group would involve taking the message to events like the "H+ Summit" and start seeking converts among the transhumanist faithful or else using the religious message to encourage non-transhumanists' conversion. Either of these would oppose the efforts of groups like Humanity+ to blend in with the mainstream as described by Gubrud.
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Two possible strategies for the religious group would involve taking the message to events like the "H+ Summit" and start seeking converts among the transhumanist faithful or else using the religious message to encourage non-transhumanists' conversion.
ReplyDeleteMany self-declared transhumanists are (or, more precisely, wish to be) passionately anti-religious. This is probably due to the fact that they had to make a huge effort to shed their religious upbringing, and they are always afraid of falling back into religion. I don't think this strategy is too effective, at least not in the short term.
I find the second strategy (with a tweak) more promising: using a formulation of the transhumanist message compatible with religious sensibility to encourage non-transhumanists' conversion.
Describing all forms of transhumanism as "religious" threaten to dilute the meaning of the word. If any value system can be called religious, there won't be a single person left out. "Ideology" strikes me as more appropriate term. From my experience with both organized religion and the radical political scene, transhumanism resembles the latter far more than the former. In my religious community, authority counted for everything. Arguments revolved around interpretation of the sacred texts. Why didn't necessarily matter; as long as an authority said something, it was correct. Transhumanism functions nothing like this. We hardly agree on anything; almost everybody critiques the major figures on various points. It's a dramatic contrast.
ReplyDelete@queersingularity: I think you are attributing to religions in the general sense some features (authority counted for everything. Arguments revolved around interpretation of the sacred texts) which are only characteristic of Western religions (Christianlty, Islam, Judaism). Some Eastern religions are much more open to individual interpretations.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the high entropy found in the transhumanist community resembles the radical political scene. Or, those artistic movements with lots of individual interpretations often inconsistent with each other.