Out of Pod Experience

What it describes are facets of everyday experience. The movement is centered around the idea that it isn't already happening and it won't happen naturally, but that isn't true. Transhumanism Human transformation is in full swing and there is no reason to expect it to stop at any point in the foreseeable future.

I'll point out that you are disagreeing with the underpinnings of the movement and hence belonging to one of the identified factions (sects?). You and I may like the goals, and even think these things will happen "naturally." But Khergit lays his finger on the core argument of the movement.

In my view, in the same excellent post, he raises one of the central problems the movement must address but fails to in any coherent or practical fashion:

The interesting thing he leaves out is that we had other societal tools that we are leaving behind, for good or ill, that did help balance us against the Tragedy of the Commons. Like it or hate, subscribe to it or decry it, religion was a powerful social tool that operated on groups at a moral level.

That mechanism as social tool may be inadequate today, but we have utterly failed to supply any reasonable replacement. Environmentalism? Nope. Trancendentalism? Nope. Transhumanism? Nope. Various forms of economic and political isms? Nope.

Why does Transhumanism fail in that evaluation? Because no matter which school of thought (see the Wikipedia entry for the various branches) they all hope that a social limiting mechanism (governance with a small "g") will arise as a side-effect. I'd submit it is a precondition.

There is something to what Ila Dace said though. Entire groups of people in a religion can mostly be counted on to do certain things that they believe are important to do based on their religion. Sometimes these things are beneficial to society, yet people won't do these things without either being supervised or coerced into believing they are being supervised.

I'm more hopeful. I think that regardless of the movement's direction, humans will continue to adapt and grow in ways that will ultimately be much more beneficial to us than harmful.

I have nothing against Transhumanism per se: to make it short, I take a nihilistic view of the universe and our existences, and thus discussions regarding the "ethics" of things, or the "definition of how X should be", come across to me as not just sterile and devoid of real meaning, but also often unhelpful and distracting.

I do have my own personal values, certainly, as constructed by my own personal experiences and personal sense of empathy, but I'd rather take a purely pragmatic approach to things, and not waste time with "ethics": millenia of religious thinking and its system of absolute truths, morals and values has already poisoned human thinking more than enough.

But on the other hand I was studying in Berkeley in the early and mid 90s, where I found a lot of what now has become part of the Transhuman / H+ movement - I remember being subscribed to Mondo 2000 and reading and re-reading every single word that was printed there, as well as immersing myself into a lot of AI research, cyberculture, techgnosis, yada yada yada, those sort of things.

And as excited as I was about it all back then in my youthful naviete, I figure now - particularly seeing what has become of all those futuristic visions and predictions 20 years later - Transhumanism involves as well a lot of nonsense, wishful thinking and role-playing by science-fiction nerds (and hell, I sure qualify as one, I'm writing this on an internet spaceships forum after all).

So, it all sounds pretty cool to think about, and I do think we should cherish our dreams, and let them inform the things we strive for and work towards to: but lets also be pragmatic about it, keep our feet on the ground and not let ourselves get carried away with nonsense.

Just ask someone injured or sorrowful and you will know. There is no need for definition.

One of the paths that evolution takes may be towards higher intelligence (whatever that might be), but it's really a very tiny part of its scope. Humans may be developing better resistances to living in smog. We certainly multitask a lot better than our previous generation. The technological learning curve is incredibly steep today compared to 20-30 years ago.

Of course we are greedy and we devour resources and we screw each other over, but I think the "stupidity of crowds" isn't a new phenomenon. I mean.. was there ever a time that the collective species was this marvelous, intelligent, graceful thing?


Agree with this.. we try and do good but we do more worse than good, overall.


We can't abandon technology just because we might use it to destroy ourselves. Anything that can do significant good in the world likely has the power to do an equal or greater amount of bad things, too.

^^ I always enjoy Bagrat posts.

There would be different categories I imagine. You don't participate in a bicycle race with your motorbike, either.

We will be full of alienity.