I actually went through the same process as what you describe here, but it didn’t remove my “transhumanist” label. I was a big fan of Humanity+, excited about human upgrading, etc. etc. I then became disillusioned about progress in the relevant fields, started to understand nonduality and the lack of a persistent or independent self, and realized AI was the only critical thing that actually was in the process of happening.
In that sense, my process was similar but I still consider myself a transhumanist. Why? Because for me, solving death or trying to make progress in the scientific fields that lead to various types of augmentations aren’t the biggest or most critical pieces of transhumanism. One could probably have been a transhumanist in the 1800s, because for me it’s about the process of imagining and defining and philosophizing about what humanity—on an individual organism level as well as on a sociocultural level—will become (or what it might be worthwhile to become) after particular types of technological transitions.
Admittedly, there is a normative component that’s something like “those of us who want to should be able to become something more than base human” and isn’t really active until those capabilities actually exist, but the process of thinking about what it might be worthwhile to become, or what the transition will be like, or what matters and what is valuable in this kind of future, are all important.
It’s not about maximizing the self, either—I’m not an extropian. Whether or not something called “me” exists in this future (which might be soon but might not), the conscious experience of beings in it matter to me (and in this sense I’m a longtermist).
Will an aligned AI solve death? Maybe, but my hopes don’t rely on this. Humanity will almost certainly change in diverse ways, and is already changing a bit (though often not in great ways). It’s worthwhile to think about what kind of changes we would want to create, given greater powers to do so.
I actually went through the same process as what you describe here, but it didn’t remove my “transhumanist” label. I was a big fan of Humanity+, excited about human upgrading, etc. etc. I then became disillusioned about progress in the relevant fields, started to understand nonduality and the lack of a persistent or independent self, and realized AI was the only critical thing that actually was in the process of happening.
In that sense, my process was similar but I still consider myself a transhumanist. Why? Because for me, solving death or trying to make progress in the scientific fields that lead to various types of augmentations aren’t the biggest or most critical pieces of transhumanism. One could probably have been a transhumanist in the 1800s, because for me it’s about the process of imagining and defining and philosophizing about what humanity—on an individual organism level as well as on a sociocultural level—will become (or what it might be worthwhile to become) after particular types of technological transitions.
Admittedly, there is a normative component that’s something like “those of us who want to should be able to become something more than base human” and isn’t really active until those capabilities actually exist, but the process of thinking about what it might be worthwhile to become, or what the transition will be like, or what matters and what is valuable in this kind of future, are all important.
It’s not about maximizing the self, either—I’m not an extropian. Whether or not something called “me” exists in this future (which might be soon but might not), the conscious experience of beings in it matter to me (and in this sense I’m a longtermist).
Will an aligned AI solve death? Maybe, but my hopes don’t rely on this. Humanity will almost certainly change in diverse ways, and is already changing a bit (though often not in great ways). It’s worthwhile to think about what kind of changes we would want to create, given greater powers to do so.