A friend of mine once remarked, “transhumanism isn’t really transhumanism. It’s transmonkeyism.”
I really like that. To me, it implies that humans are an ongoing evolutionary project that still has undesirable remnants from a monkey past—e.g. immature, violent, stupid—and that deliberately improving/removing the beastly parts might leave us more human.
I like the quote; but I think you’re using ‘human’ in the way I wish people wouldn’t use it—to mean “good” rather than “characteristic of homo sapiens”.
Yes, it accepts the highly dubious frame that human == good. It’s a rhetorical trick that could backfire if it leads someone to favor eliminating PTSD, fragile spines, and status-seeking-at-the-expense-of-truth-seeking, while still rejecting immortality and uploading. I’m not completely comfortable with it, but if it could expand someone’s notion of “human” to be more flexible, then that could be an achievable goal.
It’s a rhetorical trick that could backfire if it leads someone to favor eliminating PTSD, fragile spines, and status-seeking-at-the-expense-of-truth-seeking, while still rejecting immortality and uploading.
This seems precisely backwards to me. Any piece of mere technology is a means, not an end. People and what we want out of life are the ends.
Yes, it accepts the highly dubious frame that human == good.
Which is, more-or-less, why I don’t like such terms as “humanism” or “transhumanism”, since they anchor the conversation around the coincidental shape my meat takes rather than around the ends I seek.
Yes, it accepts the highly dubious frame that human == good. It’s a rhetorical trick that could backfire if it leads someone to favor eliminating PTSD, fragile spines, and status-seeking-at-the-expense-of-truth-seeking, while still rejecting immortality and uploading. I’m not completely comfortable with it, but if it could expand someone’s notion of “human” to be more flexible, then that could be an achievable goal.
A friend of mine once remarked, “transhumanism isn’t really transhumanism. It’s transmonkeyism.”
I really like that. To me, it implies that humans are an ongoing evolutionary project that still has undesirable remnants from a monkey past—e.g. immature, violent, stupid—and that deliberately improving/removing the beastly parts might leave us more human.
I like the quote; but I think you’re using ‘human’ in the way I wish people wouldn’t use it—to mean “good” rather than “characteristic of homo sapiens”.
Yes, it accepts the highly dubious frame that human == good. It’s a rhetorical trick that could backfire if it leads someone to favor eliminating PTSD, fragile spines, and status-seeking-at-the-expense-of-truth-seeking, while still rejecting immortality and uploading. I’m not completely comfortable with it, but if it could expand someone’s notion of “human” to be more flexible, then that could be an achievable goal.
This seems precisely backwards to me. Any piece of mere technology is a means, not an end. People and what we want out of life are the ends.
Which is, more-or-less, why I don’t like such terms as “humanism” or “transhumanism”, since they anchor the conversation around the coincidental shape my meat takes rather than around the ends I seek.
Yes, it accepts the highly dubious frame that human == good. It’s a rhetorical trick that could backfire if it leads someone to favor eliminating PTSD, fragile spines, and status-seeking-at-the-expense-of-truth-seeking, while still rejecting immortality and uploading. I’m not completely comfortable with it, but if it could expand someone’s notion of “human” to be more flexible, then that could be an achievable goal.