So my instinct is to write this guy off as a nut because it’s super sketchy to try to run for president for a party that (to my very cursory knowledge) he made up to increase his book sales. Does anyone else find some value in paying attention to him or taking time to read his stuff? I’m wondering if this is a correct judgement on my part or an instinctual misfire.
I follow his career with a perverse kind of fascination just to see how aggressive self-promotion works. Two years ago I had never heard of this guy, though he does have a media trail on the internet. Now he has figured out how to get invited to all kinds of H+ related conferences so that he can plug his novel, argue for the imminence of all kinds of radical transformations in the human condition due to allegedly accelerating technology, and make the case for a transhumanist political party in the U.S. with himself as the presidential candidate.
Case in point: He will speak at a conference in Palm Springs next month, along with several other individuals whose names you might recognize, hosted by something called the Brink Institute:
We might need multiple axes though. One for thermodynamic implausiblity, one for dammit-thats-not-how-it-works-at-all / misapplication of programming concepts to chemistry, one for do-you-realize-how-complicated-what-you-just-suggested-is.
I recently registered to vote and did not see his party listed as an option, even though I have never heard of the “Americans Elect Party” and it is an option. I mostly pay attention when other people mention him. Also, I kind of wish the Transhumanist Party would issue some statements about ballot issues besides “vote for Istvan”.
Related article by Zoltan Istvan:
The Culture of Transhumanism Is About Self-Improvement
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoltan-istvan/the-culture-of-transhuman_b_7022406.html
So my instinct is to write this guy off as a nut because it’s super sketchy to try to run for president for a party that (to my very cursory knowledge) he made up to increase his book sales. Does anyone else find some value in paying attention to him or taking time to read his stuff? I’m wondering if this is a correct judgement on my part or an instinctual misfire.
I follow his career with a perverse kind of fascination just to see how aggressive self-promotion works. Two years ago I had never heard of this guy, though he does have a media trail on the internet. Now he has figured out how to get invited to all kinds of H+ related conferences so that he can plug his novel, argue for the imminence of all kinds of radical transformations in the human condition due to allegedly accelerating technology, and make the case for a transhumanist political party in the U.S. with himself as the presidential candidate.
Case in point: He will speak at a conference in Palm Springs next month, along with several other individuals whose names you might recognize, hosted by something called the Brink Institute:
http://brinkinstitute.org/
I can say that whenever he speaks about biology his claims are an order of magnitude more inane than the usual ones I see made by others.
Is there a standard metric for inanity of biological claims?
Hmmm… we could define one.
We might need multiple axes though. One for thermodynamic implausiblity, one for dammit-thats-not-how-it-works-at-all / misapplication of programming concepts to chemistry, one for do-you-realize-how-complicated-what-you-just-suggested-is.
I recently registered to vote and did not see his party listed as an option, even though I have never heard of the “Americans Elect Party” and it is an option. I mostly pay attention when other people mention him. Also, I kind of wish the Transhumanist Party would issue some statements about ballot issues besides “vote for Istvan”.