On The State of Transhumanism

Having two weeks off because of surgery gave me more than enough time to "catch up" with the internet world. I haven't spent this much time online since the early days of Future Hi.  So I decided to poke around in some of my old stomping grounds.  I finally got hip to the twitterverse, although I'm still trying to decide if it's fun or nauseating.  I've been on about a week, and I'm currently following about 40 people.  It's nice to be able to see real-time updates from friends and "people in the know", but it can be a little overwhelming and taxing, when less than a week ago I was not exposed to any of this information.  I'm still deciding to what degree I want to tap into this stream, and to what degree a healthy distance is more warranted.

So transhumanism.  I still consider myself one, a tranhumanist that is, although I'm not always apt to mention it in polite company, as a large majority of people under that moniker hold strikingly different views of the world than I do.  What I do share is a desire to live a LOT longer, to expand my consciousness and intelligence of that life, and to live long enough to experience a small fraction of the vast space that is our universe.  I would even settle for a one-way trip to a hospitable world, settle down for awhile and die in peace, knowing that life and intelligence in its most beneficent form, will continue.

But as far as transhumanism is concerned, as much as things change, the more they stay the same.  Despite the blinding and UNDENIABLE VERDICT that so-called "free" and unregulated markets can solve the worlds problems, has failed, the usual suspects or what James Hughes calls libertopians, continue to hold to their precious belief that Ayn Randian princples will serve the world best.  Like many of my "comrades" on the left, we've been saying all along that only the most privileged (whether through inheritance of wealth, upbringing or genes) benefit from a such a system (so of course they support it).  You would be hard pressed to find a single poor or underprivileged individual in the lot of them.  Should the technologically driven economy reach a point where the majority of it is run through automation, the libertopians have no qualm with the majority of humans languishing in poverty or death, as long as they reap the rewards of such an automated economy.  Many very thoughtful people gave this a lot of thought decades before it was fashionable, and they all came to the conclusion that a Basic Guaranteed Income, an income that makes everyone a shareholder in this rapidly growing wealth producing automated economy, is the most humane and sensible thing to do.  But should these Randian types somehow manage to weasel their way back into power after this current debacle, they'd rather have this automated process darwinianlly weed out those of us who weren't "smart" enough to "invest" in said technologies earlier.  But what I think it really boils down to is they just can't stand the idea that people might actually be able to enjoy wealth and privelege as much as they do, because then what would make them different?

On the singularitarian front I am a bit surprised, but pleasantly so, at the maturity that Eliezer Yudkowsky's thinking has gone through in my absence.  I've been spending considerable time reading his latest excerpts over at Overcoming Bias.  Eli has always tried to be as comprehensive as possible in his thinking, but what surprised me was the degree to which his thinking has evolved.  Apparently, and I could be mistaken, he now prefers to create what he calls non-sentient optimizers, because as he says, "Creating a true child is the only moral and metaethical problem I know that is even harder than the shape of a Friendly AI". This is interesting, and shows to me he is quite serious in his intentions, chief among them putting human welfare first and foremost.  I also like that he has taken the time to deconstruct the best utopias, such as Iain Banks' Culture, and tried to come up with basic elements of what makes a good utopia, such as having sufficient levels of high challenge, complex novelty, and sensual experience.

And here is where I part company with about 90% of transhumanists, and what I think is missing from Eli's treatment, is a deeply nuanced spiritual component which cannot easily be placed in any of these utopian categories.  By spiritual, I mean a deep and growing awareness of sublime, subtle nuances of consciousness that are available to any conscious explorer - what some might call "energy fields", "sacred spaces", "cosmic consciousness", or "the divinity within all things".  This is as much a poetical and contextual shift as it is a scientific one, and is available to anyone who is not afraid to see the world from an enchanted point of view. I always tell people that if they believe so strongly in the scientific-materialist viewpoint, then what possible harm can come from trying to see things differently? It does not require a belief in "god", only a willingness to experience the universe from a different point of view.  There is no downside, except perhaps a loss of innocence from realizing the universe is a far greater and more mysterious place than the scientific framework is equipped to handle.  But the gains from such experience are infinite, as those who've been there can attest.  Science is an awesome expansion of our awareness of universe, and the more science we have the better off we'll all be.  The mistake is assuming it is the only awareness worth having.  Science will solve part of the puzzle, but not the whole puzzle.

Luckily, I'm no longer a lone voice in the transhumanist wilderness, as I've read several other newer voices echoing the same thoughts.

There's room for all of us in the future.