Transhumanism

What do you guys think of transhumanism? I discovered it semi-recently myself and am now a pretty hardcore transhumanist. In layman's terms it's humanity controlling our own destiny and steering the course of human evolution. We do this through augmentations of various kinds, such as mechanical augmentations, nanotechnology, human-AI merging, development of a hive mind, and the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machine. I suspect that we'll see transhumanism really go mainstream in our lifetimes, and we should be relatively young, I suspect most of us will be in our 20s by the time it hits (probably in the 2020s). Here's a video if you want to watch it explaining transhumanism, unfortunately it's biased and the guy who made the video hates transhumanists and is trying to stop the future (and failing at it), but it's the most informative video I could find for teaching non-transhumanists about transhumanism and the video itself isn't all that biased.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e30M3hw3u04"]YouTube - ‪What is Transhumanism? pt.1/2‬‏

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z8bU41X-EM"]YouTube - ‪What is Transhumanism? pt.2/2‬‏

 

It gives me the creeps.

 

dying is the best part about being human being.... i dont wanna be flash drive when I can dream about it. ever see a human being decompose?. its fucking awesome..
Or human get smash by piano, splat.. Whats so great bout smashing a micro chip?..

 

I have this awesome belief system.

It's called "wishful thinking with no basis in reality"

 

There are actually well-respected scientists that believe the human race is heading in this direction. Thats why I find it creepy and not just vaguely amusing.

 

Yeah, well timothy leary was a brilliant man in some ways, but he also thought that we should just trash earth, and build cosmic life boats to go live happily ever after on mars. Also, that cryogenics would save us from death (this has been thought on some level since the fucking aincent egyptians, people don't learn....)

 

Sick is what I think of it. I can't see how we think we could control this shit all the time if it's applied on humans outside of experiments. Extremely naive (like even more naive than building nuclear powerplants on tectonic fault lines)!

 

Just sounds like some cyborg "7 of 9" BS from Star Trek. I agree with Meliai in that this is very creepy thinking and with RooRshack in that this is just junk some of these so-called brilliant minds are (currently) coming up with, although RooRshack indicated this type thinking has been going on for some time...this is just the newest stupid thinking by "brilliant minds". lol

There is no defeating death. No matter what they do nor how they try...I'm not seeing that happening. Not on any level.

 

I believe we can defeat death, And I would take all the risks to watch the rest of you die whilst I live in my transhuman body.

 

and why am I not surprised to read you write (and/or think) that...

 

Personally I do not fear death...not to mean I desire it, for I have way too many things left to do, etc. However, not only do I think death cannot be defeated, I don't really want to defeat it!

I believe in the eternal cycle of life and that it would be wrong to alter it. Eons of life on this earth and the study of it in geology and such disciplines reflect this cycle I speak of. (and I'm not even getting into my own personal belief(s) of God. )

 

Sensation does not compute.

 

Roor, call it false all you want, but this is happening in our future, and I really fucking hate it. Maybe we are machines, but we do not need to live forever by tuning ourselves up into far-out cyborgs. These scientists have gone desperately mad

 

exactly my thoughts when I first heard of the singularity.

 

Transhumanism is an ideology which most people are not even aware of, and is usually understood by those who are only in a very limited sense. All one needs to do is actually read what is written by what history has arbitrarily terms the "brilliant minds." What we are seeing is a progression from vertical to horizontal transcendence, in which belief in gods and/or ideas (vertical) has been subsumed by belief only in the material world, and the attempt to find transcendence in it (horizontal). This is what drives almost all of us: the desire for true meaning, or, in short, transcendent meaning. Meaning that goes beyond the normal stuff of the normal world and "really means something." This has always been tied up with ideas of eternity. God is eternal. All idealistic Forms have always been considered eternal. Death is absurd to the human creature, and the most serious (do not read: "best") among us have always had the compulsion to cheat death, to make themselves eternal. This is a desire which is shared with all of humanity to a certain degree. People have certainly been led into it.

After serious belief in God has come to an end, Hegel and Marx inaugurate the horizontal reign of History. Man can only transcend himself now by subjecting himself to the future, just as Christians did when they worked and died as slaves for the promise of eternal life. It is the same principle, just vertical on the one hand and horizontal on the other. Evolutionary theory, in part pieced together from older, unscientific or semi-scientific theories, provides the perfect philosophical backing for this mindset.

If we believe that life is a biological evolution;
If we believe that humanity is both a biological and social evolution, and that it is aware of itself as such;
Then what can follow but that we must take control of our own evolution, and certainly that we must use technology to the greatest extent to which it is efficacious in doing so?

We must not doubt that those who form the big ideas we are given and who run our world take these ideas very seriously. They are the culmination of a philosophy of human progression, and we also cannot deny that this is the philosophy controlling our world. The question is: do we wish to seek transcendence this way? Is this the only, or even the best means of achieving it? What happens to humanity when something like unified consciousness is achieved? Is this really transcendence?

I believe that in seeking transcendence this way, we are vainly seeking to negate the problem of our existence. Transcendence has been sought in the vertical direction for thousands of years with no success. But this horizontal approach is not mystical: it does not hold anything in the wings. We see the future stretching out before us, and we are to find transcendence in striving for it. We strive for the next generation, which will strive for the next; and so it goes. We are at a point where no possible advancement in ability to do can be refused. If we can improve human beings through technology, there is no reason not to. We already have, it is just not yet completely physically integrated. But we can see it coming nearer. This is the mindset of our times. There is no need of a conspiracy plot: the influential people who wish to bring this about are numerous, and they openly discuss it. The question really is: what place is left for an individual human being in this brave new vision of humanity?

[A few notes:

1. I was very stoned when I wrote this. If anything is unclear or contradictory, please call me on it.

2. Some influential figures: Pere Teilhard de Chardin, Julian Huxley (and his brother Aldous), Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bertrand Russell... most 20th century scientific philosophers and materialists, many social scientists and psychologists, as well as many existential and postmodern philosophers.

3. A couple of authors who give relevant overviews of this idea are Albert Camus ("The Rebel"), Jacques Ellul ("The Technological System"), and Jean Baudrillard (many and varied).

4. These subjects are of great interest to me, and anyone who would like to discuss them further by PM should feel free to contact me.]

 

Sort of creeps me out, but intriguing at the same time. I'm not putting my hopes up/worrying about it though. Who can say if those advances will really come by 2020? Idle speculation if you ask me.

 

I used to say that technology was a form of religion or perhaps some sort of philosophy. But in recent years I've come to understand that it's neither a religion nor a philosophy. What it is, is dangerous arrogance that is amoral, serving no one or respecting anything.

The purveyors of technology hold a belief that they can one day become as gods.

Therein lies the problem,

When this technology to merge with machines and become some sort of imortal boundless consciousness emerges. It will neither be offered to the general public nor to those most deserving of such an opportunity. It will instead, go to the very same people that made it possible. The petty, greedy and power hungry and those scientist that they deem as being necessary.

That means it will be people such as Dick Cheney, Madeleine Albright, Tom Brokaw, Hillary Clinton, Robert M. Gates, etc. And scientists of the same genre of human garbage similar to men such as, Wernher von Braun, Erich W. Neubert, Theodor A. Poppel, etc.
Without a doubt it will be this very sort of subhuman garbage that transcend. Whereas the rest of humanity will be plunged into a dark age.

Our children, the children of our children and many generations thereafter will be enslaved or become the pawns, to be used for the amusement of the "new gods." A similar, in effect, fate to that of the ancient Babylonians or ancient Greeks. Who had to build temples and sacrifice what they had in order to placate their selfishness dieties. Consider it, that our future self-appointed dieties will be no less self-centered.

The real irony of this situation is,
We, as a whole, will have given this "godhood" to them by Facebook type accounts and purchasing each cheap cell phone, DVD player or similar fad as it's made available.

But to consider that the simple solution needed stop this is just to turn all this junk off and throw it out.

 

Keep the nanoshit out of me please.

 

i think it's inevitable, so to consider it to be a movement does not compute. error code: 34659276

i think it'll be a naturally progression of things, it's the stage we're slowly entering from natural selection and such. i have no problems with it, i think people that do have a problem with it need to realize a few things, but it's not like i can type a paragraph here and "convert" all y'all bitches. i don't support it either though cuz who gives a damn.
the one thing i do support is political and economic restructure though because this transhumanism concept does not mix with our current economic system in the slightest bit. things must change before things like this should begin.

 

It is a movement. What you just wrote sums up its ideology. Not everyone believes that it is an inevitable, natural progression. Those that do constitute the movement.