We must remember our values and life will always hold more value than money and or corporate profits.
I have seen a number of posts and comments from Transhumanists putting economy over lives during this COVID-19 Pandemic.
This mentality is not who we are. We hold life as the highest endeavour and it is to be fought for to the bitter end. We do not bow to the Economic Elitists because the costs are too high. I am going to point out some of the finer points from Zero State, a group that existed some time ago that gave birth to a vast number of Transhumanist leaders of today.
Over the last five years, London-based photographer David Vintiner and art director Gemma Fletcher have been documenting the subculture of transhumanists across Europe, Russia and the United States. Their photobook I Want To Believe, due out this spring, explores these enthusiasts’ achievements and motivations.
I have not been a supporter of an extended public quarantine or shut down, if any. There are a number of reasons why (governments steal liberty during such times; national debt increases and is used to the point of total socialism; inequality becomes permanent; etc), but in this letter below to everyone I want to talk specifically about why a quarantine is ultimately harming the life extension and #transhumanism movements. Don’t ever forget, we are in a race to save the lives of “everyone” right now with the plague of aging, not just those who might get #coronavirus.
Dear Fellow Humans.
If you believe in the life extension movement of trying to live indefinitely through science and technology, then you likely should not support the worldwide quarantine (at least don’t support it over 14 days in the West where we don’t have the ability to do it as efficiently as Asia). It’s horrible that so many lives will be lost by COVID-19, but in a worse-case scenario it’s likely 100 million people will die globally (mostly older people who have only a few years left to live due to their underlying medical conditions of aging — and who have likely been kept alive due to science and 21st Century medicine anyway). But the damage we could cause (and almost certainly are causing) with the quarantine and shut down to the US and global economy may cost the life extension movement and its scientific research possibly three to five years of progress — because the funding, projects, and jobs around the anti-aging industry will disappear for a notable time. The math shows that if we achieve indefinite lifespans for the human race by the year 2035 vs 2040, approximately 250 million lives will be spared and could then go on indefinitely. The aging math (or life hours) for any transhumanist shows that if we care about human life and longevity — about how long people alive today live — then we should not quarantine the world right now, but get the economy going again as a first priority so that we may fund the future of anti-aging science for the species. Some of us call this reasoning the Transhumanist Wager. For the sake of everyone alive today, it must be acknowledged that there is a dramatically larger percent gain (many thousands of percent) of overall life years for our species by not quarantining and shutting down the world. This is all a horrible scenario, and one I am terribly sad to share with you, but that doesn’t mean we should cower from facts. We owe our species the most courageous decision for its long-term longevity of all its living citizens.
Dinorah Delfin has unleashed another exceptional edition of Immortalist Magazine. One of the best aspects is the dueling articles on the future states of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Daniel Faggella constructs another dismal, dreary, depressing, destruction of hope for a benevolent artificial general intelligence. Emphasis on depressing. He has a wonderful way of creating a series of logical roadblocks to any optimism that there is a future with a compassionate artificial general intelligence. But he seems to be arguing against a contention that probably nobody believes in. He is arguing that there is no certainty that an artificial general intelligence will be benevolent. Most thinking humanoids are going to agree with that perspective. As he points out forcefully in his concluding and strongest rebuttal: no one knows what the future holds.
But no one is looking for absolute certainty in the far future. Transhumanists in general are looking for a path forward to an existence full of superhappiness, superintelligence and superlongevity.
I interviewed transhumanist thinker Anders Sandberg, research fellow at Oxford Universities Future of Humanity Institute. We discuss how the global transhumanist movement has changed, the potential political impact of technological revolutions and the debate around cryonics. Fairly new channel so very grateful for any subscribers smile
My interview with Anders Sandberg, a prominent transhumanist thinker and research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.
Dreams of human immortality may remain so, but extending our lives beyond 100, even 150 years, can soon become a reality. ‘The Future is Now’ explores ground-breaking technology that might help us to slow down the ageing process and overcome our physical limitations.
3D-printing of brand new human organs, controlling bionic prosthetics with your mind, or invading your body with disease-fighting microrobots. Hosts Kate and Talish bring you the latest developments in biomedical engineering.
Subjects: consciousness, psychedelics, panpsychism, transhumanism, abolishing suffering, death and immortality.
My guest today is David Pearce, a well known philosopher and transhumanist, yet his views about consciousness set him apart from other transhumanists you might be familiar with. David believes that the nature of consciousness goes much deeper than can be explained through classical physics or from within a materialist paradigm. He suspects that consciousness may reflect an intrinsic feature of reality. Whether or not this is the case, David is confident that the unity of consciousness is facilitated by a quantum unity occurring in the brain. As a result, David is skeptical about the possibility of classical computation-based “mind uploading” or truly conscious artificial intelligences arriving in the foreseeable future. But while our descendents will continue to be biological, they will however be dramatically different to us, not only with their indefinite lifespan, physical fortitude, and resilience to disease, but most significantly, in the structure of their minds. According to David, our great grandchildren will inhabit profoundly blissful mind spaces which exist exclusively “above hedonic zero”. They will have abandoned retributive emotions such as jealousy and anger, and their ordinary conscious states will be comparable to today’s peak experiences. Most significantly for David, our descendants will set their sites on abolishing suffering in all sentient life on this planet, and finally, the entire reachable universe.
The IAmTranshuman (ist) web site is about the stories of transhumanists, from professors to artists and everything in between from all walks of life. IAmTranshuman is about helping humanity grow and be more then what we were through the responsible use of technology.
