My Unfairness to the Robot Cultists

Those who want to pout and stamp and insist that the superlative and sub(cult)ural technocentrics I sometimes critique here -- the transhumanists, the extropians, the singularitarians, the techno-immortalists, and other assorted techno-utopians -- are not Robot Cultists (at least not all of them! at least not meeeee!), you all have the misfortune of living in a world with teh Google in it.

Just tap tap tap the keyboard e-x-t-r-o-p-i-a-n s-i-n-g-u-l-a-r-t-i-t-a-r-i-a-n t-r-a-n-s-h-u-m-a-n-i-s-t i-m-m-o-r-t-a-l-i-s-m and wade around for a leisurely afternoon, and one will discover soon enough the Robot Cult scenarios, the whole surreal futurological funhouse.

The confident assertions that consciousness will be "uploaded" into cyberspace and right-thinking humans hence immortalized.

The oh so serious calculations of the Robot God odds -- will history terminating artificial superintelligent entities arrive on the scene fifteen years ago? in fifteen years? in thirty years?

The nano-cornucopiast scenarios involving desktop anything boxes or genie-in-a-bottle utility fogs of responsive co-ordinated nanoscale robots. The grim nano-apocaloid scenarios involving planet-eating nanobotic goo arms races (as if there weren't real WMD proliferation and human-caused climate catastrophes to think about).

The suave advocates of my way or the highway "enhancement" -- because "dysfuntional" morphological, cognitive, or lifeway atypicals make Science cry, what are wanted are just the sleek sexy superpowers in the name of Reason.

The would-be techno-immortalists indulging in unironic quite pharaonic and cryonic denialialism -- freeze or glassify freshly dead brain, then simply await eventual revival by benevolent Robot God with angelic nanobot host at its disposal, so simple!

The enraptured geeks pining to take the "red pill" that makes death go away for good, still pining after the techno-magickal Philosopher's Stone that delivers deathlessness and riches beyond the dreams of avarice... but now with a weirdly Ayn Raelian boys-and-their-toys twist of delusive self-congratulatory rugged-individualist entrepreneurialism.

You'll find a little Ponzi Scheming here, a little motivational speaking there, a little salesmanly handwaving to the rubes about overcoming all the limits, man! (ie, There will always be other people around to clean up your messes for you.)

And then, of course, one finds the completely predictable blaming and complaining and self-righteousness that attends the realization that their mediocrity, marginality, and mortality abide ever on whatever the ferocity of True Belief, their "Can-Do" spirit, their devotion to stainless steel scientism... the railing and wailing against the Ignorant Masses, the Undeserving Poor, the Scaredy Cats, the "Deathists," the "Luddites," the Politicians, the Relativists, and on and on and on.

It's all there, you don't have to take my word for it.

Now, those who grumble about my "unfairness" to the superlative and sub(cult)ural futurists need to think this stuff through. Or, of course, they can just continue to ignore it or deny it, you know, whatev.

But, it seems to me that --

Either you think these inanities and insanities I am pointing to are perfectly reasonable -- or perhaps you think they can be PR-smoothed into something that sounds more reasonable without draining them of any unique content worthy of our attention in the first place -- and that it is "unfair" of me to say otherwise.

(And in that case, in my view, you're probably simply exhibiting the True Belief I deride.)

Or you actually mean to deny that the techno-utopians believe these things in the first place -- contrary to their regularly re-iterated published statements on these questions -- and my "unfairness" consists of pointing to what I see as the facts of the matter.

(And in that case, I am quite content for reasonable people to assess these things on their merits.)

So unfair!