A commenter over at the blog Transumanar has posed a question: I always wonder why those who think Transhumanist technologies are impossible bother to oppose our (clearly impossible) aims.
Well, if one really wants to know (I suspect the question was meant to be read as rhetorical), I can offer up a few reasons why I bother with this sort of thing, right off the top of my head:
[1] Because emerging technoscientific quandaries actually are urgent and dangerous.
[2] Because super-predicated hyperbole activates irrational passions driven by the fears of fantasies of agency customarily associated with technology-talk already, irrational manias for omnipotence and irrational panics at impotence, all to the cost of sense.
[3] Because the last thing an overexploited, militarized, p2p networked and environmentally conscious planetized world needs are more fundamentalisms.
[4] Because uncritical “Development” discourse that comports well with Superlative formulations is the neoliberal point of the spear for so much confiscatory wealth concentration and perilous militarization in the world.
[5] Because Superlative discourse provokes an inappropriate technodevelopmental politics of identification (and, crucially, dis-identification) around idealized outcomes rather than an open ongoing stakeholder politics among a diversity of prostheticized peers who share the world.
[6] Because such identity politics lend themselves to defensive marginal subcultural postures and cult-like organizations that stifle the flourishing of their members and sensationalize public deliberation.
[7] Because in its tendency to endorse technocratic, reductionist, hyperbolic attitudes Superlativity lends itself to the politics of incumbent interests (sometimes unintentionally) and the stifling of desirable planetary secular multiculture.
[8] Because consensual, democratized, and actually accountable ongoing technodevelopmental social struggle truly could be emancipatory for all, and that is what progressive people should be devoting themselves to.
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2 comments:
Dale wrote:
> [S]uper-predicated hyperbole activates irrational passions
> driven by the fears of fantasies of agency. . ., irrational manias
> for omnipotence and irrational panics at impotence, all to
> the cost of sense.
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=20010227014502.00400.00000107%40ng-fk1.aol.com
From: JoatSimeon
Subject: Re: SM Stirling on the Singularity Re: REVIEW: Vernor Vinge's "Across Realtime"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Date: 2001-02-26 22:48:06 PST
>(Klyfix)
>JoatSimeon writes:
> >
> >Evolution has played a cruel joke on us by making us continually aware of our
> >own impending nonexistance, while at the same time making us fear and dread
> >death.
> >
> >So much of human culture has sprung from this...
>
>But that's not necessarily a _bad_ thing now, is it?
-- not necessarily, but it often is.
If a general "oh, well, we die and become nonexistent -- nichevo, tovarich,
let's live while we live" attitude prevailed, you'd have less in the way of
crusading.
Seeking immortality projectively -- identifying with the (possibly immortal)
group -- also has negative, as well as positive, consequences.
War would probably be impossible without it, for example; war's an extremely
altruistic activity, at the individual scale of the people who actually do it.
-- S.M. Stirling
-------------------------------
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=20010227013442.00400.00000101%40ng-fk1.aol.com
From: JoatSimeon
Subject: Re: SM Stirling on the Singularity Re: REVIEW: Vernor Vinge's "Across
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Date: 2001-02-26 22:37:33 PST
>Robert.Whelan
>JoatSimeon wrote:
> >What's behind this stuff is not rational thought, but emotional longings for
> >immortality and transcendence -- the usual factors sustaining religious belief.
>
>And since you know, rationally, that this need exists in human beings,
>then, rationally, you know it needs indulging. There's no rational
>thought behind the desire for food either.
-- no, actually. It's like the desire to kill people who annoy you --
generally speaking, it should be suppressed, even if that leads to
psychological stress... 8-).
Humans go into their worst killing frenzies when possessed by precisely the
desire for transcendence or various forms of projective immortality
[. . .]
-- S.M. Stirling
[but]
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=20010228032736.22858.00000296%40ng-fo1.aol.com
One thing that never changes is what happens when you introduce common sense
among the True Believers.
-- S.M. Stirling
[and]
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=20010301162936.28773.00000064%40ng-cg1.aol.com
Amazing how resistant humans are to losing a cherished belief... 8-).
Having illustrated my points, not been refuted on any, and having had many
people prove by their emotional outbursts and naked hostility my other argument
about the religous nature of their committment to this concept...
... I will move on, chuckling, and leave the battered remnants to assure each
other of how right they are, thus helping each other avoid the unbearable pain
of original thought.
Enjoy. 8-).
-- S.M. Stirling
[3] Because the last thing an overexploited, militarized, p2p networked and environmentally conscious planetized world needs are more fundamentalisms.
It was a tough choice, but I think this one is my favorite.
I scared more than a few people away from my own blog when they came bowing before Kurzweil's magic like fundamentalists at a tent revival, and I have to admit, it genuinely terrified me.
Having been in the AI field for the last 13 years, it also cheapens real progress when it takes 50 years to move one small step in our understanding while the fanatics are waving their flags that say the job will be done tomorrow.
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