Upgraded and adapted from my reply to a Comment in the Moot:
If you think instituting universal healthcare has the same (slim) chance of accomplishment as uploading your brain into a computer to achieve immortality and eternal bliss, you need to take a deep breath and figure out just when and how you went so badly wrong in your thinking process. One outcome is fraught with difficulty, sure, but the other is impossible (and, frankly, more than a little crazy).
You may be quite right that my own pet political campaigns these days -- democratic world federalism, planetary basic income guarantee, global healthcare provision, certain radical a2k and copyfight campaigns, and an array of permaculture practices -- may not be exactly the ones through which human beings will concretely collaborate our way to greater equity and democracy in the world in our lifetimes.
But remember, democracy is not a destination at which we aim, it is a process of democratization in which we engage here and now, struggling to give ever more and more people ever more and more of a voice in the public decisions that affect them.
My pet projects will very likely change as my sense of the democratizing forces abroad in the world change, as my sense of the most urgent problems afoot change. This is as it always had been so far in my lifetime, and I think this is also as it should be, to be honest.
Even granting all this I do think there is a profoundly false equivalence in the suggestion that my sort of democratic idealism is the same as what is on display when superlative technocentrics pine after superintelligence, superlongevity, and the supercession of history through superabundance.
Incoherence isn't idealism, idealism isn't incoherence.
You might say that just as I temper my idealism with pragmatic opportunism, all the while keeping my eyes on the prize, so too transhumanists, extropians, singularitarians and the other Robot Cultists really are just working for progress in medical technique and materials science while aiming at immortality and superpowers and so on. But, again, the falsity of any such equivalence is palpable and quite important in my view.
Take away utopian idealized outcomes that might inspire this or that democratically-minded citizen-activist and you are still left with the actual ongoing struggle of democratization in the world and in history of which democracy actually essentially, materially consists.
Take away superlongevity and post-humanizing "enhancement" and you simply aren't a transhumanist anymore, you're just a secular democrat advocating healthcare and medical r & d. Take away superintelligence and you simply aren't a singularitarian anymore, you're just engaging in network security discourse. Take away millennial utility fog, desktop anything machines, and goo-apocalypses and you're just talking biotechnology and environmental security. Lose superlativity and you lose your pretensions to participating in an -ism, you lose your "movement," you lose your "sub(cult)ure" entirely.
Without the hyperbolic handwaving you're just dealing with complex technodevelopmental problems everybody with a brain is already talking about, with completely recognizable left versus right (democratic versus elitist) political commitments articulating the different positions in play. You are engaging in conventional politics rather than "overcoming" them.
As I keep telling you people, you simply don't need to join a Robot Cult to talk technodevelopmental sense. Indeed, the exact opposite is quite obviously the case. Joining the Robot Cult, indulging in superlative techno-utopian figures, frames, and formulations tends to be the very moment you step off the edge of the world into hyperbole, derangement, and True Belief.
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15 comments:
> Take away superlongevity and post-humanizing "enhancement". . .
> Take away superintelligence. . .
> Take away millennial utility fog, desktop anything machines, and goo-apocalypses. . .
> Lose superlativity and. . . you lose your "movement," you lose your
> "sub(cult)ure" entirely.
Yes, but of course the "superlativity" was the Gospel, the "good
news".
> you're just a secular democrat advocating healthcare and medical r & d. . .
> you're just engaging in network security discourse. . .
> you're just talking biotechnology and environmental security.
Yes, but those are Life As Usual (TM). In other words, BO-RING!
The superlativity is the spice, and what a spice it is,
let's admit (as fellow SF indulgers).
When folks like Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil (and yes,
Damien Broderick and the other on-line >Hist crowd)
posit that almost, **almost**-plausible techno-acceleration
mojo to bridge the gap between current sci/tech and their
SFnal dreams, the wishful thinking is like a drug fix
beckoning.
--------------------------
I know a guy who's tough but sweet
He's so fine, he can't be beat
He's got everything that I desire
Sets the summer sun on fire
I want candy, I want candy
Go to see him when the sun goes down
Ain't no finer boy in town
You're my guy, just what the doctor ordered
So sweet, you make my mouth water
I want candy, I want candy
Candy on the beach, there's nothing better
But I like candy when it's wrapped in a sweater
Some day soon I'll make you mine,
Then I'll have candy all the time
I want candy, I want candy
I want candy, I want candy...
All too true. I mean, I like sensawunda sf as much as any geek, hell, I like candy, come to think of it. But with the Robot Cultists you've got the usual delusive foot-stamping infantile confusion of candy with a nutritious meal.
I have also noticed that there's a bit of confusion regarding being in a "movement" and having particular friends. I suspect that some people, when they see criticism of silly movement stuff, see it as being told that they can't be friends with their friends. Which isn't true, but I suspect it accounts for some of the defensive backlash from certain sorts.
Really? If true, how bizarre.
The sets of people with whom one identifies and with whom one is friends are rarely co-extensive, and identification and friendship (not to mention political alliances) seem to me to do very different kinds of work for most people as far as I can see.
For a long time I remember lots of Robot Cultists accused me of literally engaging in nothing but name-calling over and over again no matter how much argumentation, contextualization, and analysis I provided in support of my claims, and I must say this charge feels rather similar in a way.
I mean, I don't doubt at all, Anne, that you are faithfully reporting what you have heard, what I mean is that the complaint you are discerning or hearing in others strikes me as similarly manipulative and cynical on their parts as the one that was incapable of seeing (or at any rate admitting to) anything but ad hominem in any actually consistently negative critique of superlative or sub(cult)ural technocentricity.
"Dale's presuming to tell me who I can be friends with or not." As if anybody in their right mind would give a second's thought to such an impertinence on my part (I should hope)! And as if micro-managing the emotional lives of mostly anonymous strangers who happen to be techno-utopians is something I would give two shits about anyway.
Truly odd.
No, when I locate superlative technocentricities in broader historical contexts of reductionism, elitism, eugenicism, when I delineate the ways in which they mime transendentalizing theological language, when I document the cult-like True Belief and foresight-deranging hyperbolic emotionalism and pan-movement ideological fervor of their affect and ethos, when I embed them within neoliberal corporate-militarist global/technocratic/eugenic developmentalism, I do all this because it helps me understand for its own sake the way otherwise perplexing superlative beliefs and behaviors hang together, and it helps me understand the better to intervene in what seems to me a politically pernicious constellation of technoscientific rhetorics.
I am no more interested in the friendships of people who are caught up in these discourses than in their pets. I assume many transhumanists feel the same fondness for their pets as I do mine, have deeply meaningful friendships, have favorite foods and delightful hobbies, or what have you. It feels like a cynical distraction on their part, or perhaps a kind of weaselly confusion to recast political critique perpetually back into the register of a directly personal attack on the private lives of people I don't know and whose intellectual commitments provide little if any kind of window onto that personal level of life in my experience.
I think (and she'll correct me if I'm wrong, I hope) that when Anne talks about friendships, it's the idea of being labelled as something by the company you keep. I totally adore Anne, still enjoy James Hughes' work, find philosophical interest in some of Nick Bostrom's work, find Mike LaTorra's interests overlap with mine in strange places, etc. etc... but would bristle and cringe at being labelled a transhumanist simply because of the company I keep. If any of these people were in town, I'd certainly invite them over for a drink, but I don't agree with the politics of their "movement" in general.
I generally lose no sleep over this whatsoever, but I recognize that were I hanging out with Nazis, I certainly wouldn't have much ground to stand on by saying "I like THEM, not their politics!" Try reading Heidegger without knowing who he kept company with and then again knowing his acceptance of Nazism.
It's not as trivial as "who one's friends are," but more as a question of how one knows they are perceived as a result of who her friends are.
I think?
Robin: Exactly. Your interpretation is pretty much dead-on.
I'll also add that I suspect that for some people, the whole question of who is a friend, who is a colleague, who is an affiliate, who is just someone one tends to agree with a lot, etc., is a very muddled one.
Certainly there is some natural overlap between these categories for everyone, and there is nothing wrong with that, but I do think some people's overlapping is unhealthy in weird ways. Like in some cases it seems like people are afraid to disagree out of fear that others won't like them, or conversely, that if other people really like them, they won't disagree (at least in public) on issues important to their supposed friends.
Personally I've never expected to be liked or agreed with, or expected to like or agree with everyone, so it's not a big deal when people who do seem to like me disagree with me, and I frankly can't hang out with people who can't deal with any form of criticism. But I think sometimes subcultural movements consisting very strongly of weirdly oversensitive people crop up, where there's this odd mutual expectation of constant back-scratching, and anyone who doesn't do that gets seen as somehow "betraying" the others. I don't have any fancy sociological theories behind these observations, mind you, they're just observations I've made via experience.
(I would also like to clarify that I do not presently call myself a transhumanist these days and haven't since I realized how much irritating baggage that entailed. I thought I'd made that pretty clear on my blog and elsewhere but maybe not?
I don't think being interested in neuroscience and sci-fi and longevity medicine obligates me or anyone else to affiliate with transhumanist organizations -- that was actually one really obnoxious thing I found about such organizations, that they seemed to want to take credit for any discussion of particular subjects as if they were the first or most qualified ones to discuss them.)
Some quotes without comment, from a book I ran into a
couple of hours ago at a local Barnes & Noble (I didn't
buy it; I'm copying the text from Amazon's "Look Inside").
Applicability, if any, to this thread is left as an
exercise for the reader.
_The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange_
by Mark Barrowcliffe
http://www.amazon.com/Elfish-Gene-Dungeons-Dragons-Growing/dp/1569475229
p. 107:
Then [Billy] said something that made me almost duck as if
someone had taken a swipe at my head. He declared himself
politically. . .
'You're a socialist?' I said.
'Marxist-Leninist tendency,' said Billy, 'although I will
take a little Trotsky if I have to. . .'
I had no idea what he was talking about. All I knew was
that anyone of his age I'd ever heard express an opinion
about politics had been incredibly right wing. 'Socialist'
was used by the fourth-year D&Ders as an alternative
term for yob, or defective. My granddad was proud
to say he was a socialist, my dad would -- at that stage --
probably have described himself that way, but they were
from another planet. Anyone I'd known and respected
was a fascist or a Nazi -- of the sort that fancies itself
in jackboots sweeping about in a staff car rather than
the sort that does a lot of thinking on the realities
of genocide. Actually, now that I come to think of it,
that is pretty much what a good number of the actual
Nazis were like.
Also I'd been given to understand that socialists were
morons. . .
p. 265
The Lost Boys
So what became of us D&Ders?
After university, I spent about a decade being deeply
dissatisfied with my life and drinking heavily. All
the time I'd been growing up I'd never felt bored, not
even once. The trouble is that boredom is a fairly
major component of most jobs. I had never learned
to cope with it. After all those years in fantasy
kingdoms, life as a nine-to-five commuter felt like
the worst sort of curse.
On one occasion, returning from a two-week break in
the sun, I actually found myself crying on the way
in to work. D&D had prepared me for a life of
excitement. Now, it seemed, I was sentenced to
crushing ennui for the rest of my days. I couldn't
even pretend to be interested in my job and poured
all my energies into my social life. If the work
was dull on its own, then it became torture with
a hangover. My attitude was ungrateful -- I had good
jobs, starting on a sought-after journalist training
scheme and working up to be editor of a magazine --
but you can't help the way you feel.
Eventually I really couldn't stand work any longer
and decided it was better to be a pauper in a fantasy
world than relatively well off in the real one.
Without D&D I don't think I'd have been so unhappy
and would not have left to become a writer. That
might have been a good thing. At the very least
I'd be driving a better car.
p. 267
The fact that most people turned out to be decent human
beings away from the group and under the influence of
women leads me to conclude that it wasn't really D&D
that had caused us to behave so vilely to each other
but masculinity itself. Shutting ourselves away in
male-only company for our entire youth was like distilling
that maleness, taking all other influences away
and just leaving us with our dark selves. The only
way that D&D was to blame is that it gave us a
reason to be in those rooms, face to face for all those
years, like an extended reality TV show that you
couldn't be voted off.
I suspect that some of the reason for our more unpleasant
behaviour was that we were bored and didn't know it.
I don't mean bored by the game, just bored by each other
and the limits of our world. . .
Most of us grew up. I bumped into Kev Gerling when I
was about twenty, and he was embarrassed by his
childish Nazism. . .
'I could still never vote for the reds,' he said, 'but all
that's behind me.' . . . His girlfriend. . . clearly
didn't recognize the person he'd been, and I guessed
that, when they spent their evenings together, he
reached for the Barry White rather than the Horst Wessel
song. . .
Sean Gardner, despite once weaving his dead gerbil's tail
into his hair and wearing its back legs **as a love charm**,
eventually married and settled down. His sarcasm,
thank God, abated, and now it is quite possible to have
a conversation with him.
Chigger dropped out of university because, to quote him,
'I was so far ahead of the others they'd asked me to
wait a year to allow them to catch up.' He waited a year
and was, the last time I heard, still waiting. All I
can say is that the others must have been a long way
behind. I know he married and went on to work in
computers, but beyond that I am in the dark.
One of the D&Ders who stuck at it into his twenties had a
D&D wedding -- every guest dressed up as a cleric,
magic-user, wizard or monster. This is the sort of thing
that's so embarrassing I'm almost ducking beneath the
desk as I type. . . I can't imagine many mothers being
too happy to watch their daughters walk up the aisle
accompanied by the horror that is the undead wizard
The Lich, particularly if they themselves had been
forced to dress as a mummy.
I did meet Billy again. . .
p. 271
'How have you been?' I said, which is a somewhat daunting
question after a break of twenty-five years.
'Well,' said Billy, although he seemed slightly
nervous. I'd never notice that in him before. I'm
not saying he'd never been nervous, just that I'd
never notice it. I was nervous too. When we'd last
known each other our relationship had been clearly
defined -- teacher and pupil. Between fifteen and
seventeen, two years are an eon; between forty and
forty-two, a doze in the sun, you scarcely notice
them pass. It was as if we'd learned a dance
together years before, and now we were trying
to perform it again. . .
We went for a drink in the Coach and Horses, the pub
popular with the staff of the humour magazine
_Private Eye_, because that's where we would have loved
to have gone as kids. Billy had introduced me
to _Private Eye_, and we'd spent a good deal of
effort aping that wit.
I'd been wrong, though. Billy had changed. Not only
was he much quieter in manner, but he'd given up
smoking. Somehow fags just seemed so much part
of him, his irreverence and sod-authority attitude,
that I almost wanted to start smoking again to
encourage him. That Billy, it appeared, was gone.
I was struck by how cowed he was compared to the
mad figure I'd known as a kid. What I didn't know
was that he was having a truly terrible time at
work under a bullying boss and was also quite ill.
I was alarmed, though, to see that his former
fearlessness seemed to have left him.
It was shocking to discover, as well, that he
hadn't done well in his final university exams and
was doing the work of a jobbing scientist
rather than one of the leaders in the field.
I think I'd imagined that he would have gone
through what I went through but that he'd have
done it better, that he'd be a successful actor
or a politician or a top scientist. . .
'Shall we have one more or shall we go to the
restaurant now?' I said. . .
'The Bible tells us that drinking is acceptable but
drunkenness isn't,' said Billy.
I looked left and right.
'Er, why are we worried about what the Bible tells
us?' I said.
'Prepare to suspend your disbelief,' said Billy, with
a hint of his old theatricality. 'I have been born
again.'
He wasn't winding me up. I would have been less
surprised if he'd told me he'd been selected as the
next Dalai Lama.
'You didn't get in contact with me to convert me,
did you?' I said.
'Well, you might want to think about it,' said Billy.
I had that sensation where the upper body remains
perfectly still, but the legs feel as though they
are straining to get to the door. Then something
strange happened. I'd spent years trying to
civilize myself, to restrain the impulses I'd
learned in the slaughterhouses of D&D's suburban
living rooms. I really had made the effort to
be nicer. All that suddenly fell away.
'Have you gone fucking mad?' I enquired.
He, raised in the same slaughterhouses, didn't
take offence at all, but leaped straight into an
argument with a lot of his old verve. And there
we were, him on the Bible, me on Darwin, my
knowledge of whom comes almost solely from what
he told me as a youth. It was great, just like
old times. We could have been chewing lumps
out of each other over how deeply sleeps the
Chimera or the effectiveness of chainmail against
needles.
Five hours later we'd actually forgotten to eat,
though not to drink, and were continuing the argument
back at my house. It could have been 1979.
I was almost tempted to break out the Empire of
the Petal Throne.
How had Billy come to God of all things? I have my
own ideas that disagree with his. Billy, like me,
wanted to believe in the fantasy world and found
real life a bit mundane. Like me, he had been
drawn to drugs, though not to the occult. The one
thing you could say about Billy was that he was
never a dilettante. If he went for something he
went for it, and it was the same with narcotics.
His precocious ability at chemistry meant that he
was able to synthesize a personal supply of some
fairly potent drugs. I think it's fair to call that
a mixed blessing. He told me that he dropped a
tab of acid before walking in to his final chemistry
exam, one of many he was to drop in the subsequent
years. Needless to say, this did not enhance
his performance.
He'd gone through that awfuly hippy demi-monde of
late-night hot-knife sessions, and cheap speed in
flats with fading Pink Floyd posters covering up the
damp, and acid taken beneath thirty-year-old
wallpaper. His tragedy was that, at twenty-five,
he'd become the sort of person he admired at
fifteen, a druggy, a rock DJ, the one who
would always take more than anyone else and hold
it together better. By forty he was someone he'd
never even dreamed of.
'I know what people think, that I've fried my brains
on acid and got God,' he said. 'It's not like that;
it's a rational decision. If I hadn't taken acid
I'd probably be less paranoid and a lot more
successful, but that's about it,' he said.
'Well, when you put it like that, I regret not
doing a load myself,' I said.
I'm not sure I do think it was the LSD that flipped
Billy over to religion. Maybe religion is just
another fantasy kingdom, another place where
magic is true, or maybe he's right. He said he's
looked at his church's interpretation of the Bible,
and that it fits reality at every point. I wouldn't
know, I haven't read it.
The thing about Billy is that he was always a believer,
in some sense. He threw himself wholeheartedly into
anything he did, D&D, LSD, or religion. I've
written some things in this book that I thought
he might find uncomfortable or difficult -- particularly
about his drug-taking and my reactions to him
when I first saw him again.
'How could I object to it?' he said. 'It's true.'
I found this a strange viewpoint. The truth about
themselves is the one thing the majority of people
find most objectionable. It's certainly a central
reason some boys spend every waking hour playing
D&D.
This honesty characterized Billy's approach to the
game. He was a purist. Even today he's still working
on a game. We still see each other occasionally,
and he's said to me that he can't quite believe
that I don't have the obsession I once did or that
I don't want to play anymore.
'I really thought we'd be doing it for the rest of
our lives,' he said. 'I keep expecting you to tell
me about a new dungeon you've designed or a game
you've bought. I ask myself was it just me that
it meant so much to?'
Earlier on, I said that, in one reading of our personal
history the ending of our friendship was a disaster
for both of us. Perhaps that's overstating the
case, but I think that, had we remained friends,
I might have been less rudderless until early
middle age and, putting it bluntly, he might not
have done all that acid.
I think both Billy and I were looking for a true
friendship -- people who gave us self-respect -- and
for a time we had it. Out of each other's company
we went, in our different ways, to where unhappy
people always go -- to extremes.
Still, who knows, and maybe what we had was the
best we could have hoped for. When I go for a drink
with him today, he doesn't think that, without
wargaming, I'm quite me, and I don't think that,
with religion, it's quite him. We get by well
enough, nevertheless.
"Dale's presuming to tell me who I can be friends with or not." As if anybody in their right mind would give a second's thought to such an impertinence on my part (I should hope)! And as if micro-managing the emotional lives of mostly anonymous strangers who happen to be techno-utopians is something I would give two shits about anyway.
Perhaps it isn't so much that transhumanists feel that Mr. Carrico is trying to tell them who they should and shouldn't be friends with (except when he criticizes them for being allies with libertarians...) as much as it is a transhumanist thinking that if he isn't a Robot Cultist (according to him) and most if not all of the transhumanists he knows or whose writings he had read are not Robot Cultists (according to him) why should he and his fellow transhumanists be unfairly portrayed as Robot Cultists who are either a silent minority within the transhumanist community or no longer exist or never existed outside of Mr. Carrico's imagination?
Because not all people are as reasonable as either Robin or Anne -- especially when techno-utopianism is under discussion -- this whole line amounts mostly to another chapter in the transhumanist hurt feelings department, just an idiotic diversion to insulate cultists from exposure as such, or to pout about criteria for practical political alliances that would exclude them.
I see no reason to change my published judgments on these questions: (one) Market fundamentalists like the so-called anarcho-capitalist and minarchist libertarians are ideologues who are ill-suited as allies of democratically-minded people, whether they are concerned with technoscience questions or not (as of course I am). (two) Superlative and Sub(cult)ural technocentrists like transhumanists, extropians, singularitarians, techno-immortalists are profoundly misguided on any number of fronts (delineated at length in writings available in the Superlative Summary, if you care to actually know what I mean rather than pouting about it), and no small number of them are outright cranks and cultists -- enough so that one wonders about the judgment of those who are not and yet ally with them (and, again, I see no strict connection at all between the criteria that govern ones allies as opposed to ones friends).
Those who want to pout and stamp and insist that the transhumanists are not Robot Cultists have the misfortune of living in a world with teh Google. Tap tap tap the keyboard and one discovers soon enough the digital upload scenarios, nano-cornucopiast fantasies, the techno-immortalist handwaving, the "think-tankers" who calculate the Robot God odds, and all the rest of the futurological funhouse.
Either you think these inanities and insanities are reasonable and that it is "unfair" of me to say otherwise (in which you're simply exhibiting the True Belief I deride) or you mean to deny 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.
I am quite content for reasonable people to assess these things on their merits.
Market fundamentalists like the so-called anarcho-capitalist and minarchist libertarians are ideologues who are ill-suited as allies of democratically-minded people, whether they are concerned with technoscience questions or not (as of course I am).
Mr. Carrico, are you saying that if a progressive activist campaigning for morphological freedom (freedom to use recreational drugs, freedom to use the morning-after pill or get an abortion, freedom to request a doctor's assistance to commit suicide, etc) has exhausted all the human and financial resources in the progressive circles he has access to he should not ally himself with libertarian activists simply because they are libertarians? I understand that there are technoscience questions on which progressives and libertarians are at odds but can't and shouldn't they work together on those on which they are like-minded? Isn't winning the cause more important than making sure our allies share our groupthink?
It's a rule of thumb, not a fundamentalist article of faith. On particular campaigns one can and will ally with all sorts of people, of course -- because, among other things, people incarnate multiple, partial, and contradictory identifications after all, and also because people are usually persuadable whatever their foolishness on this or that particular issue.
However, we're living in the shit stinking ruins of market fundamentalist ideology. Dead enders who still insist on the obvious righteousness of the pieties they swallowed from Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand are too fucking stupid to waste serious time on in my humble opinion. If you want to devote your time to spoon feeding them be my guest.
I do think that there are differences that make a difference between left and right perspectives. If you want to defend consensual prosthetic self-determination you need to think long and hard about what that word "consensual" means and what it depends on (for me, reliable public information, basic income, healthcare, and education) -- your "libertarian" ally may seem superficially to share your commitment to morphological freedom, but if for them it amounts to the usual negative liberty that treats "market transactions" as noncoercive whatever the terms that misinform and duress them, then your "ally" isn't one at all, and you only thought he was because you were stupid and superficial in your analyses.
If you want to dismiss this sort of thing as "groupthink" on my part, by all means do so. The phrase I would use is "critical intelligence."
For a long time I remember lots of Robot Cultists accused me of literally engaging in nothing but name-calling over and over again no matter how much argumentation, contextualization, and analysis I provided in support of my claims and I must say this charge feels rather similar in a way.
Well it seems that Mr. Carrico does both: He name-calls (i.e. transhumanists are batshit crazy Robots Cultists and Yes!Trons) and he provides a substantive analysis. But since most transhumanists probably don't understand all the complexities of his substantive critique because of his rhetorical style they simply remember the name-calling or it gives them an excuse to focus only on the name-calling...
If his goal is to actually persuade transhumanists and their potential sympathizers of the error of their ways perhaps less name-calling is in order. If his goal is simply to have a good laugh at their expense while practicing his analytical skills on a easy target he shouldn't change a thing...
If his goal is to actually persuade transhumanists and their potential sympathizers of the error of their ways perhaps less name-calling is in order. If his goal is simply to have a good laugh at their expense while practicing his analytical skills on a easy target he shouldn't change a thing...
There is something in what you say, but I think there are more and better alternatives on offer.
It's true I don't much expect to "persuade transhumanists" inasmuch as I regard too many of them True Believers for whom such persuasion is either unavailable or more trouble than its worth, crunching the numbers.
That also means I disagree with you a bit when you imply that the reason most transhumanists fail to understand my critique is because they are too offended by my jokes. While that is surely something of a factor it lets them off too easily to suggest that is the primary reason for their failure to see sense. Another reason is that they are being altogether nonsensical.
Now, you come closer to the mark when you suggest that my target may be "potential sympathizers," especially considering who exactly is included under the umbrella of "potential" here.
I do like very much the idea of rendering superlativity too radioactive to be too readily taken up by the corporate-militarist and neoliberal eugenicist factions within more mainstream global developmentalism (a far greater threat to actual social progress in the midst of technoscientific change than Robot Cultists after all), a task that seems to me to be quite handily served by ridicule.
No doubt there might be a few decent technocentric geeks who might feel a seductive tug from the general superlative ethos were they not to take a harder look at it -- a look that might be inspired by the awareness that some geeks like me find superlativity too sublimely ridiculous for words.
As it happens, I also have been pleased to discover that some transhumanists themselves have, quite to the contrary of my expectations and intentions, been nudged from their dogmatic slumbers by my critique despite its failure to mince words or soothe their hurt feelings when they are behaving foolishly. This has been a surprise, and a welcome one.
Also, as you say, I do enjoy having a good laugh. My critiques of the Robot Cultists have provided hours and hours and hours of mirth for me and at least some of my readers. Too laugh while ridiculing the ridiculous while nudging dogmatism occasionally into defensiveness is all a good day's work to my mind.
That also means I disagree with you a bit when you imply that the reason most transhumanists fail to understand my critique is because they are too offended by my jokes. While that is surely something of a factor it lets them off too easily to suggest that is the primary reason for their failure to see sense.
No. I said because they do not understand your critique they chose to focus only on the name-calling. If the critique was more understandable to them, they wouldn't necessarily focus only on the name-calling even though many still would. However, if the critique was more understandable and contained no name-calling, they would have no choice but to focus on developing a rebuttal to your critique such as Michael A. did a few months ago on his blog.
As it happens, I also have been pleased to discover that some transhumanists themselves have, quite to the contrary of my expectations and intentions, been nudged from their dogmatic slumbers by my critique despite its failure to mince words or soothe their hurt feelings when they are behaving foolishly. This has been a surprise, and a welcome one.
Point taken.
No. I said because they do not understand your critique they chose to focus only on the name-calling.
Ah, I misunderstood you. You're probably right, there's a lot of that going on.
if the critique was more understandable and contained no name-calling, they would have no choice but to focus on developing a rebuttal to your critique
I think you are a bit over-optimistic here, though.
Not to mention the fact that there is a Two Cultures problem here -- Many people who buy into superlativity would regard only what they call "technical" critiques as "understandable" and "worthy" of rebuttal, but such "technical" accounts concede techno-utopianism far too much ground to allow real critique much purchase in my view.
Further, my own focus is rhetorical and cultural -- which seems to me not only relevant but actually key to understanding the problems with especially organized "movement" formations of superlativity (which I call sub(cult)ural) -- and the simple truth is that this very focus itself seems to inspire the charge of name-calling and incomprehensibility.
One needs the patience of a saint to overcome these sorts of structural barriers, and it is hard for me to pretend that Robot Cultists really deserve that kind of effort (especially since patience of this kind is more likely than not to receive no reply but "tl;dr" anyway -- believe me, I know).
As I have said many times, one reaches the point at which the only sensible thing is to ridicule the ridiculous in the hopes that it will be bulldozed harmlessly into the margins the better to make room for the more reasonable to proceed in the clash of opinions.
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