Your thesis, remember, is that transhumanism is a sort of folk religion for white guys, and so all I have to do is point out that you don't have to be white or male or in the West to be into this stuff.
Well, no, I pointed out that you Robot Cultists ARE and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN overabundantly white guys.
Are you denying the truth of that observation? Are you denying that observation has any significance at all in a world in which white guys are a minority of people alive, a minority of people who will continue to share the world tomorrow being shaped today, peer-to-peer, a minority of people whose lives are impacted by technoscienfic change, a minority of people who are scientifically literate and politically aware?
If, as you say, the loose set of infantile wish-fulfillment fantasies of which your techno-transcendentalizing religious faith essentially consists could or should in fact appeal to other than white guys, then doesn't the fact that they DO NOT seem in the main in the actual world ever to appeal to other than white guys constitute more of a problem for you rather than the solution to the problem at hand?
I guess there is a certain consistency here, though, in confusing an imagined logical possibility of diversity with the actual reality of diversity, confusing fairly commonplace human wish-fulfillment fantasies of personal power with a formal philosophy, confusing science fiction with actual science.
Maybe you're just a very silly, confused person, after all?
If, by the way, you think there is an actual definition of this "transhumanism" that you seem to advocate and expect to sweep the world that does not amount to "infantile wish fulfillment fantasies of immortality and personal power enabled through confusions of science fiction with science fact" I am eager to hear it on your own terms.
You keep promising to tell me what "transhumanism" essentially and uniquely is, but so far you keep agreeing with me that it often is just a kind of religious faith "based on" wanting to live a really long time, maybe even forever, and loll around in abundance, all of which will be delivered by "technology" in a construal that seems broad to the point of vacuity and through some mechanism that remains largely unspecified.
As I have warned you many times before, you will discover that if you strive in an honest way to provide specificity about either what this "technology" actually is supposed to consist of or what mechanism will enable this "technology" to deliver its supposedly transcendentalizing wish-fulfilling goods you will surely discover either (one) that you are saying very bland sorts of things nobody needs "transhumanism" to say, or (two) you are saying batshit crazy things that only "transhumanists" say.
When you finally grasp this, then the Robot Cult spell will be broken and you will be free to be a geek who enjoys reading science fiction on its own terms and advocating sensible consensus science policy on its different terms as a grown up person. If you also happen to be a democratically minded person of the left you might even do some good in the world once you leave your Robot Cult behind, championing funding for science education and research and the application of consensus science in relevant domains of public policy (like climate change legislation, urban planning, public healthcare provision, sex education, and so on).
You don't have to thank me, just become a more sensible person and do some good in the world.
9 comments:
I pointed out that you Robot Cultists ARE and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN overabundantly white guys.
Are you denying the truth of that observation? Are you denying that observation has any significance at all
Perhaps you can explain how technoprogressivism differs from transhumanism in this regard.
I am inclined to say there is little difference at all in this matter when it comes to people who identify as "transhumanists" or who identify as "technoprogressives." Indeed, as far as I can tell almost all the people who use the term "technoprogressive" as a self-description are also transhumanist-identified as well.
As I'm sure you noticed, I once used that term in some writings of mine -- and how I have lived to regret that! Of course, I used it as a handy shorthand tag for the unwieldy phrase "democratically-minded secular progressive folks especially interested in political issues concerning technoscience and technodevelopment." But from the beginning I was always very careful to emphasize that this phrase subsumed too many interests to provide the basis for any kind of singular program, subculture, identity, or movement.
It didn't take very long for some transhumanists to take up the term themselves, as well as taking up passages from some of my writings mentioning that term wholesale (always omitting of course my warnings about programmatic oversimplifications among a whole host of other critical points), in order to promote their membership organizations and the techno-transcendentalizing aspirations of their members as more mainstream than they are, in a stealthy and profoundly dishonest way in my opinion.
I mention all this because it may be that you are unaware of that history. If you brought this up in an effort to spin for your Robot Cult, then I daresay you don't much care about such history anyway. I no longer use the term myself at all, consider it tainted by unwelcome associations with futurologists always on the lookout for a neologism to sell their crap products to the rubes with, nor indeed did I ever use the term in the way so-called "technoprogressive"-identified futurologists now sometimes do to name some sort of imaginary movement or unique ideology they think they belong to. I have published extensive critiques of the appropriations and wrongheaded uses of the term by futurologists and Robot Cultists, if you care to read them.
I still await your answer to the questions you keep sidestepping (most egregiously so in this latest "I know you are but what am I" dodge of yours):
[one] Why are an overabundant majority of the people who identify with and participate in transhumanist subcultures and discourses (as well as the other superlative futurological techno-transcendentalizing sects of extropianism, singularitarianism, cybernetic-totalism, techno-immortalism, and so on) white guys in a world in which white guys are a minority of those now living, a minority of those who will share tomorrow, a minority of those impacted by technoscientific change, and a minority of those who a technoscientifically literate and politically aware?
[two] Of just what does this transhumanism in which you are presumably so invested actually substantially and uniquely consist? Given the sweeping claims you make in the name of transhumanism I cannot see why it seems to be so difficult for you to answer this question about what the hell it is that is inspiring all these claims and all this allegiance in the first place.
I have predicted that your answer will either name views embraced by incomparably more non-transhumanists than transhumanists and none of which originated among transhumanists and hence fail to define it as unique (views such as that: effective healthcare is desirable; informed, nonduressed consent must be defended; scientific research and education should be encouraged and should inform public policy in relevant domains; new techniques have sociocultural impacts, and so on) or will name views embraced by pretty much nobody but transhumanists and hence look more definitive but also will tend to be so batshit crazy that even many transhumanist-identified people, so-called, will fail to champion them all and so will complain that treating them as definitive is a deliberate distortion (views such as that: embodied intelligence can be migrated into cyberspace and hence selves immortalized, a superintelligent Robot God will soon arrive on the scene and end human history, nanoscale technique can and probably soon will arrive that can deliver abundance and superlongevity, and so on).
I would love to hear otherwise. I am still awaiting your answers. I am still certainly not holding my breath.
Let's consider lifespan and intelligence. For political common sense, that means health care and education. Now consider just two subfields: regenerative medicine, and cognitive neuroscience as applied to education. Regenerative medicine involves stimulating the regrowth of damaged tissues, often in ways that are simply miraculous by historic standards. Cognitive neuroscience, meanwhile, studies how the state of the brain affects the capacity for learning.
It is easy to propose new standards in these areas which you would only hear from transhumanists. Let's aim, not just to regrow broken spinal cords, but to restore anyone to physical youth who wants it. Let's aim, not just to optimize the learning ability of the brains we are born with, but to boost that ability to unnatural levels through technological means.
Note well: there is no talk here of immortality or superintelligence. But this is certainly a transhumanist agenda, as I understand the term. Also, it is very clearly a thing you can set out to do in the real world. The reason it doesn't resemble traditional politics is that it is mostly a research agenda. It requires knowledge and technologies which do not yet exist.
Some such dreams will turn out to be illusions. I don't believe in mind uploading, for example. My guess is that, in terms of our current physical concepts, the phenomenological unity of consciousness has something to do with quantum entanglement, and that the functionalist philosophy of mind is simply wrong. So I predict that the future of science will falsify that particular conception.
But I see no such barrier to the eventual achievement of total physical rejuvenation or to the biotechnological enhancement of human intelligence. Genetics, molecular biology, and computational neuroscience really are a total revolution in the understanding of life and mind, and that knowledge will eventually revolutionize the human condition for better or worse, unless we somehow refuse en masse to do this. I don't see how you can get around this unless you simply deny that atoms are real, and at that point we certainly leave the scientific consensus. Knowledge is power, and this is elemental knowledge, never before possessed.
And here we encounter the lack of clear limits which encourages the drift back towards maximalism. If we have understood the molecular basis of youth, of genius, of athleticism - all real phenomena, which accordingly do have a physical, molecular constitution - then we can think about taking any human being and moving them in that direction. But why should that be the end of it? Why only settle for reproducing the high points of natural human variation? And at this point the extremism sets in; because the only limits that science can tell us about are absurdly beyond human scale, like the physical limits on information processing in matter, or the point in the far future at which the stars burn out.
This may all be disorienting to the traditional concept of human nature and our place in the cosmos, but objectively, it is the situation we face.
I was unaware that you've disowned the technoprogressive label because transhumanists took it up. Very well. It seems to me that it names a cluster of positions and priorities that do naturally go together and which are very distinct from transhumanism, though not inherently at odds with it.
Anyway, you want to know
(1) why most transhumanists are white guys. Well, this is a question that can be asked of many fields of human endeavor, yes? Why are most US Senators, people with PhDs, Beat poets, doctors, etc, white guys.
The USA is the center of transhumanism and demographically it is 75% white. The majority of scientists and engineers have always been men, and still are, even though this is changing. The racial and gender demographics and micro-politics of transhumanism are completely unexceptional for an innovative technological subculture mostly originating in the US and Europe. We can discuss where those traits come from, but that's no longer a conversation about transhumanism as such. And I would repeat that it is utterly unrealistic to think that this subcultural configuration will only ever occur in those societies. Whether or not it names itself with the T-word, I guarantee that there will be Islamic, Indian, Chinese, etc "transhumanism".
Which brings us to question (2), what is this transhumanism anyway, how am I defining this term? For the purposes of this conversation I had been opposing it to technoprogressivism, which I understood to be defined by a number of goals that are humbler and more practical. I understood your thinking to be: some things are possible and desirable; other things just aren't possible; transhumanism wants the impossible, such as physical immortality, superintelligence, mind uploading, and nanotechnological abundance.
That is a maximalist agenda for transhumanism. There's no denying that the extremes get the attention, both inside and outside the subculture. Here I would make two observations. First, there are goals which sound quite finite compared to the maximalism, but which nonetheless exceed what anyone else is willing to think about or countenance. Second, we do not have scientifically principled arguments telling us that this humbler transhumanism is all that is reasonable, and so a drift towards maximalism naturally sets in when you do discuss what the limits may be.
(cont'd below)
you want to know (1) why most transhumanists are white guys. Well, this is a question that can be asked of many fields of human endeavor, yes? Why are most US Senators, people with PhDs, Beat poets, doctors, etc, white guys.
People with any sense consider it an enormous problem that Senators are mostly white guys, that a presumably representative body is so unrepresentative renders the Senate less legitimate than it should otherwise be.
Scholars of the Beats also tend to find the dearth of women (it is not absolute by the way) to cry out for analysis and criticism.
I actually don't think it is true that most doctors or most PhDs are white guys, especially when you dive into the data cohorts.
Be all that as it may, the initial post to which you took exception was one in which I pointed out that every single essay featured on the stealth-Robot Cultist IEET website featured a portrait it author and every one was a white guy, and that I thought this was truly strange given that a minority of people in the world are white guys, a minority of the people who are building tomorrow are white guys, a minority of people who are impacted by technoscience are white guys, a minority of technoscientifically literate and politically aware people are white guys.
I thought this was enormously strange and problematic and revealing -- as is the fact that it is typical of the longer history of futurological discursive spaces more generally -- but you didn't think it was strange or problematic.
I think this is one of many things that makes your "movement" illegitimate. I tend to focus on conceptual confusions among the futurologists, but this observation about structural sexism seems worthy of occasional note as well.
I guess you don't. I think you're wrong.
I understood your thinking to be: some things are possible and desirable; other things just aren't possible; transhumanism wants the impossible, such as physical immortality, superintelligence, mind uploading, and nanotechnological abundance. That is a maximalist agenda for transhumanism. There's no denying that the extremes get the attention, both inside and outside the subculture.
What you are describing as "minimalism versus maximalism" looks to me more like research versus wish-fulfillment fantasizing, sanity versus incoherence, science versus religion. Robot Cultists like to frame their confusions of science fiction with science fact as a kind of "daring" on their part, they like to fancy themselves visionaries or what seems more like jocks of science by handwaving about superintellinge, superlongevity, and superabundance rather than consensus science. I do not agree. I think they are just engaging in a kind of advertising and promotional discourse unconnected with actual research, advertising in a hyperbolic mode that has many of the hallmarks of outright fraud.
I also think techno-transcendentalizing futurologies like transhumanism indulge in something that looks quite a bit like evangelical religiosity in its least pleasant most dangerous crusading and promotional modes. Although I am not at all a religious person myself, I don't disdain religious expression in others any more than I do aesthetic expression in others (there are lots of paths to meaningful existence). But I do insist we all take great care to discern and distinguish and criticize religion (or for that matter aesthetics) whenever it seeks to colonize, distort, or be mistaken for science or proper politics. That is as true for Pentecostals or Muslims or Mormons as it is for Robot Cultists, in my view. When an sf fandom or PR firm (every futurist is essentially a salesman) confuses itself for a policy think-tank or social movement, enormous mischief ensues.
Although I do indeed think immortality and nanoabundance and mind uploading are practically impossible, this is not -- as it is usually framed by Robot Cultists -- a matter of my quibbling with them about developmental timescales or lacking their "can-do" spirit or ability to "think big." I don't confuse lies with optimism or incoherence with bigness like futurologists characteristically do.
More to the point: I think "mind uploading" involves deep confusions about what intelligence (which is embodied and social) means, what personal lifespan (which is also embodied, social and inherently, indispensably vulnerable) means, or what it really means to aspire to a post-political superabundance in terms of human freedom. I don't think transhumanists want "more" -- I think transhumanists literally don't know what the hell they are talking about, and that when they talk they are deranging public discourse in a way the public is disastrously susceptible to in a time of disruptive technoscientific change.
I frankly don't think transhumanists are ultimately saying anything that any hungry bored lonely infant in a poopy diaper isn't already squealing about in his crib. You just trump up your infantile wish-fulfillment fantasies in the trappings of science fiction iconography and appeal to a slightly more hyperbolic id than do the usual run of the mill consumer-capitalist sports car and boner pill ads. That you people seem to think this represents a philosophical worldview or cutting edge science policy is nothing short of flabbergasting in my view.
the lack of clear limits which encourages the drift back towards maximalism
It seems to me that the lack of clarity about what have hitherto been clear limits constitutes a new limit, not an overcoming of all limits, and as such should inspire more care, more criticism, and, dare I say it, more modesty? I think we should feel a healthy skepticism and suspicion of those who opportunistically glom onto novel confusions in an effort to make big promises and aggrandize themselves. Obviously, your futurological mileage may vary.
Let's aim, not just to regrow broken spinal cords, but to restore anyone to physical youth who wants it. Let's aim, not just to optimize the learning ability of the brains we are born with, but to boost that ability to unnatural levels through technological means.
Well, first of all, the term "optimize" always contains an unstated "optimize -- in the service of which ends for what for whom": it isn't a neutral term, but a term occluding all sorts of moral, aesthetic, political contestations around what it meant by intelligence, what and who counts as intelligent, what intelligence is good for. The tendency of you transhumanist types to go off willy-nilly speaking of "enhancement" this and "optimiziation" that as though all these contestations either don't exist or aren't important typically makes transhumanist discourses on non-normative medical and prosthetic and cultural interventions stealthily eugenic (no doubt unintentionally in many cases) in addition to all the other idiotic and wrongheaded things they also tend to be.
But to speak more directly to your point here, I must say that I do not agree with you about the force of the "aim" you are mobilizing in your statement here. I think scientific and medical research tends to be driven by the proximately possible, I think its terms are suffused with laboratory conditions, funding exigencies, ongoing publications.
I don't doubt that many scientists also enjoy indulging in blue-skying about how cool it might be if we could one day regrow limbs or live for centuries or employ nanoscale techniques to change dirt to feasts and mansions for peanuts...
And I don't doubt that this sort of daydreaming fuels the imagination that drives some creative science in the lab or in the published paper, just as for others creative science it driven by the contemplation of God or James Joyce or a night of drunkenness or a night with a lover or a long suppressed traumatic event from childhood.
Even if we should grant and celebrate the often unscientific wellsprings to which the imaginative or motivational dimensions of critical, scientific, problem-solving rationality are sometimes indispensably indebted we need not and indeed should not confuse them for critical, scientific, problem-solving rationality themselves.
As anything but diffusely inspirational expressions of "wouldn't it be cool if," utterances like "let's aim for soopergenius IQs in sooper bodies that live for centuries in the Oort Cloud" have no legible connection to what is practically meant by "aiming" for anything at all where the rubber hits the road in laboratory practice, in the writing of the paper or the grant request or the regulatory study. Confusing such matters isn't a sign of superiority but of error or ignorance (some of it willful), and it is the furthest imaginable thing from helpful.
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