I consider myself a transhumanist. I spend probably too much time thinking about very long-terrm trends of humanity. Some of the trends I see seem obvious to the point of being irrefutable, while others I’m sure are controversial. Nevertheless, I’ll lay out a few of the basic tenants of transhumanism, and begin to explain why they lead to the very deep and personal implications they have for me.
Computers are getting faster and more powerful. As they do so, they’re helping humans be smarter. Maybe not invidual humans, as some studies have shown that things like e-mail and powerpoint can actually make people stupider for some definition. I can see the truth in this by considering several very smart friends of mine who don’t actually remember their spouse’s cell phone numbers. Because they don’t need to. Their computer familiars remember these things for them — the external brain. In combination we get smarter — the synergy of humans and computers or groups of humans connected through computers — whatever you want to call these aggregate life-forms, they are way better at solving difficult problems than any individual human was just 15 years ago, when there was little e-mail and no Google. In just 15 years, we’ve seen massive improvements in our ability to solve problems!
Moreover, technological change is accelerating. These changes aren’t going to stop until we have completely overcome biology. Unless something horrible happens. Which it could. To be explicit, I see humanity facing two possible futures on the multi-century timescale:
- Enlightenment by transcending the limitations of biology through technology
- A dramatic, catastrophic, probably violent and painful return to a simpler way of life
Because of this, I feel a sense of transhumanist morality obliging me to dedicate my life’s work to striving for the first option: species-wide enlightenment through technology.
I plan on writing a lot more on this topic. But I wanted to start by stating a thesis along with a few basic ideas.