Influential early contributors included Anders Sandberg (then a neuroscience doctoral student) and Robin Hanson (an economist and polymath) among many others. As these procedures become routine, costs fall and more people can afford them. Singularitarians stress the importance of ensuring that such intelligence be coupled with ethical sensibility (Yudkowsky 2003) (see also “What is the singularity?”). It offers a sense of direction and purpose and suggests a vision that humans can achieve something greater than our present condition. The original worldview and philosophy of transhumanism stems from the Principles of Extropy: Extropy (The philosophy of Extropy). Can there be much doubt that, barring a civilization-destroying cataclysm, technological progress will give us much more radical options in the future? Radical cognitive enhancements would likely be easier to implement in an upload than in an organic brain. By no means are all transhumanists signed up for cryonics, but a significant fraction finds that, for them, a cost-benefit analysis justifies the expense. Super­intelligence is an example of a technology that seems especially worth promoting because it can help reduce a broad range of threats. Just as we use rational means to improve the human condition and the external world, we can also use such means to improve ourselves, the human organism. Is the Cyber Era the New Cold War? Nuclear war. The range of expertise needed to address this question extends far beyond the community of AI researchers. Embryonic stem cells seem to be especially versatile and useful, but research is also ongoing into adult stem cells and the “reprogramming” of ordinary cells so that they can be turned back into stem cells with pluripotent capabilities. Will extended life worsen overpopulation problems? Local groups are mushrooming in all parts of the world. In this approach, the super­intelligence would not be completely specified by the programmers but would instead have to grow by learning from experience the same way a human infant does. In the case of biotechnology, we should seek to promote research into vaccines, anti-viral drugs, protective gear, sensors, and diagnostics, and to delay as long as possible the development and proliferation of biological warfare agents and the means of their weaponization. Initially, however, the greatest advantages will go to those who have the resources, the skills, and the willingness to learn to use new tools. A milestone is Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), which states that man does not have a ready form but that it is man’s task to form himself. It is sometimes useful to talk about possible future beings whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards. Buy BERGER TRANSHUMANT EN FORMATION: Pour une tradition d avenir (Défis formation) (French Edition) on Amazon.com FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders Advantages of being an upload would include: Uploads would not be subject to biological senescence. Although there are no guarantees of success, there are some things that can be done on an individual level that will improve the odds a bit: Meanwhile, we can enjoy and make the most of the opportunities that exist today for living worthwhile and meaningful lives. These can make us smarter individually and collectively or make enforcement of necessary regulation more feasible. Many of these expectations may not hold true of posthuman persons. Genetic engineering is the area of biotechnology concerned with the directed alteration of genetic material. Many biomolecules have properties that might be explored in the early phases of nanotechnology. All content is identical to the original, except for changes in markup, formatting, typography, and such. Won’t things like uploading, cryonics, and AI fail…, “Won’t these developments take thousands or millions of years?”, “Erroneous Predictions and Negative Comments Concerning Scientific and Technological Developments”, “What is cryonics? ETRE HUMANITE: Écrit par Patinet Thierri Mercredi 18 Novembre 2020 à 11:32 La fraude se révèle. We have to live with this uncertainty, along with the much greater uncertainty about whether any of us will manage to avoid dying prematurely, before technology has become mature. It was a life of poverty, misery, disease, heavy manual toil from dawn to dusk, superstitious fears, and cultural parochialism. In many particular cases, of course, there are sound practical reasons for relying on “natural” processes. Another possibility, known as augmented reality, is to have your perception of your immediate surroundings partially overlaid with simulated elements. Theoretical transhumanism. For most of human history, there were no significant existential risks, or at least none that our ancestors could do anything about. The effects of such interventions do not carry over into the next generation. Nonetheless, the following seems to constitute a common core of agreement: According to transhumanists, the human condition has been improved if the conditions of individual humans have been improved. The world could surely be improved over the way it is now, including becoming less boring. Hierdie bladsy is 'n besprekingsbladsy waar verbeteringe tot die Transhumanisme-artikel bespreek word. Transhumanism does, however, inform us about new constraints, possibilities, and issues, and it highlights numerous important leverage points for intervention, where a small application of resources can make a big long-term difference. The human genome project was completed ahead of schedule, largely because the initial predictions underestimated the degree to which instrumentation technology would improve during the course of the project. There is no “it” that everything hinges on. Another concern that becomes paramount is the need to build a world order in which dangerous arms races can be prevented and in which the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction can be suppressed or at least delayed until effective defenses have been developed (see “Aren’t these future technologies very risky? They attained it because they lived long; because they had time to experience and develop and reflect; time that we might all have. Eckard Wimmer et al., “Chemical Synthesis of Poliovirus cDNA: Generation of Infectious Virus in the Absence of Natural Template”, I. J. 6 juil. Only in extreme and unusual cases might state infringement of procreative liberty be justified. What currents are there within transhumanism? This is so because the stakes are enormous – humanity’s entire future may depend on how we manage the coming technological transitions – and because relatively few resources are at the present time being devoted to transhumanist efforts. This might sound like an improbable treatment, but the purpose of cryonics is to preserve the structure of life rather than the processes of life, because the life processes can in principle be re-started as long as the information encoded in the structural properties of the body, in particular the brain, are sufficiently preserved. Other approaches, such as analyzing pieces of the brain slice by slice in an electron microscope with automatic image processing have also been proposed. This book also established some lower bounds on the capabilities of mature nanotechnology. Robert Ettinger played an important role in giving transhumanism its modern form. A demonstration of this possibility was offered by a small team of researchers from New York University at Stony Brook in 2002, who synthesized the polio virus (whose genetic sequence is on the Internet) from scratch and injected it into mice who subsequently became paralyzed and died. Isn’t the probability of success too small?”, “Aren’t these future technologies very risky? It was founded in 1998 as an umbrella organization to publicize transhumanist ideas and to seek academic acceptance of transhumanism as a philosophical and cultural movement. These problems are being intensely studied by contemporary analytic philosophers, and although some progress has been made, e.g. We can also use technological means that will eventually enable us to move beyond what some would think of as “human”. Some artificial things are bad, such as DDT-poisoning, car accidents, and nuclear war. When human nature changes, new ways of organizing a society may become feasible. Alors l’institut Berggruen, c’est un think-tank US qui réfléchi sur les futures gouvernances internationales et les réformes à opérer pour qu’elles fonctionnent mieux et selon certains critères mondialistes. That people really strove to live longer and richer lives can also be seen in the development of systems of magic and alchemy; lacking scientific means of producing an elixir of life, one resorted to magical means. In 2001, the WTA adopted its current constitution and is now governed by an executive board that is democratically elected by its full membership. It would be possible to give a long list of examples where people in the past have solemnly declared that something was technologically absolutely impossible: The secrets of flight will not be mastered within our lifetime – not within a thousand years. A common guess among the cognoscenti is that the first assembler may be built around the year 2018, give or take a decade, but there is large scope for diverging opinion on the upper side of that estimate. Transhumanism as a source of inspiration in artistic creation and cultural activities, including efforts to communicate transhumanist ideas and values to a wider audience (see also “What kind of transhumanist art is there?”. Another accessory that might be especially useful in the early stages after the assembler-breakthrough is the disassembler, a device that can disassemble an object while creating a three-dimensional map of its molecular configuration. Sometimes a distinction is made between weak and strong super­intelligence. The vast majority of transhumanists think that super­intelligence and nanotechnology will both be developed in less than a hundred years, and many predict that it will happen well within the first third of this century. The efficacy of these institutions does not depend on all citizens having equal capacities. Combinations of these approaches are of course also possible. Provided that we manage to avoid destroying civilization, Vinge thinks that a singularity is likely to happen as a consequence of advances in artificial intelligence, large systems of networked computers, computer-human integration, or some other form of intelligence amplification. Almost all of those who do think that there will be a singularity believe it will happen in this century, and many think it is likely to happen within several decades. Much more important than its philosophical implications, however, would be its practical effects. The environmental impact of a technology depends on how it is used. Not enough information is available at the current time to provide a full answer to this question. It underlies the teachings of world religions about spiritual immortality and the hope of an afterlife. Every hour, through entirely natural processes, vast amounts of resources – millions of times more than the sum total of what the human species has consumed throughout its career – are transformed into radioactive substances or wasted as radiation escaping into intergalactic space. An atomic force microscope can drag individual atoms along a surface. Not only are transhumanist technologies ecologically sound, they may be the only environmentally viable option for the long term. One could say that manipulating nature is an important part of what civilization and human intelligence is all about; we have been doing it since the invention of the wheel. ""Meravigliosa luna di miele in Argentina, dove abbiamo trascorso quasi 3 settimane con la mia Auré. Greek philosophers made the first, stumbling attempts to create systems of thought that were based not purely on faith but on logical reasoning. When we consider the procedures that are routine today and how they might have been viewed in (say) the 1700s, we can begin to see how difficult it is to make a well-founded argument that future medical technology will never be able to reverse the injuries that occur during cryonic suspension. The transhumanist position on the ethics of death is crystal clear: death should be voluntary. In therapeutic cloning, a preimplantation embryo (also known as a “blastocyst” – a hollow ball consisting of 30-150 undifferentiated cells) is created via cloning, from which embryonic stem cells could be extracted and used for therapy. If you got rid of the pain and stress associated with, say, filling out annual tax returns, people would probably not sit around afterward saying: “Life feels meaningless now that I no longer have income tax forms to fill out.”. (Thus your lifespan would potentially be as long as the universe’s.). When discussing the morality of genetic enhancements, it is useful to be aware of the distinction between enhancements that are intrinsically beneficial to the child or society on the one hand, and, on the other, enhancements that provide a merely positional advantage to the child. It is chilling to consider what would have happened if HIV had been as contagious as the virus that causes the common cold. Inp-patrimoine @Inp_patrimoine L'Institut national du patrimoine est un établissement d'enseignement supérieur du ministère de la culture et de la communication. The standard word for such beings is “posthuman”. One might ask, given that our current use of e.g. “Quattro volte la Francia, grandi spazi, paesaggi mozzafiato, colori fantastici, tutto è in versione XXL in questo vasto paese .... ""Venti giorni in Argentina, è stato uno dei nostri viaggi più belli alla scoperta della Patagonia e Nord dell'Argentina. The boundaries between posthuman minds may not be as sharply defined as those between humans. Two physicists at IBM Almaden Labs in California illustrated this in 1989 when they used such a microscope to arrange 35 xenon atoms to spell out the trademark “I-B-M”, creating the world’s smallest logo. Healthspan-extension and cryonics are therefore high on the transhumanist list of priorities. Because of the high incidence of infectious disease, accidents, starvation, and violent death among our ancestors, very few of them lived much beyond 60 or 70. This implies that resources could very quickly become scarce unless reproduction is regulated. In part, though, the answer is, “You decide.” The outcome may be influenced by the choices we make now and over the coming decades. The multiplicity of routes adds to the probability that our journey will not come to a premature halt. Isn’t the probability of success too small?”), or chewing nicotine gum for its nootropic effects. A transhumanist is simply someone who advocates transhumanism (see “What is transhumanism?”). Transhumanism can’t tell you what kind of music to listen to, which hobbies to pursue, whom to marry or how to live your life, any more than, say, being a member of Amnesty International or studying molecular biology could tell you these things. An argument can be made that the most efficient way of contributing to making the world better is by participating in the transhumanist project. Transhumanism in arts and culture. An advanced assembler would be able to make almost any chemically stable structure. Hierdie bladsy is nie 'n forum vir 'n algemene bespreking van die artikel se onderwerp nie. What is Transhumanism? In the case of the most crucial future technologies – super­intelligence and molecular manufacturing – such analyses have been done. Transhumanism is a naturalistic outlook. Single-gene disorders, such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and Huntington’s disease are likely to be among the first targets for genetic intervention. One can distinguish between, on the one hand, endurable or limited hazards, such as car crashes, nuclear reactor meltdowns, carcinogenic pollutants in the atmosphere, floods, volcano eruptions, and so forth, and, on the other hand, existential risks – events that would cause the extinction of intelligent life or permanently and drastically cripple its potential. B. S. Haldane, in which he discusses how scientific and technological findings may come to affect society and improve the human condition. This resulted in the anti-technological, anti-intellectual sentiments whose sequelae we can still witness today in some postmodernist writers, in the New Age movement, and among the neo-Luddite wing of the anti-globalization agitators. You will be able to move about in a virtual world, pick up objects you see, and communicate with people you meet. Focusing solely on current problems would leave us unprepared for the new challenges that we will encounter. In the long-term, however, Pearce suggests that it will be technically feasible to rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and use biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world. The concept of transhumanist art would be to say that it is multi-media arts creative works produced by transhumanists. Another route to the first assembler is synthetic chemistry. Arranged one way, they make up homes and fresh air; arranged another, they make up ash and smoke. That assemblers of general capabilities are consistent with the laws of chemistry was shown by Drexler in his technical book Nanosystems in 1992. On the other hand, there is also the concept of hubris: that some ambitions are off-limit and would backfire if pursued. So, a cryonics contract is far short of a survival guarantee. By contrast, your chances of a this-worldly comeback if you opt for one of the popular alternative treatments – such as cremation or burial – are zero. The would-be creator of a new life form with such surpassing capabilities would have an obligation to ensure that the proposed being is free from psychopathic tendencies and, more generally, that it has humane inclinations. Yet this in and of itself is a narrowing of the board and explorative scope of transhumanist arts. The only long-term method of assuring continued growth of average income is some form of population control, whether spontaneous or imposed, limiting the number of new persons created per year. Some thinkers conjecture that there will be a point in the future when the rate of technological development becomes so rapid that the progress-curve becomes nearly vertical. Artificial intelligence. We can all agree that there would be little point in living an extra ten years in a state of dementia. There is a rich variety of opinions within transhumanist thought. The entire future of intelligent life on Earth may depend on how we handle it. It is unclear why anybody who has had enhancement body parts or a nomadic lifestyle is any closer to becoming a posthuman than the rest of us; nor, of course, are such persons necessarily more admirable or morally commendable than others. Transhumanists would argue that these (potential) social problems call for social remedies. If eternal life becomes boring, you will have the option of ending it at any time. Therefore, while one can in many cases give good grounds for thinking that a technology will eventually be developed, one can usually only make informed guesses about how long it will take. Many others have over the years offered questions or reflections that have in some way helped shape this document, and even though it is not possible to name you all, your contributions are warmly appreciated. Could they even cause our extinction?”). (A terminological aside: an early use of the word “transhuman” was in the 1972-book of Ettinger, who doesn’t now remember where he first encountered the term. Modern, peaceful societies have large numbers of people with diminished physical or mental capacities along with many other people who may be exceptionally physically strong or healthy or intellectually talented in various ways. The name is derived from the term “extropy”, coined by T. O. Morrow in 1988, referring to “the extent of a system’s intelligence, information, order, vitality, and capacity for improvement”. We could construct artificial experiential worlds, in which the laws of physics can be suspended, that would appear as real as physical reality to participants. Creating super­intelligence may be the last invention that humans will ever need to make, since super­intelligences could themselves take care of further scientific and technological development. Yet another route is biochemistry. Joy argued that some of the future applications of these technologies are so dangerous that research in those fields should be stopped now. Cleverly designed chemical building blocks might be made to self-assemble in solution phase into machine parts. Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire speculated about extending human life span through medical science. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. But at the same time we have opened up a vast new space of possibilities for having fun – and the new space is much larger than the previous one. (Embryo screening, in which embryos are tested for genetic defects or other traits and then selectively implanted, can also count as a kind of germ-line intervention.) Don’t you want to take part and attempt to make a difference for the better? Further, 3D vision is lacking, as is position tracking and focus effects (in reality, the picture on your retina changes continually as your head and eyeballs are moving). Even today, the segment containing the tallest 90 percent of the population could, in principle, get together and kill or enslave the shorter decile. Progress takes place not only in the development of drugs and diagnostics but also in the creation of better tools and research methodologies, which in turn accelerates progress. When it comes to life-extension and its various enabling technologies, a delay of a single week equals one million avoidable premature deaths – a weighty fact which those who argue for bans or moratoria would do well to consider carefully. The king might have a carriage with six white horses, but you can have a car that is faster and more comfortable. Over the years, this FAQ has been updated to provide a substantial account of transhumanism. Bergers et transhumances (French Edition) on Amazon.com. The accidental release of a self-replicating nanobot into the environment, where it would proceed to destroy the entire biosphere, is known as the “gray goo scenario”. One can project various possible developmental paths (see “What is a posthuman?”) which may result in very different kinds of posthuman, transhuman, and unaugmented human beings, living in very different sorts of societies. Adding people with technologically enhanced capacities to this already broad distribution of ability would not necessarily rip society apart or trigger genocide or enslavement. The point is that we cannot decide whether something is good or bad simply by asking whether it is natural or not. Le 23/09/2020 à Institut français - Centre Saint-Louis Cycle Lectures méditerranéennes - Conférence en langue française avec traduction simultanée en italien En savoir plus This defense of procreative liberty is compatible with the view that states and charities can subsidize public health, prenatal care, genetic counseling, contraception, abortion, and genetic therapies so that parents can make free and informed reproductive decisions that result in fewer disabilities in the next generation. Beyond this, one can argue that parents have a moral responsibility to make use of these methods, assuming they are safe and effective. Transhumanists reject speciesism, the (human racist) view that moral status is strongly tied to membership in a particular biological species, in our case homo sapiens. They would do so more effectively than humans. Only half of the complete cryonics procedure can be scrutinized today; the other half cannot be performed until the (perhaps distant) future. If we compare our current lot with that of our historical ancestors, most (at least those of us who don’t live in the least developed countries) will find that the material circumstances for human flourishing are the best they have ever been. An upload could have a virtual (simulated) body giving the same sensations and the same possibilities for interaction as a non-simulated body. For some examples, see Bostrom (2002, 2003a) and Hanson (1994, 1998). To pick a topical example, consider the debate about human cloning. Our intelligence enables us to desire new things, such as art, science, and mathematics. La transhumance dans le Gard. they benefit a person by making her more competitive (e.g. Some cognitive scientists speculate that we each have a “set point” of happiness, to which we soon return regardless of changes in the environment. A more promising alternative than a blanket ban is differential technological development, in which we would seek to influence the sequence in which technologies developed. an early detection system for dangerous near-earth objects on potential collation course with Earth, or the commissioning of advance peer review of planned high-energy physics experiments – are probably cost-effective. That technological advances will help us overcome many of our current human limitations is no longer an insight confined to a few handfuls of techno-savvy visionaries. When transhumanists seek to extend human life, they are not trying to add a couple of extra years at a care home spent drooling at one’s shoes. The speed with which designs and instruction lists for making useful objects can be developed will determine the speed of progress after the creation of the first full-blown assembler. Email:Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. New material has been added and many old sections have been substantially reworked. It will also require a powerful computer to run the upload, and some way for the upload to interact with the external world or with a virtual reality. Something unknown. How long it will take to solve the software problem is harder to estimate. Ed Regis’s Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition (1990) took a humorous look at transhumanism’s hubristic scientists and philosophers. ), a king embarks on a quest to find an herb that can make him immortal. Greg Burch, David Pearce, Kathryn Aegis, and Anders Sandberg kindly offered extensive editorial comments. “Posthuman” does not denote just anything that happens to come after the human era, nor does it have anything to do with the “posthumous”. The number of pixels even on high-resolution screens is also too small (typically 1280*1224 rather than about 5000*5000 as would be needed in a flawless wide-angle display). Once a technology is shared by many, it becomes extremely hard to prevent further proliferation. The position that we ought to relinquish research into robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology has been advocated in an article by Bill Joy (2000). Nanotechnology promises to give us thorough control of the structure of matter. Transhumanists can in fact make a stronger claim regarding the environment: that current technologies are unsustainable. This is the primary reason for the strong interest in life extension and cryonics among transhumanists. Average human life span hovered between 20 and 30 years for most of our species’ history. Some existentialists even went so far as to maintain that death was necessary to give life meaning! It would truly be what Arthur C. Clarke called ‘Childhood’s End’ – the beginning of the adulthood of humanity.” (Cryonics Institute), Absolutely, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Because the ramifications of nanotechnology are immense, it is imperative that serious thought be given to this topic now. Many users of today’s VR systems experience “simulator sickness,” with symptoms ranging from unpleasantness and disorientation to headaches, nausea, and vomiting. Gilman s’intéresse particulièrement à l’intelligence artificielle et au transhumanisme. While this scenario may not entail the extinction of literally all intelligent life, it nevertheless constitutes an existential risk because the future that would result would be one in which a great part of humanity’s potential had been permanently destroyed and in which at most a tiny fraction of all humans would get to enjoy the benefits of posthumanity. Diffusion d’un nouveau varaint SARS-CoV-2 à travers l’Europe durant l’été 2020. Or, for someone who believes in reincarnation, there are no traditional beliefs that say reincarnation is prevented when someone freezes to death or whose body is frozen after clinical death. More research is needed, and existential risks in particular should be singled out for attention because of their seriousness and because of the special nature of the challenges they pose. Progress in genetic engineering will lead not only to improvements in medicine but also to the capability to create more effective bioweapons. La réponse est peut-être ici ! As a result of these circumstances in the distant past, we now suffer the inevitable decline of old age: damage accumulates at a faster pace than it can be repaired; tissues and organs begin to malfunction; and then we keel over and die. ), neural-computer interfaces, or brain implants. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Views differ on the relative importance of these two criteria, but they can both be satisfied in the case of uploading. The world population growth rate has been declining for several decades. Useful comments of either substance or form have also been contributed by (in alphabetical order): Michael Anissimov, Samantha Atkins, Milan Cirkovic, José Luis Cordeiro, George Dvorsky, James Hughes, G.E. James Hughes especially (a former WTA Secretary) among others helped lift the WTA to its current more mature stage, and a strong team of volunteers has been building up the organization to what it is today.