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We robotic superbeings have no need to live under the cowardly rules of you sniveling humanoids! Ron Bailey rescues transhumanism from James Hughes' good-government prescriptions.
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|5.11.05 @ 9:15PM|#
Great article. Believe it or not, one of the best pieces that examines the questions and quanderies and possible future politics surrounding transhumanism is a role playing game. Yeah, I am a gaming geek. So what?
However, even as he extols social democracy as the best guarantor of our future biotechnological liberty, Hughes ignores that it is precisely those social democracies he praises, Germany, France, Sweden, and Britain, which now, not in the future, outlaw germinal choice, genetic modification, reproductive and therapeutic cloning, and stem cell research.
Heh, my friend who keeps up with trends in Europe was just telling me a few weeks ago that the oh so progressive Europeans were going to trounce the U.S. in biotechnology due largely to Dubbya's bible-beating agenda putting the breaks on genetic research. I don't really have the heart to tell him that he may be wrong. However, I'm sure this strain of bio-ludditism is coming from the Greens than the JEEZ-us freaks. (They don't care about man playing "God," just as long as they don't play "Gaia.")
|5.11.05 @ 10:02PM|#
Hughes grudgingly recognizes that libertarian transhumanists still belong in his big tent. And why not? You will not find a more militantly open, tolerant bunch on the planet. Adam and Steve want get married? We'll be the groomsmen. Joan wants to contract with Jill for surrogacy services? We'll throw a baby shower...
Speak for yourself, Ron. Tolerance doesn't mean you agree with and support whatever an individual wants to do. Rather, it means that you don't forcibly prevent them from doing things you disagree with, unless they violate others' rights in the process.
If confronted with these or the other situations you present in this paragraph, I certainly would not lend support, and might even try to persuade them (not forcibly, of course) not to do what they intend. Does that mean I'm not a libertarian?
Jeff|5.11.05 @ 11:30PM|#
I just recently spent an afternoon with George Dvorsky of the World Transhumanism Association. I was recalling to him my favorite moment of Transvision 2003: He had just finished explaining to an audience member that transhumanism would only succeed if there was universal health care. He then turned the mike over to Mr. Bailey (who was moderating, I believe) who simply shook his head and responded "no."
James Hughes posted a graph of the political leanings of WTA members. Libertarians make their presence known.
http://cyborgdemocracy.net/2005/05/political-diversity-of-world.html
|5.12.05 @ 12:17AM|#
Ron,
Thanks for the strong and critical review. Very interesting.
Jeff,
Yeah 23% is the plurality response. Pretty impressive since the survey was of the membership of the World Transhumanist Association. The Extropy Institute folks are the more libertarian, and generally more creative of the transhumanists:
http://www.extropy.org/
crimethink,
A libertarian you are. (Hey, I just channeled Yoda. I guess it's cause we're getting close to Star Wars time)
|5.12.05 @ 12:28AM|#
Akira,
Thanks for the game hint. It looks interesting. Do you know of anything that you can play on the computer?
|5.12.05 @ 2:31AM|#
"Do you know of anything that you can play on the computer?"
At one time, Steve Jackson Games was going to come out with "GURPS Online" ala Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies. Their initial roll-out was going to feature "Transhuman Space" as one of the settings players could choose from (the other was going to be a Western). Sadly, like many ambitious propsals in the gaming industry, the project eventually fell through and never came to fruition.
Personally, I prefer face-to-face, pen-and-paper (with a few miniatures thrown in for fun) RPGS. It lets my imagination get a workout rather than having some PC do the thinking for me. Where else can you play a genetifcally altered, asteroid dwelling, anarcho-capitalist for-hire-judge who has a sapient AI secretary/lover impanted in his brain? (An actually PC I created.)
|5.12.05 @ 9:59AM|#
Akira -
Love the gaming reference. At last, I'm not alone! :) Perhaps we should create a transhumanist/libertarian gaming league!
Live free, fight or fall.
|5.12.05 @ 10:23AM|#
Thanks to crimethink for once again reminding everyone that libertarianism does not always necessarily equal libertinism.
I, for instance, don't drink alcohol or use recreational drugs. Not because I think that they are terrible things. I just don't think that they are particularly useful substances to partake in. I can recall several instances where I turned down a joint or a glass of wine and the person who offered said "I thought you were a libertarian".
lincoln|5.12.05 @ 10:30AM|#
Thanks for the game hint. It looks interesting. Do you know of anything that you can play on the computer?
Fallout and Fallout II are the closest to what you're looking for. The highest rated role playing game ever for the computer, the Fallouts will lead you through ethical quandries you can resolve multiple ways and mutated ghouls whose brains you can blow out at close range with a shotgun. And it's old enough that you can get both games packaged together for around $10!
|5.12.05 @ 11:30AM|#
"We'll bring over the scotch to help him break in the new one."
Ha! I love it!
|5.12.05 @ 1:18PM|#
I play RPG's, too - just did last night, as a matter of fact. Like you, Akira, I enjoy the intellectual and creative stimilation. It helps with vocabulary and things of that nature, as well.
RandyAyn - that was my favourite line, too.
crimethink - as long as you don't make a nuisance of yourself, I don't have a problem with you making your position known. But, of course, I reserve the right to totally ignore you.
mk - what are you trying to say? Only that anyone who would ask you that question, in that situation, is ignorant of what it means to be a libertarian. And just because you don't think there's any use for alcohol or recreational (what makes those that much different from every other drug, I don't know) drugs doesn't mean that others don't find great utility and even enlightenment from them. You are still libertarian if you respect someone's right to hold a different belief than yours.
Obviously, as long as coersion or force are not used, aren't we all on the same page, here?
|5.12.05 @ 1:47PM|#
A point of clarity: I had inadvertently mixed gamer jargon with compter jargon. The first reference to "PC" was meant to mean "personal computer." The second use of "PC" means "player character."
|5.12.05 @ 2:49PM|#
Mmmm, Transhuman Space. I buy THS books just to read them. They're brilliant stuff, and Pulver is, despite never having written any non-gaming material that I'm aware of, one of my favorite futurists.
If you're interested in speculation about what the transhuman future will look like, I highly recommend the core Transhuman Space book. It's a great read, even if you don't play RPGs.
|5.12.05 @ 2:55PM|#
(I guess I should give an example)
There's an entire section of the book that deals with the legal status of non-human sapient entities in the various nations around the Solar System. Are intelligent AIs persons, legally? What about humans who have been digitally recorded and uploaded into a computer? What about illegal copies of those uploads? What about animals that have been engineered to higher intelligence? What about artificial humans, entirely 'constructed' and grown from cloned cells?
There's another entire section on memetics -- memes as the super-advertising-science of the next century. Why go to war with guns and bombs, when you can go to war by overwhelming your enemy's memes with your own, converting their society to your way of thinking through advertising and memetics? And what about 'toxic' memes -- destructive memes that spread like viruses through a population? If ideas can be used as weapons, can you punish the spreaders of viral toxic memes for assault?
Jeff|5.12.05 @ 4:08PM|#
The Golden Age Trilogy by John C. Wright deals in great depth with the assorted legal and social definitions of personhood in a posthuman culture, especially with recorded and "back-up" personalities. There's also a great bit about being able to TiVo your brain by applying content-specific filters to your perceptions so ads appear as trees, etc.
|5.12.05 @ 6:23PM|#
Lowdog,
I think we pretty much agree on what choices people should be allowed to make, if not what choices they should make. For example, I'm vehemently anti-drug-use, but just as vehemently anti-drug-war. They're not mutually exclusive.
I would have just let Ron's comment pass, but I've noticed the same tendency on the part of a lot of posters here to, as mk put it, equate libertarianism with libertinism. We can complain all we want about the general populace's stupidity re: the drug war, but how many of those people might give us a listen were it not for the pro-drug-use attitude of most drug policy reform groups.
If we want to be successful outside the echo chamber, perhaps we ought to follow the hugely successful (regrettably so, imo) approach of the pro-choice movement. Early on, it was populated with crazies who were not merely pro-choice but indeed pro-abortion, and they got nowhere. Eventually though, that faction was marginalized, as the "safe, legal, and rare" cadre took over. People were much more comfortable supporting those who viewed abortion as a regrettable possibility that a desperate woman should have the ability to choose, compared to those who thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Jeff|5.12.05 @ 10:02PM|#
Hughes response:
http://cyborgdemocracy.net/blogger.html
Jeff|5.12.05 @ 10:15PM|#
My bad, the above link to Dale Carrico's response.