I'd consider myself a transneanderthal but not yet a postneanderthal. The
particular class of transneanderthal I currently belong to is "human", but
I hope to eventually belong to a more extreme class of transneanderthal
sentience. Even if I hope to someday be a postneanderthal, though, I have
no intention of ever ceasing to be a transneanderthal. Indeed, being a
transneanderthal is precisely what separates us from the apes and defines
our identity as sentient beings. I can only see augmentations as
continuing to improve and increase the transneanderthal status I so
value. Some may still be mourning the loss of our neanderthality, but now
that we have abandoned it I see no way out but forward. We are all
transneanderthals now and cannot help but become even more extreme
transneanderthals in the future.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:55 MDT