From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Aug 02 2003 - 02:13:23 MDT
On Fri, Aug 01, 2003 at 11:15:49PM -0400, p_chikara@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> What would be the best answer to someone who would say that the primo body
> and mind uploading are allegoric figures that transhumanists and extropians
> are offering that permits to fantasm a body removed from it's attaches with
> the present, the here and now, impossible bodies, wich makes them promoter
> of an ascetic ideal, who hates the body and the flesh (and are possibly even
> worse than christians at it, with their angels without nose or phallus)
> and consequently alienation (alienation is to be understood here as "being
> estranged to oneself").
There are certainly transhumanists who partially share these beliefs (I
would call them cybergnostics); like any good criticism it has some
truth.
But I think the key mistake made in the criticism is that it cannot
imagine the other side: that we want better bodies to more fully enjoy
life. The ascetic ideal is well represented in our culture, but the idea
of hedonic engineering or sensual technology is not. With T1000-style
liquid bodies we could make Freud blush about "polymorphous perversity",
and the descriptions of limited omniscience from a few threads back
really have a deep sensual in-the-world quality. But relatively few
authors describe this, and of course most of us transhumanists do not
really start out our spiels by pointing it out (we usually start by
complaining about death and taxes, and showing how they will be swept
away). Maybe the best start of any transhumanist presentation is "Life
is wonderful! I want more of it for everyone!"
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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