Original Message:
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From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky sentience@pobox.com
>I agree with Samantha's usage.<
I disagree with you, as it seems you are expressing a personal view of what you deem to be transhuman and applying it to a concept that was created long before your interest in term. Certainly, you have every right to reexamine terms in your own usage, but not mine.
>"Transhumanity" takes more than contact
lenses; it requires a physical or mental improvement beyond the
capabilities of even the most trained and gifted humans. Arguably someone
with an adaptive-optics super-LASIK eye improvement to 20/7 vision is
physically transhuman in a very minor way, but I can't think of anything
else offhand that would qualify. Even the super-LASIK would be excluded
if we require a qualitative rather than quantitative improvement - i.e.,
that the improvement open up new activities or possibilities relative to
the previous human experience.<
Your assumption is missing a key factor. There are varied levels of transhuman: early-transhuman, mid-transhuman and late-transhuman.
>I should also note that my basic viewpoint is that we should be as
conservative as possible in applying the loaded and powerful word
"transhuman".<
And you should be very careful in trying to reinvent terms to suit your particular needs and espousing them as a given.
Natasha
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