From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Apr 22 2003 - 20:23:30 MDT
Keith Elis wrote:
> This past weekend I was asked the best question I've ever been asked
> about transhumanism. Paraphrasing: what is the difference, if any,
> between transhumanist views of technology and merely rational views of
> the same?
At least one brand of transhumanism can be derived as a special case of
humane rationality, but there are some transhumanists who unfortunately
are not yet humane rationalists.
All sufficiently humane, sufficiently rational, sufficiently informed
individuals in the early 21st century who successfully complete a certain
mental computation will arrive at conclusions that are sometimes referred
to as "transhumanist". Such is my claim, anyway.
"Humane" is here used in the sense of "within the moral frame of reference
defined by the renormalization of human emotions".
See http://sl4.org/bin/wiki.pl?FutureDefinitionsOfHuman
> Is transhumanism a moral philosophy? That is, does it apply moral
> principles, deduce moral principles, or even recognize moral principles?
> If it is not a moral philosophy, then what is it? Is it a philosophy at
> all?
Transhumanism is a cluster of similar belief systems arrived at through
various pathways. One point in this cluster is a set of moral and factual
conclusions that fall out of humane rationality as a special case.
> But does this way of thinking about the universe differ from rational
> thinking about the universe?
Perhaps the two terms are not coextensive. But if they are
nonoverlapping, if transhumanist thinking differs from rational thinking
in the sense of being incompatible with rationality, obviously we should
angrily beat transhumanism to a pulp, set fire to it, and dance gleefully
around the glowing embers.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 22 2003 - 20:35:47 MDT