In short
- Transhumanism was labeled a “dying cult” by critics who argued it misunderstood what it means to be human.
- Advocate Zoltan Istvan defended the motion as a humanitarian effort to finish struggling, growing older, and dying by means of expertise.
- Philosophers and AI researchers warned that guarantees of digital immortality have been flawed and raised unresolved moral dangers.
Transhumanism, a motion that seeks to defeat growing older and dying by means of expertise, was sharply criticized throughout a latest debate between philosophers, scientists, and transhumanist advocates, who rejected the accusation as misguided and reactionary.
The alternate befell Dec. 4 on the UK-based Institute of Artwork and Concepts’ “World’s Most Harmful Thought” occasion, the place neuroscientist and thinker Àlex Gómez-Marín argued that the motion capabilities as a pseudo-religion—one which goals to remove the human situation slightly than protect it.
“I feel transhumanism is a dying cult,” Gómez-Marín stated. “I feel transhumanism is a pseudo-religion wearing techno-scientific language whose objective is to extinct the human situation and inform everybody that we must always cheer and clap as this occurs.”
The talk has circulated amongst technologists, philosophers, and ethicists for many years, however has taken on renewed urgency as synthetic intelligence, biotechnology, and longevity analysis advance. Whereas advocates argue expertise can save humanity from dying, critics warn the motion is predicated on fantasies of immortality.
Extra just lately, a report by the Galileo Fee warned that transhumanist efforts to merge people and machines might cut back human life to a technical system and sideline questions of which means, identification, and company.
The time period “transhumanism” was coined within the mid-Twentieth century and later developed by thinkers together with Julian Huxley, Max Extra, Natasha Vita-Extra, Ben Goertzel, Nick Bostrom, and Ray Kurzweil. Supporters reminiscent of biohacker Bryan Johnson and tech billionaire Peter Thiel have argued that expertise could possibly be used to transcend organic limits reminiscent of growing older and illness. Critics have countered that the motion’s goals would solely profit the ultra-wealthy, and blur the road between science and faith.
Pricey humanity,
I’m constructing a faith.
Wait a second, I do know what you’re going to say. Maintain that knee-jerk response and let me clarify.
First, right here’s what’s going to occur:
+ Don’t Die turns into historical past’s fastest-growing ideology.
+ It saves the human race.
+ And ushers in… pic.twitter.com/MJcrU9uXNf— Bryan Johnson (@bryan_johnson) March 7, 2025
Becoming a member of Gómez-Marín within the dialogue have been thinker Susan Schneider, AI researcher Adam Goldstein, and Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist writer and political candidate who’s at the moment operating for governor of California, rejected Gómez-Marín’s characterization and described transhumanism as an effort to cut back struggling rooted in biology.
The contributors provided competing visions of whether or not transhumanist concepts represented humanitarian progress, philosophical confusion, or an moral misstep.
“Most transhumanists reminiscent of myself consider that growing older is a illness, and we wish to overcome that illness so that you just don’t should die, and that the family members you’ve don’t should die,” Istvan stated, tying the view to non-public loss.
“I misplaced my father about seven years in the past,” he stated. “Loss of life we’ve all accepted as a pure lifestyle, however transhumanists don’t settle for that.”
Gómez-Marín stated the larger threat lay not in particular applied sciences however within the worldview guiding their improvement, significantly amongst expertise leaders who, he argued, find out about expertise however don’t know humanity.
“They know so much about expertise, however they know little or no about anthropology,” he stated.
For her half, thinker Susan Schneider instructed the viewers that she as soon as recognized as a transhumanist, and drew a distinction between utilizing expertise to enhance well being and endorsing extra radical claims reminiscent of importing consciousness to the cloud.
“There’s this declare that we’ll add the mind,” Schneider stated. “I don’t suppose you or I will obtain digital immortality, even when the expertise is there—since you can be killing your self, and one other digital copy of you’d be created.”
Schneider additionally warned that transhumanist language was more and more used to deflect consideration from speedy coverage questions, together with knowledge privateness, regulation, and entry to rising applied sciences.
Adam Goldstein, an AI researcher, instructed the viewers that the talk ought to focus much less on predictions of salvation or disaster and extra on selections already being made about how expertise is designed and ruled.
“I feel if we wish to be constructive, we’d like to consider which of those futures we truly wish to construct,” he stated. “As a substitute of taking it as a on condition that the long run goes to be like this or like that, we are able to ask what can be a superb future.”
The central concern, Goldstein stated, was whether or not people selected to design a cooperative future with synthetic intelligence or approached it from worry and management, which might form the way forward for humanity as soon as AI programs surpassed human intelligence.
“I feel we’ve good proof for what a superb future is from the methods we’ve navigated variations with different human beings,” he stated. “We’ve discovered political programs, no less than a number of the time, that work to assist us bridge variations and obtain a peaceable settlement of our wants. And there’s no cause I can see why the long run can’t be like that with AI additionally.”
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