What is Transhumanism?

1. What is Transhumanism? World Transhumanist Association For more information: http://www.transhumanism.org Executive Director: James J. Hughes Ph.D. Public Policy Studies, Trinity College, Hartford Connecticut USA director@transhumanism.org(work) 860-297-2376 or (cell) 860-428-1837 Chair: Nick Bostrom Ph.D. director@transhumanism.org(work) 860-297-2376 or (cell) 860-428-1837

2. Transhumanism - definition The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.

3. “Transhumans” and “post-humans” • Transhuman • A ‘transitional human’ becoming posthuman (glasses, insulin, immunization?) • Posthuman • How different does one have to be before one becomes posthuman • Who cares if they are posthuman? • Transhumanist • Someone who accepts transhumanism.

4. Some dimensions of individual improvement • Longer health span • Intellectual capacity • Memory • Concentration • Mental energy • Intelligence • Empathy • Modality and special faculties • Music • Humor • Eroticism • Spirituality • Aesthetics • Affective self-control • Greater subjective well-being • Energy • Conscientiousness and sympathy • Ability to choose one’s emotions, e.g. preserve your romantic attachment to your partner undiminished through time. • Bodily functionality and morphology

5. Brief History of Transhumanism • Roots can be traced to pre-antiquity • The Age of Enlightenment • Rational Humanism • In the 1920s and 30s, ideas explored in the science fiction genre • Robert Ettinger; FM-2030 (aka F. M. Estfandiary) • 70s and 80s: organizations for life extension, cryonics, space colonization, science fiction, and futurism; Marvin Minsky • Eric Drexler Engines of Creation (1986); Hans Moravec Mind Children (1988); Ed Regis Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition (1990); Ray Kurzweil Age of Spiritual Machines (1999) • Max More and Tom Morrow: Extropy Magazine (1988); Extropians email list (1991); Extropy Institute (1992) • Nick Bostrom and David Pearce: The World Transhumanist Association (1998); The Transhumanist FAQ and the Transhumanist Declaration (1999, 2003); WTA Constitution (2001) • Alexander Chislenko, Anders Sandberg, Robin Hanson, Mark Walker et. al. • James Hughes: Cyborg Democracy (2004)

6. Brief History of Bioconservatism • Historical Luddism (1811) • Fictional dystopias; Mary Shelly: Frankenstein (1831); Karl Čapek: Rossum’s Universal Robots (1921); Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932) • Jacques Ellul; Postmodernism; radical environmentalism • Religious conservatives opposed to “hubris” and playing God • Jeremy Rifkin • Martin Heidegger  Hans Jonas  Leon Kass: “The Wisdom of Repugnance” (1997), Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity (2002) • Bill Joy: “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” (2000) • Francis Fukuyama: Our Posthuman Future (2002) • Bill McKibben: Enough (2003) • The President’s Council on Bioethics: Beyond Therapy (2003)

7. accessible by posthumans accessible by transhumans accessible by humans accessible by animals The space of possible modes of being

8. Transhumanist values and basic conditions Core Value • All people to have the opportunity to explore the posthuman realm Basic Conditions • Global security • Technological progress • Wide access • Morphological and reproductive liberty • Academic, ethical analysis, informed public debate

9. Longer Healthy Lives

10. Progress Thus Far Canadian life expectancy at age 20 has increased by an average of seven years for men, and 13 years for women, since 1920 US Life Expenctancy at Birth Has Increased 30 years in the last century

11. Current Longevity Technologies • Public health: Clean water, antibiotics, good nutrition, exercise, and stopping smoking • Life expectancy for seniors continues to increases as therapies for aging-related diseases and causes of death improve • Senior disability rates continue to decline

12. Emerging Longevity Technologies “Most biogerontologists believe that our rapidly expanding scientific knowledge holds the promise that means may eventually be discovered to slow the rate of aging. If successful, these interventions are likely to postpone age-related diseases and disorders and extend the period of healthy life…this is the only way another quantum leap in life expectancy is even possible.” Conclusion of a position statement by 50 gerontologists in Scientific American, May 2002 • Caloric restriction mimics • Genetics of centenarians and Methuselah Mice • Cryonics

13. Aubrey de Grey’s Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence

14. Immortality? • No: Longer healthy lives, that make the time of death as voluntary as possible • Immortality doesn’t seem possible: • Accidents (gamma ray bursts, etc.) • Personality change • Heat death of the universe

15. Common Ethical Objections • Playing God • All health care is playing God. Why can’t people live at least as long as Methusaleh? • No clear line between natural and unnatural life • Leon Kass: finitude gives meaning to life • No, how you live gives meaning to your life • Inequity of the distribution of life extension technologies • Let’s make them universally available

16. Common Practical Objections • Overpopulation • Technological progress has extended carrying capacity • Demographic transition will stabilize • Dependence of retirees on shrinking # of workers • Adjust retirement age • Automation will be radically changing the economy • Gerontocratic Society • Ageist assumptions without empirical basis • Arguing that people should die so that society can have fresh ideas is odious

17. Anti-Aging Groups • Methusaleh Foundation • Longevity Meme • American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine • Alliance for Health and the Future • Immortality Institute

18. Better mindsAnders Sandberg, Ph.D.

19. Enhancement Types Hardware Software Internal External

20. Internal Hardware • Better minds through • Genetics • Drugs • Memory • Executive function • Mood • Alertness • Creativity • Brain-computer interfaces

21. Internal Software • Better minds through better thinking • Reduce cognitive load through cleverencoding, organisation or methods • Memory arts • Cognitive therapy • Mental training

22. External Hardware • Move our brains into the environment • Started with clay and paper • Wearables, ubicomps • The wireless exoself

23. External Software • Add capabilities, communication and supplement skills • Personal organizers • Information visualization • Expert systems • Symbolic math programs • Decision making tools • Information searching • Information filtering • Automated indexing • Hypertext • Memory agents • AI

24. NeuroEnhancement • Cognitive and emotional enhancement isa huge market right now and will grow • Neuroethics a growth industry • Methods are getting better all the time • But radical enhancement is still far away • It is not the spectacular things that change the world the most

25. References • Amplifying Cognition: Extending Memory and Intelligence, talk given at Extro3, August 9-10 1997, San Jose: http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/Hx/Extro3/talk.html • Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance, Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge (Eds.), National Science Foundation June 2002: http://wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_report.pdf • Meeting Neuroethical Challenges in Cognitive Enhancement, New York Academy of Sciences June 16.-17 2003:http://www.nyas.org/ebriefreps/splash.asp?intEBriefID=214 • Neurocognitive enhancement: what can we do and what should we do? M.J. Farah et al. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2004 May;5(5):421-5.http://neuroethics.stanford.edu/nrn1390.pdf

26. Becoming Better Persons Transhumanists are enthusiastic about the potential for technology to assist us in becoming better persons.

27. Ominous Sounding… • Admittedly, in the abstract the idea of using technology to assist in this ambition sounds ominous. For some, it conjures up images of a Huxleyian Brave New World. • But I invite you to think of the idea improving ourselves as continuous with our present efforts to become better persons:

28. Cultivating Our Talents • One way we seek to improve ourselves as persons presently is through the cultivation of our talents, e.g., people spend countless hours working on their musicianship, or athletic abilities. • Transhumanists foresee the possibility that technology will further this quest: in the near future we will be able to harness technologies (like genetic engineering) that will provide people perfect pitch or the sort of body suited to pursuing physical excellence.

29. Better Control of our Drives • Today we use pharmacological aids such as nicotine gum to assist in breaking the unwanted addiction of smoking. • Future technological developments may allow us even better control over our drives as we better understand the biochemical basis of our behavior. • Not only will this knowledge allow us to control unwanted addictions, but it may allow us to create our own, e.g., imagine creating in yourself a short-term craving for getting your assignment finished for your editor.

30. Better Control of Our Emotions FEAR: Presently, some address their fear of public speaking through courses, others use pharmacological agents like beta blockers. Developments in pharmacology and genetics should make it easier in the future for people to master their fears. HAPPINESS: Presently people seek to be happier through a number of means including therapy and “happy pills”. Transhumanists foresee the possibility of a much happier world where individuals can control with much greater precision how much happiness they would like, and when. JEALOUSY: Many an interpersonal relation has been destroyed by jealousy. Technological advances promise the possibility of becoming the master of this emotion, rather than its slave.

31. Improving Our Ethics • Many of us seek to improve ourselves ethically. We may reflect on our past actions and regret that in certain situations we did not exhibit a greater degree of the virtue of caring for others, or the virtue of patience. • Cultivating virtues in ourselves is a difficult task. • Control over the biological aspects governing our virtues opens the possibility of a future world where the virtues flourish to a greater degree.

32. Ethical Questions • I have suggested that the quest to use technology to become better persons can be seen as continuous with many of our present activities. • However, it is naive to think that there are not new ethical issues to be addressed. Many of these issues turn on the fact that, ultimately, we will be remaking human nature. • Transhumanists seek the best possible understanding of the consequences and ethics of this project.

33. A Better World

34. Anticipatory Democracy • Most policy makers do not take account of the acceleration and convergence of technology • Even if some of the technologies we discuss don’t arrive in this century or ever, the exercise is still useful • We need to anticipate and address risks in order to defend the potential benefits

35. Collective Security • Existential threats • External • Infectious diseases • Asteroids and gamma-ray bursts • Human • Weapons of mass destruction • New forms of totalitarianism and mind control • Need for global democratic institutions and global responses

36. Ensuring safety of technology • What clinical testing regimes are appropriate for: • Inheritable genetic therapies • Genetic enhancements • Medical nanorobots • What risks do we face from • Artificial intelligence • Enhanced animals

37. Ensuring Benefits for All • Avoiding exacerbation of inequality • Breaking down the therapy/enhancement distinction • Providing enhancements with public monies, or through insurance • Technology transfer to the developing world • Intellectual property law reform

38. Beyond “Human Rights” • Rights to bodily autonomy • Rights to cognitive liberty and freedom of thought • Rights to procreative liberty • Expanding rights from “humans” to “persons,” including intelligent animals, machines and enhanced humans

39. WTA • Members 3000 members in 100 countries • Chapters Two dozen chapters, including in India, Russia, Finland, Argentina, Germany, Venezuela, the Czech Republic, Spain, Nigeria, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States

40. WTA Program Areas • Global Health • Relationships, Community and Technology • Consequences and Ethics of Emerging Technologies • Self-Determination and Human Rights • Longer, Better Lives • Visions of Utopia and Dystopia

41. Transvision Conferences • TransVision 2004 - 2004, August 6-8 – U. of Toronto, Canada • TV03 - 2003, June 27-29 - Yale Univ., New Haven, Connecticut, USA • TV01 - 2001, June 22-24 - Berlin, Germany • TVMM - 2000, July 15-16 - London, UK • TV99 - 1999, June 4-6 - Stockholm, Sweden • TV98 - 1998, June 5-7 - Weesp, The Netherlands

42. For more information • Transhumanism.org