Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

zorblax wrote

anarcho-transhumanism cannot be achieved unless communism has already been achieved.

Whether it would create new classes -- upgraded and non-upgraded -- is a question of how much planning and forethought goes into it. The answer is probably "not much", but I don't think it's that big of a problem. I think there will be a class of people who want upgrades, and a class who don't, and I think in a society that relies on goodwill among individuals it's not a big deal if your neighbor is suddenly 50 times stronger than you, they're still your neighbor and you're still theirs.

Eventually, the idea goes, humans will be able to efficiently upload our minds to computers, and I think that's the end goal. Once you're a piece of data rather than a piece of matter, your freedom is near limitless, and with that you'll probably withdraw from the real world and live your life freely. I imagine a far future where Earth is untouched, save for a few small settlements of people who didn't want to upload and the occasional underground server farm. Sounds ideal to me.

Also, your other questions:

We're obviously facing a near future where rich people get superpowers, so how do anarcho-transhumanists expect to face that dystopian nightmare?

hacking 'em

When proles are being further subjugated by the elite transhuman class, do ATs really think identifying as transhumanist in any way is going to win them anything other than scorn and mistrust from the majority of humanity?

"We want those upgrades too!" is a pretty good rallying cry, at least in places not infected with ultraconservative religion.

How do you expect to not be seen as bootlickers and collaborators if your idea of good praxis is to work to be granted equal tech grafts, immortality and superpowers as the elite class, rather than fighting to abolish their crimes against nature altogether?

Loaded question.

And how do you expect 8 billion people to be granted equal tech privileges anyway?

Same way we grant 8 billion people equal medical access.

It would speed up global warming so fast that 90% of the planet would be rendered uninhabitable in a matter of weeks.

that doesn't even make sense.

4

[deleted] wrote (edited )

1

zorblax wrote

Sounds like fiction and presumption to me

The future is unwritten. Thinking you know what it holds is the greatest hubris humanity can know.

A future in which people upload their conscious to a computer would most likely be one in which it is "unhackable"

"unhackable" is a fairy tale. There is no such thing as perfect security, and there never will be. Anyway, a casual look at the state of modern computer security shows that it is hilariously weak, even in government or military sectors. Mostly it's that most people don't understand security, or just don't care about it.

So destroying the environment?

If my choices are to keep people alive or to try to revive a biosphere that's been a lost cause for 50 years, I'll take the former.

A start to justifying your argument would be explaining how it doesn't make sense.

90% of the planet uninhabitable in a few weeks due to greenhouse gas output? It's literally impossible.

1

chaos wrote (edited )

But hacking the software won't get you 8 billion cybernetic bodies with mindlinks to hand out. It's a resource problem, not a software problem.

2

zorblax wrote

quite right, that's why I never claimed it was a solution to getting everyone those upgrades, rather it's a way to fight back against the robo-bourgeoisie.

1

kaiakerno wrote (edited )

We're obviously facing a near future where rich people get superpowers, so how do anarcho-transhumanists expect to face that > dystopian nightmare?

I would rather suggest stealing, copying and improving the technology and, of course, inventing some of our own. That includes hacking, but hacking machines, not people.

Same way we grant 8 billion people equal medical access.

So destroying the environment?

There's a lot of improvement we can do to the environment without cutting on medical access and technology in general. First step would be to move away from fossil fuels.

A start to justifying your argument would be explaining how it doesn't make sense. The only possible way that a transhumanist future would not be absolutely devastating on the environment is if countless technological feats were made, adding on even more layers of speculation and fiction onto the entire idea. Transhumanism is a dangerous thing to pursue, one which counters the entire green movement and relies on a future based on dreams and fantasies which have a much greater chance of destructive outcomes than anything else

"90% of the planet would be rendered uninhabitable in a matter of weeks" is a kind of overestimation, don't you think? Especially considering the TH technologies are not different from our current medical and computing technologies in any way that would be more ecologically taxing on the planet, and they would aim to replace much of the old technology, thus there won't be any noticeable increase in environmental damage because of them. Meanwhile reliance on better energy sources (solar, wind and, yes, nuclear) and carbon negative technologies should help us slow down and eventually stop/reverse global warming. Some of these technologies exist, some are in development but already deemed feasible.

We're past the point when we can fix environment with less technology. We have already created a problem, now we have to solve it. Like when you have broken a window, you can't just say "I won't throw any rocks at it again" and expect it to go back to normal.

1