[extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

Natasha Vita-More wrote:

> At 07:37 PM 10/31/03 -0500, Eliezer wrote:
> 
>> natashavita at earthlink.net wrote:
>>
>>> Transhumanism is not a religious or mystical term. Nor is it a 
>>> political term. It is a term used to express the ideas about 
>>> evolution in regards to the biology and psychology of humans. As 
>>> such, transhumanism has become a movement based on the advancement of 
>>> the human’s lifespan and intellectual and creative abilities. 
>>
>> Eh?  Transhumanism expresses a *goal* about the *future* development 
>> of humanity, *post* natural selection.  What does transhumanism have 
>> to say about "ideas about evolution in regards to the biology and 
>> psychology of humans"?  Such ideas are the domains of the extensively 
>> developed fields of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology!  
>> They are no longer up for grabs.
> 
> Not so!  Evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists are only 
> part of the package. 

True, there's also information theory, population genetics, quantitative 
genetics, sociobiology, cultural anthropology, etc. etc., but that doesn't 
change my point.

> For someone who is not determined to engage completely in one particular 
> academic discipline, why rely on those who do!?  No ideas are 
> exclusively the property of any one particular domain.  Ideas are always 
> up for grabs! Such is the idea of evolution - constantly change constructs.

I stand by my point that if we're talking about anything currently real, 
as opposed to making statements about what we want for the future, then 
there is nothing up for grabs.  Actually there is never anything up for 
grabs in science; if the evidence is sparse enough that one can make stuff 
up without fear of contradiction, it means that one will simply get things 
wrong.  But in this case there is no fear of that; the evidence is strong 
enough to constrain theories.  If anyone tries to make up ideas about 
evolution in regards to the biology or psychology of humans, they will 
instantly find themselves shot down by experts in the field. 
Transhumanism doesn't need, and can't have, and shouldn't have, its own 
model of evolution, any more than there should be a transhumanist model of 
physics.  There may be a transhumanist moral or ethical stance on 
evolution, the normativity or non-normativity thereof, but not a 
"transhumanist" model of what happened and why.  Why go there?

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence