[extropy-chat] Transhumanism is taking common sense seriously

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

I just found on the Mprize <http://www.mprize.org/> site a very good short
article on, and definition of
transhumanism<http://www.mprize.org/index.php?ctype=news&pagename=blogdetaildisplay&BID=2007032-16103440&detaildisplay=Y>.
This is the kind if explanations I prefer: no big words difficult to
understand, but plain simple common sense.

When they start with their crap about reverence for nature, respect for our
limits, value of suffering, mortality as a defining feature of being human,
and similar BS, just remind them of plain old common sense: health is good,
disease is no good; happiness is good, suffering is no good; being alive is
good, being dead is no good; Etc. etc. Transhumanism is taking common sense
seriously.

Full text by Reason (original
here<http://www.mprize.org/index.php?ctype=news&pagename=blogdetaildisplay&BID=2007032-16103440&detaildisplay=Y>):


On the day it comes to you that living a longer, healthier life is something
you'd like to do, that an extra year or ten of good health (or hell, why not
more?) would be just peachy keen, think of the transhumanists - because you
just became one. You saw a limit in the human condition, thought about what
life would be like with that limit removed, and liked it.

Welcome to the party!

Transhumanism, make no mistake, is just a fancy name for common sense.
Change for the better is good, right? Common sense. It's what we humans do
in our scattered finer moments - we work to change things for the better.
It's common sense to fetch in the harvest on wheels rather than on foot, and
it's common sense to repair the biomolecular damage of Alzheimer's before
the mind begins to rot. It's common sense to build perfect immune systems
from nanomedical robots, and it's common sense to develop the technologies
of regenerative medicine to their logical end.

It takes work, but what is work compared to a world of suffering? Choosing
not to attain these goals makes about as much sense as standing out in the
rain to spite yourself.

New technology cannot set slaves free, remove poverty brought of corruption,
make the willfully blind see, or the unhappy bring themselves to good cheer
of their own free will ... but it can remove the limits placed upon us by
evolution, and it will one day give us all much, much more time in health
and life to work on our other, very human issues. You can't rid the world of
poverty when you're sick, decrepit and aged to death. The limits to our
lives that we cannot negotiate away by talk and travel are the most
confining, don't you agree?

Transhumanism, common sense with a slick name, is really simple humanism -
which is also really no more than a name for common sense. It is only
humanist to work to give people the choice to live without suffering, and
without death. To live, for without life, there is nothing.
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