[ExI] ASU Conference on Transhumanism, "General Repudiation of Transhumanism: Part II"

[Jef Allbright]

On 4/29/08, John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I attended a Templeton sponsored workshop on Transhumanism at ASU this past
> Friday and had a fascinating time.  The speakers were generally very good,
> though ironically some of them admitted from the start to not knowing very
> much about the subject (and it at times really showed).  I was offended when
> at the very start of the conference, Transhumanism was called a "shallow
> ideology" that did not warrant even being called a philosophy yet.

Thank you John for your **excellent** report!


> The conference was set up to be for basically only academics and so I was
> touched to be invited.  But the closed nature of the event (I had to "sniff
> it out" to even pursue going) bothered me.  I feel it should have been
> advertised (it is not even mentioned on their website!) and the general
> public allowed to attend.  But it was believed that keeping things closed
> would keep out many possibly noisy Transhumanists. lol  Several of the
> speaking academics were very critical of Transhumanism and I was very
> troubled that there were no prominent Transhumanists there such as Max More,
> Natasha Vita-More, Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, James Hughes, etc., to
> counterbalance them.  It was definitely needed at times!  But I was told
> several Transhumanist academics had been invited, but for one reason or
> another did not accept.

I'm looking forward to receiving some word from the World
Transhumanist Association regarding this apparently total lack of
representation or involvement.

- Jef