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

[nvitamore at austin.rr.com]

Hi Jef and friends,

This is just a quick follow-up as I am out of my study but I wanted to
respond right away.

I was invited to attent the most recent lecture by Hava (Dr. T-Samuelson
(sp)) but I was not available.  She called me last week as a follow-up, but
I was unable to return her call.

I do know James Hughes has been involved in her project.  I agree with you
Jef that it is odd that more transhumanists are not invited by her to
participate in the lectures.  She told me she is not interested in a H+
interpretation of her project but is looking at H+ from the eyes of non
H+ers. I am not entirely sure she has an adequant and fully informed view
of H+. 

Best wishes,
Natasha







Original Message:
-----------------
From: Jef Allbright jef at jefallbright.net
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:54:54 -0700
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org, James.Hughes at trincoll.edu,
clementlawyer at hotmail.com, pjmanney at gmail.com, tyleremerson at gmail.com,
asa at nada.kth.se, natasha at natasha.cc
Subject: Re: [ExI] ASU Conference on Transhumanism, "General Repudiation of
Transhumanism: Part II"


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

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