[ExI] [wta-talk] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online transhumanism

[Natasha Vita-More]

Ralp wrote:

"So most of us are, whether professionals or non-professionals, left waiting
breathlessly on the closing of the Final Circuit in an AI godling, or the
First Upload, or the True Assembler. And in the meantime, the True Believers
can seem like a particularly odd, post-modern cult (if a well-educated one),
whose more extreme members seem to be rocking back and forth repeating the
technobabble equivalent of "The /Paingod/! He /Rises/! /He *Rises*/!"
I think you are serioulsy mistaken." 

You are seiously mistaken.  While it is fictional to compare h+ with Good
Friday and Palm Sunday, it is not critical and critical thinking is a
essential element of h+.  And here is the rub:  We can get all dramatic and
Hamlet about it, but the poison of death as stirred in our drink from mother
nature is a romantic way of accepting the foibles of human nature and nature
itself.  

I would say that most professional, and non-professinal (whatever that
menas, but I'm assuming those who are professionals in some sort of business
or have credentials in a field) are being proactive about our own lifes,
i.e., advancing our knowledge awareness about our current condition and
future possibilities for eradicating our postion, adapting to changes as
they come about, forcasting our own personal existence - what emotional,
physciolgical, eudcational skills we need to employ in order to live a full
life, preparing for the possibilities of disease as they could arise from
our genetic makeup and our enviironmental circumstances, and investigating
and questioning the emerging and convernign sciences and technologies which
could offer an altenrative to a limited lifespan and offer continued
personal existence in platforms other than biological.  This is all
pragmatic.

You also say, "Enthusiasts, on the other hand, could potentially serve the
goals of human enhancement and longevity simply by adopting disciplines and
technologies that promote greater human capacities and greater youth and
vitality in themselves, and thus perform direct research on a subject the
individual has ready access to (themselves) and using relatively low-cost
technologies and resources ranging from good diet and exercise to nootropic
nutrients and drugs, sensory deprivation (floatation) tanks, hypnosis and
extreme disciplines such as the martial arts."

Of course this has been going on.  For goodness sakes, please read all the
press on extropy and all the attetion (and fun made of us) for being
healthy, fit, meditating, exerciseing, etc!  Nonetheless, transhumanism has
been based in very, very large part on living a healthy life.  Just because
it is not promoted in certain transhumanist circles does not mean that it is
not a core value of transhumanism.

Now, the rest of what you say seems to be accurate, but what is new about
this?  Isn't this what has been written, spoken, and suggested for quite
some time now?  I'm wondering if it is because of the issues concerning the
proposed technological singularity and uploads that causes you to think that
there are many who just want to be put on a nanoassembler and fly off into
space?


Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More

-----Original Message-----
From: wta-talk-bounces at transhumanism.org
[mailto:wta-talk-bounces at transhumanism.org] On Behalf Of Ralph
Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2009 2:37 PM
To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List
Cc: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [wta-talk] The Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle
of online transhumanism

Kaj,
    A big part of the problem in this dichotomy between the Useless
Enthusiasts and the Serious(ly Remote) Professionals is that Transhumanism
as it is frequently conceived often relies on the final completion of a
single, radical technology that Changes Everything. The implications of
having this or that particular, fully realized technology are (rightly)
perceived as so dramatic that to some degree almost everything else becomes
irrelevant once the Ultimate Technology arrives on the scene.

Unfortunately, this leads to professionals intensely (and perhaps
rightly) focused on completely the technology they perceive as the tipping
point, and enthusiasts talking incessantly about changes they feel powerless
to achieve, but which more than a few find reasons to believe they will
somehow dominate despite their complete disassociation from the actual
research and the institutions doing it (because they will be "first
adopters" or what have you).

So most of us are, whether professionals or non-professionals, left waiting
breathlessly on the closing of the Final Circuit in an AI godling, or the
First Upload, or the True Assembler. And in the meantime, the True Believers
can seem like a particularly odd, post-modern cult (if a well-educated one),
whose more extreme members seem to be rocking back and forth repeating the
technobabble equivalent of "The /Paingod/! He /Rises/! /He *Rises*/!"

I have personally found the above mantra to be ineffective in bringing
people on board the radical-evolution bandwagon.

What might be more effective is a more broad-based yet practical strategy
for achieving the common goals of Transhumanists and their various
associated visionaries and futurists, combined with professional strategies
more apt to yield benefits resulting from incremental progress rather than
depending on a single, world-altering discovery that may or may not ever
come. (Despite the egos involved here, remember... even if a particular
breakthrough is entirely possible and eventually occurs, does not guarantee
it will happen at /your/ lab.)

Some AI researchers appear to have already gone in this direction, with
Biomind developing applications that could assist in biotech-oriented
human-enhancement technologies while also creating a plausible candidate for
outside investment and/or funding.

Enthusiasts, on the other hand, could potentially serve the goals of human
enhancement and longevity simply by adopting disciplines and technologies
that promote greater human capacities and greater youth and vitality in
themselves, and thus perform direct research on a subject the individual has
ready access to (themselves) and using relatively low-cost technologies and
resources ranging from good diet and exercise to nootropic nutrients and
drugs, sensory deprivation (floatation) tanks, hypnosis and extreme
disciplines such as the martial arts.

The above may seem like an eclectic mix, but there are plenty of simple
"enhancements" that are well-documented and cheap (such as cutting out fast
food/junk food and aerobic exercise) and to the extent that these skills
permeate the larger culture, they will not only aid researchers in
"Transhumanist fields" directly (for those adopting resources that augment
their overall ability to do the work) but indirectly, by assisting other
scientists, programmers and inventors, and also leading to a more
effectively run society with more wealth and opportunity to engage in
seemingly blue-sky or implausible research.

Or, that's how I see it, anyway.


Kaj Sotala wrote:
> Originally posted at http://xuenay.livejournal.com/318060.html :
>
> A colleague's posting on the Finnish Transhumanist Association's 
> mailing list made me think about a phenomenon I've observed both in 
> myself and several others, but never thought about so explicitly. I 
> call it the Excitement-Disillusionment-Reorientation cycle of online 
> transhumanism.
>
> The excitement phase is when you first stumble across concepts such as 
> transhumanism, radical life extension, and superintelligent AI. This 
> is when you subscribe to transhumanist mailing lists, join your local 
> WTA/H+ chapter, and start trying to spread the word to everybody you 
> know. You'll probably spend hundreds of hours reading different kinds 
> of transhumanist materials. This phase typically lasts for several 
> years.
>
> In the disillusionment phase, you start to realize that while you 
> still agree with the fundamental transhumanist philosophy, most of 
> what you are doing is rather pointless. You can have all the 
> discussions you want, but by themselves, those discussions aren't 
> going to bring all those amazing technologies here. You learn to 
> ignore the "but an upload of you is just a copy" debate when it shows 
> up the twentieth time, with the same names rehearsing the same 
> arguments and thought experiments for the fifteenth time. Having 
> gotten over your initial future shock, you may start to wonder why 
> having a specific name like transhumanism is necessary in the first 
> place - people have been taking advantage of new technologies for 
> several thousands of years. After all, you don't have a specific 
> "cellphonist" label for people using cell phones, either. You'll 
> slowly start losing interest in activities that are specifically 
> termed as transhumanist.
>
> In the reorientation cycle you have two alternatives. Some people 
> renounce transhumanism entirely, finding the label pointless and 
> mostly a magnet for people with a tendency towards future hype and 
> techno-optimism. Others (like me) simply realize that bringing forth 
> the movement's goals requires a very different kind of effort than 
> debating other transhumanists on closed mailing lists. An effort like 
> engaging with the large audience in a more effective manner, or 
> getting an education in a technology-related field and becoming 
> involved in the actual research yourself. In either case, you're 
> likely to unsubscribe the mailing lists or at least start paying them 
> much less attention than before. If you still identify as a 
> transhumanist, your interest in the online communities wanes because 
> you're too busy actually working for the cause. (Alternatively, you've 
> realized how much work this would be and have stopped even trying.)
>
> This shouldn't be taken to mean that I'm saying the online h+ 
> community is unnecessary, and that people ought to just skip to the 
> last phase. The first step of the cycle is a very useful ingredient 
> for giving one a strong motivation to keep working for the cause in 
> one's later life, even when they're no longer following the lists.
>
> One might think that this cycle isn't really specific to 
> transhumanism, and that a more general form of it ought to apply to 
> all communities. While I have no doubt that it probably does apply to 
> other communities as well, I find that the transhumanist cause is 
> somewhat rare in that it is so technology-dependant. Hobby communities 
> are built around a certain interest, and for those you don't need much 
> more than the community - having gathered a bunch of RPG or BDSM 
> enthusiasts, you can then go enjoy the activity in question together 
> with them. For purely political movements, you can make progress with 
> a mainly online presence, debating the pros and cons of your cause and 
> recruiting more people under its banner. But while transhumanism is 
> certainly a political cause as well, the vast majority of people 
> aren't really going to care about the social implications of a 
> technology before they can be convinced that the technology in 
> question is actually going to become real soon. And even if everybody 
> did agree that radical life extension, say, is a good thing, that 
> wouldn't really matter for as long as you didn't have life extension 
> available. You'd need to actually get involved with things that 
> actually brought life extension forward, instead of just twiddling 
> your thumbs in the general transhumanist community. This makes the 
> transhumanist community very different from most other kinds of 
> communities.
>   
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