[ExI] transhumanism by any other name

[Stefano Vaj]

On 13 December 2012 22:18, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:

> The point of Magneto is to be The Bad Guy.  So he doesn't care about other
> people.  Dr. X does.  Magneto wants the mutants to win, but he also wants
> the baselines to lose.  This is not a convincing argument to me.  We want
> win-win scenarios, not win-lose ones.
>
> The most telling scene in the X-men films, to me, is when Mystique loses
> her powers, and Magneto instantly turns his back on her, leaving her naked
> on the ground, to die for all he cares.  That defines his character more
> than any powers or arguments about mutants vs. baselines.  I don't want
> that to be associated with transhumanism.  Do you?
>

What is ridiculous *and* very humanist in Magneto is that he defines "us
vs. them" on the basis of "objectivist" criteria such as a mutant-ness
which actually does not involve anything else that some special (and wildly
variable) power, exactly on the same line of the Singularitians who believe
it obvious that our duty would be to take side for the "mankind" in a
supposed upcoming wars - or at least conflict of interest - with AGIs, why
you and I should always remaining untold and very vague.

The truth is that historical experience show us well enough that humans,
gods, animals and machines do not fight each other as such, not any more
than males fight females or the other way around across the animal kingdom,
but rather cooperate in order to compete with groups of a similarly mixed
composition.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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