[ExI] The meaning of life (in transhumanism)

Giulio Prisco giulio at gmail.com
Tue Feb 18 07:57:02 UTC 2014


The question "what's the meaning of life?" assumes that there is a
unique answer valid for everyone. But I don't think there is one. It's
up to everyone to give meaning to their life.

I find meaning in being a small part of something very big - humanity
on its way to become a cosmic civilization that will achieve the
dreams of Fedorov and Tipler, mentioned by Anders.

On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 12:14 AM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
> A while ago I started working on an essay called "the meaning of life in
> transhumanism", but quite soon I got distracted (Oh! Shiny!) and it
> languished. Then I got an offer to turn it into a book chapter, and it is
> now up and running. However, while much of it is standard scholarship
> (Nikolai Fedorov's cosmism and its links to Tipler and FHI-style big
> futures) I think it would be sensible to actually ask you in the community
> for your views of what the "meaning of life is".
>
> Some ground rules: Yes, it is not clear that the question even makes sense.
> Do your best. See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/ for a lot
> of takes on what might be going on (including a pretty cool use of uploading
> as a counterargument to soul-centred views). I am interested in meanings
> that actually relate to transhumanism: either as an idea that motivates you
> to want to enhance yourselves or hope humanity does get enhanced, or as an
> explanation of why all of this enhancement actually is moving things along
> in the right direction, or maybe the meaning of life as the right
> direction(s) to enhance ourselves along.
>
> Bonus meaning-of-life-points to people who can point at fun publications I
> can cite: I love having footnotes to early issues of Extropy.
>
>
>
> Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford
> University
>
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