[ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists

[Bryan Bishop]

On Sunday 02 March 2008, John Grigg wrote:
> Bryan Bishop wrote:
> > Just to make sure, you do understand that I am not dismissive of
> > religions at all, merely in terms of making "transhumanism" a
> > reality, such as making futurist technologies realized, since *not*
> > paying attention to religion does not influence the bottomline
> > technicality of the technologies involved. Otherwise, it's an
> > amazing cultural phenomena and much more. 
>
> Not paying attention to religion may not influence the
> bottomline *technicality* of a technology.  But in terms of the
> actual *successful development* of a technology, you need generally a

Successful development means making it happen, yes? Making it happen is 
mostly figuring out how to make it work in the given context, like 
where to get the materials, how to put them together, etc.

> combination of political, corporate, academic and financial support. 

That's because of the subjective variation of 'success'. Otherwise, you 
don't need that combination at all: you just need to make it happen.

> The "amazing cultural phenomena" you describe, if it turns against
> you (stem cell research vrs. the Bush Administration, for instance),
> results in a definite slowing or stopping of potentially life saving
> medical technology.

The only way they can do that is by jailing us in prisons.

> And even though the research and development would continue in other
> nations, the U.S. would then be at a serious disadvantage to be a
> leader in the biotech field and reap the financial harvest.  And
> remember that it's just plain "un-American" to not make tons of money
> and dominate technological progress! lol

Heh, well, with self-replication there might be a collapse of the 
financial institutions, but not if they play their cards right. So 
that's something that somebody might want to put some thought into.

> you continue:
> > No matter how much they proclaim to be against a possibility does 
> > not determine that bottom line of feasability. Yes, they can 
> > protest, yes, they can try to stone us, they can try to burn us 
> > alive, but you see, we can diffuse the information over the 
> > internet, and good luck warring against the internet. It will route 
> > around the damage.     
>
> But warring against research labs and those who fund them in another
> matter, entirely.  It generally takes serious money and disciplined
> scientific teams to tease out Mother Nature's secrets.

Nah, it just takes discipline. That's the whole discipline of science. 
It does not take money, but rather the raw resources. The guys that 
build particle accelerators and energy stations? They had the 
discipline to make it happen even when there wasn't necessarily 
a "plutonium economy" or "electricity economy" when they started off.

> I think part of the problem may be that highschool chemistry teaching
> has fallen into such disrepair.  "Oh, no, we can't trust the kids to
> not blow themselves up!" lol  In chemistry people learn the joy of
> scientific investigation.

That's certainly true in my local case, but in general the electronics 
revolutions occured even without high tech electronics labs in high 
school, so I think it might be something different. I was using high 
school mostly to refer to age.

> of global competitiveness.  And by the time we try to really turn
> things around we may have lost some critical advantages that might
> never be fully regained.

Maybe. Can you own an advantage, even in natural-evolutionary terms?

> In terms of national security (and economic strength is a foundation
> of military strength) and a having a powerful and effective armed
> forces, the U.S. in my view needs to be much more careful in terms of
> who does scientific research in our labs and who can gain access to
> our technological trade secrets.  I think we should only let in
> foreign nationals that are from nations which do not have longterm
> plans to take our spot as the definitive world superpower.  I cringe
> to think of all the knowledge & power which is leaked out to
> potentially hostile foreign competitors because we are so dependent
> on researchers not from our native country.

What knowledge and power? What does the military have that cannot be 
already duplicated? Airplanes? Easily duplicated (though not 
necessarily the money to make many tests. This is of course a matter of 
resources, not money.) Nuclear weapons? Non-military persons came up 
with nukes. Navy machinery? Easy enough. 

> We are in a race to develop whatever the next generation of
> technological innovations are that we must have to stay not just
> competitive, but ahead of the rest of the world.  And yes, we do have

This is FUD.

> our top secret military labs that surely have incredible security and
> well vetted researchers, but the tech that feeds those places comes
> generally from corporate and academic America.  It will be carefully
> nurtured and protected technological progress that will maintain our
> economic strength, and this must be protected every bit as much as
> some state of the art new weapons system.

Fud, fud, fud.

> Nationalism is a two-edged sword.  On the one side it can cause

It is also more fud.

> healthy competition among developed nations to make rapid progress in
> key technologies that would potentially change our lives for the
> better.  I am very grateful for this (would you want a powerful world
> government that had a negative view of biotech research and passed
> laws in effect *everywhere* to enforce their stance?, lol)  But on
> the other hand, nationalism can cause extreme over-competitiveness,
> which leads to wars, both cold and hot.

Btw, I apologize for not getting back to this soon enough. I forgot 
about it. :)

- Bryan
________________________________________
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/