[ExI] Reframing transhumanism as good vs. evil

[Darren Greer]

I had an
> idea to speak
> about transhumanism, to which one of my classmates rather
> indignantly
> asked me why I wanted to advocate biotech enhancement
> instead of medicine.

That kind of question irks me slightly: it makes the mistake of assuming
popular modalities in the discipline *are* the discipline. Since when is
biotech not medicine? Transport back a five hundred years and you'd have a
student asking a doctor with some new approaches why he'd rather perform
surgery than bleed the patient with leeches and gauge his dominant "humor."

Darren

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:

> AlgaeNymph <algaenymph at gmail.com> asked:
>
>
> >
> > A while age in college, I was in a speech class where one
> > of the things
> > we did was have a group critique our ideas.  I had an
> > idea to speak
> > about transhumanism, to which one of my classmates rather
> > indignantly
> > asked me why I wanted to advocate biotech enhancement
> > instead of medicine.
> >
> > That's the problem we have.  Even when we're not seen
> > as evil, we're
> > seen as selfish nerds who are utterly indifferent to
> > it.  The sad thing
> > is I find myself almost believing this.  Causes that
> > comedians can't
> > brand as outright evil or obvious spin are pretty much
> > about fighting
> > evil and/or saving innocents.  Citizen heroics,
> > basically.
> >
> > What kind of citizen heroics do *we* have?
>
>
> You've got to be joking.
>
> What's more heroic than saving the lives of 100,000 people a day?
>
> Even superman is never shown doing that.
>
>
> Ben Zaiboc
>
>
>
>
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-- 
*"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard everyone would do it. The
'hard' is what makes it great."*
*
*
*--A League of Their Own
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