Transhumanism with Guest Speaker David Pearce @David Pearce
Thanks for joining us.
My concern with transhumanism is that it's beneficiaries like yourself are either unaware of or downplaying what I (maybe erroneously) refer to as the "human condition"; namely that state we all find ourselves in in which we are unable to achieve the moral ideals we aspire to - I want to
not be selfish, and yet I am; I want to
not give in to base pleasures, and yet I do; I want to devote my time and energy to higher ideals, and yet I spend hours watching vapid youtube videos (or even doing something slightly more noble like going down wiki rabbit holes or listening to weird music that I'm not sure if I like or not). I worry about the gap between lofty goals such as those that are transhumanistic on one hand, and the cold hard reality of purely
human existence on the other. Tie that in to what
@darthbarracuda mentioned about Ellul, and I'm wondering if transhumanism isn't just a sort of pubescent lack of understanding about the human situations we all find ourselves in; technology, after all, is simply humans harnessing our (ever-changing understanding of) nature in a
very imperfect, and often
destructive way. Cryptocurrency itself is detrimental to the environment.
What I'm really worried about is a transhumanistic approach to the human situation that is not based on an accurate understanding of that human situation; an approach that assumes too much and introspects about ourselves far too little.
Somewhat related; how does transhumanism address addiction?