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Elan Moritz's avatar

Nice...I am sure every age and era will have its own interpretations and factions regarding Transhumanism. ( agree the way forward is really to focus on Unlimited Abundance. We literally have an entire universe to play with; much of it currently unreachable; but quite a bit is reachable. The cost of computing and energy is trending basically to the cost of infrastructure and transmission. Sadly there are many humans and societies that want power for themselves, and elimination of opposing views and beliefs. So one of the great challenges is to come up with a new narrative of life, society, and religion. The atrocities that have been committed in the name of religion and ideology are staggering. If one conducts a side by side comparison of the principles, goals, death, and end-of-times narratives of the major religions, what pops up is that many are fundamentally intolerant, and in some cases, promote violent elimination of opponents. We need to get past that hurdle ... it's festering everywhere. So, we need to fix the story of existence, and highlight boundless abundance available to all.

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John Quiggin's avatar

"increasing excitement around and support for the development of transhumanist technologies (life extension, human spaceflight, brain-computer interfaces, gene editing, personal robots, AI, nanotech)."

I'd say there has been a distinct cooling in support for human spaceflight, as it's become evident that it's never going to amount to more than wasteful joyflights for the ultra-rich and vanity projects like the ISS. In particular, the enthusiasm of people like Musk for settlement of Mars has focused increasing attention on the fact that it's impossible. A moon base might just be feasible, but entirely pointless.

Less dramatically, hopes that nanotech and gene editing would be transformative rather than useful have faded away. And human life extension has gone nowhere in terms of maximum lifespans, though we have done a good job in reducing premature deaths. Lots more centenarians but no sign that anyone is ever going to live past, say, 125. For the other items on the list, it's too early to tell.

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