Is the word “transhumanist” cool in the eyes of Joe Smith, or Joe Blow for that matter? This is a topic that has been being explored on the transhumanist mailing lists in recent weeks, as well in personal email conversations.

I asked Mike Johnson of Modern Dragons to tell me exactly what his problems were with the word transhumanism. Here’s what he came up with:

Michael,

As a follow-up to our brief discussion of last night: my background in transhumanist literature is somewhat spotty- deep in some places, shallow in others. I’ve been reading your blog for about six months (my initial interest was kicked off by reading The Singularity Is Near… a very persuasive book). I find that I generally identify with the movement you outline in your posts, the only two big things you’ve argued that I really don’t agree with being

1.that people in the movement you/we identify with should be called transhumanists;
2.the mostly-implicit assumption that intelligence augmentation won’t play a huge role in the years to come.

I did some thinking about why I don’t like the label ‘transhumanist’ and here’s what I came up with. No punches pulled, nothing against the movement itself. Just one man’s feedback about the term.

Etymologically and linguistically, I think ‘transhumanism’ has a tinge of

Elitism — the term transhumanist sounds like it involves becoming ‘more than other humans’ (or perhaps ‘more than other humanists’). This may not be the intended nor technical subtext of the term, but to me it has that baggage.

Disregard for flexible definitions of humanity — we’ll still be human whatever happens, sort of, right? And insofar as we shed our humanity, do we lose our identity? I suppose it’s a word game at that point… but it’ll be a connotation/word game which will have to be grappled with, should the term stick.

Inexactness — it’s applied to a group whose core interests span certain things which have very little to do with transcendence or humans (e.g., molecular manufacturing is a huge interest in the group/movement). I think it works now as a label now for the group, but only because the group is young and hasn’t had a lot of time to philosophically diversify. Maybe any label would be as much or more inexact… perhaps as the group gets bigger, sub-movements will splinter off and call themselves different things. I don’t know.

Linguistic association with ‘transsexual’ – I realize it’s just a linguistic accident that the other common-usage group label which starts with ‘trans’ is transsexual, and there is in fact nothing wrong with transsexuals, but the linguistic association might throw some people off.

Rapture-theology — a group with the stated goal to “transcend humanity” rings religion warning bells in peoples minds, which can be exploited by hack pieces such as The Rapture of the Geeks.

Oddness – I’d like a movement label which wouldn’t cause any strange looks if I mentioned it on e.g., a first date. Maybe this objection overlaps with some of the others… and perhaps you’re right, and the term will become more familiar and palatable in time… but I think this is an important litmus test of the term.

All that said, transhumanist is a powerful label insofar it comes right out and says: we think the future is going to involve the possibility of becoming more than human, and we think that’s a worthy goal. I see the strength of that.

Best wishes,
Mike Johnson
http://moderndragons.blogspot.com/

~~~

Here was my response:

Mike,

Just so you know, there are already multiple sub-movements in transhumanism, some with more far-out names than others. For instance, “singularitarianism”! There’s also “Democratic Transhumanism” which is less radical in its name.

I don’t think, for instance, that an uploaded being made out of pure data and computing a million times more information than would be possible for a human should really be called a “human”.

We are trying to transcend humanity, and I think our name needs to reflect that.

For a first date, would “pro-cyborg” be better? I mean, this is another one of those areas where nothing would pass the test — transhumanism is inherently radical! No name change will fix that.

The sad thing is that every alternative to “transhumanist” I have heard proposed sounds a lot worse. Also, I think it may be permanently too late to turn back on it.

Best,

Michael Anissimov
Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com
http://acceleratingfuture.com

~~~

Then, on another mailing list, in response to the questions “Can you give reasons why you dislike the term? What negatives does it imply to you? What are your thoughts/feelings about the term posthumanism?”, Jamais Cascio wrote:

I actually like the term “transhuman” more than “posthuman” (and I say that as someone who still owns the domain “post-human.org”). Actually, stripped of its connotations and associations, the term “transhuman” is just fine — it doesn’t call for a disassociation with humanity, and emphasizes the elements of transition. Unfortunately, in real world language, you can’t strip away connotations and associations (really, they’re what give language meaning beyond simple definitions). What bothers me about the term, and the reason I don’t refer to myself with it, is that the connotations and associations arising from the way that the term “transhuman” has been used in the past decade or so all boil down to one thing:

Selfishness.

Sometimes, that’s selfishness in the most basic sense — I want to have the right/ability/support to make enhancements to myself. This is something that one finds in any rights-focused community, and isn’t terribly problematic in and of itself. In my brushes with transhumanists over the years, however, I’ve seen this metastasize in a couple of different ways:

* the neo-Randian, “I got mine, Jack,” ultra-selfish types who want these rights/abilities for themselves and really don’t care whether anybody else gets them, too. By and large, these folks don’t (in my experience) deny the potential for drastically divided societies, but in fact seem to relish the notion (or, at best, not care too much about it as long as they’re on the winning side). This is what James Hughes’ “democratic transhumanism” was invented to fight against, and I have a strong bias towards Hughes’ perspective here. But the fact that the term “transhumanism” needs a modifier for people to see it as an inclusive, democratic philosophy is itself indicative of the larger problem.

* the damn-the-consequences, “we’ll fix it in post,” ultra-proactionist types who want to see all manner of experimentation and development happen without any significant regard for the possibility of complex, irreversible mistakes. I’m not calling for the overly-cautious, deep-precautionary approach of not doing anything that might have a negative result at any point anywhere down the road, but for a model that demands a great deal more emphasis on evaluation of consequences and is willing to say “not yet” when the results of those evaluations remain too negative or too vague to feel confident for now. I know that Natasha [Vita-More] and Max [More] created the proactionary principle, and I’m not saying that everyone who adopts that view is guilty of this manner of selfishness — but sadly, it doesn’t seem hard for people to get from a reasonable position to an unreasonable one.

(I wrote about this in the past.)

These two metastasized forms of transhumanism are caricatures, to be sure, but are grounded in reality. I want to emphasize that I’m not saying that everyone in the H+ world can be described in the above ways; I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a distinct minority. But, like it or not, there’s a strong connotation of selfishness connected to the term for the growing numbers of people who have heard of transhumanism, but only have the more vocal online rants to help them understand what it means. Those vocal rants didn’t just come from fringe, late-arriving elements; they were heard from voices at the core of the movement, from its earliest days. I — and a lot of other future-enthusiast folks who might otherwise be allies — simply don’t want to be tarred with that brush.

- Jamais

~~~

The selfishness accusation is evidently not enough to stop me and many others from proudly calling ourselves transhumanist. But I definitely don’t want to see drastically divided societies, and comments like Marvin Minsky’s recent quote in New Scientist frustrate me:

“Ordinary citizens wouldn’t know what to do with eternal life,” says Minsky. “The masses don’t have any clear-cut goals or purpose.” Only scientists, who work on problems that might take decades to solve appreciate the need for extended lifespans, he argues.”

Dr. Minsky, why? From the perspective of the posthuman, believe me, all humans will look pretty much the same. This is the “psychic unity of humankind” that evolutionary psychologists are discovering more about everyday.

All I can do as a non-selfish transhumanist is to repudiate comments such as this.

I know a fair amount of intelligent transhumanists who are admirers of Ayn Rand, who said weird things like, “For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship – the desire to look up to man.” I feel that Ms. Rand promulgated a philosophy of selfishness and excessive absolutism. (Objectively good art? Objective morality? There are no such things.) I agree with her pro-capitalist, pro-secular sentiments, but feel that many use her work is used too often as a justification for petty selfishness. With technologies as powerful as MNT and AGI coming down the road, this selfish attitude could get us all killed.