Why am I a transhumanist?

One very important reason is the inherent fragility of the human body and mind. Every day, just by getting out of bed, we put ourselves in a little bit at risk of misfortune or even death. The situation is far better than it was a couple centuries ago, but still, tomorrow any one of us could get into a car accident and it would all be over.

Not to mention the trauma that it seems almost everyone has to go through to get a decent mate. Human mating, as with mating in general, is largely a zero-sum game: if the other person picks up the hot girl or guy we like, we’re out of luck. Human psychology is configured to be largely zero-sum; someone else is successful, and it can make us feel a little worse. Why does it have to be that way? Because the process that made us, evolution, optimizes for the survival of our genes, not us. We’re just the robotic shell used by the genes to achieve their goals.

Many would agree with what I’ve outlined so far. What they don’t seem to agree on is that we should make an effort to change things, yank them up by the roots and reconfigure them to our liking. Why the hell not? The situation is so bad that we have social intuitions that cause us to be wary of people that point out these flaws in the first place. They tend to be misanthropic. But I think noticing these flaws is important.

My point is that it’s perfectly possible to be enthusiastic and cheerful about life, while simultaneously acknowledging that our bodies are weak and are minds are twisted by our genes’ shallow goals.

People grow old and die when they shouldn’t have to. People work at jobs they hate when they shouldn’t have to. They get into nasty relationships when they deserve so much better. They get bored or angry or sad or confused when if they had the choice, none of those things would happen.

But our society tells itself lies about how these things were all meant to be. That God wills it. That whatever doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.

Bullshit!

Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me miserable, it doesn’t make me stronger. These empty phrases are defensive mechanisms that are fundamentally based on the premise that we can’t do anything about the problem. But we can. We’ve spent so many centuries reassuring ourselves we can’t change our natures that we are blinded to the technologies on the horizon which will enable it.

We’ve achieved so much as a species already. We sit in air-conditioned buildings, using devices with billions of nanoscale electronic components, communicating with people across the world at the speed of light, and then we say things like, “there’s nothing new under the Sun”. There is!

We can defeat aging, upgrade the human brain, colonize the solar system, get food and water for everyone, and wipe out all diseases, and that’s just the beginning. Our defeatist attitude about solving these problems is what holds us back! If people would stop settling for what they have, and start wanting something more, something outside the box of more toys and more partying, then the world could become a lot better place in a hurry.

Don’t be part of the problem, be a part of the solution! Get educated, and use your education to achieve something amazing — as quickly as possible! Use your intelligence to come up with something nobody else has come up with before, and put all your energy towards making it real.

The Enlightenment happened when people stopped being tools of the elite and started trying to earnest to make the world around them a better place. Transhumanism takes this one step further — instead of reengineering the world to be a better place, it also compels us to reengineer ourselves. And we will.