Transhumanism, as it stands today, is a philosophy that emphasizes the future of human enhancement and the risks and opportunities presented when one species (Homo sapiens sapiens) differentiates into millions or billions of new species through technological self-transformation. Transhumanists argue that unless we blow ourselves up, this differentiation is very likely to occur, whether we like it or not. I should also emphasize that transhumanists are not unequivocally in favor of every possible enhancement pathway, and in fact may be more concerned about the potential downsides of these technologies than the upsides. Like me, for instance.

What will transhumanism be in the future? Well, if humanity survives and develops technologies that people can use to profoundly modify their bodies, including their mental and physical capacities, then transhumanism will not be a “futurist philosophy”, but merely everyday life. It will be hard not to care about the risks and benefits of self-modification technologies at that point, because they’ll be directing everything around us and the course of world history. Everyone will become de facto transhumanists, so the term will lose much of its present meaning. Do people that use computers call themselves “computerists”? No, but that’s what many of us are, whether we explicitly recognize it or not.

Transhumanists argue that we need a head start — why start caring about these issues when they’re already coming full force, and everyone is more or less forced to care about them? We can start now, analyzing the possibilities and deploying strategies to increase the probability that things go well and our species doesn’t go extinct. Some transhumans may not be so nice, and there’ll need to be systems in place to ensure that these individuals are kept in check and prevented from acquiring too much power. Traditional political banter is only peripherally relevant to this task, because politics as we know it is predicated on an all-human society with human motivations, human intelligence, human habits, and human levels of capability. We have to do something far more difficult — build a model of a world unlike anything else that has existed before. All of history has only contained one truly intelligent species — us. When we’re confronted with billions of new intelligent species, how will we react? Will those that had the foresight to prepare in advance be able to soften the technological torrent, bend it in a way that is beneficial both to humans and transhumans? I do think so, and that’s why these investigations are extremely important now.