Ben Goertzel’s New Writings Wednesday, Jun 10 2009
transhumanism 4:18 pm
I’m not going to pretend to ignore this, so what do people think of Ben’s new Cosmist stuff?
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Ugh, why adopt/accept de Garis’ terminology? How pointlessly aggravating.
A free, wide-ranging mind having fun and musing on dozens of valid and (mostly) significant questions…I would not worry about it. He’s certainly established his bona fides elsewhere.
What do whales think? Are we in a simulation? Will sexuality ultimately prove to be too great a hindrance to the super-intelligent? I certainly would like answers to these, and Ben writes about the issues in such a warm and bouyant tone that it seems ungenerous to turn away.
As far as the epater-le-bourgeois-and-frighten-the-soccer-moms concern, I don’t think he comes near the shock value of Kurzweil’s well-publicized scenario — our inevitable march into the enveloping arms of the machine to reawaken into a deeply foreign consciousness — with its many implied exclamation points.
The trouble with a new “ism” like this is that no-one will bother to support it.
I think we have a “too many ‘isms not enough supporters” problem.
The “Cosmist” terminology has been also used by De Garis, but it is mainly used for the early 20th century Russian Cosmists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Cosmism
In the Cosmist Manifesto (in the comments section), Ben says: “I find myself in great spiritual and conceptual sympathy with the Russian Cosmists, and I’d like to think they’d agree largely with my views if they were aware of modern technology and science”.
I think Ben’s manifesto is a seminal, very important paper and look forward to the revival of Cosmism, which is my favorite interpretation and formulation of transhumanism. A very interesting and intense discussion is ongoing at the cosmic engineers mailing list.