X-Message-Number: 29436
From: "Mark Plus" <>
Subject: Re: Look at me! I'm a transhumanist weirdo!
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:32:25 -0700

In fairness to some of the transhumanists listed on that page in Wikipedia:

Several of them have advanced degrees and hold regular jobs in academia 
while writing about transhumanist topics as avocations. They look a little 
more substanial than the self-professed but marginally employable 
"algernons" who have promoted themselves as the public faces of 
transhumanism.

Ray Kurzweil, despite his recent weirdness about the Singularity and claims 
that he stopped aging in 1990, has at least invented a few useful things and 
made some money running his companies. (Does anyone know of a reference to 
his net worth?) While I thank Kurzweil for popularizing "singularitarian," a 
word he credits me with coining in his book "The Singularity Is Near" (p. 
498), I would respect him more if went back to his lab and continued to 
invent the future instead of merely talking about it every time he can find 
an audience.

The people on the list known primarily for their published science fiction? 
That just demonstrates  they have marketable fantasy lives, not that they've 
necessarily done anything tangible towards turning us all into immortal 
superhumans. (J.R. Rowling probably sells more copies of her Harry Potter 
novels in a month than most science fiction writers can sell in their whole 
careers.)

A couple of cryonics-friendly cryobiologists probably also belong on that 
list, though I can understand their voluntary absence if the identification 
with transhumanism would cause professional difficulties. They have a better 
claim than most transhumanists that they've done something to build 
transhumanity instead of just fantaszing about it.

Oh, I suppose I could belong on that list, too. Only I just claim that I've 
run small motels for the past 16 years. A lot of the transhuman-speak bores 
me these days because in my late 40's I realize how little progress we've 
made in instantiating all those exciiting visions I grew up reading about in 
my teens and twenties. I suspect a lot of other transhumanists around my age 
will admit to similar disillusionment, perhaps after you disinhibit them 
with some alcohol.

Mark Plus

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