Interesting reflection. In my experience, many people do not share transhumanist views. A large portion of the human population appears very conservative on societal questions, particularly when it comes to transformative technology. This is obviously the case for many religious people, but also for less religious but educated profiles, who won’t hesitate to invoke the tropes of Prometheus, Icarus, the Tower of Babel, Frankenstein, and so on. Traditional wisdom warns against hubris, including regarding the pursuit of immortality (Gilgamesh and others).
While most of these conservative people are obviously in favor of safeguarding humanity’s survival, they don’t necessarily have an attraction to ASI and biological immortality, on the contrary, the prospect of such societal change can be an absolute repellent for them. It’s possible that this clashes with their preferences almost as much as the prospect of humanity’s end.
So my question is the following : When conducting reasoning like in this article, should we take as reference the preferences of a normal person committed to transhumanist causes, or should we instead reason from what seems to be reality, also taking into account the preferences of these numerous conservative people, regardless of what we might personally think ?
Interesting reflection. In my experience, many people do not share transhumanist views. A large portion of the human population appears very conservative on societal questions, particularly when it comes to transformative technology. This is obviously the case for many religious people, but also for less religious but educated profiles, who won’t hesitate to invoke the tropes of Prometheus, Icarus, the Tower of Babel, Frankenstein, and so on. Traditional wisdom warns against hubris, including regarding the pursuit of immortality (Gilgamesh and others).
While most of these conservative people are obviously in favor of safeguarding humanity’s survival, they don’t necessarily have an attraction to ASI and biological immortality, on the contrary, the prospect of such societal change can be an absolute repellent for them. It’s possible that this clashes with their preferences almost as much as the prospect of humanity’s end.
So my question is the following : When conducting reasoning like in this article, should we take as reference the preferences of a normal person committed to transhumanist causes, or should we instead reason from what seems to be reality, also taking into account the preferences of these numerous conservative people, regardless of what we might personally think ?