I think Transhumanism and singularity are a beautiful vision of a society but I believe it requires a level of enlightenment we humans are yet to be shown capable of. But hey in the end it’s a dream worth chasing isn’t it ?
Well I’ve been having doubts about it …
First of all
1 my biggest doubt is the possibility.
How do we know that even if those things are physically possible, they aren’t impractical to achieve and that we won’t find out that there are limitations on what we can do as our knowledge improves ? Is betting on something like this safe ?
2 lack of ethics discussions. Many Transhumanists and singularitarians I’ve come across really come off as either extremely privileged and completely oblivious to the social effects of such technologies. Besides the lack of minority participation in itself really shows a lot. I don’t think it’s useful to say “minorities don’t participate in this because they don’t know about Transhumanism” there might be other reasons as well.
3 the outright denialistic behaviour and the amount of people in fragile mental states joining Transhumanism. Constantly looking for validation of one’s worldview , avoiding anything that challenges one’s views really anxiously. Besides many people who are overly invested into Transhumanism seem to be in fragile mental conditions and seem to really be looking for a hope or in denial of their condition. Is it actually ethical ? To get people involved in a non safe bet ?
I’ve seen many actual academics say that people should appreciate Transhumanists should stop the immortality or bust mentality and appreciate the practical stuff for current period , all repeated this same thing
4 I admit I’ve been and still am in all 3 categories but I would very much like to be proven wrong and would still like to believe that Transhumanism is still worth it and not just a false hope for people in Denial or fragile emotional states …
We’ll find out when we get to those limits, I guess. So far, science and technology advance. We can keep going forward and see how far it gets us.
The default outcome is that you will die, just like everyone you care about, so that puts “safe” into some perspective.
Is there anything else you would prefer to bet on? If the answer is something like “religion”, I think this bet makes even less sense. If the answer is something like “improving the world”, well, you can try to have both. Science brought the green revolution, science may one day cure malaria, etc.
Do you have any specific reasons in mind? Because this sounds like an accusation, too unspecific to respond to meaningfully.
This article is better than anything I could write: Black People Less Likely.
Please note that a friendly singularity could make all forms of privilege disappear literally overnight. (Technically, so could a bad singularity, by killing us all.)
By the way, it seems to me that you are trying to solve an emotional problem by having a debate on internet. In general, this doesn’t work. You need to address the true cause of the problem, whatever it is.