ShortHand: ‘The War on Death’ – Transhumanism
Starting in the mid-20th century, a movement known as Transhumanism has advocated that human beings should be optimised in every way possible. And they don’t do anything by halves: their aims include eradicating all illness, reversing the ageing process, merging man and machine – and even ending death itself.
So what could go wrong? Well, among a lot of very real and phenomenally impressive scientific progress – there are also some pretty sinister ideas lurking below the surface.
So: can brain chips cure dementia? Can you join with AI and live forever as a machine? Or are we just opening ourselves up to a world where an enhanced, post-human elite rule over the rest of us puny earthlings? Find out in this week’s ShortHand.
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Sources:
https://www.au.dk/fukuyama/boger/essay
https://nickbostrom.com/oldemail.pdf
https://academic.oup.com/book/31995/chapter-abstract/267764064?redirectedFrom=fulltext
'Transhumanism: The History of a Dangerous Idea'
https://qz.com/2141720/modern-prosthetics-go-beyond-bionic-limbs-and-into-the-brain
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3328150 https://nickbostrom.com/oldemail.pdf https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211799#:~:text=Further%2C%20the%20best%20experimentally%20measured,compared%20to%20NA%20athletes%2C%20respectively
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Warwick