Nick Bostrom: We shouldn’t assume that humanity will remain indefinitely in its current form. But we won’t have to wait for biological evolution to change us before we change into something different.
That’s Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He’s also the co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association. Transhumanists believe that human life will be radically enhanced in the future.
Nick Bostrom: We might use our technological abilities to change not just the world around us, but to change also ourselves, our own human nature.
Bostrom said we’re already developing the genetics, enhancement drugs, and nanotechnology to move towards what he calls ‘post humanity.’
Nick Bostrom: You need a label for whatever we might become. If we increase our capacities in different directions, radically extend our lifespans, improve our cognitive and emotional abilities and so on – you might call that the ‘post human phase of humanity.’
In this phase, humans might look not so different from avatars in the virtual world of Second Life. Which may sound like science fiction, but according to Bostrom…
Nick Bostrom: It lies ahead of us, yes, but not that far ahead of us.
Our thanks to:
Nick Bostrom
Director, Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford University
United Kingdom
We’re here to advocate all sentient life’s freedom for evolutionary self-determination, via the ethical implementation of enhancement technologies powered by scientific discovery. This is the time to be alive, to see it all happen. That makes the blood race and each breath is an adventure.
http://www.Thoughtware.TV
The label for the next dominant life form already exists. It’s “rat.”
Intelligence is merely evolution’s latest attempt to find a climactic species which will survive that asteroid impact, and it’s a pretty poor attempt. It doesn’t look as if it’‘s even going to survive long enough to take the test! Dinosaurs did a couple of hundred times better than us.
The next dominant life form will likely be small, omnivorous, with a strong immune system and breed rapidly.
Will We Witness The Wreck of the Old 97 in 2008?
Dear Wayne,
You report,
“Vaclav Havel never did choose to stand up and pull the ’stop’ cord on the train!â€
But, Wayne, the colossal train is adding cars and accelerating its speed as it proceeds down the track. There is no engineer on the train. Everyone has gone below to stoke the furnace so that the train goes faster and faster. Where it will stop, or how, nobody knows. Conventional wisdom indicates the track is clear ahead and without an endpoint. Widely shared and consensually validated thinking assures everyone on board this train that we can add more and more cars to the train and continuously stoke its furnace with fossil fuels so that the train can keep going at an increasing speed as long as we have fuel to keep the train going. There are no limits to the speed the train can achieve, no limits to the number of cars the engine can pull, and no end to the railroad track. Everything is going as planned and will continue without interruption indefinitely.
Wayne, if this train is a metaphor for the ever manmade global political economy, could you help us understand how magical thinking, arrogance, pyramid-type schemes and greed are governing the seemingly endless growth of the global economy and how the unbridled increase of the leviathan-like global economy cannot be sustained much longer by a relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably frangible planet with the size and make-up of Earth?
And what of the ’stop’ cord on the train, Wayne? I can see it, but cannot yet see how pulling it will do any good because there is no engineer in control. Do you think Vaclav Havel could see that the engine room must have been empty for a long time?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001