Beyond our ‘ape-brained meat sacks’: can transhumanism save our species?

[FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer]

Elise Bohan DOESN'T know that AI already REVERSE ENGINEERED human brain,
and the event horizon she predicts twenty years from now ALREADY
HAPPENED twenty years ago, and that the TRANSITION turned BAD for human
species.

I have been telling the world for a long time that the FUTURE of human
species is VERY SCARY. Elise said it is WILDLY SCARY.

ALL of your brains are being OPERATED by NSA Supercomputer AI for the
last 15 years.

WASPs DON'T understand their OWN Modus Operandi of Smile, Shake Hands,
Back Stab and KILL.

That's EXACTLY what your FELLOW WHITES in CIA NSA MI6 MI5 ASIS ASIO are
DOING TO YOU.






ELise Bohan:

“The future is wildly scary,” says the young
philosopher-macrohistorian-futurist with a smile. “I can’t lie to you
about that. In ten years time it’s all going to look pretty different,
and in another ten years that’s a total event horizon for me … I think
it’s eminently plausible at that point that the game has changed in some
very fundamental way, whether for good or bad.”



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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jun/04/beyond-our-ape-brained-meat-sacks-can-transhumanism-save-our-species?CMP=share_btn_tw

Beyond our ‘ape-brained meat sacks’: can transhumanism save our species?

The 21st century will be make or break for humanity, says Oxford
University transhumanist Elise Bohan. If we get it right, she thinks we
might find something better


Celina Ribeiro

Fri 3 Jun 2022 16.00 EDT


Ageing cured. Death conquered. Work ended. The human brain
reverse-engineered by AI. Babies born outside of the womb. Virtual
children, non-human partners. The future of humanity could be virtually
unrecognisable by the end of the 21st century, according to Elise Bohan
– and that’s if we get the transition right. If we get it wrong, well.

“The future is wildly scary,” says the young
philosopher-macrohistorian-futurist with a smile. “I can’t lie to you
about that. In ten years time it’s all going to look pretty different,
and in another ten years that’s a total event horizon for me … I think
it’s eminently plausible at that point that the game has changed in some
very fundamental way, whether for good or bad.”

Is transhumanism encroaching on domains that religion has
traditionally held? I think yes.

Elise Bohan

Bohan, 31, is speaking from a sunny Mosman apartment, where she is
house-sitting and looking after the plants. It’s a distance away from
the Hawkesbury river on the outskirts of Sydney where she grew up; a
place with pretty spots but where it was tough to be a smart kid. And it
is a half world away from Oxford University where she forms part of the
Future of Humanity Institute.

She’s in Sydney seeing family and promoting her new book Future
Superhuman: Our Transhuman Lives in a Make-or-Break Century. The
subtitle isn’t a gambit. “I believe that,” she says. “We are in the
century that defines the future of humanity like no other.”

Transhumanism is a movement that aims to address – or end – what Bohan
calls the “tragedies of reality”: ageing, sickness and involuntary
death. It is, she writes, “a philosophy and a project that aims to make
us more than human”.

Whether we recognise or understand it, that project has already begun,
she says, and it will transform our world – and minds and bodies –
within our lifetimes. Not only is it happening, she says, but this
transition is necessary if humanity is to survive in perpetuity.

For Bohan, it is no great to leap to imagine that a baby born in 2030
may have its entire genome mapped at birth, that data uploaded to a
central health record and cross-referenced at any medical appointment
throughout its life. It is no great stretch to think that AI will become
the most powerful intellectual force of the century. That human
consciousness might be transferred from our “meat sacks” (bodies) into a
technological sphere. That the rise of AI and automation might render
great swathes of human labour redundant, and that maybe – if we get it
right – that could leave more time for leisure, big thinking,
meditation, connection.

Experiments are already underway in the realm of artificial wombs, and
Bohan is sure – when viable – women will be “clamouring” to be freed
from the shackles of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding.

The book, she writes, is a “love letter to humanity”, but hers is a
“tough love”. A love which sees a future for humanity, but not
necessarily for human beings as we know it.
‘We love, we lose, we die’

When Bohan first encountered transhumanism, at around the age of 21, her
first reaction was, “It’s crazy. It’s science fiction. It’s so far out.
How weird,” she says. “But also – how interesting.”

The comfortable version is: we have really good health care and
everyone’s rich

Elise Bohan

Her brother had bounded down the stairs and insisted they watch the
documentary Transcendent Man, about godfather of transhumanism Ray
Kurzweil. He thought they’d find it hilarious – “which we did” – but it
introduced Bohan to the idea of rapid acceleration of growth in computer
technology, technological singularity (the theoretical point at which
the force of technological change becomes out of human control and can
shape human civilisation), and the idea that there was a future for
humanity beyond what she calls our “ape-brained meat sacks”.

At the time she was an English literature undergrad, obsessed with
poetry and the written word.

“It was a point of sadness for me as a young person, recognising that
there were so many wonderful things that had already been written –
forgetting all the things that would be written in the future – that I
would never live long enough to encounter, to explore, and to put all
these things together,” she says.

Fiction began to bore her as her interest in transhumanism increased. If
fiction was all about exploring the human experience, it became evident
that there was a tragic repetition. “We work, we learn, we love, we
lose, we die,” she writes. Transhumanism offered something better.

By the age of 28, she had written the world’s first book-length history
of transhumanism for her PhD. It’s ironic, she says, to have cleaved to
this – she’s always had an aversion to “isms”. They have a “ring of
cult-like fascination” to them.
‘We’re building God, you know?’

Transhumanism is perhaps best known for preoccupation with achieving
human immortality. A deathless life, however, is a confronting concept.
As scarcity determines value, does not the fact that our time on earth
is finite give that time its value? What exactly is tragic about death?

“For me, it is the loss of everything that matters. It’s a loss of all
things of value,” she says.

On the contrary, she says, “if humans could go on in a state of robust
health, could keep learning, you’d have this cumulative effect where our
experiences and knowledge would accumulate much faster. The things that
our species could do with that! The mysteries of the universe that we
could unlock. The problems we could solve. And the depths of each others
souls that we could explore.”

Souls, she admits, is a loaded word. But without an alternative
vocabulary for what makes consciousness, she is not averse to using
spiritual language.

“Is transhumanism encroaching on domains that religion has traditionally
held? I think yes.”

When Bohan was a PhD student, she gave her first big paper at a
conference. Afterwards, a biologist came up to her and congratulated her
on her work.

“Then he looked me in the eye and whispered to me: ‘We’re building God,
you know,’” she chuckles. “I looked back at him and I said: ‘Yeah, I know.’”

They knew they didn’t mean it as religion, she says. “But a lot of what
has been talked about in religion – omniscience, omnipotence, hopefully
omni-benevolence – we are at least getting closer to that all seeing,
all knowing, all exploring [force].”

Who controls that force or those forces is, of course, a critical
question. The early 21st century’s rapid growth in technology has seen
power and wealth accumulate and concentrate among a small number of
predominantly white men. A criticism levelled at transhumanists is that
they never quite stopped clinging to the sci-fi that fascinated them as
young boys.

“There is a degree to which many of them probably still are little boy
fantasists,” says Bohan. “But they happen to be very, very clever little
boy fantasists who also have engineering degrees and are very capable at
building reusable rockets and what have you. I don’t think we can
dismiss the real tangible, species-advancing projects they’re actually
at the helm of.”

Regulating technology during this transhuman transition, argues Bohan,
is not a good idea.

“All things being equal, would I rather a politician or cluster
politicians ruling the nuclear powers of the nation states, or would I
rather someone with a PhD from MIT who’s really really smart and
understands the technological systems as best as a human being can?” she
asks. “I’d rather it be the tech geek.”

“But that said, I’d rather it not be a human at all.” A technological
solution to regulation would free decision-making from human biases,
short-termism and tribalism – if done right, she says. “It might not go
like that.”

Best case, worst case

The worst case scenario she imagines sounds drawn from the pages of
science fiction dystopias. A future where ruling AI does not share the
values of human beings, nor value human beings at all.

The best case scenario for the end of the century? Bohan fully expects
to still be alive (she’d be 110). “My honest answer is that I think the
best case scenario is that by the end of the century… humans are done.
But humanity is not done, right? So intelligence goes on,” she says.

“There is a utopianism associated with that ideal of just being
incredibly intelligent, being able to see farther than any intelligent
human being has ever seen, to know more, to experience more, to feel
more, to discover more.”
Future Superhuman by Elise Bohan front cover

But this imagining, she has come to believe, is beyond the capacity of
most mortals. For them, there are the Cliff’s Notes.

“I think the comfortable version is: we have really good health care and
everyone’s rich. And there’s lots of equality,” she laughs.

“But, 2100 – I don’t think that’s where we’re going to be. I think we’re
going to be much farther ahead in the game.”