A blog focusing on some of the most prominent “-isms” surrounding humanity’s technological future: extropianism, transhumanism, posthumanism, the mouth-filling Singularitarianism, and others in that constellation.
June 17, 2010
[A few more posts about last weekend’s H+ Summit at Harvard.] Another of the transhumanist movement’s more prominent figures, David Pearce (bio, slides), spoke at the conference about what he considers a moral imperative: the abolition of “suffering in all sentient life.” As with much of the rest of...
June 16, 2010
[A few more posts about last weekend’s H+ Summit at Harvard.] After taking a little time to recuperate from the H+ Summit this weekend at Harvard, I’ll be finishing up my coverage over the next day or so. One of the bigger names speaking at the conference was Natasha Vita-More (bio, slides, on-the-fly transcript). The wife of...
June 14, 2010
[Continuing coverage of the 2010 H+ Summit at Harvard.] After James Hughes came Patrick Lin (bio). Lin noted correctly that something that’s gone basically unremarked at this conference so far is how much of the push towards futuristic technologies and human enhancement is driven by the military. The military has strong reasons to...
June 13, 2010
[Continuing coverage of the 2010 H+ Summit at Harvard.] James Hughes had the morning talk after Patrick Hopkins. He basically did a rapidfire ten-minute version of a mini-essay he published earlier this year on transhumanism’s inheritance of Enlightenment problems. That mini-essay was supposed to be part of a seven-essay series,...
June 13, 2010
Up next is Brian Malow (bio), self-described “transhumorist.” I think that means he transcends the boundaries of what’s humorous, because yowza: — “We are going to die, and that is a spoiler.” — (after a joke bombs) “That was an endothermic joke. It required the addition of...
June 13, 2010
[Continuing coverage of the 2010 H+ Summit at Harvard.] Next up is Patrick Hopkins on “Why Uploading Will Not Work” (bio, slides). A few days ago on this blog, guest-poster Mark Gubrud previewed Hopkins’s presentation at length. As Gubrud described, Hopkins looks at the language used to describe mind uploading. What are...
June 13, 2010
The 2010 H+ Summit is back underway here at Harvard, running even later than yesterday. After the first couple of talks, the conference launches into a more philosophical block, which promises a break in the doldrums of most of these talks so far. First up in this block is George Dvorsky (bio, slides, on-the-fly transcript), who rightly...
June 12, 2010
[Continuing coverage of the 2010 H+ Summit at Harvard.] Ben Goertzel (bio, slides) delivers the last talk of the day, rehashing lots of boilerplate stuff about artificial intelligence. Towards the end of the talk, he uses the word “ethics” for what I think must be the first time in the conference. The developments he’s...
June 12, 2010
Darlene Cavalier (bio, slides) is giving the most tangible talk they’ve had yet on the conference’s theme of “The Citizen Scientist.” She’s citing a number of anecdotes about small, nonprofessional organizations conducting experiments on their own, or amateur astronomers and entomologists making little...
June 12, 2010
[Continuing coverage of the 2010 H+ Summit at Harvard.] Kevin Jain (bio), an undergrad at Harvard who is president of the school’s Future Society, talks about “assumptions” behind academic disciplines. Each one is predicated on some assumed fact about human nature. Psychology assumes the existence of death;...