Is Transhumanism a desirable future for humanity?

Transhumanism is a philosophical and scientific

movement that advocates the use of current and
emerging technologies to augment human
capabilities and improve the human condition. The
movement proposes that humans with augmented
capabilities will evolve into an enhanced species that
transcends humanity—the “posthuman.”

The aims of the transhumanist movement are

summed up by Mark O’Connell in his book To Be a Machine (2017): “It is their belief that we
can and should eradicate ageing as a cause of death; that we can and should use technology
to augment our bodies and our minds; that we can and should merge with machines, remaking
ourselves, finally, in the image of our own higher ideals.”

The term transhumanism was popularized by the English biologist and philosopher Julian
Huxley in his 1957 essay of the same name, who held that it was now possible for social
institutions to supplant human evolution in refining and improving the human species.
Although Huxley was principally concerned with advancing the human condition
through social and cultural change, the general notion of humanity transcending itself came
to be adopted by the emerging transhumanist movement encouraged by significant scientific
advances and breakthroughs – cryopreservation of egg cells, cryonics, stem cell therapies, in
vitro fertilization, brain chips, animal cloning, exoskeletons (e.g., robotic arms), artificial
intelligence (AI), and genetic engineering, nanotechnology, biotechnology…
Advocates of transhumanism believe there are spectacular rewards to be reaped from going
beyond the natural barriers and limitations that constitute an ordinary human being.
Adherents of transhumanism envisage a day when humans will free themselves of all
corporeal restraints.

Augmented bodies

The idea of technologically enhancing our bodies is not new. But

the extent to which transhumanists take the concept is. In the
past, we made devices such as wooden legs, hearing aids,
spectacles and false teeth. In future, we might use implants to
augment our senses so we can detect infrared or ultraviolet
radiation directly or boost our cognitive processes by
connecting ourselves to memory chips. Ultimately, by merging
man and machine, science will produce humans who have
vastly increased intelligence, strength, and lifespans; a near
embodiment of gods.

Fighting, putting off and reversing the effects of ageing

The transhumanist movement believes that modern technology ultimately offers humans
the chance to live for aeons, unshackled – as they would be – from the frailties of the human
body. Failing organs would be replaced by longer-lasting high-tech versions just as carbon-
fibre blades could replace the flesh, blood and bone of natural limbs. This would turn our frail
version 1.0 human bodies into a far more durable and capable 2.0 counterpart.

Cryonics
However, the technology needed to achieve these goals relies on as
yet unrealised developments in genetic engineering, nanotechnology
and many other sciences and it may take many decades to reach
fruition. As a result, many transhumanist advocates have backed the
idea of having their bodies stored in liquid nitrogen and cryogenically
preserved until medical science has reached the stage when they can
be revived and their resurrected bodies augmented, enhanced or
cured from a disease like cancer.

Four such cryogenic facilities have now been constructed: three in the
US and one in Russia. The largest is the Alcor Life Extension
Foundation in Arizona whose refrigerators store more than 100 bodies
(nevertheless referred to as “patients” by staff) in the hope of their subsequent thawing and
physiological resurrection. It is “a place built to house the corpses of optimists”, as O’Connell
says in To Be a Machine.

The culture of youth and the fear of ageing has provoked the overpowering urge to use
technology to overcome the ageing effects.

Biotechnology & AI: computerized extension of consciousness

Ultimately, adherents of transhumanism envisage a day when humans will free themselves
of all corporeal restraints. They believe this turning point will be reached around the year
2030, when biotechnology will enable a union between humans and genuinely intelligent
computers and AI systems. The resulting human-machine mind will become free to roam a
universe of its own creation, uploading itself at will on to a “suitably powerful computational
substrate”.

Much of the impetus for establishing such extreme forms

of transhuman technology comes from California and
Silicon Valley: Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the
entrepreneur who wants to send the human race to Mars,
also believes that to avoid becoming redundant in the
face of the development of artificial intelligence, humans
must merge with machines to enhance our own intellect.

BRAIN-CHIP (May 2023)

Elon Musk's brain-chip firm Neuralink received approval from the US Food and Drugs
Administration (FDA) to conduct its first tests on humans. The Neuralink implant company
wants to help restore vision and mobility to people by linking brains to computers.
Neuralink hopes to use its microchips to treat conditions such as paralysis and blindness,
and to help certain disabled people use computers and mobile technology. The chips -
which have been tested in monkeys - are designed to interpret signals produced in the brain
and relay information to devices via Bluetooth. Experts have cautioned that Neuralink's
brain implants will require extensive testing to overcome technical and ethical challenges
if they are to become widely available.

Mr Musk has also previously suggested that the proposed technology could help ease concerns
about humans being displaced by AI.
Towards the Age of Singularity?

• In The Age of Spiritual Machines (1999), the American futurist and computer scientist
Ray Kurzweil predicted that machines will not only overtake human intelligence but
will appear to develop free will and have emotional and spiritual experiences.

• In The Singularity Is Near (2005), Kurzweil expanded on this theory to predict an

impending singularity, in which human intelligence will merge with artificial
intelligence and all disease, aging, social ills, and death will be reversed, resolved, or
eliminated. Kurzweil predicted that the singularity will be reached by 2045.

Space colonization
The likely catastrophic effects of climate
change have spurred some transhumanists
to promote space colonization. Critics have
countered that realizing the transhumanist
goal of slowing or reversing aging and
extending human life spans will only worsen
overpopulation—to which a transhumanist
may reassert the necessity of establishing
human colonies on Mars. For
transhumanists, our destiny is to evolve
and to expand, and that includes space.

For transhumanists, living in space will change us in unimaginable ways. It is the inevitable
consequence of our species adapting to new environments across the cosmos: we will grow
more resilient, intelligent and far more capable. It will blur the definition of what it means to
be human — and a transformation will occur when being human begins to be something
more.

Space environments contain many hazards for our current biology, such as damaging cosmic
radiation, low-gravity leading to bone-loss and muscle deterioration, and with current
technology, the simple limitation of trip times to other stars that vastly exceed the human
lifespan. If humans or transhumans are to survive in the environment of space, we also need
to transform ourselves to meet the challenge, like building our bodies to be more adaptable,
flexible and sustainable. This would require both medical, scientific, technological and
industrial design components. For example, although spacesuits have certainly become more
convenient for astronauts over the years, for the long-term space travel and lifestyle needs,
we ought to have biologically adaptable bodies to meet the environmental challenges of
space. This could imply designing new bodies for humans.

Risks linted to transhumanism?

• Discrimination & Social Inequalities

Many of those who question the values of the transhuman movement warn it risks creating
technologies that will only create deeper gulfs in an already divided society where only the
richest will be able to afford to become enhanced or augmented while many other lose out.
  For their part, transhumanists argue that the costs of enhancement will inevitably
plummet and point to the example of the mobile phone, which was once so expensive
only the very richest could afford one, but which today is a universal gadget owned by
virtually every member of society. Such ubiquity will become a feature of
technologies for augmenting men and women, advocates insist.

Racism and discrimination remain tragic social issues, but when

you think about it, the differences in skin-color that we perceive
as different races are nothing compared to the differences to be
conveyed over time by genetic engineering. Even if transhumans
are welcomed at first into our society, after they become
commonplace, discrimination could occur against them from
humans who remain unchanged: even if transhumans could look
like humans, they will have better functioning bodies, with a
higher bandwidth of cognition and stronger sensory capabilities.
They will probably have millions of nanorobots in their brains and bodies performing all sorts
of tasks to help them function better, both cognitively and physically. So, it seems plausible
that “pure” humans might be envious of or annoyed by the transhumans.

• Eugenics

The flip-side of transhumanism is that it allows humanity to explore the eugenic fantasy of
the “perfect human”, and that might lead to reverse-discrimination against humans who
choose to stay “pure” and retain the flaws they were originally endowed with by nature. Will
transhumans respect normal humans as the progenitors of their species, or will mankind in its
present form eventually be regarded as “obsolete”? This reflects fears that technology will
be exploited by those wishing to become or breed “superhumans.” Transhumanism is a form
of ableist eugenics that perpetuates the logic of the Nazi regime by scientifically engineering
disability out of existence. Eugenics, as such, has moved from the dark ghettos of Nazi
Germany to well-lit science labs, but retains the same aims. Transhumanists want to reduce
and eliminate disabilities and to engineer nondisabled bodies.

This is the premise of the film Gattaca, in which “natural-born” people are second-class
citizens labelled as “in-valids” and denied civil liberties, like equal access to jobs, housing, and
basic respect. The film demonstrates that the mainstream concept of disability is a political
apparatus used to uphold ableist hierarchies of power. Science cannot eliminate disability,
but it can be used to police and punish “disabled people,” whoever they may be.

Super-Athletes?
The drug erythropoietin (EPO) increases red blood cell production in patients with severe anaemia but
has also been taken up as an illicit performance booster by some athletes to improve their
bloodstream’s ability to carry oxygen to their muscles, resulting in doping scandals. And that is just the
start: we are now approaching the time when, for some kinds of track sports such as the 100-metre
sprint, athletes who run on carbon-fibre blades will be able outperform those who run on natural legs.
The question is: when the technology reaches this level, will it be ethical to allow surgeons to replace
someone’s healthy limbs with carbon-fibre blades just so they can win gold medals?