transhumanist
Article
transhumanist is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 29, 2021 and August 02, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “transhumanist/singularitarian groups working on protecting the long-term future”; “philosophy grad school to join the transhumanist compound”; “Until we defeat death in the glorious transhumanist future”. It most often appears alongside COVID, Eliezer Yudkowsky, 80,000 Hours.
Metadata
- Category: Concepts
- Mention count: 3
- Issue count: 3
- First seen: January 29, 2021
- Last seen: August 02, 2024
Appears In
Related Pages
-
- COVID (2 shared issues)
-
- Eliezer Yudkowsky (2 shared issues)
-
- 80,000 Hours (1 shared issues)
-
- Ableism (1 shared issues)
-
- Acapulco (1 shared issues)
-
- Aella (1 shared issues)
-
- AI alignment problem (1 shared issues)
-
- Alberta (1 shared issues)
-
- Alexander (1 shared issues)
-
- Americans with Disabilities Act (1 shared issues)
-
- Anand Giridharadas (1 shared issues)
-
- anti-ableism (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
Weyl's link doesn't support his claim. It's an 80,000 Hours page saying that that it's important to protect the long-term future, something EA has believed since the beginning. EA started with a sort of merger and cross-pollination between people trying to save lives by eg curing malaria, and transhumanist/singularitarian groups working on protecting the long-term future; it held together because both groups agree that the other's position can make sense given different sets of complicated assumptions about ethics and tractability. The page Weyl links highlights and explains the philosophy around that, but does not claim anyone had a sudden enlightenment where they realized they'd previously been ignoring the threat of totalitarianism and that was wrong. Everyone has always believed that stopping the rise of a totalitarian regime is one part of the important task of protecting the far-future, but we haven't focused on it because it's less tractable and less neglected than other parts. As far as I know we continue to think that and mostly not focus on it aside from occasionally looking for tractable interventions we've missed.
But everyone’s story is weird. During college, my father moonlighted as a juggling instructor. My mother signed up for his class, one thing led to another, and a year later they ran off to Sardinia together and got married. My best man met his wife when she dropped out of philosophy grad school to join the transhumanist compound he was staying at. Darwin spends five billion years optimizing your genes for reproduction, and God laughs and decides that whether or not you mate will depend on which weird parties you go to, or whatever.
Twenty years and exactly one million micromarriages later, I have yet to find any better advice. Gather your micromarriages while ye may, for time is still a-flying. Do annoying things, expect them to fail, and increment a little counter in your head each time, to prevent yourself from going insane. Then do more annoying things. Teach a juggling class. Join a weird transhumanist compound. Go to one of Aella’s weird parties. There is no royal road. I’m not claiming to have super useful advice here, just to be able to say from the end of a long and very rocky path that it does eventually pay off. Or as Lin Manuel-Miranda put it:
Inline links: Lin Manuel-Miranda put it
Until we defeat death in the glorious transhumanist future, it’s coming for all of us. Some of us may die suddenly in a tragic accident. Some may be diagnosed with a terminal illness that kills in a matter of months.