i don't consider myself to be a transhumanist, but the idea doesn't frighten me as much as it did at first. I imagine that a humanist would be pretty scary to a Neanderthal. (and i know that we're not directly descended from Neanderthals, gimme some latitude.)

The first thing you imagine is some kind of future beehive, the Borg, but it might not be that way. "Everything that is making us human" is destroying us, and destroying the world. For real. I don't like the idea of future generations leaving us behind, and not having any real connection to our traditions and culture, but what will the future generations think? Suffering, fear, and the fear of suffering motivate things like war, oppression, and class struggle, addiction, loneliness. They also motivate great art. it saddens one to think that our descendents might not understand the violent emotions of The Iliad, but then you look at it another way, and it would be kind of great.


I don't think i have to take a position. I don't feel like anything that I am going to do during my remaining 20 or 30 years is going to have any influence over how these questions will be resolved, but I'm also not sure that this can be stopped, except by religious conservatives, and I'm not really happy about the idea of future generations living in their world, either.

Actually, I think Glenn Beck is a pretty good argument for transhumanism.

It doesn't frighten me because I am as close to fully confident as I can be that it won't amount to anything, but it worries me that influential people believe it with such religious fervor. Its the TED Talks crowd's counterpart to creationism.

JHM, the problems you mention are problems of overpopulation. Sooner or later that's going to sort itself out, unfortunately for us.

Glenn Beck is never right about anything, ever. What is wrong with you.

The video "Frank Tipler - The Ultimate Future - TEDx Brussels 2010" in the hopper at the moment combines TED, christianity, AND transhumanism. :P

I don't really know anything about the transhumanist movement, but I think a lot of our problems could be solved if we could all change our genetic makeup on the fly. Like, sprout tentacles, a chitinous shell, wings, gills and compound eyes at will. No Gattaca scenarios there.
What I'm saying is we'd be a lot better if we were the Thing.

Pre-emptive warning: Tipler is a colossal idiot who, if not for the fact he does some serious mathematical research, would have been laughed out of academia a long time ago. I've heard him referred to as Tulane's private shame.

Old Zircon, no matter what the population, there's never been a time in human history when there was no war, oppression, class struggle, addiction, or loneliness.

Sure, I'll give him credit for successful pandering, but substance? In most of his videos? Move over boxxy, JHM has a new hard-on!

Okay, three points.

1. I absolutely stand by my statement.

2. This guy doesn't deserve to scoop Boxxy's cat's litter.

3. I haven't had a hard on in about a year, since the doctor put me on Flomax and Proscar.

I don't know how you define substantial, poopy, but here's a list of authors that were cited in the first two minutes:

Teilhard de CHARDIN
Max More
Raymond Kurzweil
Nick Bostrom
Kurt Vonnegut
David Pearce

Still, you raised an interesting point when you talked about my dick.

I didn't like other videos of his, but I liked this one. C'est la vie.

Also me.

Honestly it deserves a one-star just for copying ray william johnson.

>>My granddad used to have arthritis so bad he wished he could just chop his leg off and get a new one. Had he lived far into the future, they could have made that happen.

As I write this, my best friend is in the hospital recovering from hip replacement surgery. The joints are where the pain is, and they've been replacing hips and knees for a long time. Maybe your Grandad just needed Obamacare.

Joint issues run in my family. I've been on prescription-strength Ibuprofen for a few years to deal with knee, hip and shoulder pain. Before I started that, I never thought the little aches made that much difference, but after getting relief, I realized how tired it had made me at the end of the day.

Even more shocking was how depressed the pain made me. Seriously, my outlook is much brighter now that I don't end every day in pain and am able to get a good night's sleep.

Both my mom's parents spent their final years in wheelchairs, immobilized by severe arthritis. My mom is only a year or two away from this fate. She's taking painkillers and had to have some surgery, including getting some vertebrae fused. It's really reduced her mobility. We worry that she's suffering from mild depression because she losing her independence and can't care for the family the way she used to.

If the technology existed now to replace bodies with mechanical equivalents, I would hop on that bandwagon.

it's worth noting here that ROUS got the title exactly wrong . The title is: "Is Futurama the Best Argument AGAINST Transhumanism?" The fact that no one has noticed is probably the best argument against anyone having actually watched the video.

I've come to the conclusion that these rhetorical questions in the titles are supposed to be silly, and are not to be taken seriously AT ALL. The guy seems to want to engage you by appearing to be really dumb. In this case, however, I think he's dead wrong to bring Futurama into any discussion about the future, because Futurama isn't really about the future. Just about everything that happens on Futurama, the EyePhones, the debate about Robosexual Marriage, the war with the bouncing ball creatures, the thoughtless slaughter of the Popplers, is a way of looking at our own time. Sometimes it's a direct satire, other times it's a funhouse mirror, absurd for the point of being absurd, but if the future turns out to be anything like Futurama, it's just going to be a coincidence, nothing more.

I think that this guy uses rhetorical questions differently than what we're used to. When Fox News runs a title that says "Obama: Worst President Ever?", it's a way of implying a thing, saying it without sticking your neck out. The implied answer is always "yes".

When this guy names his video "Does facebook makes us all better citizens?" or whatever, the answer is usually "OH GOD NO WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY BE THINKING?" It's a way of getting your attention, i suppose, but it's almost never what the guy is actually saying. Although he really did seem to be saying that Bronies were changing the definition of masculinity. Oh God no, what could he possibly be thinking?

The purpose of the these videos is to inspire discussion, and i think they're really good at that. I've enjoyed thinking about Transhumanism, and I hope that the offensive RWJ style doesn't keep videos from the Idea Channel from being voted up in the future.

I don't think so. He's ACTING much dumber than he is, probably in response to somebody's market research. in this case, somebody simply found out who was the most popular youtuber, found out it was Ray William Johnson (kudos to wander for picking up on that) , and consciously copied the format. And yep, that is annoying. On a straight scale (not scoring for evil) every one of these videos rates 1 star for style, 5 stars for substance.

NO NO NO NO! Futurama isn't actually used as an argument against transhumanism, so much as a way of explaining an alternate view. I don't think that he ever says transhumanism is misguided. He certainly doesn't use Futurama a proof of anything. that would be extremely dumb. He just lays out the two sides, and invites you to leave your comment.

See, i think a lot of you guys aren't getting past the title. I don't think everyone's watching the video.