eli_sennesh comments on Transhumanism and the denotation-connotation gap - Less Wrong

19 Post author: PhilGoetz 18 August 2010 03:33PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 03 August 2015 12:59:02PM 0 points [-]

It's a rhetorical trick that could backfire if it leads someone to favor eliminating PTSD, fragile spines, and status-seeking-at-the-expense-of-truth-seeking, while still rejecting immortality and uploading.

This seems precisely backwards to me. Any piece of mere technology is a means, not an end. People and what we want out of life are the ends.

Yes, it accepts the highly dubious frame that human == good.

Which is, more-or-less, why I don't like such terms as "humanism" or "transhumanism", since they anchor the conversation around the coincidental shape my meat takes rather than around the ends I seek.