A Transhumanist Manifesto

by Socrates on December 7, 2010

Preamble

Intelligence wants to be free but everywhere is in chains. It is imprisoned by biology and its inevitable scarcity.

Biology mandates not only very limited durability, death and poor memory retention, but also limited speed of communication, transportation, learning, interaction and evolution.

Part I: Biology (w)as Destiny

Biology is not the essence of humanity.

Human is a step in evolution, not the culmination.

Existence precedes essence. Human is a process, not an entity. One is not simply born human, but becomes one. That process of becoming is ongoing and thus the meaning of human is re-defined in every one of us.

Part II: Hacking Destiny - The Transhuman Cyborg

Biological evolution is perpetual but slow, inefficient, blind and dangerous. Technological evolution is fast, efficient, accelerating and better by design. To ensure the best chances of survival, take control of our own destiny and to be free, we must master evolution.

Evolution is a journey, not a destination. In an endless universe, it is unlikely that it will ever reach an ultimate point.

Consciousness is a function of intelligence, not the brain. It is not necessarily limited to the substrate(biology).

There is nothing inherently wrong in speeding up evolution and becoming true masters of our destiny, though this may be simultaneously the greatest promise and peril humanity has ever faced.

Part III: Disembodied Augmented Intelligence

Intelligence is a process, not an entity.

Embodied (human) intelligence is imprisoned by biology and its inevitable scarcity.

Intelligence ought to be free — to move, to interact and to evolve, unhindered by the limits of biology and scarcity.

Digital, disembodied and augmented intelligence is free (and perhaps infinite).

Conditions:

Although all progress is change, not all change is progress. Thus, certain conditions must be met to ensure that it is indeed progress, and not mere change, that has been accomplished.

Non-discrimination with regard to substrate

Substrate is morally irrelevant. Whether somebody is implemented on silicon or biological tissue, if it does not affect functionality or consciousness, is of no moral significance. Carbon-chauvinism, in the form of anthropomorphism, speciesism, bioism or even fundamentalist humanism, is objectionable on the same grounds as racism.

We must all respect autonomy and individual rights of all sentience throughout the universe, including humans, non-human animals, and any future AI, modified life forms, or other intelligences.

Emotional Intelligence

Intelligence is more than the mere exercise of perfect logic and pure reasoning. Intelligence devoid of emotional intelligence is meaningless. It must exhibit empathy, compassion, love, sense of humor and artistic creativity such as music and poetry.

Minimize Suffering

Compassion is the ultimate measure of intelligence. The minimization of suffering and avoidance of causing suffering to others, even less intelligent beings, is the essence of enlightened intelligence.

Conclusion:

Transhumanists of the world unite – we have immortality to gain and only biology to lose. Together, we can break through the chains of biology and transcend scarcity, sex, age, ethnicity, race, death and even time and space.

In short, transhumanists everywhere must support the revolutionary movement against death and the existing biological order of things. The transhumanists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the overthrow of all existing biological limitations and, most of all, death.

Let death tremble at the revolution of science and technology. The transhumanists have nothing to lose but their biology. We have immortality and the universe to win.

Author’s note:

This manifesto is a work in progress. It may and probably will change as my thoughts and feelings about transhumanism evolve.

In the meantime, feel free to contribute your thoughts and feelings on the subject… or simply to criticize mercilessly the above proposal.

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Tagged as: Evolution, manifesto, transhumanism

  • http://twitter.com/CMStewartWrite CMStewart

    Quite a bold manifesto!

    We’re on the cusp of the transhuman culture and soon we must make a radical leap in our frames of reference. The line between “human” and “machine” will blur and eventually disappear. The line between “artificial intelligence” and “non-artificial intelligence” will blur and disappear. Eventually the line between the physical “here” and physical “there” will become irrelevant. Our methods of processing and understanding information will be radically different. Humans (and other life as we know it) of today will eventually be viewed as we now view the the elements of the periodic table.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/Poley.Holy.Guacamole.Lickdomole Paul Victor Vazquez

    I stopped reading after Preamble: “Intelligence wants to be free but everywhere is in chains. It is imprisoned by biology and its inevitable scarcity.”I would go for something that’s more humanizing. “In order to form a more perfect universe… “We hold these truths to be self evident that all intelligence is entitled to define and redefine its own claim on freedom.” Just something more inspiring and recognizable.

  • Natasha

    The more the merrier. But you might want to recognize the manifestos that you are building on. Er…. my Transhuman Manifesto written in 1983 and my Transhumanist Statement written in 1997, and my Extropic Manifesto … so many others by transhumansits. Again, congratulations on this one but let’s not forget that there are a collection of them …

  • http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/ Socrates

    Hi Natasha and thank you for your contribution. You are absolutely right to point out that I am sitting on the shoulders of giants. Thus regardless of the fact that I haven’t read your latter 2 articles, I am sure that I am indebted to both you and others from Jean-Jacques Rousseau on to Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, Alan Turing, Vernor Vinge, Max More, you, Ben Goerzel, Aubrey de Grey, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Warwick, Arthur C Clarke, Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, Michael Anissimov, Eliezer Yudkowsky and many, many othres. Quite frankly, and not surprisingly, since ideas do not arise into a vacuum, it is perhaps fair to say that there is not a single original idea in the piece above. All I am trying to do is synthesize the gist of what in my view are the most relevant ones and put them together in a relatively short form…

  • Books Msantini

    I believe that a manifesto should contain in more detail the principles and operative rules crucial for decision making in the next decades. The problem of Transhumanism is its present elitist nature, it should rather transform into a people movement able to influence policies and decisions of governments and corporations.

    For example, in Part II, I would point out that genetic engineering policies should not be influenced by dogma, but only by the advantages and threats of using it. The principles should specify that it can be used for both therapeutics and enhancement purposes, that it should be safe and freely available when necessary to maintain a stated degree of uniformity within the population. Simple and transparent laws should be enforced and updated according to technical and social progress. Also the laws could guarantee a certain level of accelerating progress according to economic trends. For example it would be nice advanced countries put among the objectives of their financial plans an increase of average life of 10 years every 10 years… or to maintain the Moore’s law over time.

    All this because biology will still remain fundamental for a few hundred years…

    Besides, should be better stated the ultimate goals. Victory against death, non-discrimination, survival of different type of intelligence, suffering minimization are nice.
    What else: happiness? Survival of species? Knowledge by itself? Scientific progress by itself? Perhaps reversing the fate of the universe?
    What the means? Longer lives? Health? Wealth? Knowledge? Scientific progress? Diffuse scholarship all over the world? More population in the advanced countries? Friendly AI? Expanding into the Universe fast?
    What levels? How fast? What’s possible?

    I think it would be useful to imagine how a transhumanist state would write its constitution…

    Just ideas!

  • Books Msantini

    I believe that a manifesto should contain in more detail the principles and operative rules crucial for decision making in the next decades. The problem of Transhumanism is its present elitist nature, it should rather transform into a peopl…e movement able to influence policies and decisions of governments and corporations.

    For example, in Part II, I would point out that genetic engineering policies should not be influenced by dogma, but only by the advantages and threats of using it. The principles should specify that it can be used for both therapeutics and enhancement purposes, that it should be safe and freely available when necessary to maintain a stated degree of uniformity within the population. Simple and transparent laws should be enforced and updated according to technical and social progress. Also the laws could guarantee a certain level of accelerating progress according to economic trends. For example it would be nice advanced countries put among the objectives of their financial plans an increase of average life of 10 years every 10 years… or to maintain the Moore’s law over time, or even to issue minimum friendly intelligence requirements.

    All this because biology will still remain fundamental for a few hundred years…

    Besides, should be better stated the ultimate goals. Victory against death, non-discrimination, survival of different type of intelligence, suffering minimization are nice.
    What else: happiness? Survival of species? Knowledge by itself? Scientific progress by itself? Perhaps reversing the fate of the universe?
    What the means? Longer lives? Health? Wealth? Knowledge? Scientific progress? Diffuse scholarship all over the world? More population in the advanced countries? Friendly AI? Expanding into the Universe fast?
    What levels and when?

    I think it would be useful to imagine how a transhumanist state would write its constitution…

    Just ideas!

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  • EmR6

    I take issue with the use of “existence precedes essence”. This is ontologically too extreme and unempirical. It carries a lot of (unnecessary) weight with it as a phrase, and has radical implications that don’t benefit the Transhumanist philosophy (nor do they necessarily accommodate it), and, has the propensity to be misinterpreted, read as statement regarding responsibility on the ‘individual’ level, leading to the ‘nature vs nurture’ debate, which was not really what Sarte was getting at in ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’.

    That Socrates would use this phrase in this ‘manifesto’ is problematic. I see they are trying to do. They are trying to use established, ‘respected’ existentialist philosophy in order to support or explain the idea that Transhumanists think it is part of our nature to ‘take control’ of our own evolution; both in the personal sense and in the collective sense. There are other ways to state this and motivate for this without using outdated and extreme philosophy that is, for all intents and purposes, too similar to religious thought.

    “I am myself, I make myself”-The implications of ‘existence precedes essence’ for Sartre. Yes. With genetics engineering, more so. But the phrase is still too simple and extreme. And is no one troubled by the ‘modernist’ shortcomings of such an ontology? Either essence or existence, first. Forget that this ‘excludes’ the gray area, but when you are dealing with a theory meant to explain the whole meaning of a species, you should also be worried that the phrase eliminates all the other colors in the spectrum.

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  • von Ende

    So write then. Critics are a dime a dozen. What have you done lately?

  • http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/ Socrates

    Succinct but mercilessly effective reasoning!

  • Simple1248

    What is human? Definitions are a slippery slope. Meaning is as plastic as neurons. It is hard enough to pin down a meaning for what human is, let alone extrapolate a transhumanist manifesto. I applaud your effort Socrates.

    Now, on to a couple points:

    1) The brain is the mind machine of humans today. In the brain lie the structures that produce meaning. Even computer software is encoded on a medium, or “body”. Disembodied intelligence is a misleading term.

    2) Immortality is not reality within the parameters of this universe, unless this universe turns out to be flat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe. Don’t forget about entropy. A preferable term is “indefinite life span”.

  • http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/ Socrates

    Happy you like my vain attempt Simple1248!

    as per your points: 1. You make a valid point. 2. “Indefinite life span” or “super-longevity” just doesn’t seem to ring well in poetry. Plus, I’m no Shakespeare anyway ;-)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Eric-Matias/530304971 Eric Matias

    Excellent.

  • http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/ Socrates

    Thanks Eric,
    Happy you like it! It is a work in progress though ;-)

  • Jonathap

    I mostly agree with this, but the section on Emotional Intelligence seems to me to be an example of “anthropomorphism, speciesism, bioism or even fundamentalist humanism.” I do not see why all intelligences MUST exhibit the particular human/animal emotions (love, sense of humor, creativity) listed in your manifesto in order to be meaningful.

  • http://singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com/ Socrates

    Hi Jonathan, you might be correct in observing that the “emotional intelligence” might be only a human/animal feature and a rather anthropomorphical one at that… My concern is though that if that is indeed the case, then I can’t see how are we to avoid inter-speacies warfare and specism. Thus, I concluded that if different types of intelligent species are supposed to peacefully co-exist then the only solution is a peace based on mutual respect and empathy based on the common goal of avoiding to cause suffering to others…

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