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I am in shock.

I have almost finished reading The Transhumanist Manifesto, by Simon Young. Transhumanism has so many coincidences with Objectivism, that I can't help but bringing this to you immediately.

I typed "Transhumanism" in the search bar of this forum and it returned me no entries, no threads. So I suspect this has not been discussed before.

I am really thrilled.

Transhumanism is "the belief in overcoming human limitations through reason, science and technology".

It declares itself "romantic", "individualistic", based on "self-interest" and "love for life".

The thesis is simple:

Men are rational beings, and our mind is our tool for survival, but guess what? our genes are programmed to make us die, to make that "tool for survival", eventually, a failed tool.

Since we love life, and our minds have the ability to transform nature (including our bodies)to ensure our survival, the overriding of our genetic programming is the rational and moral course of action. In other words, love for life translates logically into the search for the continuous enhancement of our bodies and minds and immortality.

Transhumanism seeks to put your body processes (and hence, your destiny) under the control of your reason, through science and techonology. It abhorss totalitarism and statism. Body-enhancement is to be placed under the control of self-interested individuals, even when the consequences of that will benefit all humanity. In this sense, it also considers itselfe "compassionate".

Trashumanism beliefis in the primacy of existence over conciousness, although the wording seem somewhat different than that used by Objecivists.

It strongly condems the nihilism and relativism embedded in postmodernism. It holds that knowdlege of reality is possible. "The purpose of science is to understand nature so that we can improve it, i order to make life easier, less of a struggle, more pleasant, better."

Transhumanism also roots ethics in reason. "The chief task of twenty-first-century philosophy is the unification of science and ethics". It rejects the vision of man as a puppet of its genes or environment. It also belives that the ethical should be the practical.

"Benevolence is simply common sense". For transhumanism, "good is sensible self-interest, the ability of the rational mind to inhibit antisocial impulses in the interest of maximum survivability and well-being".

Even when it does not openly attacks altruism, it places "sensible self-interest" constantly at the base of its ethics. "Self-interest has always motivated propagation. That is the way human beings are programmed: to survive and reproduce. There can be nothing immoral in self-interest unless self-preservation is deemed a crime". In explaining why we cooperate wit others, it establishes self-interest at the root: "Benevolence is simply sensible self-interest, the optimum tactic for mutual survival. In short, we have a better chance of getting on in life by cooperating, whether instincively through innate feelings of empathy, or rationally through concious effort".

Transhumanism is romantic. "The belief in human trascendence... is the essence of romanticism. Thus, the ethos of the emerging Self-Enhancement Society might be called technoromanticism, or neuroromanticism, the passionate belief in the transcendece of human limitations -not through religion or politics, but through science-- product of the rational mind in the technowonderland of the modern world.

Transhumanism claims to embrace modernity and defines modernity as "the condition of a culture based on the underlying belief in ongoing human progress toward ever-increasing knowldege, abilities, survivability, and well being, attained through reason, science, and technology, as opposed to irrationality or superstition".

Although the book glosses over Politics, it does dare saying "Libertarianism and individualism are the safeguards against malevolent ideologies. Let us keep Superbiology away from state control and in the hand of individuals"

Edited by Hotu Matua
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Take a minute to think of the most rational individualist person you have known.

For the sake of this excercise, take the life of Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand was free to make choices. She generally was consistent with her ideas, and generally made rational choices. So we could have expect her to survive and be living with us today, writing, teaching, developing her ideas in depth. It is clear that she didn't want to die in 1982. On new Year's day 1982, according to Anne Heller, "she rose and wrote the first page of the second part of her script for Atlas Shrugged, observing as she always had, the Russian tradition of welcoming the new year by doing what you hope to do for the rest of the year". Why is she not with us any more? Why her mind didn't help her to survive? Why, in short, is she dead?

Ayn Rand is dead because she was not born totally free. She was born, as we are born, wearing the shackles of genes programmed for the self-destruction of the person.

We are born, though, with enough freedom to free ourselves completely and definitely, if we choose to do it. We have to be free to think, but we also need to think to be truly and ultimately free.

Freedom is something we ultimately gain by choosing to understand how our bodies work, and defeating disease and death.

Men are not puppets of their genes... or are we? If we are not, then we should be able to defeat their program and keep being qua man for centuries... for ever...

In this sense, transhumanism, if not a philosophy in its own right (I don't think it is a philosophical system as such) is just a corollary of Objectivist metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics.

What do you think about all this?

Edited by Hotu Matua
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Sin? Flaw?

You didn't choose your genes, Grames. There is no sin to feel guilty for.

I don't know what exactly you mean by flaw, in the context of your answer.

being born with any condition that endangers your survival is undesirable, if your goal is to live.

Our genetic programming is undesirable, to the extent that it kill us.

If we agree that being born deaf is undesirable ( which hinders but not prevent us from living qua man ), how could we deny that being born with a program for self destruction is undesirable?

Being humans does not entail by necessity getting old, demented, frail and dead.

There is nothing in Objectivism that equals being a man with being sick and mortal. All the opposite.

When would a man stop being a man? When he gets 150 years old, 300 years old, 1000 years old?

You stop being human when you die.

So let's stop dieing. Let's keep enjoying life.. on and on and on...

Edited by Hotu Matua
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Ayn Rand is dead because she was not born totally free.

What can that redundant word "totally" be meant to invoke in conjunction with "free" other than some utopian fantasy of being free of causality?

It is all well and good to be healthy and have extended life spans, but if all the so-called 'natural causes' of death are eliminated then it is a guarantee that all persons shall live until they meet a violent unnatural death. Death is inevitable. All things are finite. All men are mortal.

There is strain of wild-eyed religious enthusiasm in transhumanism that wants to transcend being human, in addition to any particular improvements to the human condition it may advocate and may even be sensible. That is the element that distinguishes transhumanism from the general attitude of looking forward to progress in medicine, which does not need a name.

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I'm not sure that there is anything that is objectionable in your original post, however...

Ayn Rand is dead because she was not born totally free. She was born, as we are born, wearing the shackles of genes programmed for the self-destruction of the person.

We are born, though, with enough freedom to free ourselves completely and definitely, if we choose to do it. We have to be free to think, but we also need to think to be truly and ultimately free.

Freedom is something we ultimately gain by choosing to understand how our bodies work, and defeating disease and death.

This is not a useful approach to freedom. Freedom does not mean freedom from mortality; it cannot mean this, or no one will ever be free. Freedom indicates freedom of action, freedom from external coercion. Freedom as defined as freedom from death and disease would mean that any step, using others to attain a little more space form disease or death would be a step towards freedom. This is not the Objectivist view of freedom.

We are not "shackled" by the genes we are born with, any more than we are shackled by gravity. We are born into reality, and we must deal with the world as we encounter it. Defeating death is simply not possible.

EDIT: also, this question has been addressed several times, and asked directly at least once:

http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.php?showtopic=881&st=0&p=42171&hl=transhuman&fromsearch=1&#entry42171

Edited by Dante
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The transhumanism you're talking about sounds a lot different than the transhumanism I've heard about. But everything transhumanism I've heard about, I heard it from my ex-roommate, whose views are crazy at best. I thought transhumanists are generally altruists and utilitarians. The ones I've been exposed to seem to uphold omnipotence as the standard of judging ability, and omniscience as the standard of judging intelligence. Perfection as the standard of judging human nature. When you take these kinds of standards for your value-judgments, you're going to pronounce everything about humanity to be inferior and imperfect, and not good enough.

I don't oppose the quest to improve our lives. I don't oppose the desire to seek value and enjoyment. But the transhumanists I've been exposed to had, in my opinion, disgusting views. They really viewed humanity as damaged goods and seemed to think that the only path to salvation was to try to defeat our own nature long enough to invent nanotechnology and completely alter ourselves to perfection.

If the transhumanists you're talking about really start from rational self-interest and all that jazz, then I can hold a higher opinion of them. But you'll have to forgive me for being a little cynical about that movement.

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The transhumanism you're talking about sounds a lot different than the transhumanism I've heard about. But everything transhumanism I've heard about, I heard it from my ex-roommate, whose views are crazy at best. I thought transhumanists are generally altruists and utilitarians. The ones I've been exposed to seem to uphold omnipotence as the standard of judging ability, and omniscience as the standard of judging intelligence. Perfection as the standard of judging human nature. When you take these kinds of standards for your value-judgments, you're going to pronounce everything about humanity to be inferior and imperfect, and not good enough.

I don't oppose the quest to improve our lives. I don't oppose the desire to seek value and enjoyment. But the transhumanists I've been exposed to had, in my opinion, disgusting views. They really viewed humanity as damaged goods and seemed to think that the only path to salvation was to try to defeat our own nature long enough to invent nanotechnology and completely alter ourselves to perfection.

If the transhumanists you're talking about really start from rational self-interest and all that jazz, then I can hold a higher opinion of them. But you'll have to forgive me for being a little cynical about that movement.

In my experience, Transhumanism is a very ill-expressed viewpoint involving improvement from wherever the Transhumanist thinks the human race is at that point. It sounds very vague and compatible with a number of different philosophical starting points. It's certainly not exclusively altruistic or utilitarian, but obviously does not rule them out either. Overall, I don't think it's a very useful way of looking at progress or humanity.

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Brave New World?

Now I know 99% more about the subject than I did before, and while it has some parallels - possibly influenced by Objectivism? - and raises some challenging thoughts, I've gotta go with my original impression of unrealistic utopianism.

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I'm not sure that there is anything that is objectionable in your original post, however...

This is not a useful approach to freedom. Freedom does not mean freedom from mortality; it cannot mean this, or no one will ever be free. Freedom indicates freedom of action, freedom from external coercion.

If freedom indicates freedom of action, what kind of action does a man in Intensive Care Unit have? what kind of action does a man with severe dementia have?

If freedom means fredom from external coercion, then a copper miner trapped by a natural disaster in Chile is free, while a man trapped in a Soviet gulag is not?

We are not "shackled" by the genes we are born with, any more than we are shackled by gravity. We are born into reality, and we must deal with the world as we encounter it. Defeating death is simply not possible.

I disagree with you in this comparison between programmed death and gravity.

The dilemma of any living being is to live or die. If we are to live as men, we have to survive as men. Not just for a month, for a year, for 80 years, but as much as possible, as long as there are values to pursue, as long of a rational life of joy is attainable. Genes which program us to die go directly against our highest value. Against our highest pursuit.

And here we are not talking about all of our genoma. We are talking just about the part of the genoma that makes us die.

When you say that "we are born into reality, and we must deal with the world as we encounter it" does it mean that a person born with a inherited disease must accept that fact as metaphysically given, even if new medical treatments become available to heal his condition?

Defeating death is simply not possible.

Death is already being defeated, Dante.

Life expectancy was about 40 years by the end of XIX century. Now it is around 80. This doubling of lifespan means that death has been defeated by 40 years in a single century.Every year you gain, is a year you won from death, your constant alternative as a living organism. By the end of XXI century, a life span might be well beyond 150 years.

Objectivists are deliberate life-lovers.

In the thread "Should we seek immortality?" the positive answers won by landslide.

So probably transhumanism, as a movement, is little more than a club where people with all kind of contradictory philosophies sit together with more libertarian-like guys. But the point I am trying to bring here is that the principle of seeking to extend and improve life as much as possible (even if it gets "endless") is not just compatible with, but essential to Objectivism. Since I personally favor David Kelley's position on dialogue and cooperation with libertarians and other potential allies to achive specific improvements in my world, I am naturally interest in knowing Transhumanist people of an individualist vein. I think their insights will be important in the realm of the forthcoming bioethical debate on extending lifespan.

After Frank O'Connor's death, old Ayn Rand was asked in a TV interview whether she had been tempted about any beliefs on an afterlife.

She answered that, if she had any reason to expect joining Frank in heaven (which of course she had not), she would commit suicide immediately.

Her answer is extremely powerful.

When we have a value to live for, we embrace life, immediately, without hesitation.

Edited by Hotu Matua
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If freedom indicates freedom of action, what kind of action does a man in Intensive Care Unit have? what kind of action does a man with severe dementia have?

If freedom means fredom from external coercion, then a copper miner trapped by a natural disaster in Chile is free, while a man trapped in a Soviet gulag is not?

The premise that identity is coercion is poison. You are well on your way to becoming a determinist.

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Life expectancy was about 40 years by the end of XIX century. Now it is around 80. This doubling of lifespan means that death has been defeated by 40 years in a single century.Every year you gain, is a year you won from death, your constant alternative as a living organism. By the end of XXI century, a life span might be well beyond 150 years.

That's fine, but the way I understand it, transhumanism practically turns extending life expectancy as long as possible into a moral imperative, that anything less is fruitless because death makes achievement pointless.

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I classify myself as a transhumanist, for similar reasons (though not his definition of freedom) that Hotu Matua does. I like living. I want to continue to do so. As of right now, it is biologically impossible without new medical interventions for me to live beyond 130 or so, and more realistically I can expect to live 80 years without new advances in medicine. I don't like that. I want scientists to figure out how to fix the damage being done by my metabolism all the time. By damage, I mean the buildup of waste products and assorted changes in my body at the macro, cellular, and molecular levels which negatively impact me; examples include purely cosmetic concerns like wrinkles (which I don't have since I'm only 20) go more disastrous things like brittle bones, diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, etc. If we can fix the damage to our bodies that accrues with time simply by being alive, then we can expect to live longer. And the longer we live, the better we'll get at fixing damage (thanks to the progression of knowledge and technology), and so the longer we'll be able to continue to live. The ultimate goal is to get medical science advancing fast enough that I get an extra year of life on my healthy life expectancy for every year I am alive. That way, I stay roughly the same distance away from death, and can continue to do so so long as medical science advances.

This talk of damage doesn't have any moral quality to it at all. People do not have "original sin", but rather are physical creatures whose bodies act in a way to keep them alive. But the body doesn't maintain life indefinitely, barring catastrophic accidents, and so there is no problem in saying that it can be made better (that is, better at its job- keeping us alive).

In a similar vein, I think it would be great to be able to access the resources of a computer internally, without having to type and use my hands but rather by controlling it with my mind (or more properly, brain)- rudimentary versions of such technologies already exist and help some disabled patients who, for example, are "locked in" to communicate to the world. One example would be for someone like Stephen Hawking, whose mind is perfectly functional, to communicate in almost real time, rather than having to prepare for hours and hours for a short interview. We can't do it yet, but we are getting there. Eventually the technologies like that should enable me to, for example, overlay information about the world onto my vision and manipulate machines directly. One use for that might be for an engineer to be able to look at a structure and see the stress points directly, through say some sort of color map, or be able to overlay a diagrammatic view of an engine onto the engine itself, things like that. One day, we might even be able to pack little knowledge modules in our heads (I'd love to have Mathematica available 24/7, so I could simply look at an equation on a board and know the integral of it, or be able to instantly make a phase-space diagram of it and test out numerical solutions without having to go to a computer and type what I want in). Such things aren't simply science fiction, one can envision such things based on significant advances in things we're already doing on a limited scale.

That's really the whole point of transhumanism, the use of technology to make our lives better, and to change ourselves in ways that enhance our abilities, with the ultimate aim of making our lives better. I will grant you, some transhumanists are horrible, and while they are all opposed to a mind body dichotomy in the sense of the supernatural (well, all I've ever seen anyway), some are downright hateful of their body. Others have horrible moral views, mostly utilitarian and altruistic. Some sub-groups in transhumanism are better than others. For example, Extropians are committed to reason, individualism, rational self-interest, and capitalism (I classify myself as an extropian in particular). In any case, I don't see anything wrong with transhumanism as a general idea: the commitment to use technology to expand human abilities and make our lives better (and this is unqualified, including the use of technology to change our own bodies, indeed, its distinguishing characteristic is its insistence that such a thing is desirable). I, too, think it is a view demanded by Objectivist ethics. I think an Objectivist rationally has to be a transhumanist, but not very many transhumanists are going to be Objectivists (honestly, the majority are altruists and whatnot).

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The premise that identity is coercion is poison. You are well on your way to becoming a determinist.

No, I am not.

I am not claiming that identity is coercion.

You said that freedom is freedom from coercion. I am just saying that the man trapped in the jaws of a crocodrile is as unfree as the man trapped in the hands of the smartest kidnapper. That's why both will fight for their freedom, regardless of the coercive or non-coercive nature of the situation.

The love-loving man trapped in the jaws of the crocodrile would not give up and say: "The identity of the crocodrile leads him to act as a carnivore. It is a metaphysical fact, and I must accept to be his prey".

I am not the determinist one here, Dante. Don't target the wrong guy.

I am not the one accepting that my genes "determine" that I will lose my mind, my vigor and ultimately my life.

Edited by Hotu Matua
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That's fine, but the way I understand it, transhumanism practically turns extending life expectancy as long as possible into a moral imperative, that anything less is fruitless because death makes achievement pointless.

Well, yes.

If you love life as your highest value, the rational course of action is to do all necessary actions that preserve your life.

If you have a tumor that has a chance to be cured, and you have many projects in life that makes your life worth living for you, the MORAL action is to go to the doctor and get your surgery, chemo or radiotherapy. Not doing that would be irrational and hence immoral.

When Steve Jobs resorted to mediation and herbs to cure his pancreatic cancer, he was doing the immoral thing. When he changed his mind and got rational therapy, he was doint the moral thing.

Edited by Hotu Matua
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If freedom means fredom from external coercion, then a copper miner trapped by a natural disaster in Chile is free, while a man trapped in a Soviet gulag is not?

There is an important difference between those two situations, is there not? We do need some word to indicate one kind of situation and not the other, do we not? The obstacles facing the copper miner are of a different nature than those facing the man in the Soviet gulag, and the language in discussing them should indicate that.

And here we are not talking about all of our genoma. We are talking just about the part of the genoma that makes us die.

Is there any scientific evidence that there is a "death" section of the genome? Wear and damage to the body is simply a by-product of use, not something programmed in. Obviously some specific diseases that often cause death are programmed in, but we're talking about death as a phenomenon.

When you say that "we are born into reality, and we must deal with the world as we encounter it" does it mean that a person born with a inherited disease must accept that fact as metaphysically given, even if new medical treatments become available to heal his condition?

That is obviously not what I am arguing. I'm saying that this situation is fundamentally different than someone looking to never die at all, precisely because it's possible to heal the condition.

Extending lifespans and improving life as much as possible through technology seems like a no-brainer to me. I don't know why there needs to be a movement about it.

EDIT: Added:

I am not the determinist one here, Dante. Don't target the wrong guy.

Lol... that wasn't me, speaking of targeting the wrong guy ^_^

Edited by Dante
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For example, Extropians are committed to reason, individualism, rational self-interest, and capitalism (I classify myself as an extropian in particular).... I think an Objectivist rationally has to be a transhumanist, but not very many transhumanists are going to be Objectivists (honestly, the majority are altruists and whatnot).

Thanks for bringing this fresh air to the discussion, nanite.

I think we should see Transhumanism as a intellectual movement that we could observe and prudently support, here and there, in self-interested way.

For example, the main enemies of Transhumanism nowadays seem to be religionists and statists which are, not coincidentally, our ideological enemies.

Religionists oppose Transhumanism on the grounds of "playing God".

Statists oppose it because it seeks to "widen the gap between the haves and the haves-not"

An potential contribution of Transhumanism, at least in the Extropian version of Simon Young, is the concept of the "Will to Evolve" as part of human nature.

We all know that men use their minds to survive. What Objectivism has not explained in depth (although Tara Smith has hinted some insights) is how "survival" translates into progress. We pursue to know more, do more, achieve more, and not just settle with what we have. Survival means for men something radically different than for animals. Survival alone does not explain our behaviour. Trahsnhumanism sees in man a will to become more complex. But that is maybe the theme for another post in this thread.

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That's weird, for the past few days I've been thinking about the state of being 'trans-human' but I had no idea about the movement Transhumanism or that someone else had coined the term.

What I was thinking was along the lines of

- many things in our nature are essentially side-effects of evolution, not things we'd necessarily choose to embrace if we had a choice

- for instance death. i keep seeing news stories about scientist making progress on the understanding of ageing, though

- or from a different slant, things like sleep

- but also things we like, like sex drive, but which are really driven by hormones for evolutionary reasons

the thing is lots of people define themselves by the limitations of being a human, rather than by the immense freedom the rationality of being human affords us

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Thus, the ethos of the emerging Self-Enhancement Society might be called technoromanticism, or neuroromanticism, the passionate belief in the transcendece of human limitations -not through religion or politics, but through science-- product of the rational mind in the technowonderland of the modern world.

I don't have anything to add to the topic really, however, it just seemed worth pointing out that this immediately made me think of the book "Neuromancer," especially since the book is fitting to this very topic.

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lots of people define themselves by the limitations of being a human, rather than by the immense freedom the rationality of being human affords us

The immense freedom the rationality of being human affords us is so good, so damn good, that we don't want to lose it. We want to keep it.

Think in a life after 70 without the threat of Alzheimer's.

Year after year, millions of formerly intelligent, independent people get disconnected from reality due to Alzheimer's disease. Their personality breaks down. Mind collapses.

Isn't this a tragedy?

Ageing is a disease.

Death is the anti-value.

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If you love life as your highest value, the rational course of action is to do all necessary actions that preserve your life.

Although, on a first glance, your statement above may seem reasonable -in fact, it is not true. As a principle it is false and it does not follow from Objectivism. Objectivism does not state that prolonging one's life as much as possible is the ultimate goal and that long life should be the standard of value.

If you have a tumor that has a chance to be cured, and you have many projects in life that makes your life worth living for you, the MORAL action is to go to the doctor and get your surgery, chemo or radiotherapy. Not doing that would be irrational and hence immoral.

As Dante pointed out - this is no-brainer to a rational person. A separate philosophy promoting and defending the idea of prolonging one's life is not necessary and in fact without the context of an entire ethical system based on reason - it can be dangerous.

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Extending lifespans and improving life as much as possible through technology seems like a no-brainer to me. I don't know why there needs to be a movement about it.

Maybe because there is a movement against it.

Most people believe that death is a given.

"All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Hence, Socrates is mortal"

Most people throughout history have believed your body is not entirely yours. They believe it belongs to God, to Mother Gaia, to the "Circle of Life" (in Disney's Lion King's terms), to society, to the State... And the final proof of it is the fact that we don't want to die and still die. Your volitional thinking is defeated, annulated, proved to be useless.

You may claim victory over armies, ideologies, theats, diseases, and then, sooner or later, you still get sick, suffer, and die.

So, the mystics of the muscle and the mystics of the spirit are quite happy with the fact of death. They can use it to frighten you and keep controlling your life.

"You are transient and insignificant. Mother Russia/Germany is eternal and glorious."

"You are transient and insignificant. God is eternal and glorious."

"You as individual are transient and insignificant. You as a cell of humankind are eternal and glorious"

By expanding your health and lifespan as long as possible you are telling the church, the state and society:

"Look: I belong to myself. I don't need a God to grant me life. I don't need to sacrifice myself to others in this earth to gain a ticket to eternal life as a disembodied ghost. There is only one life, and it belongs to me."

Edited by Hotu Matua
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Although, on a first glance, your statement above may seem reasonable -in fact, it is not true. As a principle it is false and it does not follow from Objectivism. Objectivism does not state that prolonging one's life as much as possible is the ultimate goal and that long life should be the standard of value.

I'm afraid you're wrong, Sophia.

Objectivism states that we (as all living organisms) constantly face the dilemma of life and death.

You face this dilemma now, as you will face it within 20 or 60 years. And your choice will be the same: life or death. You will either choose to get your atheroma plaque repaired by nanorobots or you choose to get a heart attack.

A value is something you strive to gain or keep.

If life is a value to you, you will act to keep it. If you are successful, you will indeed KEEP IT.

As Dante pointed out - this is no-brainer to a rational person. A separate philosophy promoting and defending the idea of prolonging one's life is not necessary and in fact without the context of an entire ethical system based on reason - it can be dangerous.

I am not here to invite you to embrace another philosophy, but to reflect on a concrete idea of Transhumanism, that is infrequently discussed in Objectivism, but is compatible with Objectivism and, as I have said, essential as a corollary of Objectivist ethics.

Picture Howard Roarks, naked, at the edge of the cliff as in the first words of The Fountainhead.

He sees the rocks and trees around him and imagine how they should be transformed to meet the visions of his mind.

"He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked at the tree. To be split and made into rafters.He looked at the streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky. These rocks, he thought, are here for me; wating the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them".

Since he is naked, the natural corollary is:

"He looked at his extremities. To be made strong as iron, elastic as rubber, durable as diamond. He looked as his thorax. To be the home of a heart who never collapses. He looked at his abdomen and thought of the digestion ocurring inside. To be transformed into an efficient metabolic factory, to emerge as an extraordinary source of nutrients for his brain. This body, he thought, is here for me; wating the laser, the genetic engineering, the nanorobots and my voice; waiting to be strengthened, healed, enabled, powered, reborn; wating for the shape my mind will give it".

What a fantastic picture of a XXI century Howard Roarks!

Edited by Hotu Matua
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Anyone who holds the full context—who keeps in mind the identity of man and of all the other relevant entities—would be unable even to imagine an alternative to the facts as they are; the contradictions involved in such a projection would obliterate it. The rewriters, however, do not keep identity in mind. They specialize in out-of-context pining for a heaven that is the opposite of the metaphysically given.

f living organisms are mortal, then (within the relevant circumstances) they are so necessarily, by the nature of the life process. To rebel against one's eventual death is, therefore, to rebel against life—and reality.

Many factors contribute to the longer lifespans we are likely to embrace today. As we continue to expand our understanding of the universe in which we find ourselves, more factors may be discovered.

I find the statement that our genes are 'programmed to make us die' language that suggests short-circuiting or by-passing identity. If anything is wrong here, it would be the idea that the mind is capable of transforming the nature of nature.

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