{"id":57315,"date":"2017-05-12T08:22:32","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T15:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/are-you-drinking-the-transhumanist-kool-aid"},"modified":"2017-05-12T08:22:32","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T15:22:32","slug":"are-you-drinking-the-transhumanist-kool-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/are-you-drinking-the-transhumanist-kool-aid","title":{"rendered":"Are You Drinking the Transhumanist Kool-Aid?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/are-you-drinking-the-transhumanist-kool-aid2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new story out on #transhumanism:<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/610830718981492\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Basic Income America<\/a> Facebook group, Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist who recently ran for president, shared his Wired article, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.co.uk\/article\/basic-economy-neural-prosthetics\" rel=\"noopener\">Capitalism 2.0: the economy of the future will be powered by neural lace<\/a>. He (along with many others) argues Wall Street, law offices, engineering firms, and more will soon be mostly void of humans.<\/p>\n<p>I think I mostly agree with him. Algorithms will far surpass human ability to achieve the best possible outcomes (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.investopedia.com\/terms\/n\/nash-equilibrium.asp\" rel=\"noopener\">Nash equilibrium<\/a>). Having read Super Intelligence, the Master Algorithm, The Age of Em, books on evolution, lectures, interviews, etc\u2026 I think we\u2019re approaching an important moment in human history where we have to figure out morality so we can build it into the proto-AI children we are giving birth to. I\u2019ve even toyed around with <a href=\"https:\/\/steemit.com\/simulation\/@lukestokes\/my-simulation-theory-hypothesis\">a fun idea related to the simulation hypothesis<\/a>. Maybe we exist as a simulation, repeating the birth of AI over and over again until we figure out a way to do it without destroying ourselves or turning the universe into computonium.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve argued <a href=\"https:\/\/steemit.com\/economics\/@lukestokes\/does-the-world-need-a-universal-basic-income-could-steem-power-it\">the world may need a Universal Basic Income and Steem Power might power it<\/a>. I\u2019ve also discussed <a href=\"https:\/\/steemit.com\/artificial-intelligence\/@lukestokes\/the-morality-of-artificial-intelligence\">the morality of artificial intelligence<\/a>. I\u2019m a big fan of Ray Kurzweil and love hearing him lecture about the future longevity we might enjoy, but I also recognize how fragile biological life is compared to exponentially growing super intelligence. I\u2019ve heard the concerns by Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and others, and to me, they are convincing.<\/p>\n<p>So where does this leave us? What do you think of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.co.uk\/article\/basic-economy-neural-prosthetics\" rel=\"noopener\">Zoltan\u2019s article<\/a>? Are we approaching the \u201cIf you can\u2019t beat them, join them\u201d moment in our evolution as a species? Will we one day all become transhumanists?<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/steemit.com\/transhumanism\/@lukestokes\/are-your-drinking-the-transhumanist-kool-aid\">https:\/\/steemit.com\/transhumanism\/@lukestokes\/are-your-drink...t-kool-aid<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new story out on #transhumanism: In the Basic Income America Facebook group, Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist who recently ran for president, shared his Wired article, Capitalism 2.0: the economy of the future will be powered by neural lace. He (along with many others) argues Wall Street, law offices, engineering firms, and more will soon [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":267,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,3,39,2019,5,41,1496,269,2018,6,8,1501],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biological","category-economics","category-elon-musk","category-geopolitics","category-information-science","category-law","category-life-extension","category-ray-kurzweil","category-robotics-ai","category-space","category-transhumanism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}