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Transhumanism Quotes

Browse 75 quotes about Transhumanism.

Transhumanism Quotes

“We fail to take responsibility, to act productively in the interest of ourselves and others. And in our attempts at a better life, we are often severely limited or thwarted by the immature and socially inept behavior of ourselves and others. There is a great fabric of relations, behaviors and emotions, reverberating with human and animal bliss and suffering, a web of intimate and formal relations, both direct and indirect. Nasty whirlwinds of feedback cycles blow through this great multidimensional web, pulsating with hurt and degradation. My lacking human development blocks your possible human development. My lack of understanding of you, your needs perspectives, hurts you in a million subtle ways. I become a bad lover, a bad colleague, a bad fellow citizen and human being. We are interconnected: You cannot get away from my hurt and wounds. They will follow you all of your life—I will be your daughter’s abusive boyfriend, your belligerent neighbor from hell. And you will never grow wings because there will always be mean bosses, misunderstanding families and envious friends. And you will tell yourself that is how life must be. But it is not how life has to be. Once you begin to be able to see the social-psychological fabric of everyday life, it becomes increasingly apparent that the fabric is relatively easy to change, to develop. Metamodern politics aims to make everyone secure at the deepest psychological level, so that we can live authentically; a byproduct of which is a sense of meaning in life and lasting happiness; a byproduct of which is kindness and an increased ability to cooperate with others; a byproduct of which is deeper freedom and better concrete results in the lives of everyone; a byproduct of which is a society less likely to collapse into a heap of atrocities.”

PoliticsResponsibilitySocietyFutureHumanismTranshumanismMetamodernism
Book:The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One
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“Technology isn’t what makes us “post-human” or “transhuman,” as some writers and scholars have recently suggested. It’s what makes us human. Technology is in our nature. Through our tools we give our dreams form. We bring them into the world. The practicality of technology may distinguish it from art, but both spring from a similar, distinctly human yearning.”

TechnologyHumanismTranshumanism
Book:The Glass Cage: Automation and Us
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“Even a most detailed temporary snapshot of our brains will not magically make us alive again when it is run as a software version on a computer that operates an artificial robot body.”

MindPhilosophyScienceBrainConsciousnessPsychologyNeuroscienceTranshumanismBrainmappingMinduploading
Book:Beyond Machine Man: Who we really are and why Transhumanism is just an empty promise!
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“If we really were only a hallucinating user illusion, a conscious mind that has nothing to say and can only observe the machinations of the subconscious mind, both supposedly being the creations of the brain, why would we want to transfer the brain's illusions anyway?”

MindPhilosophyScienceBrainConsciousnessPsychologyNeuroscienceTranshumanismBrainmappingMinduploading
Book:Beyond Machine Man: Who we really are and why Transhumanism is just an empty promise!
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“This is not to say that I have outgrown those elemental desires that drew me to transhumanism—just that they express themselves in more conventional ways. Over the intervening years, I have given up alcohol, drugs, sugar, and bread. On any given week, my Google search history is a compendium of cleanse recipes, high-intensity workouts, and the glycemic index of various exotic fruits. I spend my evenings in the concrete and cavernous halls of a university athletic center, rowing across virtual rivers and cycling up virtual hills, guided by the voice of my virtual trainer, Jessica, who came with an app that I bought. It’s easy enough to justify these rituals of health optimization as more than mere vanity, especially when we’re so frequently told that physical health determines our mental and emotional well-being. But if I’m honest with myself, these pursuits have less to do with achieving a static state of well-being than with the thrill of possibility that lies at the root of all self-improvement: the delusion that you are climbing an endless ladder of upgrades and solutions. The fact that I am aware of this delusion has not weakened its power over me. Even as I understand the futility of the pursuit, I persist in an almost mystical belief that I can, through concerted effort, feel better each year than the last, as though the trajectory of my life led toward not the abyss but some pinnacle of total achievement and solution, at which point I will dissolve into pure energy. Still, maintaining this delusion requires a kind of willful vigilance that can be exhausting.”

ScienceHealthTranshumanismExercisee
Book:Interior States: Essays
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“Wait!” he told himself, “give it time. After all, a human being is complex and probably responds slowly.” He was still thinking that when a voice said right into his ears, “Emergency report: power be now used by a not known unit.” Marin jumped involuntarily and turned his head. The shock of that voice was throbbing inside him as he twisted his head and looked around wildly for the speaker. Except for the silent form, on the floor beside him, the laboratory was empty. Before he could think about that, a second voice said, “Directional find —did be find interfere unit—Group 814 area.” There was a pause, and once more Marin gazed around the room. It was still deserted. His mind began to work. He thought, Why, they’re speaking straight into my brain. Mental telepathy. But how—what? That was as far as he got. A third voice said, “No contact be possible. Receiving unit be human person. Further operation command be now necessary and include more data.” Other sensations—not verbal—were coming now. They seemed to be more on the level of automatic processes, partly below consciousness. Marin could feel a tugging at what seemed to be the base of his brain, and then, vaguely, stirrings inside his body: changes taking place, readjustments of functions, tiny manipulations of his glands and cells. The contact was as deep and thorough as that.”

PatienceTelepathyTranshumanism
Book:The Mind Cage
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“I’d begun to think of the Immortality Bus as the Entropy Bus, and of ourselves as trundling across Texas in a great mobile metaphor for the inevitable decline of all things, the disintegration of all systems over time.”

MetaphorImmortalityTexasBusEntropyTranshumanism
Book:To Be a Machine : Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
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“Hypnosis, mental control from a distance, weird use of electronic circuits directly onto the brains of human beings—we just couldn’t take any chances with most of the people who were connected even indirectly. I could tell you how many people were killed, but you wouldn’t like the figures. They sound unpleasant in the very total. But even as it was, we took pity on some of them, and merely keep an eye on them, or otherwise control them or their descendants.” Marin thought of Riva, and now the picture was clear indeed. Her story and his account fitted rather well. The only thing was that she would never know how narrowly she and her mother had escaped death. It would actually have been simpler to destroy them. The number of dead must be large for two men like the Great Judge and Slater to have finally paused in their executioner’s role and made alleviations.”

MercyTyrannyHumanitarianismMind ControlTranshumanism
Book:The Mind Cage
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“It is safe to say that the message spoke of a common shape to all the processes of the world, and insisted there was a unity to all explanations. It confirmed that all phenomena are expressions of a single phenomenon, and while all droplets consider themselves independent, they are nonetheless still ocean through and through. In that message the great suspicions were vindicated and the old cliches were jettisoned. The hymn of the world was notated and an invitation to join the choir extended. The shape of Being was outlined in all its myriad forms and the whole was expressed in the part. With the right ears even a lesser creature can hear the song. It is sung constantly, from the heart of each atom and star. The galaxies hum of shape and form in their essence. That is their secret. The particles whisper of the nature of proper interactions. That is their game. And during a storm, in the forest, on the right night, it is no secret that the leaves all sing of God.”

GodScienceUniverseNatureUnityCuriosityPhysicsLaws Of NaturePantheismTranshumanism
Book:The Fifth Science
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“J. Robert Oppenheimer observed people’s reaction to the use of nuclear weapons and he said, “A few people laughed. A few people cried. Most people were silent.” If we keep silent and sit on the sidelines instead of speaking up and marching forward, human suffering will continue and inevitably escalate.”

ScienceModernMankindConscienceInnovationIdeologyDiscoverFuturisticTranshumanismTranshumanist
Book:The Transhumanism Handbook
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“The Transhumanist Party aims to motivate and mobilize both female and male scientists and engineers to take on additional responsibilities as rational politicians. It does not mean replacing democracy with technocracy. It means that our government needs help in making the right policies and investing in science, health, and technology for the improvement of the human condition and the long-term survival of the human race.”

ScienceModernMankindConscienceInnovationIdeologyDiscoverFuturisticTranshumanismTranshumanist
Book:The Transhumanism Handbook
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“It seemed to me that transhumanism was an expression of the profound human longing to transcend the confusion and desire and impotence and sickness of the body, cowering in the darkening shadow of its own decay. This longing had historically been the domain of religion, and was now the increasingly fertile terrain of technology.”

ReligionTechnologyLongingSicknessDecayHuman BodyTranscendenceImpotenceTranshumanism
Book:To Be a Machine : Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
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“Transhumanism is terrorism, for it is the very antithesis of life. Wasting precious resources on a pompous, narcissistic and megalomaniacal dream of extending life through cold, mechanical means, instead of helping to improve genuine human condition, transhumanists act as modern day terrorists who desecrate the very spirit of life and liberty without ever being held accountable. Let me tell you as a brain scientist and a computer engineering dropout - transhumanism is to brain computer interface, what nuclear weapons are to nuclear physics.”

Artificial IntelligenceComputer ScienceSingularityAlgorithmsMachine LearningCodingTranshumanismEthics And MoralityTranshumanistBrain Computer Interface
Book:Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans
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“Transhumanism is Terrorism (The Sonnet) Intelligence comes easy, accountability not so much, Yet intelligence is complex, accountability is simple. Technology comes easy, transformation not so much, Yet technology is complicated, transformation is simple. In olden days there were just nutters of fundamentalism, Today there are nutters of nationalism and transhumanism. Some are obsessed with land, others with digital avatars, While humanity battles age-old crises like starvationism. When too much logic, coldness and pomposity set in, Common sense humanity goes out of the window. Once upon a time religion was the opium of all people, Today transhumanism and singularity are opium of the shallow. To replace the sky god with a computer god isn't advancement. Real advancement is when nobody suffers from scarcity of sustenance.”

Artificial IntelligenceComputer ScienceSingularityAlgorithmsMachine LearningHumanitarian CrisisCodingTranshumanismEthics And MoralityTranshumanist
Book:Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans
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“Transhumanism and the rise of cyborgs will increasingly move humanity from a profound and direct experience with the Divine. Science and academic research are very important for humanity’s growth and evolution as human beings on this planet. The danger lies in the overly sentimental and simple-minded concepts of religion and spirituality that are popular themes in today’s spiritual books. True spirituality is something that is as complex, and at the same time subtle, as the most advanced study of particle physics. A person must devote many years of study, meditation, prayer and other spiritual disciplines, in order to properly develop himself or herself spiritually. Humanity, at this time, must let go of the illusion that true spirituality consists of a kind of emotional “high,” or on the other hand, that true spirituality consists of a kind of militaristic, fanatically disciplinarian obedience to a vast list of rules and regulations.”

DivineGnosticismTranshumanismGnosticCyborgsAcademic ResearchTrue SpiritualityDisciplinarian
Book:Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!
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“No mechanic now for modern cars, no doctor now for modern pathologies. The infinitesimal calculus of viral pathologies, unlocatable by traditional diagnostics, has entirely outstripped the mechanics of the body, just as the electronics of the modern car have outstripped the knowledge of its user. But one can imagine an electronic 'smartness' of the body (like 'smart' cars or houses) that would inform you of all its anomalies, or even, by a kind of GPS effect, of your position in the space of human relations.”

AndroidsTeslaTranshumanismElon Musk
Book:Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004
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“My kids understand what I’m doing. They’re totally saturated in it. My daughter, she’s eleven. A little while ago, she said to me, ‘Dad, I don’t care if you become a robot, but you have to keep your face. I don’t want you to replace your face.’ Personally, I don’t have any sentimental attachment to my face, any more than I have a sentimental attachment to any other part of my body. I could look like the Mars Rover for all I give a shit. But she’s pretty attached to my face, I guess.”

AttachmentSentimentalFaceTranshumanismRobotBody PartsMars Rover
Author:Tim Cannon
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“Sonnet 1103 Our ancestors are not the boss of us, Life must be dictated by living conscience. Dead people may have the right to make suggestions, But they do not have the right to issue mandates. Our ancestors belong in history books, Our descendants belong in comic books. Only we are alive to belong here and now, Don't waste that life, submissive to books. Too much involvement in the past cripples your present, The same is true with too much involvement in the future. If you are oblivious to the human condition of now and here, Ignorance and intellect will equally end up causing disaster. Use past and future as markers of direction, But never as authority on living tradition.”

TraditionConservativeTraditionalExistentialismFundamentalismStereotypesRational ThinkingFreethinkerHumanist PoetryTranshumanism
Book:Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo
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“By definition, posthumanism (I call it ‘cyberhumanism’) is to replace transhumanism at the center stage circa 2035. By then, mind uploading could become a reality with gradual neuronal replacement, rapid advancements in Strong AI, massively parallel computing, and nanotechnology allowing us to directly connect our brains to the Cloud-based infrastructure of the Global Brain. Via interaction with our AI assistants, the GB will know us better than we know ourselves in all respects, so mind transfer, or rather 'mind migration,' for billions of enhanced humans would be seamless, sometime by mid-century.”

CloudTranshumanismNanotechnologyGlobal BrainPosthumanismAi AssistantMind UploadingCyberhumanismMind TransferStrong Ai
Book:The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence
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“The humans have become so obsessed with innovation that they have completely ignored their own soul. And among these innovation-obsessed humans, the so-called transhumanists are the most deluded bunch, for they don’t have a clue of any kind of order in the human mind, yet they boast about developing more advanced technologies to merge the mind with machine – and the most interesting thing to notice here is that, they don’t even have a clue that they don’t have a clue.”

IntelligenceArtificial IntelligenceRoboticsMachine LearningTranshumanismTranshumanistSmart Devices
Book:Let The Poor Be Your God
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“I expect to see the coming decades transform the planet into an art form; the new man, linked in a cosmic harmony that transcends time and space, will sensuously caress and mold and pattern every facet of the terrestrial artifact as if it were a work of art, and man himself will become an organic art form. There is a long road ahead, and the stars are only way stations, but we have begun the journey. To be born in this age is a precious gift, and I regret the prospect of my own death only because I will leave so many pages of man’s destiny — if you will excuse the Gutenbergian image — tantalizingly unread. But perhaps, as I’ve tried to demonstrate in my examination of the postliterate culture, the story begins only when the book closes.”

InspirationalArtBooksPlayboyTranshumanism
Author:Marshall McLuhan
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“I cannot shake the conviction that life is (usually) worth living, and that we should continue to create the conditions for intelligent life to experience beauty, create art, discover how the world works, and continue to set and satisfy goals that presuppose a complex form of intelligence. It is at this point that our intuitions bottom out. If you think that life is pointless, given that we will leave no trace in 20 billion years, it is hard to know how to convince you to believe otherwise. An obligation to reproduce, no matter how weak it is, cannot exist unless there is value to the future experiences intelligent creatures will have.”

ProgressEugenicsTranshumanismNatalismPosthumanism
Book:Creating Future People
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“The best thing would perhaps be to remove consciousness surgically in utero, together with irony, criticism and intelligence - all those qualities that are so fragile and so dangerous to existence in general. One might take advantage of this (all in a specialized Psycho-Genetic Institute, akin to the Institute of Zodiacal Semiurgy, where the surgical removal of star signs is practised) to be rid of the Unconscious, the extraction of which, like the extraction of all the irregularities of the genome, would be a great relief for future generations.”

TranshumanismLobotomy
Book:Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004
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“A part of me tried to fabricate reasons in my mind why it was too dangerous, or why it couldn’t be possible. But I knew the truth — there was a part of me that was just afraid of change. And another part that was afraid of losing what made me special. I’d risked my life for that attunement. Was it really fair for others to get them for free? Perhaps even any attunement of their choice? But that was an inherently selfish line of thinking.”

FantasyTranshumanismLitrpgMagic SystemsGame Lit
Book:On the Shoulders of Titans
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