Why we don’t need transhumanism

By Massimo Pigliucci

Julia has recently made a good case for transhumanism, easily rebuffing some of the most popular, and somewhat inane, objections to the “movement.” She started her post by reminding us that transhumanism is “the idea that we should be pursuing science and technology to improve the human condition, modifying our bodies and our minds to make us smarter, healthier, happier, and potentially longer-lived.” She immediately acknowledged my retort during a recent Rationally Speaking podcast that if one defines transhumanism that way, we don’t need a movement, because we have been doing just what transhumanists advocate since the dawn of civilization. In fact, what transhumanism is about is the promotion of radical alterations to human bodies and minds, through a variety of futuristic technologies that include genetic engineering and “mind uploading” (whatever that means).

Julia takes on what she sees as the three major objections to transhumanism: it robs life of meaning; it's dehumanizing; it's hubris; and rightly ends up making fun of arguments proposed by people like Francis Fukuyama, the famed author of The End of History (man, is there a more famous writer who got so many things so wrong during the past couple of decades?). Even there, though, Julia is not quite fair to Fukuyama and like-minded critics: “Our ancestors were less knowledgable, more tribalistic, less healthy, shorter-lived; would Fukuyama have argued for the preservation of all those qualities on the grounds that, in their respective time, they constituted an ‘essential human nature’?”

No, he wouldn’t. There is a fundamental difference between improving the human lot through medicine, agriculture, and other technologies on the one hand, and permanently and radically altering the human genetic makeup on the other hand. It is the latter that Fukuyama and other critics of transhumanism are objecting to, not the former. That objection cannot be dismissed simply on the basis that there is no such thing as human nature (really? Do you mean to say that there are no fundamental, if quantitative, differences between us and chimpanzees? And yet I just haven’t felt like having sex with a chimp lately), or that it is an ill-conceived and somewhat perverse longing for a tragic view of the human condition (“If we all live long healthy happy lives, [transhumanism critics’] favorite poetry will become obsolete”).

First off, there are many more types of criticism (and number of critics) of transhumanism than one would glean from Julia’s post. (A surprisingly good summary with informative links can be found here.) This is not the place to examine them one by one, so let me give you the run down of my own objections instead.

First, transhumanism is irrelevant. We do not need a “movement” to tell us that we need to pursue technologies that will improve and/or radically alter the human condition. It will happen anyway, because human nature (oh yeah, baby) favors whatever can stave off disease and death as much as possible, at pretty much any cost — the consequences be damned.

Second, transhumanism is simply another version of futurism (which is itself a form of what I call techno-optimism, in turn an outgrowth of scientism — is that ‘nough “isms” for ya?). And if there is one thing we know about futurists is that they are almost always both spectacularly wrong and absolutely inconsequential to humanity’s actual technological developments.

Third, there are potentially serious issues of hubris at play. I am by no means a Luddite, but we already have enough trouble managing a number of complex systems that we have been recklessly playing with (the environment and our own ecosystem come to mind, not to mention the economy), so one would think that when it comes to irreversible changes to the human genome we might want at the very least to tread lightly.

Fourth, just like with any other technology, there are serious issues of access, fairness, and protection from abuse. And if the technology really promises to dramatically extend human life while also improving its quality, it is far too easy to imagine scenarios under which a privileged few would have control and access, or ways in which the technology could be used for nefarious purposes (from exploitation of other human beings to military applications).


Fifth, there is the issue of priorities. We have limited resources in terms of funds to invest in scientific research and technological development, as well as in terms of number of competent scientists to do the work. If the goal is to reduce human suffering, should we not therefore prioritize, oh I don't know, mundane an admittedly not techno-sexy things like already eradicable diseases that kill millions? Or famine? I'm just saying.

Sixth, there are the (potentially disastrous) ecological consequences of a humanity bound to a single and very finite (in terms of space and resources) planet, and yet capable of both reproducing and living forever. You do the math: unless transhumanist immortality comes with mandatory castration (try to sell that to your fellow human beings!), it would take a very short number of years to cause a planetary collapse due to overpopulation.

(I have a seventh, more Jon Stewart-inspired argument: do you really want someone like Sarah Palin or Karl Rove to live forever, or for their “minds” to be uploaded and replicated in countless computers? That would really scare the shit out of me.)

I do share Julia’s bewilderment at the Christian-sounding arguments that some secularists have brought to bear on this debate. I do not think that human suffering (or any other species, for that matter) is a good thing. I do not support Mother Theresa’s type bullshit about the positive effects of sharing the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. But that doesn’t mean that there are no extremely serious issues with what the transhumanists wish to do, and given humanity’s track record so far in dealing with complex problems, I’m not exactly an optimist on this one either.

Fortunately, I don’t really think transhumanism is a threat to anyone, just like no futurist has ever been. These movements are populated by naive optimists with a fairly high degree of narcissism, but they are otherwise mostly harmless.