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Transhumanism

A cool-eyed survey of the movement that says human nature is not the finish line. From cochlear implants to mind uploads, what is now medicine, what is...

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A cool-eyed survey of the movement that says human nature is not the finish line. From cochlear implants to mind uploads, what is now medicine, what is enhancement, and what is still pure manifesto? Key sections include: The body, upgraded.; What "transhumanism" means in 2026; Four directions of upgrade; What is shipping; How a brain-computer interface listens in; How long, really?; Smarter, or just augmented?; Who shaped the conversation; The five hard arguments; Enhancement spectrum & regulatory zones.

Key sections

  • 01The body, upgraded.
  • 02What "transhumanism" means in 2026
  • 03Four directions of upgrade
  • 04What is shipping
  • 05How a brain-computer interface listens in
  • 06How long, really?
  • 07Smarter, or just augmented?
  • 08Who shaped the conversation
  • 09The five hard arguments
  • 10Enhancement spectrum & regulatory zones
  • 11What stays speculative
  • 12What to watch · 2026–2030

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Slide outline
  1. 01The body, upgraded.
  2. 02What "transhumanism" means in 2026
  3. 03Four directions of upgrade
  4. 04What is shipping
  5. 05How a brain-computer interface listens in
  6. 06How long, really?
  7. 07Smarter, or just augmented?
  8. 08Who shaped the conversation
  9. 09The five hard arguments
  10. 10Enhancement spectrum & regulatory zones
  11. 11What stays speculative
  12. 12What to watch · 2026–2030
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Category
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Updated
2026-05-17
LLM text
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Presentation Transcript

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Slide 01

The body, upgraded.

  • Volume 6 · Future & Speculation
  • A cool-eyed survey of the movement that says human nature is not the finish line. From cochlear implants to mind uploads, what is now medicine, what is enhancement, and what is still pure manifesto?
Slide 02

What "transhumanism" means in 2026

  • Definition
  • Transhumanism is the philosophical claim that we should use technology to extend human capacities — physical, cognitive, emotional — beyond evolved norms. The term goes back to Julian Huxley (1957). The contemporary movement crystallized with Max More (1990), Nick Bostrom & David Pearce (1998 WTA / Humanity+), and the Extropians.
  • It is not transhumanism if it merely cures disease. It becomes transhumanism when the same techniques are pressed past baseline — to lifespans of 150, IQ +30, sensory ranges that birds and bats have but we never did.
  • Three pillars · More 1990
  • Perpetual progress — open-ended improvement
  • Self-transformation — biological & psychological enhancement
  • Practical optimism — "dynamic optimism", action-oriented
  • Adjacent labels
  • Extropianism · Posthumanism · Longevism · Singularitarianism · Effective Accelerationism (e/acc)
Slide 03

Four directions of upgrade

  • Map · Domains
Slide 04

What is shipping

  • State of the Art · 2026
  • TechStageNotableYear
  • Cochlear implantsApproved · 1m+ usersFDA 19841984
  • Deep brain stimulationApproved · Parkinson's, OCD~200k implants1997
  • Retinal prosthesisLimited · Argus-II discontinuedPixium IRIS-II2013–25
  • Neuralink N1FDA-cleared trials, ~3 patientsTelepathy demo, 20242024–
  • Synchron StentrodeFDA breakthrough · vascular BCIthought-cursor for ALS2022–
  • CRISPR (Casgevy)Approved · sickle-cell, β-thalassemiaVertex / CRISPR Tx2023
  • GLP-1 agonistsMass adoption · weight, addiction trialssemaglutide, tirzepatide2017–
  • SenolyticsPhase II trialsUNITY, Mayo2018–
  • Mind uploadingConcept onlyconnectomics datasets—
Slide 05

How a brain-computer interface listens in

  • Diagram · Neuron-on-Chip
  • BCIs span a spectrum from non-invasive (EEG, ~10⁰ neurons resolved) to fully invasive (Utah arrays, Neuralink threads, ~10³ neurons). Bandwidth scales with electrode count, but so do tissue-rejection problems.
Slide 06

How long, really?

  • Domain · Longevity
  • Aubrey de Grey's SENS framework (2002) categorizes seven types of cellular damage. It is no longer a fringe view: NIH's Interventions Testing Program, Calico, Altos Labs, and Loyal (dog longevity) have absorbed billions in capital. The hard claim — "longevity escape velocity by 2030" — remains a minority position even among researchers who agree aging is intervenable.
  • What might actually move the needle
  • Senolytics (clearing senescent cells)
  • Partial reprogramming (Yamanaka factors, in vivo)
  • Rapamycin / mTOR axis
  • Mitochondrial uncouplers (DNP analogues, careful)
  • Plasma factor exchange (TPE)
  • forecast Healthspan extension of 5–10 years by 2050 is plausible. Lifespan to 150 by 2050 is not.
Slide 07

Smarter, or just augmented?

  • Domain · Cognition
  • Pharmacological cognitive enhancement (modafinil, methylphenidate, amphetamines) has modest, dose-dependent effects on attention. Benefits in healthy subjects often vanish in well-controlled trials. The most consequential cognitive upgrade of the 2020s is not a pill — it is an LLM in your pocket.
  • 2026 baseline
  • Exocortex
  • LLMs functioning as a memory + reasoning prosthesis. The Memex, finally, almost.
  • 2030–2040
  • High-bandwidth BCI
  • 10⁴–10⁵ channel arrays. Direct text-to-thought decoding for typing speeds > 100 WPM.
  • 2050+
  • Cognitive merge
  • Speculative. Bidirectional input at concept-level, not phoneme-level. Bostrom's superintelligence-by-IA route.
Slide 08

Who shaped the conversation

  • Voices
  • Nick BostromFHI Oxford. Superintelligence (2014); the simulation argument; existential risk.
  • David PearceHedonistic Imperative; abolitionism — engineering away suffering.
  • Ray KurzweilThe Singularity Is Near (2005); accelerating returns; nano-bots in capillaries.
  • Aubrey de GreySENS, longevity escape velocity; controversial within mainstream gerontology.
  • Anders SandbergWhole-brain emulation roadmap (2008, FHI).
  • Donna Haraway"A Cyborg Manifesto" (1985); the founding feminist text on hybridity.
  • Francis FukuyamaCritic. Our Posthuman Future (2002), called transhumanism "the world's most dangerous idea".
  • Leon KassBioconservative; Bush bioethics council; defends "the wisdom of repugnance".
Slide 09

The five hard arguments

  • Ethics
  • Inequality. If enhancement requires capital, you fork the species along wealth lines. (Sandel; Persson & Savulescu.)
  • Authenticity. Is a CRISPR-edited child still "your" child? Is a memory you didn't form "your" memory?
  • Coercion. Once enhancement is normal, opting out costs you the job, the SAT score, the marriage market.
  • Reversibility. Germline edits are inheritable. Mistakes propagate.
  • Identity. If you replace neurons gradually with chips, when (if ever) does "you" stop being you? (Parfit's bundle theory.)
Slide 10

Enhancement spectrum & regulatory zones

  • Diagram · Risk Surface
Slide 11

What stays speculative

  • Frontiers · 2050+
  • Whole-brain emulation. Sandberg & Bostrom (2008) put the compute requirement around 10¹⁴–10¹⁸ FLOPS, plausibly in reach by 2030s. Scanning resolution is the harder bottleneck — destructive serial-section EM still required. scenario
  • Morphological freedom. Designed bodies, optional sensory modes, optional substrates. Manfred Macx, not 2030. fiction-adjacent
  • Pearce's pleasure-engineering. A "hedonic floor" lifted by gene therapy — phenomenologically plausible, politically nowhere. fiction-adjacent
  • Suspended animation / cryonics. Alcor and Cryonics Institute have ~500 patients. No reanimation pathway demonstrated. scenario
Slide 12

What if we nuke aging?

  • Watch · YouTube
  • CHANNEL · Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell
  • 10-minute primer on senescence, partial reprogramming, and the most plausible levers. Designed for skeptics.
  • youtube.com/@kurzgesagt →
  • CHANNEL · Lex Fridman
  • Conversations with Bostrom, Hassabis, and Aubrey de Grey
  • Multi-hour interviews — slow, patient, contradicts itself across episodes. Useful precisely for that.
  • youtube.com/@lexfridman →
Slide 13

What to watch · 2026–2030

  • Closing
  • Neuralink & Synchron multi-patient endpoints (typing speed, longevity)
  • First in-vivo partial-reprogramming clinical trial (Altos, Calico)
  • FDA pathway for "aging" as an indication (TAME trial readout)
  • Germline editing moratorium status — China, UK Parliament debates
  • GLP-1 long-term cognition data at scale
  • // END FILE 06.02 // The body is a draft.
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