Outline of Transhumanism - Transhumanist Concepts

Transhumanist Concepts

• Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance
• Extropianism – evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition. Extropians believe that advances in science and technology will some day let people live indefinitely. An extropian may wish to contribute to this goal, e.g. by doing research and development or volunteering to test new technology.
• Futures studies – study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. Also called "futurology".
• GNR – denotes the technologies of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.
• Human condition – the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to gender, race, class, etc.; the experiences of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. Transhumanism aims to radically improve the human condition.
• Human enhancement –
• Survival –
  • Existential risks – dangers that have the potential to destroy, or drastically restrict, human civilization. They are distinguished from other forms of risk both by their scope, affecting all of humanity, and severity; destroying or irreversibly crippling the target.
  • Human extinction –
    • Human extinction scenarios –
  • Longevity –
    • Immortality –
    • Indefinite lifespan –
• Megatrajectory – theoretical concept in evolutionary biology that describes paradigmatic developmental stages (major evolutionary milestones) and potential directionality in the evolution of life. A theorized megatrajectory that hasn't occurred yet is postbiological evolution triggered by the emergence of strong AI and several other similarly complex technologies.
• Morphological freedom – proposed civil right of a person to either maintain or modify his or her own body, on his or her own terms, through informed, consensual recourse to, or refusal of, available therapeutic or enabling medical technology.
• Noosphere – "sphere of human thought". In the original theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere (sentience) is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life).
• Omega Point – term coined by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) to describe a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving.
• Participant evolution – process of deliberately redesigning the human body and brain using technological means, rather than through the natural processes of mutation and natural selection, with the goal of removing "biological limitations."
  • Procreative beneficence –
  • Procreative liberty –
• Posthumanism –
  • Posthuman – in transhumanism, it is a hypothetical future being "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards."
    • Parahuman – human-animal hybrid or chimera. Scientists have done extensive research into the mixing of genes or cells from different species, e.g. adding human (and other animal) genes to bacteria and farm animals to mass-produce insulin and spider silk proteins, and introducing human cells into mouse embryos.
    • Posthuman God – idea that posthumans, being no longer confined to the parameters of human nature, might grow physically and mentally so powerful as to appear god-like by human standards.
• Post scarcity – hypothetical form of economy or society, in which things such as goods, services and information are free, or practically free. This would be due to an abundance of fundamental resources (matter, energy and intelligence), in conjunction with sophisticated automated systems capable of converting raw materials into finished goods, allowing manufacturing to be as easy as duplicating software.
• Singularitarianism – technocentric ideology and social movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of a superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the Singularity benefits humans.
• Technogaianism – bright green environmentalist stance of active support for the research, development and use of emerging and future technologies to help restore Earth's environment. Technogaians argue that developing safe, clean, alternative technology should be an important goal of environmentalists.
• Technological convergence – tendency for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks. Convergence can refer to previously separate technologies such as voice (and telephony features), data (and productivity applications), and video that now share resources and interact with each other synergistically.
• Technological singularity – hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as an intellectual event horizon, beyond which the future becomes difficult to understand or predict. Nevertheless, proponents of the singularity typically anticipate such an event to precede an "intelligence explosion", wherein superintelligences design successive generations of increasingly powerful minds.
• Technophilia – strong enthusiasm for technology, especially new technologies such as personal computers, the Internet, mobile phones and home cinema. The term is used in sociology when examining the interaction of individuals with their society, especially contrasted with technophobia.
• Techno-utopianism – any ideology based on the belief that advances in science and technology will eventually bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal. A techno-utopia is therefore a hypothetical ideal society, in which laws, government, and social conditions are solely operating for the benefit and well-being of all its citizens, set in the near- or far-future, when advanced science and technology will allow these ideal living standards to exist; for example, post scarcity, transformations in human nature, the abolition of suffering and even the end of death.