Talk:Transhumanism/Archive 17

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Contempt for the flesh and fountain of youth

Why are these conflated? Just so that Bostrom's argument can be presented as trumping Midgeley's? Someone can argue that transhumanist views show contempt for the body without saying anything in particular about longevity. This is just one of the problems with the categorisation of the arguments in the debate, Wikipedians' synthesis throughout. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:35, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Because some critics of transhumanist views often conflate these two arguments and more. --Loremaster (talk) 00:58, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The two arguments are present in the literature and are sometimes conflated, as noted by Loremaster. If there is a good basis for separating them it would be a welcome improvement to the article and much preferable to taking potshots at it. StN (talk) 06:18, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Midgeley is a well known philosopher. If she has more than one critique of transhumanism, or if she wants to assert that two objections to transhumanism are related, that's her prerogative. But it is very difficult to do justice to philosophical arguments when there is so much original synthesis in the article, this being just one example of Wikipedia editors adding glosses to scholarly work. I will try and pull it apart. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:03, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I will strong oppose you so please discuss here your proposed changes before making them to reach consensus in order to avoid a needless edit war. --Loremaster (talk) 18:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:BRD? Now, I see that Midgley's book doesn't mention "transhumanism", so we need another source to tell us that her critique is relevant. I've found one that might do: Stuart A. Newman, "The Transhumanism Bubble", Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, June 2010. I'll post again when I've read it. In the meantime, if you have any source that says that "fountain of youth" is used in academic discussion of transhumanism, please add it. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

An author doesn't need to specifically mention the word "transhumanism" in order for her critique of a transhumanist ideal (such as immortality through technology) to be relevant to a Wikipedia article on transhumanism. --Loremaster (talk) 00:51, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

If no reliable source makes the link then it would seem to be an original synthesis. IRWolfie- (talk) 17:16, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

B-class

Regarding [1]. Standards change, I had written articles that were FA once and now are C-class. This article has a number of unreferenced claims (I just marked them), and for me that's a quick B-class fail. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 17:55, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Progress post FA demotion

I saw that User:Loremaster re-added the FA template. This was out of order and it should not be added again. The article still has multiple problems. I would like to see those bracketed descriptions off the headings. The reason is clear: it is original synthesis to group those critiques in that particular way, and to apply those labels. More eyes are needed on this whole series of articles, so I am going to post again at WP:FTN. Itsmejudith (talk) 13:36, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I was simply reverting multiple edits without realizing that I re-added the FA template in the process. That being said, although I acknowledge that the article has many problems mostly related to sourcing, the headings are not one of them. I will therefore strongly and consistantly opposed any changes to theses headings, which had consensus for years and where approved when the article first got FA status years ago. --Loremaster (talk) 15:09, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I've given you a reason why I think they should come off, now it would be nice if you would give a reason why they should stay on. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:41, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

You seem to be missing a very large point. If you feel that they should be changed, then come up with a better idea and put it here. I do get rather tired of people that go "I don't like this, you should fix it" (though that's at least better than "I don't like this, so I'm going to frell with chunks of the article without discussion"). Being "eyes" and having complaints without constructive input is the exact opposite of helpful. Human.v2.0 (talk) 19:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

So here's the thing. I feel that the bracketed bits should be taken off all the subheadings as they are OR. This has already been discussed here and I went ahead and did it and was reverted. We have policy on sourcing and original research that you may wish to refer to in future discussion. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:40, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

The bracketed headings are not original research. The are metonyms that serve to epitomize the concepts in the respective sections and make them more memorable. Each named work is referenced in the section it heads and was accepted as uncontroversially paradigmatic of the main idea of the section after discussion among editors with various viewpoints. If you think this is not the case for one or more of these works, please give your reasons. A general dislike for this style of exposition is not enough to expunge all the examples.StN (talk) 19:58, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I was going to point out the similar point: those bracketed bits are direct references to the title of arguments used in those sections (by the people involved in the matter, not us) or the titles of the referenced books themselves. You're basically arguing a matter of personal preference in style here; "Synthesis" is a WP phrase that is completely unrelated to the matter at hand.

Also, stating that you don't like something for no reason or mis-cited reasons is not the same as discussing a matter. Human.v2.0 (talk) 20:39, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Happy to spell out the problems subsection by subsection. Note first that Criticism sections, which this is, are not usually helpful in articles on controversial subjects. Let us look at the Infeasibility (Futurehype) subsection. First we have reference to a book by Max Dublin. I see that it was published with Viking, thus for a popular audience, it has very few academic citations but those it does have are favourable. Dublin seems to have been a sociologist, at University of Toronto, retired, I suppose. The book was first published 1989, and while its points probably are quite difficult for transhumanism to dodge, they obviously don't address the recent arguments. Who says that Dublin's critique is essentially "Infeasibility". From the reviews it seems to be "hype", not "it can't be done" but "it's blather". Those who want to include material from this book must give the page numbers. I haven't accessed the Stock text but he is a proponent of a biotech version of transhumanism. His points shouldn't be conflated with those of Dublin. The Kelly text appears to be a blog post. Seidensticker is a populist regurgitation of Dublin. Broderick is lightweight populism. None of the three latter belong in a philosophy article. So we are left with one critique, that of Dublin, which is not even really a critique of transhumanism because it is too early, but it is a critique of some of the underlying assumptions. That's worth including but not with the current title, and not really meriting a section of its own. I'll leave it to you to add the page numbers from Dublin. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:02, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Just a few late-night responses...

First off... so wait, a criticism section is more valuable in a topic that has less criticism? How does that logic work?

Next, let's get it right out of the way that you are criticizing the usefulness of a Max Dublin book that you are not personally familiar with? I assume that's what you mean there, and also by the fact that you are basing your comments on reviews. What reviews? And while you also haven't read Stock, you don't think that those should be mixed. You're aware that this is exactly what I meant previously about editors making comments/demands about topics that they are not well versed on, right?

The Kelly text is indeed linking to a blog. By Kelly. On his site. It's a one-line inclusion about a Wired founding exec, one who has a heavy side-tangent in future-spec. I don't personally see a problem with citing an individuals statements (at least an individual such as this) from their own website (it would also be better for you to remember that this "blog" is a portion of his own site, which is different from some Joe-Shmoe with a random blog).

I cannot argue that Bob Seidensticker is perhaps the lightweight in this crowd as far as weight in the field goes. That's ok, not everyone can be a PhD. His inclusion under "Infeasibility" is solely due to the fact that his book is about... well, about how a lot of scientific achievements in the past were consider infeasible. No, it's not a nuclear bomb as inclusions go, but uh?

The section could use a bit of rewording and restructuring (and me personally? I don't care one way or another about the bracketed bits. I don't feel that they go against any real Wiki guidelines, I just think that they're a little rough from an editorial perspective), but your position that all but one line of it should be removed seems a little unfounded considering that you are unfamiliar with the rest of it outside of (I can assume) online reviews. I hope you can understand where I'm coming from with that. Human.v2.0 (talk) 03:09, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

You are forgetting that it is up to those who want to include material to show that it is reliably sourced. I look at the indicators of reliability first, because these usually tell us what we need to know. I'm going to make a bold edit, which you will no doubt revert, but do take the time to look at the effect it has and work out what exactly you object to. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:11, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Putting aside the fact that I don't understand this obsession with toying with an article that had Featured Article status and user consensus for years, I have and will continue to revert Itsmejudith's changes until this dispute is resolved on the talk page. --Loremaster (talk) 22:09, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Your position is completely unreasonable. You need to understand and respond to the many objections that have been made. I doubt whether you have even looked at WP:OWN. Owning is what you are doing, It is not OK to oppose proposed changes just because of the person who is making the proposals. There is no article on this encyclopaedia that can remain in exactly the same state for years on end. Our standards and expectations change over time. This is a collaborative effort and you have to learn to collaborate with other people. We all have the same goal, an informative article. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:48, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

The standards for FA have improved over the years. One can read the article in the history from when it was FA to see that it no longer comes close to the quality of current FAs. "Toying" with an article is exactly the mechanism by which it gets improved on WP, particularly on an article that has remained structurally stale while WP standards and guidelines have changed.

I appreciate your motives, Loremaster, but you've got to let go. Let the article get messy organically for a bit, and drop in to help maintain its standards as it evolves. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:47, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

This revised Transhumanism article is MUCH better than the last version, as it more directly addresses, in the positive tense, what Transhumanism is rather than malingering on what it is not and what the arguments against it are. I still believe, however, that there is an undue amount of weight being given to the Controversies section, which are largely just about fear of what might happen. Fear of the unknown, fear of incomplete knowledge, fear of apocalypse, etc. Other people's fears about H+ aren't really worth that much space. -- TK — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.211.7.20 (talk) 10:18, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

The article would never have gained FA status in the first place without the Controversies section. The section was considered by a consensus of the editors to add necessary balance to a field of discourse which was notable, but was being promoted by its advocates as representing the march of progress. Transhumanism is not a philosophy, but an ideology, according to many writers. Without the critiques it has attracted it would not be worthy of an encyclopedia article.StN (talk) 00:47, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Original research tag

Recently some fact tags were added to unverified statements. They were removed without sourcing or removing the statements, which is, in my opinion, against policy. I could have removed them within policy, but I've tagged the article instead as they do appear to be original research. Dougweller (talk) 16:31, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Controversies section

This should be broken up per WP:CRITICISM and the material integrated with the rest of the article. Controversy about transhumanism is an integral part of what transhumanism is. This is true of all social philosophies. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:38, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

This seems reasonable to me.StN (talk) 00:19, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Referencing style

I propose to change the referencing style, so that we have footnotes to short "Harvard" references, followed by a bibliography. Any objections? I think it will be more useful for readers and the process will ensure that we look through the references carefully and get rid of all the bare URLs. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:59, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

:/

It's so sad to see the once-great Transhumanism article being mutilated by people who have no appreciation for the value of the previous content but also all the time and energy that was spent by the many contributors who made it what it was. Despite some minor tweaks, I won't fight this regression since I personally no longer have that kind of time and energy but I simply wanted to express my sadness for the record... --Loremaster (talk) 17:51, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Hands off! MY article! Itsmejudith (talk) 17:54, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

It's not an issue of article ownership, Judith. Most of the impressive contributions to this article that is being lost during this mutilation came from other people than me... But, as you would say, whatever... --Loremaster (talk) 17:58, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, what you see as impressive. It's sad really,because a lot of it is even a bit better than undergraduate essay, postgraduate dissertation level, but still not right for Wikipedia. Perhaps those who put in the work can publish it on blogs. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:06, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

golf clap

Now I remember why I stopped bothering to check this talk page. Nothing but canvassing and personal attacks instead of logic. Truly pathetic how a yapping, canvassing minority opinion can get anything they want on Wikipedia; especially when they ignore than a mass of new, uninformed editors is not the same as "consensus".

It's honestly not worth the effort on my part anymore to deal with you, and the folks that you drum up/drummed you up in the first place. We've already covered months ago that you have no knowledge of the subject, no knowledge of the sources, and simply put you're the strict definition of a deletionist. There's been no effort made on your side of the debate to rationalize removals other than vague mis-quoting wiki-isms (if you can call simply hotlinking to the page "quoting". the content of those pages has been brought up here as disagreeing with you before, but hey, what's that between friends?).

In short, have fun deleting the article. I don't have enough time in my life to try and drag a valid explanation out every time a thousand words are removed.Human.v2.0 (talk) 02:49, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

The ad-hominems are not helping. Reasoned suggestions for article-improvement would be helpful. bobrayner (talk) 22:04, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I've tried. Look up through the page, and on archived discussions. When it comes down to people who will not rationally discuss things on the talk page (see above) and are going to go ahead and remove chuncks of the article I'm pretty much left with starting an Edit War, and I'm not going to stoop to that (let alone waste time out of my life over the matter). That's the main problem here: editors who have disagreed with the article went gathering troops, and no one has the time to try and rationalize/cite information (again: see above, aka where this has been tried) only to have it be repeatedly ignored by people who admit they have no knowledge of the subject or sources.

I'll wait it out a couple years/months until this crowd moves along to something better to do, then see what's left to work with. Or not. I'm pretty much past caring. Human.v2.0 (talk) 17:21, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

.::If you can stir yourself to do some donkey work like finding page numbers in books that you want to see cited or replacing dead links with live ones, that would be helpful. But if you don't want to do that, don't be surprised if people reduce the article to what can be well sourced, e.g. from Midgeley. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:27, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Eliminating aging not a necessary criterion

If you want a better definition of transhumanism I suggest making use of Bostrom's criteria for a post-human condition:

An explication of what has been referred to as “posthuman condition” is overdue. In this paper, the term is used to refer to a condition which has at least one of the following characteristics:

• Population greater than 1 trillion persons
• Life expectancy greater than 500 years
• Large fraction of the population has cognitive capacities more than two standard deviations above the current human maximum
• Near-complete control over the sensory input, for the majority of people for most of the time
• Human psychological suffering becoming rare occurrence
• Any change of magnitude or profundity comparable to that of one of the above

www.nickbostrom.com/papers/future.html

Transhumanism is best defined, I think, as seeking to bring this about.

85.40.209.178 (talk) 17:04, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Countdown to Singularity image caption

I tagged the caption under this image used in section Transhumanism#Aims with the following reason: "Caption needs expanding to tell the reader the significance of this image. What does Kurzweil claim this image intends to show, for example?".

At first glance it appears to show the line of events are tending to some zero point, but is that what Kurzweil really claims using that graph? We should be careful not to attribute claims not made, but there must be some reason for showing the graph.

This archived discussion (ignoring the calls for deletion) has a few possible suggestions for captions, or a least the beginnings of captions, or maybe better, explanatory text in the body. -84user (talk) 23:19, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Orphaned ref

Ref not used.

- - MrBill3 (talk) 13:31, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

POV nature of article

It seems that negative critiques of Transhumanism exceed a clear statement of the transhumanist views. Can this be corrected? John D. Croft (talk) 09:32, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Concurrency Argument

Believers of the concurrency argument, observe that, one can only prove an internal, not an externality (external reality). Transhumanism already is fully implemented-- that is to say, the era that is "relived" is the one that leads into the adoption of machine hosts. This enables the brain to develop normally till such a time that the transition can be made, and preserves the uniqueness. After all, its nurture and nature, not either or. Placing high regard on religious concepts such as pergatory, and things leading to an afterlife. For the simplest way, for the brain to accept an afterlife, is for it to truly believe there is one. The concurrency argument gets its name, because it is not mutually exclusive to followers of other religions. One can concurrently be of one faith, and believe in transhumanism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:C:A380:A03:BDAD:9E40:787B:A371 (talk) 20:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Transhumanist films

There has been a Category:Transhumanist films which seems likely to be deleted as part of a CFD discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 January 23‎#Category:Transhumanist films.

Films noted as being Transhumanist include Hanna (film) and a couple more where the category was already deleted by an opponent of the term (i don't know which film articles were those), and also 12 films recently added by me to the category, which were noted in two sources ( a link to a Woodstock film festival with transhumanist billing, mentioning 2 films and a blog/opinion piece list of top 10 transhumanist films I believe that there is a genre of transhumanist films usefully identified as such. However many films in the genre would predate the term transhumanism itself, so sources are needed. Creating List of transhumanist films as a separate list or including such a list in a section of the Transhumanism article would be worthwhile. For the record, the films cited as transhumanist in those 2 sources, anyhow, are: 2B (film) 2009, pilot movie of Caprica (2009 ish tv series); Avatar (2009 film), Gattaca 1997, The Terminator, The Matrix, WALL-E, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931 film), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2004, Brazil (1985 film), Metropolis (1927 film); 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) (1968). Hope this helps with some future development here.

Anyone know of academic articles describing transhumanism which mention any films? --doncram 17:30, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Too much branding

There is too much commercial branding in this article ("h+" stuff). 93.173.134.62 (talk) 11:00, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

As stated in the article, h+ is a symbol for transhumanism in general. It is also an abbreviation for the former World Transhumanist Association, but that is a nonprofit organization and not a commercial entity.-Gloriamarie (talk) 21:53, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

User:WillMonrovie and Zoltan Istvan

User:WillMonrovie appears to be a WP:SPA inserting information about Zoltan Istvan into several articles, usually with excess detail, and almost always full of WP:PUFFERY. For example, The Transhumanist Wager, Seasteading, and here at Transhumanism (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and most recently 8. Each time does get more and more acceptable per Wikipedia standards, and in truth there's probably room to mention Istvan's blogs somewhere, but the evident POV is concerning. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  23:52, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

2004

"Some elements of transhumanist thought and research are considered by critics to be within the realm of fringe science because it departs significantly from the mainstream" This is stated in the present tense, but is from a decade ago. It needs an updated source or removal. It also requires a "such as" so the reader can evaluate what kinds of things are so considered. B^e——C_ritical 00:21, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Link to Untermensch misleading

The references in the Dehumanization section to the ethical concerns about creating subhumans are reasonable and valid, but the link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermensch is extremely misleading. That article is entirely focused on nazi genocide. The word choices here make literal sense, but the context of that article is completely unrelated to the meaning intended by the transhumanism article. It's contextually incorrect to link to it from here. 68.228.89.42 (talk) 15:18, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Removing original research template

The template doesn't identify which statements are OR, if any, and there is no discussion thread on this page pointing out any OR either. That makes it tagcruft. I'm removing it. The Transhumanist 22:10, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Name Change

I changed "Philippe Verdoux" to "Phil Torres," because Torres wrote under that name for a while. http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/torres/ (See CV section.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.23.109.231 (talk) 22:09, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Directed evolution (transhumanism)

A new article (Directed evolution (transhumanism)) has been generated but is a bit of a stub. It would be useful if it could be improved (particularly references) or otherwise merged into another article. T. Shafee (Evo&Evo) (talk) 11:17, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Other transhumanist articles that need to be edited can be found at WikiProject Transhumanism. Please consider joining this WikiProject.

H+You are invited to join WikiProject Transhumanism

Waters.Justin (talk) 16:05, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I've put it up for assesment T. Shafee (Evo&Evo) (talk) 22:54, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Transhumanist_politics

Can you please help to improve the article Transhumanist_politics. About half of the content in the article has been deleted by two editors, so it would be helpful to have more eyes looking at the article. Thank you. Waters.Justin (talk) 13:17, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

This is mostly to get something Wikipedia-worthy down about the Transhumanist Party, which failed AFD as a separate article once. There's a draft replacement, but it's been rejected once already. Need WP:RS to talk about a political party. Also noted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Transhumanism#Transhumanist_politics_and_Transhumanist_Party - David Gerard (talk) 17:42, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

emerging "smart-drugs," such as, Modafinil. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xan81 (talk • contribs) 18:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Dan Agin in Ethics section

His name has [who?] after it. A web search has the publishers Macmillan and Huffington Post (http://us.macmillan.com/author/danagin, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-agin/ describing him as a professor of genetics at the University of Chicago, but searching their website comes up empty (http://www.uchicago.edu/search/results/?GSAq=dan+agin), as does Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/public/Dan-Agin) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Dan/Agin). Dealing with this is beyond my skills. Tagus 18:12, 27 December 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tagus (talk • contribs)

Eclipse Phase

Not sure if this was appropriate but I added the roleplaying game Eclipse Phase to the See Also section because of its transhuman/posthuman themes. If it doesn't belong then feel free to delete it. 63.140.104.226 (talk) 11:59, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

I went ahead and deleted it anyway. I just noticed it's already mentioned under "Transhumanism in Fiction" so it probably would've been redundant. 63.140.104.226 (talk) 12:13, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Different/new transhumanism logo?

How does the standard h+ logo with the circle around it compare with this "newer" one made by Ivan Raszl? http://raszl.com/blog/transhumanism-logo I think it seems cleaner, more modern and overall more transhumanistic. Thoughts?

Daymonday (talk) 06:48, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Using H+ or h+ is just way too similar to HIV+, and for inclusiveness I don't understand why that isn't addressed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.121.229.140 (talk) 03:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Relation to Posthumanism

This edit by Fixuture removed Posthumanism from the hatnote. Transhumanism is mentioned in the Posthumanism article, which may be an indication that readers may easily confuse the two, which would be a sufficient reason for leaving this hatnote in place.  —jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 22:52, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I concur. Also, it involves a ton of very frindge (at best) science. Also, the quiet removal of the Mormon Transhumanist Association seems odd - David Gerard (talk) 05:54, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Not sure what happened. The word Mormon was left behind at the very top of the article by Fixture's edit. I got rid of it as a stray word. But I see that the paragraph about the Mormon Transhumanist Association was taken out by the same edit that clobbered the hatnote.  —jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 09:37, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Fixuture just blindly reverted. I have pointed them at this discussion so that they may defend their proposed changes - David Gerard (talk) 11:42, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't take notice of this talk page entry. For some reason I didn't get a notification even though my username was mentioned.

Anyway - I did make 3 changes and below is my rationale for each of them:

1. Removal of the posthumanism hatnote: posthumanism isn't just a critique of humanism so the hatnote is somewhere between false and misleading. Also this article is ALSO about posthumanism which makes it even more misleading. E.g. transhumanism can be seen as part of posthumanism or posthumanism as a part of transhumanism or both mostly overlapping - hence it is, once again, misleading to attempt to sharply distinguish both unecessarily in the hatnote. I suggest to set both into relation and distinguish them in proper text length in the article if that isn't the case yet.
2. Removal of the fringe science link in the see also section: transhumanism does not inherently involve fringe scince (transhumanism is just an ideology/philosophy that the human condition can and should be improved via technology - no fringe science needed for that). That's a non-neutral opinion of an editor and if anything belongs to a criticism section.
3. Removal of the sentence "Since 2006, the Mormon Transhumanist Association sponsors conferences and lectures on the intersection of technology and religion": there already is information on the MTA in the article. Even more of it is undue weight. Also it just has sloppy youtube reference and is obvious Mormon advocacy. The main reason I removed it however is because "lectures on the intersection of technology and religion" aren't relevant to an article about transhumanism - why should this info stay in the article?

--Fixuture (talk) 12:14, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

It's pretty darned unlikely you'd have most of present-day transhumanism if you took away the fringe science; even if you can philosophically construct a version of transhumanism that doesn't include fringe science, the version we actually have is suffsed with it. And I don't see how anyone can really claim otherwise - David Gerard (talk) 13:19, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

@David Gerard: Well that's your opinion and nothing more. And why the heck wouldn't it be possible to be convinced that the human condition can and should be improved via technology without technology? I really doubt that you have an answer for that. That's not some "strange constructed version" of transhumanism - it's just the core transhumanist ideology/philosophy. Things that go much further aren't the core values. The "version" you're talking about is actually your (biased) conception of it. The connection to fringe science isn't evident (that there are some transhumanist individuals and sub-groups that might engage in such doesn't make it see-also-link worthy nor would such a link be properly interpreted by the readers) and (just) your opinion - if anything you need consensus to add it.

--Fixuture (talk) 19:13, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Cryonics, the Singularity, immortality ... you can try to argue definitions, but the prominent stuff, that gets column inches, is the stuff that's fringe science at best and pseudoscience at worst. It's not just my opinion - David Gerard (talk) 20:32, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

@David Gerard: All of these are not required for the transhumanist ideology/philosophy. These are topics quite a count of transhumanists are interested about / transhumanist topics but again: they're not in any way part of the core thought. Add the fringe science link to the articles about these topics and not here.

There are many transhumanists who think those issues are bunk. (As a sidenote: speculation and science fiction about the future and its potentials that presents itself as such isn't fringe science and as far as I can tell the majority of sources discussing these issues present themselves as such and not as scientific studies or alike.) --Fixuture (talk) 21:33, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

My take:

1. That hatnote should stay. While Transhumanism and Posthumanism are sometimes used as synonyms, Posthumanism is used for a variety of subjects, some of which are indeed criticisms of Humanism. The two terms may easily be confused by readers, therefore justifying a hatnote and, indeed, a hatnote worded the way this one was – to emphasize the non-synonymous usage.
2. The Fringe science link should stay in See also. It's not a label saying the main topic is crazy; interpret it to mean that some aspects are decidedly not mainstream.
3. The Mormon Transhumanist Association is mentioned in the sidebar, and at two different places in the article. Perhaps it has been given undue weight. I would be in favor of consolidating or rationalizing the two mentions, if that makes sense. A mention does not need to be in the lead.

Will anyone else care to weigh in?  —jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 21:25, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

@Jmcgnh:

1. Might be - but not all of them (and afaik "criticisms of humanism" isn't even the major one). As said I think the short hatnote only causes more confusion as there are overlaps between the two terms and because the description isn't even nearly correct (in scope etc). As said I'd favor properly informing about the relationship of the two terms in a separate section/paragraph or maybe even sentence in the lead. If the hatnote stays it needs to be extended. I'd say we should have a vote on what to do about it here.
2. It is as people will conceive it so. Not sure which aspects of the core transhumanist ideology/philosophy can be considered "fringe science" but if you think that this is the case add this wikilink with a reference to the places where these aspects are issued or properly with description to the criticism section.
3. I'd favor consolidating it in the "Spirituality" section.

Also hoping for more people to weigh in.

--Fixuture (talk) 19:13, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

The whole point of hatnotes is to link confusable terms that aren't related. Wikipedia:Hatnote says: "Hatnotes help readers locate a different article they might be seeking. Readers may have arrived at the article containing the hatnote because they were redirected, because the sought article uses a more specific, disambiguated title, or because the sought article and the article with the hatnote have similar names." You arguing that they're not related is an argument for the hatnote - David Gerard (talk) 20:32, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

@David Gerard: No I was arguing that those two concepts are highly related (e.g. I said that this article is also about posthumanism and that they're overlapping much etc.). So thanks for underscoring my point. --Fixuture (talk) 21:33, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Per Fixuture above, noted on WP:FTN and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Transhumanism to get more eyes - David Gerard (talk) 22:42, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

On the "see also" question, there is a common misconception that "see also" entries categorize an article's topic. They don't - that is what our categories do. See also entries are in part "to enable readers to explore tangentially related topics" WP:ALSO. Alexbrn (talk) 09:29, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

1. There should be a posthumanism hatnote, but it could be reworded. If posthumanism and transhumanism are easily confused terms (and they are), a hatnote is sensible.
2. If transhumanism is based in large part on fringe science, that should be part of the article, and thus linked from there. If the article doesn't make the case that it's fringe science, in so many words, why would we say that it's a related or tangential concept? In other words, I support removing this, but wouldn't object at all to it being linked from a sourced statement in the article.
3. This is an easy one. Why would we include any organization based on its existence, cited only to itself? Include reliable sources independent of the subject and I'm indifferent. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:48, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

Debate section

The debate section is excessively large compared to the rest of the article. Also it doesn't tell us about any debate but simply a lot about people and ideas criticizing transhumanism. Furthermore the subsections of this section contain words such as threat, spectre and trivialization which are clearly POV. I hope I can make some time to clean this up. Any help would be greatly appreciated since I'm writing my thesis! AlwaysUnite (talk) 20:49, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

+1 I made a minor edit, and am looking at working on this, but frankly I think the best route would be a full rewrite. Although, come to think of it, perhaps working it into a "Criticisms of Transhumanism" (or something similar; rather than debate) section would be a decent solution. UniversityofPi (talk) 19:38, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

I didn't see it was that huge, only looked at the overall portion. Perhaps this is something that could be a separate article that's referenced here with a general overview of the debate. UniversityofPi (talk) 19:46, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

"Criticisms of" would be a step back - such sections should be avoided. I would like to see the topics become headings in their own right and in each one both sides of the issue can be examined. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:12, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, what they can't make up for in quality, they make up for in quantity. ;) 46.239.250.137 (talk) 18:03, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree, the debate section is way to large, and additionally seems to present a negative outlook. This seems strongly biased, so I would suggesting either making a new page ("Critisims of Transhumanism") and moving some content there or strongly cutting the content anyways HeadphoneG (talk) 23:19, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

careful there - splitting most criticism off to a separate article is usually considered POV forking, per WP:NPOV. You can't just keep the advocacy and send the criticism off somewhere else - David Gerard (talk) 00:04, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Sources discussing whether or not this is pseudoscience?

I see from here [2] that we have had some related discussion on whether or not transhumanism is pseudoscience (or if aspects of it are pseudoscience). Do we have some sources on this? Isambard Kingdom (talk) 22:44, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Nootropics

I see no mention of brain altering substances being used to enhance the human form?

--86.139.252.238 (talk) 23:14, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Casas – on whether our society is already transhuman

Moved from User talk:Jmcgnh § Transhumanism

I reverted an edit by KsaveroEO and they have subsequently added the material to the Debate section of the article with these edits.

I still question whether this is a noteworthy addition. An observation from a transhumanist FAQ seems appropriate here:

...whether we are not already transhuman? The question is a provocative one, but ultimately not very meaningful; the concept of the transhuman is too vague for there to be a definite answer.

A major part of the debate about efforts to promote transhumanism is the role of unintended consequences. The role of conscious choice is not nearly as significant as the ability (or inability) to predict the outcomes. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 07:24, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Actually, what Casas argues is that in order to consider transhumanism a movement, the role of conscious choice is not only significant, but necessary to be a transhumanist (2017: 112). That is why our society would be (unintendedly) transhuman, but not (consciously) transhumanist. On another front, it is true that the concept of the transhuman is vague, and that it is a continuum, but the author gives relevant examples to make his case, such as the extension of life expectancy and the increase in IQ (Flynn effect). Still, as I said, I have no particular attachment to the reference used. If you know other authors who make the same argument and you prefer to refer to them, feel free to do so. --KsaveroEO (talk) 12:12, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Unbalanced viewpoint

I've added the "Unbalanced" Issues tag because this article reeks of the giddiness of mad science—there is a clear bias towards pro-transhumanism with only a token nod toward any opposing views or concerns, and an overall tone to the contrary. I'd like to encourage a better balance. WikiEditorial101 (talk) 03:05, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

WikiEditorial101, reeking isn't good. Please point out what it is in the article that reeks. And where is it giddy? Thank you. The Transhumanist 23:12, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

What's missing from the opposing views or concerns? The Transhumanist 23:12, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Pro-transhumanism = Singularitarianism? The Transhumanist 23:18, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. But this is at the centre of one of the corners of wikipedia that was taken over by special interests. Only professional editors can cure that. 84.169.224.146 (talk) 15:23, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

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Storing data from brain into solid-state memory

Some research has been done by Paul Verschure of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra to store data from the brain into solid-state memory. It is intented to create a backup of the data in the brain for Alzheimer patients.

Perhaps useful to mention in this article ? PS: one thing I'm no sure about is whether the data (stored on a solid state memory module) can also be read by the brain again, and whether data sticks of other people can be exchanged (which could theoretically give memories, skills of other people to the patient KVDP (talk) 09:33, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@KVDP: This article briefly describes "mind uploading", but it does not mention this specific technology. Jarble (talk) 17:28, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

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Human Transformations

Tracking function's transformations from sensation, emotion, mentation, meaning, awareness, consciousness and maybe even a self and observation,45.49.226.155 (talk) 00:54, 9 June 2018 (UTC)Arnold45.49.226.155 (talk) 00:54, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

References

Remove original research template from June 2012?

I think it may be time to remove the original research template? Thoughts? I vote to keep whatever pap was submitted in June 2012. Live with it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.231.88.61 (talk) 01:45, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Transhumanist Ridicule

Quite often Transhumanists are Included in Discourse as a Niche Political Ideology. They are teased for "Just wanting robot arms. This is a Humourous definition of Transhumanist and is probably why you came to this article for a clarification of this Loose definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doggo 52 (talk • contribs) 04:19, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I see someone here watches Jreg. 108.20.174.117 (talk) 21:34, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Singularity

The article states without source that

The concept of the technological singularity, or the ultra-rapid advent of superhuman intelligence, was first proposed by the British cryptologist I. J. Good in 1965

Here is a source that this idea was not new even a year before, Stanislaw Lem, translation by Joanna Zylinska:

We can imagine it in a form envisaged by many cyberneticists today—that of building ever greater “intelligence amplifiers” (which would not just become scientists’ “allies” but which, thanks to their “intelectronic” supremacy over the human brain, would quickly leave scientists behind)

--Rainald62 (talk) 16:30, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

make page: Digiperson (species)

An individual which manifests personhood and isn't merely a transhuman (half digital), but s/he/it has a digibrain (digital brain) which has the equivalent of the limbic system to exhibit emotion and sentience (thus not merely exhibiting a convincing Turing personhood to pass the test, but [the digiperson is] a truly experiencing being). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:411E:7C76:713D:79BE:56ED:AB1 (talk) 10:53, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

This is very much WP:SYNTHESIS and WP:FRINGE territory, but you can try your luck here: WP:AfC. Symmachus Auxiliarus (talk) 10:56, 12 April 2021 (UTC)