It's seriously annoying to not be able to see what you're typing on mobile because this thing is taking up the entire edit window every single time.

N=4, so some caution is probably warranted. Still, impressive results.

I've been on this sub for a minute so I know people on it are sick of pseudospiritual schizobabble posts that talk about vaguely transhuman-flavoured nonsense. I promise this post is not that and just some philosophical thoughts vis a vis transhumanism that I've been thinking about. But, full disclosure: I am a depressed young person with a lot of existential angst and quite possibly a form of existential OCD, so perhaps some of the things that feel like deep issues to me may in fact appear trivial to some of you.

Transhumanists are very acquainted with the debate of immortality's desirability. I think most of them agree minimally that some form of modest life extension would be desirable to have, and many more believe not only that but dramatically extended lives, if not "truly" immortal ones (i.e. infinite in duration) could be desirable if they were possible.

One common objection to immortality is that given a long enough time, you will outlive all of your loved ones and despair at their absence. The obvious transhumanist objection to this is that transhumanists don't just want immortality for themselves and no one else, they ideally want it to be freely available to everyone, which I think dissolves this particular problem.

But this objection to immortality does fundamentally get at something that I think is worth taking seriously, which is that dramatically or even infinitely extending the duration of lives with more and more time will not resolve the existential tension of everything else around us being transient or impermanent as time relentlessly marches on. For example, even if we could make all of the people in our lives literally live forever -- never have to fear that your parents or friends or other loved ones will die -- given an infinite amount of time your positive relationship with them could not literally endure forever. All of the material goods in our lives that we value as pleasurable (food, fashion, literature, films, games, etc) and therefore hope to avoid losing access to by not dying doesn't prevent those other things from eventual erasure. The servers of your favorite game that you want to keep playing will eventually shut down, the favorite restaurant you want to keep eating at will eventually close, the clothes that you enjoy wearing the most will eventually wear out or break or be lost, and so on. In other words, even if we hypothetically entertain the possibility of of acquiring immortality, that still will not allow us to have the things we desire permanently or make us impervious to loss.

Maybe this is just a 'me problem', but, while I am not at all a religious believer, I do resonate with the Buddhist notions that much of our suffering derives from attaching ourselves to things (objects, relationships, nations, movements, etc) that are necessarily incapable of lasting permanently, and their eventual ends causes us pain. In physics terms familiar to transhumanists we would say this is because everything around us is subject to the increase of entropy (which, indeed, as we presently understand it, appears to preclude the possibility of true immortality anyways). It seems to me that many of transhumanists hope to permanently resolve the pains of the human condition through transhuman technologies, boldly hope that through human progress and determination we can satisfy all of our desires (as opposed to the Buddhist recommendation of detaching ourselves from them), prevent everything bad, and enjoy flawless utopia forever. But then what, and then what, and then what, and so on? Merely having more and more and more time to get what we want won't stop us from living inside of time and cyclically wanting and losing in the first place; an infinite lifespan is spent on an infinite hedonic treadmill, and freedom from death is not freedom from suffering.

What resolutions can the transhumanist project conceivably employ against the passage of time itself? Altering our minds and bodies so profoundly that we are incapable of ever suffering over infinite time? Deleting our memories of past attachments to prevent our experiencing of loss over them? Do you think that the properly aligned god ASI singularity will simply have to figure the best possible state of affairs for us out? Do you hope to become some kind of nonhuman entity that somehow transcends these conditions? Should we invoke highly speculative sci fi physics like the Omega Point or ascending to 4D beings beyond time?

Now, you may reasonably reply that, perhaps we cannot literally have infinite, eternal, timeless perfection that resolves all problems forever, but this shouldn't prevent us from attempting to improve things via technology in more modest ways; just because we can't live forever doesn't mean it would be bad to extend lifespans to 150 years or to cure all cancers. To that I agree, but then I would suggest that some of the much more utopian and millenarian attitudes within the transhumanist fold should be tempered.

You may also rebut that everything I've said applies to a finite human life just as much to an infinite one, which is true. This is not an argument against immortality itself. I just wonder that there may perhaps be a fundamental limit on how much our lives can really be improved.

If you're interested in helping out and helping to add more oversight on posts then please apply or DM me if you are active.

Thank you!

At what point does a collection of whatever parts of wetware and hardware go so far as to stop being transhuman and become un human? At the extreme: does a full consciousness upload remain human? What if said mind is altered by the system?

heres the freedom of form foundation newsletter that talks about it: https://www.patreon.com/freedomofform/posts/170307678

heres the public domain document about the procedure: https://freedomofform.org/research/integument/invention-synth-material-implants-fur/

thank u unhinged raccoon girl, zennith, hyper, and shoutout to mecknavors!!!

edit: apparently using """ on both sides of a word is a nazi dogwhistle. im sorry, i didnt mean it that way. i meant that zennith and unhinged raccoon cyborg girl are probably alterhuman so they dont identify as humans. im srry.

Hello! I'm a Master's student in Canada and would love to conduct an online interview with an individual (or a parent of an individual) using a brain machine interface. Any leads would be appreciated! TIA!

What constitutes transhuman to you? Does a pacemaker equal transhuman? Does a human head on a synthetic body? Does a human with a neural implant?

Discuss...

Full disclosure: my co-host and I made this video exploring biohacking and whether aging could eventually become a treatable biological condition.

My favorite question was if someone had lived for 70 years but genuinely had the body and biological health of a 30-year-old - would chronological age still be the most meaningful measure of their age?

Wanted to get this community's thoughts...thanks!

People are either positive or neutral against literally any transhumanist concept except cryonics. Why is cryonics so hated?

Cryonics always gets mocked and people make jokes and make fun of the cryopreserved people.

There is also that myth about ice, water, crystallization, etc... This has been solved years ago and isn't happening anymore. Modern cryonics has nothing to do with water, ice and freezing.

​

I'm curious how people here view the concept of a “soul.”

By soul, I mean any non-physical aspect of a person that could constitute their consciousness, identity, or “self” beyond the physical brain/body. So I'm not strictly talking about a religious concept of a soul, or something that has to be supernatural.

Basically, do you guys believe that consciousness or the self exists in some form beyond the physical processes of the brain/body?

And if you do, how would that affect your views on things like mind uploading, brain-computer interfaces, replacing biological organs with artificial ones, or eventually replacing the body entirely?

I'm especially interested in hearing from people who don't believe in a soul, since that seems like it could lead to some pretty interesting conclusions about what makes someone “the same person” after extensive augmentation.

I'm personally a Materialist or Naturalist when it comes to the topic.

The Brain Preservation Summit brings together people working across the technical, clinical, and philosophical dimensions of preserving the brain. Over two days at the Sparks Brain Preservation facility in Salem, Oregon, speakers will share short talks on connectome preservation, aldehyde-based methods, cryobiology, electron microscopy, long-term storage, molecular nanotechnology, the future of the field, and many other topics.

For those who cannot attend in person, we will be livestreaming the event. 

Saturday, September 19: Talks begin at 8:30 AM PT and run through the afternoon, with a lunch break from approximately 12:00–1:30 PM.

Day 1 livestream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQT4ADZhFkU

Sunday, September 20: Talks begin at 8:30 AM PT and end around noon.

Day 2 livestream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um-LP24PoYs

You can view the full planned schedule here, although please note that the timing of specific speakers might be a little bit off depending upon how the day goes: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/e/2PACX-1vRsg4tGS4vqbf1qqa0Ktcd5v1MORqelKkmSTsO1vYh1PQ23yCr2uJoorVwufimx7C79U1ibdFX9Fd3O/pub?pli=1

More information here: https://sparksbrain.org/summit-2026.html

No soy un loco o sería interesante ver como una especie hecha a base de vida artificial evolucionara y se pudiera ver como una especie de evolucion forzada por los humanos y como sería una simulación sería más rápido que la vida real(seríana)

Hello! I am a graduate student studying philosophy, and I have become interested in the ideas behind transhumanism. I often see it described as a philosophy, but have had a hard time finding recources or getting straight answers as to the root philosophical claims underscoring the movement. Some are more clear : human suffering is bad, and concious beings capable of grasping ethical circumstance ought to do what they can to alleviate that suffering. This leads us to the conclusion that we should use our ingenuity and technology to overcome this suffering. Some are less clear : from where do we derive the claim that we "ought" to minimize suffering? Is there such a thing as human nature, and if so, does the attaiment of the transhuman or posthuman ideal add to, change, or go beyond that, or does it still fit within? Are humans "rational animals," and if so, at what point do we cease to be human if we go down the path of modification and enhancement? Could there be an obligation (perhaps rooted in evolutionary ethics) to only enhance, and never to modify?

Forgive my long jumble of questions, but I am curious to see what the broader community thinks, and what individual transhumanists think personally. I would also greatly appreciate any articles / videos that anyone has to share on the matter. I understand that there are probably a great number of opinions and perspectives on the questions I'm asking, but I'd love to hear anything and everything that people have to say.

Best wishes, and thanks. 

Which of the two are you a Transhumanist for?

Obviously, those two are not mutually exclusive, but are even tightened intertwined.

But if you had to lean towards one way or the other, which and why?

I am personally lean towards the quality of life, but am biased since I'm young.

THPedia is our wiki for Transhumanism and we created new infobox templates for people and organizations and an authority control template to be able to add identifiers for a respective person or organization! Come join our working group and help contribute to the wiki!

Okay, so out of a feminine rage after writing about Medusa for a world history report, I was scrolling through Pinterest when I saw a video talking about how the male chromosomes will one day go extinct.

I went down a rabbit hole of asexual reproduction and cloning before I had a thought...

If we could somehow control the way malignant cancerous cells develop, then maybe we could use that to grow grow a human embryo without sperm or male genes.

That's just a thought though and I wanted to see if I'm just crazy or if someone gets where I'm coming from.

Edit: I am just a high schooler who knows nothing, so pls correct me if I'm wrong (which y'all have already been doing lol) 😂

I wanted to raise a question for the Transhumanist community.

We have been seeing a significant increasing use of AI across society, technological development, and scientific research. These developments are particularly relevant to Transhumanism because AI has the potential to accelerate scientific and technological breakthroughs that could enable us to augment ourselves beyond the conventional human condition and expand the possibilities of morphological freedom.

However, AI is also well known for its ability to act as a catalyst for both positive and negative change across almost every area of society

With this in mind, in what areas do you see AI being beneficial and/or harmful to:

1. Applied Transhumanism - such as scientific and technological innovations that enable human enhancement, augmentation, longevity, and morphological freedom; and
2. The ideological and philosophical framework of Transhumanism itself - including our ideas about human nature, technological progress, autonomy, intelligence, personhood, and what it means to transcend the limitations of the human condition?

More broadly, could AI ultimately strengthen the Transhumanist movement and its goals, or could some developments in AI challenge or fundamentally alter the philosophical foundations of Transhumanism?

I've been thinking about a possible future direction for AI and brain-computer interfaces.

AI models can be trained on enormous amounts of information and develop useful internal representations of patterns, such as programming concepts, language, mathematics, etc.

This made me wonder:

Could a future BCI somehow translate useful information from an AI-trained system into signals that a biological brain could actually learn from?

For example, imagine an AI trained extensively on Python. Rather than simply asking the AI questions, could a future interface help the human brain acquire some of the underlying patterns and concepts more directly?

I'm not suggesting that current technology can upload knowledge into the brain. I know we are nowhere near that.

I'm interested in the theoretical question:

Could artificial neural-network representations eventually be translated into useful learning signals for biological neural networks?

What do you think would be the biggest obstacle — understanding how knowledge is represented in the brain, translating AI representations into neural signals, or something else?