TR
Transhumanism school of thought
This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.
School of thought. Use technology to overcome death, disease, and cognitive limits. Canonical summary, not a person.
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Kindred % · overall match
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Twin % · thinks like you
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World % · lives in your world
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Life % · lives like you
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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty
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Bubble
Positions & sources
| Question | Position | Source |
|---|---|---|
| A new drug targets a disease that kills most patients within a year. Stipulate: if it works, it extends median survival by about 6 months; if not, its side effects shorten survival by about 1 month. A definitive trial would take 3 years. Stipulate: the trial will run regardless of your decision. As the regulator, what's the lowest probability that it works at which you'd approve it now for any informed patient who wants it? | 10% or less | Transhumanist Declaration (2009) on morphological freedom, and the movement's consistent literature opposing precautionary blocking of life-extending therapies — patient self-determination at low success thresholds. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| A teleporter scans you, builds an exact atom-for-atom copy at the destination, and instantly and painlessly destroys the original. Stipulate: it has been used 10,000 times, every arrival reports feeling continuous, and it would save you a 12-hour trip. You'd use it: | Freely, as I'd use a car | Pattern identity — Moravec, Mind Children (1988); Bostrom on mind uploading: a copy that continues your pattern is survival. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Twenty years from now, advanced AI will most likely have been: | Transformative beyond current imagination, overwhelmingly for the better | The Transhumanist Declaration (2009). (The movement's expected trajectory is transformation; extinction is treated as a serious tail risk, not the expectation.) |
| God exists | Probably false | The Transhumanist Declaration (1998, rev. 2009) — the movement's stance is secular and naturalistic. |
| Conscious existence continues after death | Probably false | The Transhumanist Declaration (2009) — no supernatural afterlife; death is a problem addressed technologically (life extension, cryonics). |
| Consciousness is produced entirely by the brain | Certainly true | Hans Moravec, Mind Children (1988); Bostrom's writings — minds as physical, informational processes (substrate-independence presupposes physicalism). |
| We are living in a computer simulation | Genuinely unsure | Nick Bostrom, "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?", Philosophical Quarterly (2003) — his own stated credence is roughly one in three; "genuinely unsure" is the accurate scale point. |
| Advanced AI poses a serious risk of human extinction | Probably true | Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence (2014) — advanced AI as a serious existential risk: the movement's flagship treatment. |
| People in 2100 will live better lives than people do today | Certainly true | The Transhumanist Declaration (2009) — the movement's defining technological optimism. |
| Human life has a purpose beyond the one we choose for it | Probably false | The Transhumanist Declaration (2009) — purposes and identities are self-directed; morphological freedom includes choosing one's own ends. |