Normally, thousands of rabbits and guinea pigs are used andkilled, in scientific laboratories, for experiments which yieldgreat and tangible benefits to humanity. This war butcheredmillions of people and ruined the health and lives of tens ofmillions. Is this climax of the pre-war civilization to be passedunnoticed, except for the poetry and the manuring of the battlefields, that the“poppies blow”stronger and better fed? Or is thedeath of ten men on the battle field to be of as much worth inknowledge gained as is the life of one rabbit killed for experi-ment? Is the great sacrifice worth analysing? There can be onlyone answer—yes. But, if truth be desired, the analysis must bescientific.

What we call progressconsists in coordinating ideas with realities

What is the defining or characteristic mark of humanity?To this question two answers and only two have been given in thecourse of the ages, and they are both of them current to-day. Oneof the answers is biological—man is an animal, a certain kind ofanimal; the other answer is a mixture partly biological and partlymythological or partly biological and partly philosophical—manis a combination orunionof animal with something supernatural.An important part of my task will be to show that both of theseanswers are radically wrong and that, beyond all things else, theyare primarily responsible for what is dismal in the life and historyof humankind. This done, the question remains: What is Man? Ihope to show clearly and convincingly that the answer is to befound in the patent fact that human beings possess in varyingdegrees a certain natural faculty or power or capacity whichserves at once to give them their appropriate dignity as humanbeings and to discriminate them, not only from the minerals andthe plants but also from the world of animals, this peculiar orcharacteristic human faculty or power or capacity I shall call[004]

“For a while he trampled with impunity on laws human anddivine but, as he was obsessed with the delusion that two andtwo makes five, he fell, at last a victim to the relentless rulesof humble Arithmetic.“Remember, O stranger, Arithmetic is the first of thesciences and the mother of safety.”BRANDEIS

It is useless to argue if electricity be“natural”or“supernatu-ral,”of“material”or of“spiritual”origin. As a matter of fact wedo not ask these questions in studying electricity; we endeavorto find out the natural laws governing it and in handling livewires we do not argue or speculate about them—we use rubber[xi]gloves, etc. It will be the same with Man and the great affairs ofMan—we have, first of all, to know what Man is.

Extropians and other early transhumanists also had a longstandinginterest in self-historicisation. Theyseemed to have a feeling that what they were doing at the time was important and that one day people would want to know about it.

In retrospect, such a meme, then all in fun,now seems to pose a significant PR problem for transhumanists. Despite their youthfully optimistic parties and wordplay, extropianism always had a serious and strongly academic side and, over time, in keeping with its principle of self-transformation, the handshakes and the outfits fell away. This is perhaps part of the reason that some former extropians and early transhumanists, who remain active transhumanists today, rarely mention Machado and her antics when reflecting on the early days of transhumanism.

Marvin Minskysaid of the extropians, with whom he often associated,“they’re extremists... but that’s the way you get good ideas.”

These ideals were first promoted by The Church of Venturism, which was founded in 1986. However, the ‘Church,’ which promoted rational thinking and decried mysticism, soon changed itsname tothe Society for Venturism.

Ed Regis also reported that, as a student at Oxford, More “kept a heart-lung resuscitator in hisdorm room, just in case.”513More has also noted that his undergraduate dorm room was a source of fascination to many of his peers as it housed “several shelves of bottles and pills, and people would come to my room and goggle-eye at them.”

To all this, the extropians said no. There is more to come, and better things lie on the horizon. Evolution mandates change, and “in the long run the positive potentials for intelligent beings are virtually limitless.” Believing that they were theagents of their own destiny, extropians aimed to be catalysts for progressive change, adopting “a positive, dynamic, empowering attitude,” while rejecting, “gloom, defeatism, and the typical focus on the negatives.”

Extropymag was one of the two main mediums in which extropian ideas were circulated—the other was, of course, the Internet. The first issue of Extropyin 1988 had a print run of 50 and interest was scant. Speaking about the first editions, More recalls, “we basically forced them on people.”444By 1992,the editors were churning out 750 copies,445and in the subsequent Winter/Spring edition of 1993, the output more than trebled to 2,500.446In 1992 a separate newsletter, Exponent, was launched and circulated bi-monthly, and in 1993 Extropywas printed in colour for the first time. By 1995, the print run per issue was 4,500.447Althoughthese are ultimately small print numbers, every increase was seen by Extropy’s founding editors as an important milestone in the pursuit of what More referred to as the “inexorable advance”448of extropianism.

While still a student at MIT, a young Eric Drexler met O’Neill, for whom he worked as a research assistantat Princeton in the summer of 1974, funded by the wealthy patron and influential space colonisation spokeswoman, Barbara Marx Hubbard(another devotee of Teilhard’s ideas).408Drexler“went on to develop plans for lunar factories, solar sails, and methods to mine asteroids for mineral resources” and “was one of the L5 Society’s most articulate and vocal advocates for an expanded human presence in space.”409Butby the late 70s,Drexler began to turn his attentionto a new concept, nanotechnology, which fed into the space colonisation dream, but also broadened the emphasis of the L5 space-age, human potential movement, into something that underpinned cryonics and life-extensionist ambitions,and other facets of what later became a distinctly transhumanist vision of the future.

Although Haldaneobserved thatthe progress of science had been staggeringly rapid in the last hundred and forty years, he considered it, “quite as likely as not that scientific research may ultimately bestrangled in some such way as this before mankind has learned to control its own evolution.”

It may be urged that they are only fit to be placed in the hands of a being who has learned to control himself, and that man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches.

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was the son of the leading Scottish physiologist, John Scott Haldane, from whom J.B.S. learned “the fundamentals of science,”an education that began very early in his life.Throughout the younger Haldane’s youth, the pair undertook many “legendary and daring physiological experiments,”

Teilhard consistentlyargued that,“the main movement in the universe has been, and is, a groping towards consciousness.”262Evolution, in hisview, exhibits a tendency towards increasing complexity and “cerebralisation.”263To date, this process has resulted in the emergence of humans, highly complex creatures thathave in turn given rise to a new “‘thinking layer,’” or noosphere—the complex web of collective thought and technologies that have dramatically extended humanity’s reach within the biosphere.264

Another thinker whose ideas overlap substantiallywith the three proto-transhumanistsdiscussed hereis the British biologist Julian Huxley. Huxley was the grandson of T. H. Huxley, who we met in chapter three, and the brother of the novelist and author of Brave New World (1932), Aldous Huxley. Like his grandfather, Julian was a keen evolutionist and a firm believer in the power of science, collective intelligence and education to further social and evolutionary progress.

The most impressive, I might say startling, of these changes have been brought about in the course of the last two centuries; while a right comprehension of the process of life and of the means of influencing its manifestations is only just dawning upon us.

TheIndustrial Revolution isthe first strong historical analog for the modern phenomenonof a quantum leap in human progress, resulting in radically altered ways of life in a short span of time.

Godwin wasn’t convinced. Hiscounterargument, neatly summarised by Porter, was that “such a threat would be averted by the simultaneous withering away of sexual desires—a proposal which notoriously reduced Malthus to guffaws.”

Another thinkerof the period, whose life also extended into the nineteenth century,was the British philosopher and novelist William Godwin (1756-1836). Godwin was the father of Mary Shelley, the author ofthe classic gothic novel,Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus(1823). Hewasalsoan ardent believer in the power of reason and mind to improve the human condition. According to the Stanford Encyclopediaof Philosophy, Godwinwas a prolongevist who:... looked forward to a period in which the dominance of mind over matter would be so complete that mental perfectibility would take a physical form, allowingus to control illness and ageing and become immortal.

O that moral science were in as fair a way of improvement, that men would cease to be wolves to one another, and the human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call humanity!

Today, Mr. Machine, as La Mettrie mechanically dubbed himself, finally has his audience.

He theorised at length about the preservative properties of the cold in his History of Life and Death, enthusiasticallyremarkingthat fruits and nuts have been known to have fallen in the snow, or have sometimes been buried in purpose built ice vaults. When recovered months laterthey have been found to be “as fresh and fine as if they had been picked yesterday.”

14Like all other ideas and movements, transhumanism is a product of its time. Transhumanist ambitions of radical life extension, brain uploading, intelligence augmentation, and space colonisation, could not be taken seriously as realisticprojectsbefore the invention of modern computers and rockets, the discovery of DNA, or the rapid increases in computing power and the declining cost of computation—all of which took place in the twentieth century

produced by calling

Context: This is a popular(5) comedy panel game show (1) crossover (2) that’s filmed in Manchester (3) and broadcast on Channel 4 (4), a state-owned but advertiser funded TV network. There’s a lot of context in that sentence, so I’m going to unpack it.

Although not everything is in the past:

For reference, Manchester’s 25-29 share is 2.2% higher than Portland and 0.22% shy of Manhattan.

In a sense my project’s strategy is like Y Combinator’s “valley within The Valley”. You take a place that already promotes something, and compound it by an order of magnitude. For Y Combinator, that thing is tech startups. For us, it’s more like social innovation.

Dense talent networks mean that you often bump into people who can help you with tough problems by happenstance, and when you are doing something highly ambitious, you need as much luck as you can get.

Startup rate per capita varies by orders of magnitude because most startups die by default and only certain places are able to save them. Startups are mostly saved by two things: background encouragement and dense talent networks.

The geography of talent can change if ambitious people decide to move away from the current location. The startup “centre of gravity” shifted from Palo Alto to SF because founders preferred to live downtown.

In the UK, things are a bit more civilized.

Sometimes I refer to the UK as the United States of Civilization, but in some ways it’s really not a joke.

Cells, for example, are a central category, but there’s no definite criterion for what counts as a cell. If you attempt to find one, you rapidly bog down in a maze of exceptions. You might start with something like “a self-reproducing living unit carrying a single copy of the organism’s DNA within a membrane.” But red blood cells don’t self-reproduce and have no DNA. Mitochondria are not cells, but they self-reproduce using their own DNA within a membrane. Muscle cells have multiple nuclei, each with a separate complete copy of the DNA. Some algae have life stages in which they have no cell membranes. And so on indefinitely.8

The dream is that reduction could deliver absolute truths about the eggplant-sized world, by explanation through a series of levels. The rationalist’s reflex, when confronted with nebulosity, is to retreat to the most fundamental physics: quantum field theory. That, she says, is definitely not nebulous; there is absolute truth there.2 Based on this unshakable foundation, we can find absolute truths about atoms, which are just assemblages of quanta. And we can reduce molecules to atoms (chemistry), and cells to molecules (molecular biology), and eggplants to cells (phytotomy); and finally, triumphantly, prove beyond any possibility of doubt the absolute truth that eggplants are fruits (reproductive biology).

Unlike logicism, probabilism doesn’t require an absolute belief about what the truth of a statement is. However, it does require that any statement actually is either absolutely true or absolutely false. Suppose you want to know if there is any water in the refrigerator. To eliminate uncertainty, you look inside, and there appears to be only an eggplant. Now, is there water in the refrigerator? Well, with probability nearly 1.0, it’s sort of true that there is (in the cells of the eggplant).3 And with probability nearly 1.0, it’s sort of false (you were thirsty and there’s nothing to drink). It’s a rock-bottom principle of the mathematics that the probability of a statement being true and the probability of it being false have to add up to 1.0. (This is a different way of stating the Law of the Excluded Middle.) Here the probabilities of sort-of truth and sort-of falsity add up to nearly 2.0, which is uninterpretable as a probability. The math doesn’t work for sort-of truths.

and it is technically true that eggplants are berries.

In Parts Four and Five, we’ll see how meta-rationality selectively integrates reasonableness and rationality to make both work better.

In “the eggplant is a fruit,” probably what is meant is that all eggplants are fruits. In “the dog is a Samoyed,” probably what is meant is that some dog is a Samoyed. We can reasonably assume these meanings from our background understanding of their topics. This knowledge is nowhere in the sentence. The meaning depends on its parts—but not only on them.

Using esoteric equipment and methods to get some tiny bit of reality to behave according to theory is most of what you do in a science lab.

When your statistical analysis determines with high confidence that the moon is made of green cheese, you should not rush to publish your exciting discovery.

Creating a bot in discord is stupid easy.