Two roads diverge in transhumanism

This is my answer to those who, like Marc Andreessen, are selling the metaverse as a sort of Marxist way to deal with "the small percent of people who live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substance with beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date.” But these are just the lucky among us. “Everyone else,” he said, “the vast majority of humanity, lacks “Reality Privilege”—their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote “real world.”

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The first road biologically and genetically modifies natural evolution, the second road moves beyond what we are to join with machines or become artificial life. I affirm the first road of conscious evolutionary modification of billions of years of unconscious evolution, from the simple to the complex, using many forms of biological enhancements.

The superstructure of genetics and bioengineering needs to rest on the evolutionary base of biology and genetics, and not become a new artificial structure without a natural base. We can enhance our genetic and biological capabilities endlessly as we evolve toward Godhood, but if we upload ourselves into silicone chips we could end natural evolutionary life, which is a diabolical end.

There seems to be something almost paranoid about those who see racism behind any talk of the improvement of hereditary qualities, which is taken to the point of preferring artificial evolution to biological evolution, as with many transhumanists. A very cynical reading could also see those who wish to stop the evolutionary biological improvement of hereditary qualities as an underhanded way to enhance their own genes, consciously or unconsciously, by stopping the advancement of others.

Ethics can be inferred from evolutionary history (what else?) otherwise we attempt to go beyond nature itself. This does nor mean we will not move beyond the human species, ethnocentrism, for example, has been a stopping off place to secure beneficial mutations before moving on to the next stage, the next pause, the next species.