Alternet article by Brad Reed:”
Artificial intelligence expert David Levy, who believes that “love and sex with robots are inevitable on a grand scale,” thinks Kurzweil is being far too optimistic when he predicts that the first human-robot marriage will take place by the year 2030. And Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel has said that one of the reasons he is funding the seasteading project is because the Singularity might take too long to happen.
Even so, all this hasn’t stopped Kurzweil and his followers from trying to extend their lifespans for as long as possible so they don’t miss their shot at becoming immortal cyborgs.
“I have been very aggressive in reprogramming by biochemistry,” Kurzweil confides in The Singularity Is Near. “I take 250 supplements (pills) a day and receive a half-dozen intravenous therapies each week.”
Man, and you thought the guys who had their heads sawed off and frozen in a cryogenic chamber were hardcore!
But where does libertarianism fit into all this, you ask? First of all, it’s useful to note that transhumanists don’t all fall under a monolithic political philosophy. There are many liberal transhumanists who see the enhancement of the mind and body through technology as the ultimate equalizer that will allow people to improve themselves and transcend their limitations. There are even Christian transhumanists who see the technological singularity as a sort of man-made Rapture that will bring them closer to God.
But there is also a very vocal sect of transhumanist libertarians who see their future robot bodies as the best chance to escape statist control once and for all. Reason magazine’s Ron Bailey thinks transhumanism is the linchpin that will help libertarians “win the future.” Why? Because once we all become self-healing and self-medicating cyborgs, then “ideas about government health care and government-guaranteed incomes will appear quaint.” Who needs Obamacare when you have nanobots coursing through your blood?
Unlike many other types of transhumanists, who understandably worry about the potential negative consequences such technological advancement could have on both the environment and their fellow humans, the libertarian sect seems to simply shrug and say, “Bring it on!” Libertarian economist Arnold Kling thinks humans have been far too cautious in experimenting with radical life extension technologies that could help us live until the Singularity arrives. His solution is to unleash the magic of the free market and pay poor people to undergo dangerous experimental medical procedures.
That article in turn was blogged about by Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society in a conservatively titled post “Transhumanist Fantasylands – Way Out There on the Political Horizon”
Immortal cyborgs are just one of the bizarre libertarian plans hatched by transhumanists. Another (described by Reed in an earlier Alternet post) is “seasteading,” a scheme to gather the libertarian elite on an ocean platform where they “can build new city-states to experiment with new institutions.” The Seasteading Institute – yes, there’s an organization devoted to this – is directed by the grandson of free-marketeer Milton Friedman, whose manifesto is published on Cato Unbound, the website of the libertarian Cato Institute.
With the recent revelations about the behind-the-curtain funders of the Tea Party in mind, just who is financing the libertarian transhumanists?
Both The Seasteading Institute and a number of groups whose missions include working toward immortality have been generously funded by one Peter Thiel, the co-founder and former CEO of PayPal who now runs a $2 billion hedge fund. According to a recent article in The Futurist, Thiel has “invested more than $4 million of his own money in groups working toward immortality” and “regularly speaks at trans-humanist gatherings.” Thiel’s anti-democracy rants can also be found at Cato Unbound.
And David Koch himself has given hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research centers supposedly researching prostate cancer but life-extension research is pretty much the same thing as cancer research, so it makes sense.
Now that the covert influence of the bizarre Libertarians on our politics has been exposed, maybe we can get past the roadblocks they have thrown up in the way of social justice and environmental stewardship.
Darnovsky has another good article focusing on Reason Magazine editor Ron Bailey’s talk at the Humanity+ Summit that took place at Harvard last year: “Libertarians Diss Democracy” His talk was entitled “the Democratic Threat To Transhumanism”, but apparently he changed the title for the Reason Magazine piece on the same subject, which is called “Transhumanism and the Limits of Democracy”
<
p>From Bailey’s piece demanding laissez-faire Transhumanism, which shows how Transhumanists push Libertarianism to influence our politics and policies:
See, that is how Jeff Jacoby winds up supporting embryonic stem cell research, by letting his Libertarianism overrule his thinking.