Rick Searle, over at IEET, gives his reaction to a speech by David Brin called “So you want to make gods. Now why would that bother anyone?” Searle’s take-away:
Brin’s history and his read of current and near future political and social development seems to be almost Marxist in the sense that the pursuit of scientific knowledge and technological advancement will inevitably lead to further democratization. Such a “faith” I believe to be dangerous. If science and technology prove to be democratizing forces it will be because we have chosen to make them so, but a backlash is indeed possible. Such a “counter-revolution” can most likely be averted not by technologists taking on yet more religious language and concepts and proselytizing to the non-converted. Rather, we can escape this fate by putting some distance between the religious rhetoric of singularitarians and those who believe in the liberating and humanist potential of emerging technologies. For if transhumanists frame their goals to be the extension of the healthy human lifespan to the longest length possible and the increase of available intelligence, both human and artificial, so as to navigate and solve the problems of our complex societies almost everyone would assent. Whereas if transhumanists continue to be dragged into fights with the religious over goals such as “immortality”, “becoming gods” or “building gods”(an idea that makes as much sense as saying you were going to build the Tao or design Goodness) we might find ourselves in the 21st century version of a religious war.
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