Transhumanism, From a Strictly Extra-Terrestrial Point of View

Suppose you’re an alien, from outer space. You arrive to planet earth and start to wonder: “How come every time I come around here things keep getting crazier and crazier?”

First it was scarifying your first born to the sun to seek eternal life. Then it was throwing virgins to the volcano to seek eternal life. Then it was chowing down on human hearts to seek eternal life.

And even in the recent years, people were popping up cyanide pills in Jonestown to seek eternal life.

But even after seeing all of that, nothing leaves you more perplexed than the newest hype of all, Transhumanism.

Remixing the Same Old Song

You go visit some old friends and take you along as they go singing up for this new Eugenics trend that now has re-emerged with a brand new name.

The story goes like this: You freeze yourself up in a cryogenic chamber and wait for an unknown time in the future, to be defrosted like a chicken breast and then wait for them to upload your consciousness back into your body.

Now that sounds like a totally believable story. I bet the virgin from the volcano would totally buy into that.

So how does this work exactly?

You say that in a few years, you’ll un-freeze me and upload my consciousness back to my body.

“Yes, that’s correct.”

Then where you keep that consciousness until the upload process begins?

She’s in shock, she never expected that type of question before. But you throw in a joke to break the silence:

Is there some a big freezer in the basement where you find all those souls stacked in plastic bags?

I just hope they don’t keep it stored next to the Siracha sauce.

She releases a nervous laugh and continues to show you around, meanwhile she strengthens her sales pitch trying to appeal to your emotional senses so you can stop questioning and start believing.

But the thing is, curiosity is a lot more fun.

How do you extract the consciousness anyways? Do they stab you with a syringe in the head and extract it? Do you have to pee in a cup and they filter it out of your bodily fluids?

Or maybe they pump it out your crown Chakra?

Everyone laughs, but it only last at second. It is as if everyone just realized that they never stopped to question these things before.

“No silly, we still don’t know how to extract consciousness yet. But in the future, science will provide all the answers.”

So just how far away are we from that point in time? Your friend asks. Five years? Ten Years?

“Well… It’s like this. What is known as the consciousness-consciousness, no one know what it is yet, let alone where it resides.”

She continues:

“That look into the person’s eye, that moment when you touch someone and feel something unique. That love at first sight... The intuition, that moment when a woman knows her son is not coming back or the her husband shouldn’t go to work that day… The human soul so to speak, we still haven’t figured out where that resides.”

One of your friends gets curious and asks:

So basically, you don’t know whether the consciousness lies in the heart, in the gut, in brain… Nor on the bloodstream for that matter?

“That we don’t know yet. Buuuttt… You have to have faith that science will one day provide all the answers that we seek”.

So basically, I go freeze myself now with the hope that someday, someone would be able to find my consciousness and upload it back into my body?

“You have to have faith, yes.”

In the absence of any scientific proof that they find a human soul let alone download and upload it at will. Doesn’t that almost like some type of religious cult?

“Well... It’s like this, we charge a standard fee of $80.000 per year, but you are free to choose the number of years you want to remain in the freezer… If you have faith that science will find an answer in 10 years then we book you for ten. If you think in twenty years, then pay for twenty.

It depends on how much faith you have”.

I stand corrected, that sounds exactly like a religious cult.

“…Any suggestion that you can come back to life is simply snake oil. Transhumanists have responses to these issues. In my experience, they consist of alternating demands that we trust our intuition about nonexistent technology but deny our intuition about consciousness.

No one who has experienced the disbelief of losing a loved one can help but sympathize with someone who pays $80,000 to freeze their brain. But reanimation or simulation is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the “cryonics” industry.
Those who profit from this hope deserve our anger and contempt.”

– MIT Technology Review ; The False Science of Cryonics.

Blind Faith, That's Not What Science is About

Now I know, eighty grand per year is a bit steep for sleeping in a freezer. But if there’s something you don’t want to skimp on, that’s the personnel handling your consciousness transfer.

The last thing you want is that they go hiring double digit IQ staff with questionable morals and a bad attitude.

What do you mean?

You know how wherever you go to MacDonald there is this guy that always gives you the wrong order?

Now hire that guy, and you’ll know the true meaning of waking up to as a man trapped in a woman’s body.

“Damn it Bobby! You uploaded the consciousness to the wrong body again. How many times I told you to pay attention?”.

Picture that, you’re a 30 years old man and they upload your consciousness to a 90-year-old woman… Or a four-year-old kid.

And then what do you do?

Funny Questions That Ought to Be Asked

Suppose they mistakenly upload two streams of consciousness inside one body.

Would that count as schizophrenia?

And what’s the peaceful resolution on this case? That each person gets one half of the body?

Suppose you want to have sex with and you co-host doesn’t. Suppose you want to masturbate but you got the left hand. Suppose you share a body with a bulimic who keeps going to the bathroom to throw up as soon as soon as you satisfy your hunger.

Suppose you share a body with an Instagram model who just can’t stop taking butt selfies.

Technically you still own the other butt cheek, but your life would be a nightmare nonetheless.

Suppose the guy who writes the label on each consciousness file suffers from a bit of Dyslexia.

You think you’re resuscitating Obama, but instead you’re getting Osama.

I bet they didn’t see that one coming.

Image Sources: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 - 7

… To be continued.