What if we could bioengineer our bodies to live forever, would we and should we? What if we could avoid all the awkward bits of sex and just neatly copulate with a robot? And what if we never had to go through the bother and pain of pregnancy and could instead use artificial external wombs? Would we? And should we?
Transhumanists say these are moot questions because the superhuman or post-human train has well and truly left the station. We’re only decades from these altered, souped up realities. Oxford transhumanist scholar Elise Bohan and I roll our sleeves up to discuss the litany of moral questions that arise from this, like why the hell were we not consulted on this before the train took off? Has anyone stopped to ask if this is what humanity wants or can handle morally? We chat about the singularity, the particularly worrying effects on men and dating and Elise posits a timeframe for AI intelligence taking over from human smarts (!). If ever there was a conversation in history to get us talking about what matters and makes for a flourishing existence, this is it. Take a deep breath…
Grab Elise’s book, Future Superhuman: Our Transhuman Lives in a Make-or-Break Century
I refer to the book Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
And we reference previous podcast chats with William Macaskill
.....
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BONUS EP: Sarah + Berry Liberman talk Sensemaking in the Metacrisis
TRACEY SPICER: AI is the new frontier of feminism!
AMA: Sarah, What do you think of marriage?
ANNIE MURPHY PAUL: We don’t think with our brains, we think with the world!
AMA: Sarah, why did you move away from Australia?
MISSY SIMS: The TikTok star suing Big Oil
NATE HAGENS: On the “Great Simplification”
ADAM MASTROIANNI: Do we need to make the world great (and kinder) again?
EMILY M. BENDER: AI won’t kill us any time soon (don’t believe the bro’ hype!)
IAN LESLIE: Why your future depends on getting curious
DR GLADYS MCGAREY: “I’m 102, here’s how to spend your energy wildly”
JONATHAN ROWSON: Welcome to the “metacrisis”. Now what?
GAYA HERRINGTON: Complete global collapse by 2040? The prediction is “right on track”...
LUKE BURGIS: How humans “want”: Mimetic desire explained
CLANCY MARTIN: How not to kill yourself
SUSAN NEIMAN: Left is not woke!
FRANCES HAUGEN: In which I speak to the Facebook whistleblower
PICO IYER: The spiritual case for travel
TYSON YUNKAPORTA: Indigenous knowledge can save the world!
WILL STORR: How to play the status game (a fresh way to fix the world!)
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