Talk:Comparison of futurist related ideas and positions

November 2015 Feedback

When I wrote "Transhumanist jargon for the discerning time traveller" I was inspired from researching what I considered the main streams in transhumanist and futurist identification, which I identified as life extension, futurism, singularitarianism, transhumanism and biohacking. Healthy debate ensued as to whether all life extensionist transhumanists were in fact singularitarians, and I conceded that I was wrong on that front. My use of the small area for biohacking was an ommision I regretted so I set out to create a greater diagram.

This diagram would feature more detailed examples, edge cases and more intersections with the aim of showing the breadth of transhumanist related positions. Some of the major changes from the first iteration was placing posthumanism as a central subset of transhumanism - as the two concepts are closely related. Singularitarians were repositioned to futurist/transhumanists and placed alongside the rising numbers of AI risk advocates.

• In /r/RationalPsychonaut I asked the question - 'Are Psychonauts considered self-modificationists?' There were some interested responses, but the consensus appeared to emerge that simply 'visiting' new states of consciousness' was not self modification as it was temporary only. Nootropic users were suggested as a better fit. As a consequence the term was placed at the edge of the grouping.
• Second Life research - complete
• Meditation - negative response.
• Cyborgs - Broadly approved
• Posthumanism - talking on the Posthuman Network, a lot of feedback was gathered in general including posthuman types that I was previously unaware of or had simply omitted.

Identifying examples of different positions was entertaining and frustrating, especially considering that this is a fundamentally arbitrary grouping of ideas, hopefully presented in a not-too leading fashion.

Having iterated through it several times myself as well as privately with some feedback, I consider it a mostly correct diagram that can be incrementally improved in the future.

Issues, omissions and rooms for improvement

Given the originality of the infographic, I am quite pleased I managed to find many distinct positions to place within each intersecting ideology.

My somewhat arbitrary distinction between biopunk and cyberpunk grinders illustrates I am not very well informed about these areas just now.

The relative absence of non-modified posthumans is certainly food for thought in posthuman circles.

There are likely a number of other questionable decisions, many of which could be improved upon which I have not yet identified.

October 2016 Feedback

I blitzed this across H+ social media and got a few bits of useful feedback

• The need to distinguish digital immortality and destructive uploading from life extensionism
• Continued confusion over the term Posthumanism - though I improved the article following this
• 95% of users read the image and not the source material, future attempts to push the infographic need an in-built key prompting people to seek more info, or even adding some definitions directly into an enhanced infographic.
• Confusion about how I've distinguished postgenderists (the idea) from transgender people whome I've called 'morphological freedom enthusiasts'. This needs clarification.
• Dissatisfaction of my heavy and inconsistent use of 'ist', I am probably going to refactor this a lot.
• Immortalism is missing
• Secondlifers need re-writing into a more generic term like virtual reality avatarists or MMO users

Deku-shrub (talk) 07:05, 28 October 2016 (CDT)

October 29 2016 update

I rotated the whole thing 90 degrees and made a number of updates and changes Deku-shrub (talk) 11:37, 29 October 2016 (CDT)

Jan 17 update

Moved genetic engineering to the boundary of transhumanism Deku-shrub (talk) 08:09, 29 January 2017 (CST)

May 20 Update

Maybe move Neural lace? Add sci-fi fans? Deku-shrub (talk) 11:20, 14 April 2017 (CDT)

Digital immortalism needs to intercect transhumanism, not sure how I missed that Deku-shrub (talk) 06:58, 18 March 2018 (CDT)

Biopunk hackers - Biohackers Deku-shrub (talk) 17:53, 17 May 2018 (CDT)

Implemented Deku-shrub (talk) 15:50, 20 May 2018 (CDT)

Pending

Typo on resurrection Deku-shrub (talk) 17:59, 7 July 2018 (CDT)

Probably need to add an edge item for cosmetics for longevity / modification Deku-shrub (talk) 05:53, 22 July 2018 (CDT)

Yes, that make sense David W. Wood (talk) 04:59, 24 July 2018 (CDT)

Jan 2020 Update

Technically an implementation of modifications I drafted October but had not updated here.

Changes:

• Added super happiness
• Promoted radical life extensionism to fringe transhumanism
• Added Quantified self to fringe transhumanism
• Moved supplement enthusiasts to fringe futurism
• Added post scarcity economics
• Added Technogaianism
• Added post secularism

Deku-shrub (talk) 12:48, 16 January 2020 (CST)

December 2020 Update

Typo and fixed image map Deku-shrub (talk) 13:00, 6 December 2020 (CST)