Via Massimo Pigliucci, Paul Fidalgo offers a critique of sorts of both transhumanism (not limited to Ray Kurzweil's Singularity) and the "collapsitarian" movement, led by a group called Dark Mountain.
Many people who read here probably know what transhumanism is. For those who may not guess on collapsitarianism, it's a name given to an idea that has also been around for some time, with an additional dollop. The old idea is that civilization was a mistake. The new idea is that climate change and related issues will lead to its fracturing, that we can't fix that, and that we might as well accept it.
Here's my take on Fidalgo's take.
Transhumanism, IMO, like much of such futurism, has strong libertarian roots. Like colonizing Mars and other such nutteries, first, it doesn't address who would be able to afford this at start (nor, in the case of colonizing Mars, who would agree to be the soma-fueled worker bees). Fidalgo partially addresses this, late in the long piece, with a "don't leave people behind," but doesn't get straight into the largely libertarian politics behind that, even though he does focus later in the piece on Zoltan Istvan.
I agree in large part on the collapse-predictors. Like author Fidalgo, I reject the seeming Roussellian attitude that a pre-industrial style of life was "intended," is noble or whatever.
Beyond that, re the "civilization as a mistake" angle, even though the Dark Mountain people don't expressly mention overpopulation, if you're turning your back on civilization, you can't ignore it. And, that's my ultimate rhetorical question: Are you volunteering to be part of the 90 percent, or whatever, "cut"? I've never seen any such group be honest about this.
That said, back to the transhumanist side and civilization to this point. Per a commenter on Massimo's Facebook group, the bottleneck of energy production and consumption includes the destructiveness associated with such production and consumption.
The Istvan part is interesting. Didn't know his past as a Natl Geo reporter. Sounds like there's probably some psychology behind all of this. He of course ignores the energy issues for transhumanism, as well as the libertarianism it's based on.
And, per Fidalgo, I am reminded, with this, of the "Sargon" episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. Finally, and I think Massimo would agree, that re theories of consciousness as being embodied, a mind "stored on a machine" (if even possible, and almost certainly not) would no longer be a mind.
Fidalgo's piece, especially the riffs on Shakespeare in the last one-third, isn't bad overall, but I think could have been sharpened even more.
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