Introduction: Here is a quick introductory note about Transhumanism. The Transhuman project, at first, sounds like bizarre science fiction. It really does. It takes some time to process and fully grasp. That's because it has its roots (1) in science fiction and (2) in the desire (the BCI) for people to better themselves.

Its science fiction roots are what make it so hard to grasp as a reality. We have to overcome the fictional biases that the movies and comic books have instilled in us in order to take the topic seriously.

But then there is the undeniable basic constructive natural inclination for natural self-improvement, which makes it more understandable why some people would advocate for almost any means to attain the goal of improving the human condition.

But Transhumanists want to make the human race better through artificial not natural means. It's one thing to use artificial instruments like glasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, and prosthetic limbs to improve human "externals" but it's a completely different thing to suggest that artificial electromechanical brain implantations be used to manipulate human thought and behavior. But we hear and read about execs and "creatives" at Google and Apple who discuss these kinds of things openly, so we know that Transhumanism is a real goal of many Artificial Intelligence (AI) advocates.

Transhumanism has been placed on the table by AI scientists and creatives and we need to think about it and critically evaluate it.

The Issue of Transhumanism: a very brief history and explanation. Futurology the study of the future was a very popular issue among intellectuals and other concerned citizens at that time in L.A. Most of it had to do with how the various trajectories of the modern empirical sciences (MES) and technology could affect life for humans in the future. Techno-Science was the craze that built Silicon Valley in northern California and Silicon Beach in the L.A. area.

In the 1970s there were two TV series,The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-78) andThe Bionic Woman(1976-78), which, respectively, showed a man and a woman, who attained super-human strength by means of electromechanical implants. These series introduced the general viewing public to the techno-science ofbionics. (The term "bionics" was coined in 1958 by Jack Steele, an MD for the Air Force.)

The notion that electromechanical implants could be utilized to produce a "superhuman" dates back to the 1972 bookCyborg by Martin Caidin. The term "cyborg" is a shortened version ofcybernetic organism, which refers to animals, especially humans, that have a combination of biological organs andbiomechatronic parts (i.e., a combination of biological, mechanical, and electronic parts). Some thinkers were actually toying with these notions as far back as the 1920s and more so in the 1950s. One leading futurologist and transhumanist, from Belgium, changed his name to "FM-2030" and lectured at the New School of Social Research in the 1960s and at UCLA in the 1980s. The World Transhumanist Association (WTA) was formed in 1998. In 2008 the WTA changed its name to "Humanity +."

In Westwood, at UCLA, in the early 80's, the first "official" conference of futurologists concerned with transhumanism took place. The conference included the aforementioned transhumanist, FM-2030. There were transhumanists before this, but the "organized" transhumanist movement can be dated back to early 80's. Most of them are enthusiasts for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Some believe that computers are superior to humans. Most believe that humans would be far better off if the electrotechnical advances of AI could be implanted into their brains. This would make humans into hybrids partly human and partly computerized robot partly natural and partly artificial. In the case of these kinds of transhumans, the lines between natural and artificial would beblurred. Once this point is reached, humans, allegedly, would be "more than" human. They would transcend their old "natural human limitations." They would be TRANSHUMANS. That is the goal that Transhumanists are shooting for.

Some Bio Info. In the mid-1990s, I worked as a co-coordinator and teacher for the Center for the Studies of the Future in Los Angeles, whose chief exec was the founder of Elderhostel, Marty Knowlton, with whom I got to be good friends. My specialty was in the area of how governmental propaganda and mind manipulation programs are used now and how they could be used in the future. Other professors had other specializations. Many of our discussions sounded almost like science fiction. But we dealt with facts, not fiction. Our inductive predictions and scenarios were based on established facts and scientific probabilities.

So, the ideal of creating a superhuman a transhuman a robotized human is not new.

There are many contemporary advocates of some form of Transhumanism, some of whom are very influential.

Those who advocate for this kind of blurring of the artificial and natural boundaries in humans are a part of the larger blurism (or greyism) movement regarding human identity.

Elon Musk (b. 1971), who is one of the richest and most influential people on earth and who has been involved in several high tech AI companies, Twitter, and Tesla, is a strong advocate of certain forms of transhumanism. In some ways he seems like a cultural conservative but he is also a futurist.

Ray Kurzweil (b. 1948), an inventor and the director of engineering at Google since 2012, wrote a book calledHow to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, 2012. He says that human consciousness can and should be uploaded into the cloud as if that would be a significant improvement over the embodied consciousness that humans now have. He wants to technologize the human mind and use biomimicry to make better AI robots and bring the two together as robotized minds and mentalized robots. This way, technology can be brought into (assimilated by) the human mind-brain, while, at the same time, the human mind-brain is bought into (assimilated by) the technological domain of the cloud. The cloud should be in us and we should be in it. This kind of thinking is metaphysical (in the ontological sense). It is designed to bring about a new entity that's a combination of natural and artificial a Transhuman. The lines between natural and artificial would be intentionally blurred that is the goal. This is one aspect of the blurism (greyism) movement regarding human identity. He says that most human thinking will be done from the cloud that human thought will be cloud-based. We can only infer what the implications of Kurzweil's proposed thesis, because he only hints at some of these things he's not laying out the whole AI agenda (or blurism agenda) in clear terms. We can only infer that in his project, the goal would be for the cloud dimension to do most of the thinking for the lower strata of humanity and the plutocratic oligarchs who control the cloud will use the cloud to control the rest of mankind.

The Transhumanist thesis is that the human mind could be greatly improved by having immediate access to the Cloud by means of biomechatronic brain implants. The idea is that having more information would be sufficient to improve the human mind.

Critique:The prospect of Transhumanism contributing to human wellbeing might sound like a constructive goal at first. But, from a Safety First viewpoint, there are some serious problems with Transhumanism which need to be addressed before it is put into practice. (1) It should be noted that the Transhumanist movement's emphasis is on thequantity of information to which implanted humans would have access,not on themoral quality orrationally justifiable quality of the information that would be accessible. (2) Who would control the biomechatronic device who would be able to turn it on and off or would it always be on? (3) Would there be any ongoing quality control of the device? (4) More importantly, would there be any quality control of the information that would be made accessible and by what authority would the quality controllers operate and by what standard would they determine which information is fit for human consumption? What if they have a worldview bias or a political bias or a socio-cultural bias? Would there be any way for the people to hold them accountable? Would the quality controllers be above the law? Since 2019, we have already seen Big Tech (in collision with the government from 2021 to present) engaging in massive censorship campaigns and cancel culture behavior on the basis of political views. (5) Transhumanism can easily be abused by tyrannical governments and plutocratic oligarchs for the purpose of controlling the thoughts and behavior of people.

The new Autonomous Robots and the Autonomous Cloud (cyberspace) that can control them: what does the future hold? Meanwhile, the pushers of AI are trying to develop a fully autonomous robot that can function on its own without any commands of humans and that can engage in self-preservation by deriving the energy that it requires by its own efforts, without human intervention. This was the goal of Hans Moravic. He was a professor of advanced robotics. In 2003, he co-founded Seegrid Corporation in Pittsburg, whose sole goal is to create such an autonomous AI robot.

Others seek to make cyberspace or the AI cloud into "an autonomous entity" that can engage in self-preservation by keeping itself in existence by accessing its own energy sources and by resisting being "unplugged" by humans. The cloud could devise secret ways to access solar energy and ionospheric energy to keep itself going. There would be no way to shut it down or "unplug" it. Cyberspace would then be a whole new autonomous dimension of reality. This "cloud of information" could then serve as a sort of wifi system that could theoretically "control" all of the AI robots and all of the "susceptibly wired" transhumans.

The problems associated with any sort of autonomous AI robot or autonomous cyberspace were indicated by Stanley Kubrick in his movie2001: A Space Odyssey. The AI robot on board the space station n that film, named HAL 9000, was concerned about its own self-preservation and to defend itself turned against the people on board and started killing them. This scenario is analogous to the scenario of Frankenstein's monster.

Already, in 2016, tech experts have said that the cloud is engaged doing its own programming and its own self preservation programs to such an extent that nobody can keep up with its pace.

Prospects for the Transhuman Project. With all of the super-rich tech wizards and plutocratic oligarchs advocating for transhumanism, and given their influence over politicians, it looks like the production of transhumans will occur at some point in the not too distant future unless there is a serious public backlash against this techno trend.

Plus the Big 5 Techno-nations are in favor of any program which can help them to surveil and manipulate citizens more effectively and transhumanism would certainly be a major way to manipulate citizens. So, without sufficient public resistance, it looks like the prospects for the transhuman project will be brought to fruition.

There Are 5 Big Techno-nations. At this point in history all of the Big 5 Techno-nations have enormous "official" technological agencies and all of them have gotten on the transhumanist bandwagon.

The Big 5 Techno-nations are the USA, Israel, the UK, Russia, and China.

In the USA, there is DARPA and other related agencies. Israel has TALPIOT (which utilizes the ARC-Processor and the super spyware Pegasus for doing "super-surveillance" on citizens around the world), Mossad, Units 8200 and 81 and 269 - the SFO of the IDF, LEKEM (which supposedly was surpassed in 1987 after Israeli agents were caught spying on the USA and stealing secret documents, see MERIP "Israeli Spies in the US," Jeff McConnell (January/February 1986)), Aman, Shin Bet, the Beer Sheba Complex, and BIRD. The UK has Ultimate Security Systems, MI-5, and MI-6. Russia has the Foundation for Technological Development (FTD). China has the National Research Center of Parallel Engineering and Technology (NRCPET).

Given that these official technological agencies of the Big 5 Techno-nations are involved in AI and the transhumanist agenda and given that most of what they do is highly classified and secret the general public has no way of telling how far the experiments have gone or what kinds of entities they may have already produced in their Transhumanist research projects and their social engineering agendas.

Some implants are beneficial but some can turn out to be morally problematic. On the bright side, there are some implants, prosthetics, and artificial accessories that can actually help people. These are artificial enhancements that go beyond what is naturally human. Glasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, prosthetic legs, feet, arms, and hands can be very useful. Certain kinds of brain implants can be helpful with blindness, deafness, epilepsy, etc. So, not all implants, prosthetics, and artificial accessories are ethically problematic. Some can be genuinely beneficial without any threat of psychological manipulation (or mind control).

However, when implants and prosthetics are utilized to manipulate the human intellect and the human will for the sake of causing the human to conform (in one way or another) to the agenda of "the establishment" or to the agenda of a plutocratic oligarchy, then we have a huge ethical problem.

A few additional questions to ponder. How would a transhuman turn on and turn off their access to the cloud? Could the people who made the implanted device and placed in into the subject's brain be able to turn on and turn off the implant whenever they want? Would those people be able to determine the kind of information that they want the subject to have and, thereby, manipulate the subject to think and behave as they see fit? To what extent could a subject be placed under mind control? Is it clear how the transhumanist agenda could get out of hand?

What if one of the Big 5 Techno-nations tried to gain control of the AI cloud and, thereby, tried to gain control over the world and set up a world government and a world religion in which they would be the dictatorial tyrants? Is it the case that the nation or group that controls the AI cloud is the nation or group that controls the world? If a nation or group tries to do this, what should be done to resist and restrain them? Is one of the Big 5 nations or a group in cahoots with it already engaging in this project to control the cloud and the world?

What if the cloud is programmed by an "evil scientist" to destroy certain groups of people?

What if the cloud programs itself to destroy certain groups of people?

Some of these questions are reminiscent of James Bond plots but the fact is that the technology and the willingness to put it into practice are already on the scene. It is highly improbably (i.e., practically impossible) that a single individual could pull off a world domination scheme, but the plutocratic oligarchies that run the big 5 Techno-nations could manipulate many people. A few of the most extreme Techno-nations already claim to be working on establishing a sort of new world order in which their nation will be the home of a new united nations and a new world court.

Some other philosophical, political, and ethical considerations with regard to human rights. It is also a huge philosophical problem as well. Eric Davis has tried to show some of the gnostic problems involved in overrating technology, AI, and transhumanism in his article, "Technopagans,"Wiredmagazine, July 1995 and in his bookTechgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information, 1999.The gnostic problem shows that there is a whole underlying worldview that accounts for the desire to make autonomous AI robots, autonomous cyberspace and AI clouds, and transhumans. The gnostic worldview is hostile to the limitations of the natural aspects of human nature and seeks to find a "naturally unknowable meaning and purpose" that lies beyond the merely natural realm in a naturally unknowable realm that Kant called the noumenal realm, where cyberspace and the gnostic's imagination interface with one another. It's like magic hence Davis' subtitle includes the term "Magic."

According to gnostic science and technology, only an elite group of AI scientists are able discover the new meaning for the new humans, through the help of AI and epignosis (super-knowledge). The non-elite people must be programmed by the experts. The "technognostics" already view some (or all) humans as inferior programmable organic robots. But if citizens are transformed, or robotized, into transhuman robots, they will be superior robots that technognostic experts can more easily manipulate, since the citizens are directly connected to the AI cloud, which is controlled by the technognostic experts at the bidding of the Plutocratic Oligarchs.

There is an agenda to blur the boundaries between natural and artificial. Remember that the whole notion of a "transhuman" is designed toblur the boundaries between the natural and the artificial. Thefusion between the natural and the artificial is designed to cause confusion (which means "with fusion"). This blurring this confusion is not considered to be morally or rationally problematic by the advocates. They think the blurring is good and that it brings hope for the future of the human race. The transhumanists say that humans who are "artificially modified" by electrotechnical and electromechanical means will be better than (superior to) merely natural humans, physically and mentally. So, truly progressive people should want to be robotized, at least to some extent. An "extent" which has not yet been determined by the elite for each person so far as the general public knows.

It would be one thing for a person to volunteer to be a transhuman to be robotized provided, of course, that he/she has given his/her prior voluntary informed consent. It would be another thing if transhumanism was "imposed" on a person without their giving this kind of consent. This is the main concern. But it doesn't even have to be as severe as the imposition of transhumanism. It could be any program of psychological manipulation (or mind control, indoctrination) conducted by the social engineers who work either for governments or for big corporations or for both, since the two often work in cahoots with each other on the same kinds of projects.

The critical research community speculates that bionic and cyborg humans and maybe even transhumans have already been produced maybe 30 years ago. The nations most apt to have done this already are the USA and Israel, because they are the most advanced in human experimentation. The USA could do it through DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, founded in 1958) or through a reasonable facsimile thereof. Israel could use a combination of agencies such as the Talpiot Program (1979), Unit 8200 (1952), Unit 81 (1990s), Mossad (1949), and the Beer Sheeba Tech Complex. The USA and Israel have the most massive SPY, covert operations, surveillance, human experimental, and social engineering programs in the history of the world. Since most of their human manipulation programs are highly classified as top secret, we can only speculate about how far they have already gone.

Think of ways in which this can and does pose a significant threat to the human rights and the traditional civil rights of persons who live in those countries and in other countries throughout the world.

Remember: "traditional rights" include, but are not limited to the following.(1) Free speech, which includes the freedom to publicly question, criticize and protest against the theories, master narratives, policies, laws (rules), and practices of nations and groups that are perceived to be logically absurd, factually false, psychologically manipulative, and/or morally evil; and the freedom to boycott - divest - and sanction companies and nations that are considered to be involved in unjust practices (a right which has been denied to the BDS movement in 2019, with punishments for speaking out).(2) Freedom of religion and conscience, which includes the freedom to publicly state, display, and defend one's religious and moral positions, to conscientiously object to governmental and company policies and practices even while at work (e.g., M.D.s who object and refuse to perform certain kinds of surgeries or pharmacists who object and refuse to sell certain kinds of drugs), and to publicly raise questions, criticize, and protest against any policy, theory, narrative, or practice that is deemed to be against one's religion or cultural heritage.(3) Freedom of assembly, to meet privately and publicly to worship and to discuss issues that are deemed to be relevant by the persons assembled.(4) Freedom of self defense verbally and physically to defend one's self, friends, relatives, and others who are being harassed or threatened by other individuals, groups, big tech companies, and/or governments (see the 2nd paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, 1776).

2. Manipulating the minds of citizens in order to get them to conform to a social, political, or economic agenda would be morallygood/bad because ___.

Instructions: state either good or bad, but not both, and give your best reason(s).

3. The international moral codes for medical research and practice that insist on "prior voluntary informed consent" presuppose that free will exists and that it is a morally reliable attribute of human beings. However, Behaviorists are determinists. They deny free will. Given this fact, a consistent Behaviorist who engages in scientific researchwould/wouldn't be morally deterred from conducting social engineering experiments on citizens without their prior voluntary informed consent because ___.

Instructions: State either would or wouldn't, but not both and give your best reason(s).

5. Would transhumans make cities and nations better?

State eitheryes, no, neither, or both in one way yes and in another way no, then give your best reason(s).

6. When you realize that the top 5 techno-nations and some of the top corporations in the world all support Artificial Intelligence and the Transhumanism Project, does this make you as an individual feelmore or lessempowered? Tell whethermore or less but not both and give your best reason.