asked eight leading thinkers to issue an early warning on the ideas that will be most destructive in the coming years. A few of these ideas have long and sometimes bloody pedigrees. Others are embryonic, nourished by breakthroughs in science and technology. Several are policy ideas whose reverberations are already felt; others are more abstract, but just as pernicious. Yet, as the essays make clear, these dangerous ideas share a vulnerability to insightful critique and open debate.Francis Fukuyama said, "Transhumanism," thereby bringing recognition to a previously fringe concept.
For the last several decades, a strange liberation movement has grown within the developed world. Its crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gayrights advocates. They want nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints. As “transhumanists” see it, humans must wrest their biological destiny from evolution’s blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species.The transhumnists respond. (The same essay is available at another site: Betterhumans: Is Transhumanism the World's Most Dangerous Idea?.)
The Extropy Institute is now planning a book of replies. Contact info@extropy.org to contribute. They also have a long list of related web sites.
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