Dictionary transhumanism: 6 terms that should know to understand the issues of life and death

Cryogenic freezing, life in the 200-year-long, people cyborg - these images and ideas are now gone far beyond the limits of science fiction books, although it did not become commonplace yet. While scientists are working to defeat aging, cryogenic companies offer any freeze body after death in the hope that someday he will be able to resurrect, and Elon Musk is neurochip that in the future will combine natural and artificial intelligence. Heroine decided to tell about the terms that will help you to understand the modern ideas of the man of the future, life and death.

Transhumanism 1.

It is a philosophical concept, which considers the human being not as the culmination and the end of the evolution, but only as one of its intermediates. According to this idea, our development has not yet been completed. Transhumanism supports technologies and scientific achievements, which will help to eliminate the negative aspects of human existence: illness, aging, death.

Transhumanism - is not just a philosophical concept, but also a major international movement. Its members are studying the prospects, the results and the possible dangers of using science and technology to improve the human body.

In our country, the idea of ​​transhumanism advocates Russian Transhumanist Movement. This topic has been seriously discussed at the national and international scientific conferences.

2. Transchelovek

This term means "transition man" who is on the path of evolution in the posthuman. The concept of "transchelovek" described in detail futurist FM-2030. Among the signs he calls transchelovechnosti improved implant body, artificial reproduction, asexual, distributed identity (creation and distribution of a person's identity in several bodies: a biological and technological). Simply put, transchelovek - is the one who possesses sufficient knowledge to see in the future, new opportunities, using all currently existing methods of improving and preparing to become posthuman.

3. posthuman

posthuman called hypothetical image of what could be the man of the future as a result of the introduction of new technologies. Posthuman has physical and mental disabilities that do not go to any comparison with ours. He has an excellent memory, a unique intelligence, his body is not sick and does not age. He has an excellent command of their emotions, without fatigue or negativity.

Tools for creating posthuman transhumanists believe artificial intelligence, cognitive technologies, genetic engineering, reproductive genetics, bionics and other progress.

Posthumans may be entirely artificial creations that are willing to give up his body and turn into a kind of computer program.

Now the image posthuman is widely used in such genres of science fiction, cyberpunk and how nanopunk.

4. immortalism

This belief system, which is based on the desire to at most postpone death or even avoid it. Scientific immortalism solves the problem of achieving human immortality. This is one of the most important goals of applied science, along with the development of space travel and artificial intelligence.

Scientists have many arguments in favor of immortality, or a significant increase in life expectancy possible. As an example, lead existing cellular organisms and structures that do not undergo aging. Currently these multicellular organisms, there are seven, including painted turtles, some species of sea urchins, sea bass Aleut. Immortalism adherents are convinced that there is no biological law that would necessarily finite claimed the life of organisms.

Over the radical increase in life expectancy of active medicine, inventing new medicines and other technologies. But life-long 150-200 years is impossible without changes at the molecular level, and this is precisely the task of transhumanism. We can say that immortalism - just one of the ideas of transhumanism.

5. Morphological Freedom

This term refers to the person entitled to dispose of his body: to change it as he sees fit, or leave in the original state. This desire can be expressed in the form of treatment for medical services or, conversely, denial of it.

It is believed that the term "morphological freedom" imposed philosopher Max More in the article "Technological Self-Transformation: Expanding Personal Extropy". Tools that provide the ability to change your body, it is called surgery, genetic engineering, mind uploading (hypothetical technology that allows you to scan the human brain and transfer his consciousness to another medium, such as a computer) and nanotechnology.

6. Cryonics

This technology is deep-frozen in humans or animals in the hope that there will be opportunities to revive them in the future and cure, if necessary. Currently, cryopreservation of larger animals or humans is considered to be an irreversible process, so it is only conducted after the legally fixed brain death, otherwise it would be tantamount to murder. Cryonics believes that brain death may be inconclusive organism death. The researchers are now actively studying the possibility of freezing. It is already known that in 2016 managed to revive Cryobiology tardigrades, are held in frozen 30 years, and in 2017 a group of scientists from the University of Minnesota carried out a reversible cryopreservation of large parts of the pig heart.

Due to the high cost of burial traditions and contradictions that exist in our society, cryonics is not very popular. Despite this, there are several cryonics companies with their own stores in the world. In Russia, it is a commercial organization "KrioRus". According to the company on September 2017 in our country, 54 cryopreserved humans and 21 animals.