Wild with Sarah Wilson27 Sep 2022

ELISE BOHAN: Ah shit, transhumanism….

What if we could bioengineer our bodies to live forever, would we and should we? What if we could avoid all the awkward bits of sex and just neatly copulate with a robot? And what if we never had to go through the bother and pain of pregnancy and could instead use artificial external wombs? Would we? And should we?

Transhumanists say these are moot questions because the superhuman or post-human train has well and truly left the station. We’re only decades from these altered, souped up realities. Oxford transhumanist scholar Elise Bohan and I roll our sleeves up to discuss the litany of moral questions that arise from this, like why the hell were we not consulted on this before the train took off? Has anyone stopped to ask if this is what humanity wants or can handle morally? We chat about the singularity, the particularly worrying effects on men and dating and Elise posits a timeframe for AI intelligence taking over from human smarts (!). If ever there was a conversation in history to get us talking about what matters and makes for a flourishing existence, this is it. Take a deep breath…

Grab Elise’s book, Future Superhuman: Our Transhuman Lives in a Make-or-Break Century

I refer to the book Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

And we reference previous podcast chats with William Macaskill

.....

If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page.

Subscribe to my Substack newsletter for more such conversation.

Get your copy of my book, This One Wild and Precious Life

Let’s connect on Instagram! It’s where I interact the most.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(215)

INDY JOHAR: "How do we prepare the world for what’s coming?"

Indy Johar (founder of Dark Matter Labs, systems designer) closes this 12-part series on the life-enhancing “what comes next” that we need (and want) to be creating. Indy is one of the world’s most or...

7 Jul 1h 17min

SARAH STEIN LUBRANO: How do we change people’s minds about what’s happening to the world?

Sarah Stein Lubrano (neuroscientist, political scientist, former obituary writer!) is an expert in how to change people’s minds most effectively and for the betterment of all beings. In this chat, we ...

30 Jun 1h 4min

JOHN SEED: Is Deep Ecology the answer?

John Seed (Deep Ecology OG, global rainforest steward) says we can’t save the world. And that the planetary crisis is not a failure of information or awareness; it’s a failure of human identity. We ha...

23 Jun 57min

JEREMY LENT: Can humans build a (beautiful) new civilisation?

Jeremy Lent (author, systems thinker) is a leading authority on civilisations and has just created a manifesto on how to shift from the current crumbling one to what he calls an Ecocivilization. He jo...

16 Jun 56min

FRANCIS WELLER: “Grief will wake us up”…so how do we do good grief again?

Francis Weller (psychotherapist, bestselling author + “soul activist”) believes we have entered a “Long Dark”, a multi-decade (century?) period of collapse and psychological pain that will demand we l...

2 Jun 1h 1min

RUTH BEN-GHIAT: How do we create a values-led politic from this mess?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat (historian of fascism +NYT bestselling author of Strongmen) is an internationally recognised expert in how psychologically unstable men come to power and use corruption, sexual predatio...

26 Mai 59min

ZAK STEIN: How do we raise kids in a metacrisis?

Zak Stein (Harvard philosopher of education, AI + kids expert) is worried that we are not raising and educating our kids for the kind of wobbly, harsh future they will be inheriting. Zak is a Harvard ...

19 Mai 1h 11min

MICHAEL MUTHUKRISHNA: Can we cooperate our way out of this? (Warning: a tricky episode!)

Michael Muthukrishna (behavioural scientist, cultural evolution researcher) has a unified “theory of everyone” that says we evolved as a species, surviving crises and collapses, through cooperative no...

12 Mai 1h 16min