Akansha is an aspiring scientist, philosopher and science journalist who joins us from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  She is currently completing her senior thesis on Alexander’s disease at the Waisman Center. 

The Fermi Paradox—if there’s other intelligent life in the galaxy, given how long the galaxy’s been here, how come we haven’t seen any indication of it?—is an important puzzle for those of us who like to think ahead. Setting aside the mystical (we’re all that was created by a higher being) and fundamentally unprovable (we’re all living in a simulation), we’re left with two unpalatable options: we’re the first intelligent species to arise; or no civilization ever makes it long enough. 

There’s two kinds of people asking me about the economy lately: people with money wanting to know how to keep it “safe,” and people without money, wanting to know how to keep safe, themselves. Maybe it’s the difference between those two concerns that best explains the underlying nature of today’s fiscal crisis. 

Discussions of the implications of the augmentation of our biological bodies with prosthetic technologies can be found quite readily in the esoteric discourses of self-described transhumanists, social theorists and bioethicists.

There’s been considerable media attention surrounding a recent breakthrough in the development of a male birth-control pill (MBCP).

Abstract: This article investigates the conceptual distinctions between therapy and various forms of human enhancement. It begins by proposing a typology of human enhancements in order to make more rigorous and grounded discussions about the distinction between therapy and enhancement. Three types of human enhancement are proposed: 1) engineering traits of accepted value, 2) engineering traits of contested value and 3) radical transhuman enhancements. Subsequently, the paper explores the distinctions between the ethical justifications that are advanced for therapeutic interventions, comparing them with human enhancements, concluding that the salient characteristic of health-related suffering enables enhancement to gain legitimacy from the perspective of traditional medical ethics. Finally, the paper considers a number of practical obstructions to the realization of radical transhuman enhancements. Specifically, it discusses procedural obstacles to approving experimental medical research for human enhancements, the likely commercialization of human enhancements that would ensue from their development, and the need to develop experimental medical interventions via animal models.
Recommended Citation

Miah, Andy (2008) “Engineering Greater Resilience or Radical Transhuman Enhancement?,”

Available as PDF here after registration

Products put together by a nanofactory (see here for some fun examples) can be expected to be far more powerful and sophisticated than today’s best-built products. 

I have one thing to say: depopulation is not a global warming strategy.

Transhumanist philosopher (and IEET Chair) Nick Bostrom desperately hopes that we never find signs of extraterrestrial life—advanced or otherwise.  Why? Because he understands the Fermi Paradox.