E110 FA19 Class Blog

Transhumanism, although it is a controversial topic offers many benefits to society. The term transhumanism often times has a negative connotation but is simply “the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.” This does not necessarily mean anything negative. Transhumanism could allow for science and technology to help all individuals to do everyday things that they were born unable to do, things as simple as to see or hear. Of course this could also lead to new abilities that currently are not able to be done by humans. Science and technology are already aiding in human advancement, but the term “transhumanism” gives it a sort of ominous feeling. Media, such as television, has not helped this view either, as transhumanism is often depicted as evil or negative, leading the viewers unable to see the potential benefits.

Transhumanism offers many different advancements for people, and not looking into the technology or science would be foolish that can help individuals. I fully understand the implications that these advancements could cause which is why some some sort of regulation or watch on these emerging technologies would be beneficial. The surveillance of these technologies and scientific advancements would lead to things the media portrays to be less likely to occur. Overall, anything that could further the human experience for all individuals is something I believe should be explored, regardless of whether media has depicted scenarios in which it leads to something quite negative.

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Due to the growing climate problems, scientists have been looking into space colonization. Stephen Hawking predicted that human kind will become extinct within the next thousand years unless we find an alternative place to inhabit. Along with human kind surviving longer, the Solar System alone has, according to different estimates, enough material and energy to support anywhere from several thousand to over a billion times that of the current Earth-based human population. Colonizing other planets can also fix some of the climate issues we have on this planet. It will decrease the amount of pollution and the amount of resources being used. Colonizing new places has been known to displace indigenous peoples. If people were to colonize other planets, no one would be displaced because no one has been able to discover and other form of life within the solar system. In recent times, the overpopulation of the earth has been hurting the environment. People have been polluting the earth and overusing the natural resources. If the population were split between earth and another planet, there would be less stress on each environment. With the improvement of technology, space colonization could possible happen in the near future. As Stephen Hawking said that scientists have about 200 years to colonize and build residences on other planets or human kind will face long term extinction.

The human race has, at most 11 years, in which to slow climate change before it becomes inevitable and disastrous. While there are many who deny climate change altogether, there are also those who are apathetic about it, seeing no need to combat it. These people think of the moon and Mars as backups to Earth, that we can move to once it’s destroyed. However, humans have yet to even visit Mars and no one has spent an extended period of time on the moon. The argument that humans can just pack up and leave once Earth is no longer habitable shows a lack of insight into the particulars of off-world colonization and indifference to saving the planet we already have.

The amount of carbon emissions produced by the human race today is not sustainable in order to maintain a habitable planet. Too much CO² in the atmosphere leads to a changing climate, turning hot areas boiling and cold areas frigid. Parts of the planet will drown, and parts will dry up. There won’t be enough food to sustain the human population because there won’t be anywhere to grow it. There won’t be enough oxygen to breath because there won’t be anymore rainforests. Billions of people will lose their homes and livelihoods. First, life as we know it, luxury and abundance, food and freedom, will vanish. Then, the human race will go extinct.

While much of the negative impact of humans on the environment is irreversible, there is still time before it is too late. We need to slow the warming of the planet to less than 2° by 2030 but ideally to less than 1.5°. Carbon emissions need to be severely cut down. The obvious solutions are a carbon tax, eating much less meat, not using carbon heavy transportation, and not eliminating the natural elements that already work to absorb carbon, such as rainforests.

However, some people are too lazy or too invested in their own assets to take these ideas seriously or even consider them. People would rather continue eating hamburgers for every meal and driving their SUVs and the heads of huge fossil fuel corporations would rather continue hiring lobbyists and “scientists” to spread misinformation to continue making a profit and expanding their personal fortunes. It’s no coincidence that most climate change deniers are old and wealthy: they won’t be around for the end of the world and can only profit off polluting the environment.

Space colonization shouldn’t be considered as the solution to climate change. We shouldn’t be investing time and resources in an unsure future on a different planet when we should be investing those in saving the one we already have. Space colonization is not the safety net people like to think it is; it should be the last resort in the far future for if our planet finally goes to shit and the human race hasn’t curbed its population growth rate. We haven’t done enough research into the effects of living off-world on humans and we don’t know if we would be displacing or exploiting native races. The idea of space colonization is alluring but our focus at the present should be on making Earth habitable into the future.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization

Transhumanism is a controversial topic among people because of the definition and the sub categories alone. Transhumanism is the movement that condones the transformation of humans by creating highly advanced technology to enhance humans intellect and physiology. I’m going to specifically focus on the idea that transhumanism creates a loss of human identity.

It is believed to create a loss of identity by altering the basic human genes to overcome the natural processes we face e.g aging, maximum life expectancy, etc. Bill McKibben, an environmental ethicist, argues that transhumanism is unethical. “He claims that it would be morally wrong for humans to tamper with fundamental aspects of themselves (or their children) in an attempt to overcome universal human limitations […].” As McKibben states, society would be creepy if anyone could alter themselves to overcome natural limitations. It would make it harder for the natural process of birth, life and death to occur. Altering ourselves in Transhumanism is not what our society needs or should want.

There have been a multitude of arguments made for space colonization over the course of the past 60 years. Though this concept may be mesmerizing, and space colonization could open up entirely new possibilities that could benefit the increasing human-race while simultaneously preserving the biosphere in the occasion that a devastating disaster occurs. However, this bold idea could have even more devastating results, one of them being which nation controls what.

There is no way to successfully divide space, let alone an inhabitable planet, among the many nations that are on earth. This battle for control between the powerful economies and militaries globally would surely turn universal pending the colonization of space. This would surely cause new wars and more exploitation of people and goods. There is also a large lack of public support for this due to the financial, physical and human resources needed, meaning it could take longer for certain nations to implement colonizing space. This may cause wars on earth, whether between nations or a divided one ( http://monthlyreview.org/2010/11/01/the-humanization-of-the-cosmos-to-what-end/ ). In all, space colonization would cause warfare and disagreements among the nations, and would do more harm than good.

It’s crazy to think one century ago many believed space exploration and flying aircrafts and drones to other planets was crazy. Now it has become a standard and we have furthered our exploration to trying to find planets able to inhabit life forces and a place to recolonize human race. I believe space colonization is something we need to start focusing on. As we know many of Earth’s natural resources are winding down as we can tell with many environmental issues such as global warming, deforestation, animal populations, and natural oils and fuels are coming up frequently in the news. Stories have spread all over social media platforms showing the destruction of land and oceans all across the world and entire cities going bankrupt of certain resources. Many companies are starting to panic and do something to solve these issues before they become large scale. Many groups are starting to invest in ideas to provide alternate human made resources to avoid the issues while others look into replanting trees and regulations. Other companies have lost hope in the fixing off the mistreatment of our planet and chosen to invest in proposing plans to begin space exploration. Another concern is the overpopulation of earth. Certain areas of Earth are in poverty and other troubling reasons humans cannot survive in those areas. Compared to all cities and countries on earth there are more areas in poverty and struggle to survive as a nation. Do to this entire cultures desire moving to somewhere that is rich in resources as more people move into the areas able to sustain life the resources continue to be used up at a growing rate. When cities become overpopulated what do you think happens? The answer is our resources deplead rapidly and very like to completely run out. As a temporary fix we find other options such as electric cars and alternate fuels and processed foods. But certain things cannot be fixed our atmosphere being destroyed from the burning of fuels can lead to a loss of Earths ability to inhabit life, deforestation leads to loss in oxygen and in many areas clean air, pollution of our water sources leads to many areas in the world not having clean water which can kill of entire populations through disease. All in all, the more we populate and continue to overuse our earth’s resources we need to find another area rich in resources. What else to do than find another Earth like place to move Earths inhabitants to. Being able to continue space exploration and finding resources for the humans to survive off of is something our world has to continue to work on. Eventually beyond the life we live generations simply cannot survive in a world filled with toxic air, polluted water, lack of non scientifically modified foods. We need to continue to expand our natural resources for the human race to survive whether it is recolonizing on a planet with an earth-like atmosphere or finding the resources we need to live on another planet and transporting them back to earth.

Ever since the idea of extraterrestrials has been presented to humans on earth, the debate of whether or not aliens are real has been one that has baffled society forever. Italian American physicist, Enrico Fermi, developed the Fermi Paradox however, which explores the idea that if aliens do exist, our human race should have come into contact with them by this point in time. 

The paradox brings up many questions and points involving our lack of knowledge and exposure to extraterrestrial life; beginning with the size of our universe. Fermi explains that since our Milky Way is so vast and there are billions of stars and planets within it that we don’t even know exist, that the chance of there being other societies out there is very likely, however we just have not developed the technological capabilities to discover them. 

Another question asked is “Why are no aliens or their artifacts found here on Earth, or in the Solar System?” And the answer again is the lack of technological advancements we have made on planet earth. Our space travelling abilities are considered rather slow, as it would take us from 5 million to 50 million years to even attempt to colonize the rest of the galaxy. We also have a lack of knowledge of these life forms as a whole. We have no idea as humans what these other beings could look like or how they live their lives. For all we know, there could be another planet exactly like earth with beings living on it just like we are now. That relates to another point made in the paradox: with the size of our galaxy, there is a very high chance that there is another planet out there that has the ability to be a home to life forms. 

Through all of these ideas, I think they allude to the fact that maybe we aren’t set out to discover aliens or extraterrestrial life forms. If we have not contacted them by now and there are so many questions and contradicting ideas as to why we have not reached them yet, maybe that is a sign that they are meant to be left alone and undiscovered. Also, on the planet we live in, we tend to use things and take them for granted (cough, cough, our own damn planet) so I feel if aliens did come into contact with us, we would exploit them and make them hate the world that we live in – there is no way we could let them remain peaceful.

Transhumanism is a controversial topic that faces a lot of criticism. The controversial aspect that I will focus on is the idea that transhumanism creates a loss of human identity. It is believed to do so by the hope of creating a way to alter human genes to essentially construct human beings into more perfect versions of themselves. Bill McKibben, an environmental ethicist, argues in support of transhumanism being unethical. “He claims that it would be morally wrong for humans to tamper with fundamental aspects of themselves (or their children) in an attempt to overcome universal human limitations, such as vulnerability to aging, maximum life span and biological constraints on physical and cognitive ability.” As Bill McKibben states, society would be weird if everyone could alter themselves to overcome natural limitations. If we could alter ourselves to be perfect, it would eliminate the need for us to strive to be better which would produce an unmotivated society. The aspect of altering ourselves in Transhumanism is not what our society needs.

Humans should learn how to colonize in space because it would be beneficial to the survival of the human civilization.  If humans were able to live somewhere other than Earth, it would allow for our species to live on and procreate in the event of a natural disaster.  In addition, we would have access to more new and useful resources than are available on earth. Moving our civilization to a different planet could be the only hope for saving human civilization

Many scholarly scientists say that moving human life to other planets is the only way to save the human species.  According to the Wikipedia article, in 2006 Stephan Hawking stated that if we do not colonize outer space within the next 200 years, mass extinction may be upon us.  With the diminishing ecosystem and enviroment of Earth, it is not likely that life on this planet will survive much longer. Soon, with global warming, the earth will no longer be a safe, healthy place to live. Mass extinction of the human race is likely coming in the near future. Another large argument for moving human life to other places is in the event of nuclear warfare.  If nuclear warfare were to happen on Earth, it would wipe out the human race in its entirity. Moving human colonization to a different planet could save the human race.

Another reason for colonizing off of Earth is because of the plentiful resources found on other planets. The wikipedia article states that the solar system alone has enough material and energy to support over a billion times that over the human population.  Asteroid mining would also be a great way to obtain resources outside of Earth. Asteroid mining could help find water and materials for building and sheilding from things in the atmopshere. The biggest resource that another planet could provide is a plentiful amount of space.  Because the Earth is so highly populated, moving to another space would allow for people to have more space and expansion.

Overall, colonizing planet’s in outerspace, or at least beginning to learn how to is a very smart move.  Earth as we know it will most likely not last very much longer, and if we do not take initiative the human race could soon be extinct.  The resources that the solar system could provide would also be very beneficial considering Earth is beginning to run out of certain resources. Space colonization is necessary for human civilization.