hello hello hello and welcome to English learning for curious minds by Leonardo English the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English I'm Alistair budge and today we are going to be talking about something called transhumanism it's the idea that humans can enhance bodies with the use of Technology turning us from flesh and blood into Flesh Blood and well anything from microchips to semiconductors silicon to graphine all in a bid to allow us to break free from our biological
reality okay then transhumanism and the rise of the superhumans when I was growing up I had a great uncle called Douglas or Uncle Doug as we called him he lived on a farm in the north of Scotland and every time my cousins and I went to visit him which we would do every summer he had a special trick for us he would let us kick one of his legs and depending on which leg we kicked he would either go ow or there would be a hollow thud see one of his legs was plastic it was
amputated below the knee he had a prosthetic leg we knew that he had fought in the second world war so in our little boy imagination this was some kind of Glorious battle wound in fact it was because he was a heavy smoker and this had caused a blood clot in his leg but that's beside the point now this game had to stop after we got a bit older and one summer someone kicked the real leg a little bit too hard but it was was fun while it lasted and clearly for Uncle Doug this prosthetic leg
was lifechanging his life was extended because the leg and the blood clot were removed and the fact that he had a fake leg meant that he was able to continue to walk around without major difficulty and Doug had an older brother too Uncle jock who moved to the United States as a Young Man Uncle jock almost lived until his H 100th birthday and by the end of his life he had had so many different transplants and surgeries that his relatives would joke that he was 10% metal and a living example of the wonders of California
Hospitals now the use of medical technology to resolve problems and prolong life like in the case of these brothers is something that is almost universally accepted approved of and and practiced around the world but what happens when people try to use technology not just to solve routine problems that arise but to enhance and Elevate The Human Condition to blur the lines between human and superhuman this is the subject of today's episode the philosophical intellectual and scientific movement called transhumanism the movement can be traced back to the English biologist and philosopher Julian Huxley who first wrote
about the concept in 1957 now Huxley had a fascinating life and distinguished career but it was towards the end of both his career and his life that he proposed this revolutionary idea in an essay titled new bottles for new wine I'll actually read you out the last two paragraphs from the essay as it's here that he introduces the subject the human species can if it wishes transcend itself not just sporadically an individual here in one way an individual there in another way but in its entirety as Humanity we need a name for this new belief
perhaps transhumanism will serve man remaining man but transcending himself by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature I believe in transhumanism once there are enough people who can truly say that the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence as different from ours as ours is from that of peing man it will at last be consciously fulfilling its real Destiny end quote peing man if you were not aware was the remains of a homo erectus discovered in a cave in China and Homo erectus was an ancestor to Homo
sapiens you and me in other words mankind has a duty to evolve to transcend human and biological limitations and move into a different state it might sound like something out of a science fiction novel and if you wondering whether Julian Huxley was any relation of the science fiction writer alest Huxley yes he was his older brother but Julian Huxley was deadly serious with this proposition it was no joke in this essay however it was merely a theory a call to arms and it wouldn't be until several decades later that there was the first serious work
towards achieving what Hu had called for but let's step back for a moment and consider what transhumanism really means in practice as it is understood today at its core transhumanism is about enhancing The Human Condition through technology this could be anything from extending our lifespans and improving our physical abilities to enhancing our cognitive capacities it's about pushing the boundaries of what it means to be human now you might be thinking hang on a minute haven't we always been doing this glasses hearing aids pacemakers Uncle Doug's prothetic leg and even the vaccines we take aren't these
all ways of extending our lifespans and enhancing our human abilities well yes you're right of course what sets transhumanism apart though is the scale and the intention Behind These enhancements it's not just about fixing fix in something that's broken or missing it's about pushing our bodies and Minds beyond their natural limits one of the most talked about aspects of transhumanism is the use of technology to extend human life potentially indefinitely this idea which is often referred to as radical life extension challenges our very understanding of life and death some transhumanists believe that through a combination
of biotechnology nanotechnology and possibly AI we could one day cure aging like we would any disease so if all diseases are curable and the aging process is slowed stopped or even reversed then as long as you don't get hit by a bus theoretically at least you can live forever but as to the question of immortality of beating death even though humans are living for longer than ever before we are still a long way off even radical life extension one area of transhumanism that is closer to being achieved though and by some definitions is already here
is related to the enhancement of cognitive abilities being able to access knowledge and information that you would never be able to process only with your biological birth brain imagine being able to download skills directly into your brain Matrix style or connecting your brain to a computer interface to access the internet just by thinking these ideas might sound far-fetched but there have been some important discoveries in this field in the field of neurotechnology you might have heard about an Elon Musk backed company called neuralink which is developing implantable brain computer interfaces essentially linking your brain directly
up to a computer and it works or at least it is showing promising signs there's an amazing video from 2021 of a monkey controlling a video game using only his brain showing that this technology has succeeded in recording and decoding electrical signals from the brain essentially downloading thoughts and uploading them to a computer now it is still very early days but imagine a world where your brain had access to the internet where instead of going to a computer and typing or saying what you wanted you simply thought it and the information was immediately available in
your brain again this might sound creepy and your immediate reaction might be that sounds like a step too far but there are many cases in which this kind of cognitive enhancement is more in the category of adding a prosthetic leg to someone who lost theirs in a car accident than connecting the internet to a normal healthy human's brain imagine someone suffering from motor neuron disease whose body had deteriorated to such an extent that they were unable to communicate with normal speech a real world example would be Steven Hawking who lost all physical power and had
to communicate by moving his eyes but clearly on a cognitive level he was functioning perfectly and made important scientific discoveries and wrote several influential books without the use of his body now imagine for a moment that the technology existed that connected his brain to a computer so he was able to use a computer and communicate simply by thinking rather than the laborious process of having to move his eye to look at letters and spell out a word or imagine that you could restore the memory of someone who had lost it after an accident or during
dementia ethically it would be hard to argue that these were bad things but they raise interesting questions about where we draw the line between restoring human qualities and abilities to someone who had lost them and enhancing The Human Condition for perfectly functioning humans in other words if we consider it not only morally and ethically acceptable but also a medical obligation to help treat someone who is sick can we use the same technology to enhance someone's physical condition if they are perfectly healthy and this leads us on to some important ethical questions about what a world
of transhumans might look like it would almost by definition increase inequality in a way that Humanity has never really had to contemplate before yes at the moment there is great wealth inequality inequality between rich and poor and clearly someone living on a few dollars a day in a developing country does not have access to the same Medical Treatments as a chief executive in New York or Paris or London so life expectancy is generally correlated with wealth people in higher income countries live longer and healthier lives than people in lower income countries but a rich person's
body is not so drastically different from a poor person's body imagine a world where you could pay to enhance your body to such an extent that you became a superhuman essentially creating two different classes of humanity of course these kinds of treatments are likely to be very expensive at least at the start and they would further widen the gap between the rich and the poor creating a world where the wealthy can afford to become superhuman while everyone else is Left Behind there are also concerns about identity what does it mean to be human if we
can radically alter our bodies and mind if your mind is no longer only yours but it's augmented by all sorts of algorithms and sources of data where do you draw the line between the human and the robot now to take the other side of the argument arent for a minute especially on the question of price and inequality of course it would be expensive at the start and of course this could initially lead to the rich being able to afford these treatments that poor people cannot but some might say isn't this already the case just to
a slightly lesser degree isn't this just a natural progression from being able to pay for better healthare and to live longer once more the price of such technology always decreases over time so it is these rich people that Finance the research and development which then allows the technology to be mass-- produced and affordable for the less wealthy now given the increased interest in transhumanism in the past 50 years or so and The Colossal shift that it would bring to humanity and life on Earth it has provided inspiration for all manner of science fiction series a
particularly good TV series in my opinion at least is the British series Black Mirror each episode in the series is a standalone story set in a different world and these worlds usually have some dystopian technological elements in one people rate each other after every social interaction using eye implants in another people have a chip behind their ear with which they can replay their memories and in another relationships are formed by an algorithm matching people with other people for a predetermined period of time it's a great series and one I definitely recommend you check it out
the First episodes came out in 2011 to which many critics sort of laughed and said ha that will never happen but just a decade later it is looking much closer to reality and on the subject of transhumanism in reality transhumanism today I want to finish by briefly telling you about a man who is trying his utmost to push the boundaries of the human body his name is Brian Johnson and a recent Vice article about him called him the most measured man man in human history he made his money creating a payments company called brain tree
which was later sold to PayPal for $800 million he was born in 1977 so is still quite young but over the past few years he has made it his mission to do everything he possibly can to enhance his body to stop the aging process and just perhaps live forever this includes measuring everything on a daily basis eating exactly 1,977 calories a day the food he eats determined by what the measurements dictate in other words instead of thinking oh I'll have a sandwich or pizza or even salad for lunch today Brian Johnson's diet and meal plan
is dictated by an algorithm that analyzes the results of his body measurements and Returns the exact food that he should consume to quote Johnson the program runs my body for me and it does a better job than I can the logic behind this is that we humans are not particularly good managers of our body we're not great custodians of our own bodies we eat fatty foods we drink fizzy drinks or Al alcohol we smoke we don't exercise we don't get enough sleep Johnson's view is that he completely removes himself from the decision-making process about how
to manage his body instead following the instructions dictated by a computer program it might not sound like a particularly enjoyable life to you or me but it does sound like it's working by all measurements Johnson says that he is in perfect physical condition not only has he slowed the aging process but according to his core measurements he is a few years younger than a person should be at his age his objective is to stop aging completely to live forever if you're wondering how much all of this costs he says that he spends around $2 million
a year for all of this now you might hear this and think this all sounds miserable count me out if that's what I need to do to live forever and reading the comments on his posts and YouTube videos this does seem to be a common reaction when someone learns about him and the health care regime that he is on but to take Johnson's side for a minute is this just our natural reaction because we don't know if what he's doing will work if he drops dead tomorrow or even at the age of 85 no doubt
his critics will write that it was all for nothing that he sacrificed his Humanity for nothing but if he lives to 100 150 or is still alive in 250 years time and is living proof that anyone could do this if they change their behavior how would that change our opinions now Brian Johnson is just one example of someone who is living and breathing transhumanism and is prepared to put his money and his body on the line in the Quest for superh Humanity but he gets us asking important questions about the ethics of transhumanism the practicalities
of what is involved and how far we are prepared to go to conquer our physical beings if you knew that you could take certain action to fundamentally change your body and the nature of your life and if cost Was No Object would you take them for all human existence humans have been dealt the same pack of cards we've experienced joy and sorrow Pleasure and Pain strength and weakness life and death and we've been constrained by our human bodies if at some point in the future this constraint no longer exists one cannot but ask what is
left of humanity okay then that is it for this episode on transhumanism and the rise of the superhumans I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learned something new as always I'd love to know what you thought about this episode if you could click your fingers and live forever would you do it and would you live a life like Brian Johnson's if you knew that you could live to 500 years old and by the way if you like this episode I think you'll like the previous one which was on cryonics the process of
freezing people in order to bring them back from the dead when the technology exists you've been listening to English learning for curious minds by Leonardo English I'm aliser budge you stay safe and I'll catch you in the next episode
