Редактирование: Criticism of transhumanism (раздел)

== The view that science and technology will likely cause more harm than good ==

Some critics of transhumanism assert that more powerful technology is likely to cause:

* [[Dark green|Damage to the world]] (for example, via environmental stress)
* Damage to social well-being (for example, via technological unemployment, or increased financial inequality)
* The outbreak of dangerous new diseases (for example, via problems with genetic manipulation)
* [[Post privacy|Loss of privacy]], and greater manipulation of people [[Fascist transhumanism|by government]] [[Oligarchic transhumanism|and/or corporations]](via increased surveillance and big data analytics).

Taking this view to an extreme, these critics point to the possibility of technologies inducing [[existential risk]]s.

More powerful technology might also magnify the impact of existing character flaws, such as personal meanness, cold-heartedness, and egoism. People might become smarter and stronger as a result of improved technology, but there's no guarantee that they'll also become wiser or kinder.

For these reasons, critics object to the transhumanist project "to seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology". These critics claim that science and technology will likely take intelligent life backwards rather than forwards.

However, these criticisms don't undermine the overall transhumanist initiative. Instead, they show that technological improvement needs to happen in parallel with:

* A continued focus on moral issues
* Smart political and social checks on potential misuse of technology.

This point is emphasised in, for example, the continuation of the excerpt given above from [http://strategicphilosophy.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/its-about-ten-years-since-i-wrote.html "A letter to Mother Nature" by Max More, 1999]:

<blockquote>
We have decided that it is time to amend the human constitution.

We do not do this lightly, carelessly, or disrespectfully, but cautiously, intelligently, and in pursuit of excellence. We intend to make you proud of us. Over the coming decades we will pursue a series of changes to our own constitution, initiated with the tools of biotechnology guided by critical and creative thinking...

We will cautiously yet boldly reshape our motivational patterns and emotional responses in ways we, as individuals, deem healthy. We will seek to improve upon typical human emotional excesses, bringing about refined emotions. We will strengthen ourselves so we can let go of unhealthy needs for dogmatic certainty, removing emotional barriers to rational self-correction...

These amendments to our constitution will move us from a human to an transhuman condition as individuals. We believe that individual transhumanizing will also allow us to form relationships, cultures, and polities of unprecedented innovation, richness, freedom, and responsibility.
</blockquote>