Transhumanists see many possible avenues of technological development that will continue to drive changes in human capabilities. But they radically oversimplify both the challenges that transhumanism claims to address, and the institutional and social frameworks in which people are defined and function. They assume that “human” will only be improved and enhanced, not transcended, rendered obsolete, or even degraded. The language used to promote transhumanism (by Hans Moravic, Ray Kurzweil, Gregory Stock, and others) is “an agenda for human betterment that in other contexts marks the domain of faith and spiritual practice.” Enhancing cognitive abilities and reducing pain and suffering are desirable of course, but the technologies that can achieve such benefits may also have less happy effects.

We can make two predictions with considerable confidence: 1) the beneficiaries of enhancement will generally not be individuals, but institutions; drivers for enhancement will be economic efficiency and competition for military and cultural dominance, not quality of life or ‘better humaneness,” even if we knew (or could agree on) what the latter was; 2) particular enhancements cannot be viewed in isolation: they are changes in highly complex and adaptive systems.” Future dilemmas about human enhancement issues will be much like the current ones: we will not suddenly find ourselves in a world where we can buy computer-brain interfaces that boost IQ by 100 points, or genetic modifications that make one impervious to aging. Such technologies will be approached slowly and unevenly, “with front-page claims of amazing advances one day and page-seven revelations of disappointed expectations a year later.”

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