WhyTranshumanism Is Not Credible

Transhumanism is something that may be called a philosophy or a philosophical movement or a social movement or a thought trend. It can be called a creed, and it is even sometimes called a new religion. Transhumanism is basically the idea that it will be possible before long to use technology or science to make radical improvements in the fundamental nature of humans.  The more modest claims of transhumanists are that before long it will be possible to very significantly extend the human life span and significantly expand human intelligence. There are other more extravagant claims made by transhumanists, such as:

(1) The claim that humans will be able to achieve some huge increase in intelligence or thinking speed by modifying their brains or linking their brains directly to computers;

(2) The claim that humans will be able to achieve some huge increase in their knowledge by electronically uploading knowledge into their brains, or some similar process that will allow you to learn almost instantly skills or knowledge that would otherwise take months of school work or reading;

(3) The claim that humans may be able to achieve some kind of electronic immortality in which they upload their minds into some computer system or some "cloud" of computer systems;

(4) The claim that there will be some "Singularity" that involves computers vastly exceeding humans in intelligence, and that humans will be able to radically transform their minds by somehow linking with such super-intelligent computers.

A goofy gospel

The word "transhumanism" was coined by evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley. He used it as the title of a brief essay  which sounded rather like support for the discredited idea of eugenics, with mention of humans becoming "managing directors" of their evolution.  Little use was made of the term "transhumanism" until the rise of Silicon Valley, the Internet and high-powered personal computers. Then quite a few people in Silicon Valley started speculating about the idea of using computers to radically enhance humanity.  The software industry is largely about upgrades: if you have a software startup, you start with a version 1.0 and then maybe every six months or so you issue an upgrade, so that a user may end up with version 1.5, version 2.0, version 3.0, and so forth.  It is no big surprise that in an industry so centered around technological upgrades we would have people speculating about doing technological upgrades of the human species. 

Among the biggest apostles of transhumanism (or people whose work is cited by transhumanists) have been the following:

• Eric Drexler, who since 1987 has predicted that self-replicating microscopic robots called nanobots would revolutionize the world, an idea that still seems in the category of science fiction;
• Ray Kurzweil, a person who made quite a few predictions about what we would have in 2019 that did not prove true (as discussed here);
• Nick Bostrom, a transhumanist apostle also famous for originating the pernicious speculation that humans are merely part of a computer simulation set up by extraterrestrials (he founded a World Transhumanist Assocation);
• Elon Musk, a very successful hi-tech figure who has claimed that we are probably living in a computer simulation.

Musk's silly reasoning to back up this claim was as follows:

"If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then games will be indistinguishable from reality, or civilization will end. One of those two things will occur. Therefore, we are most likely in a simulation, because we exist."

Let me explain why transhumanism is mostly bunk. The most notable claims of transhumanists are based on an uncritical acceptance of unjustified claims that brains are the storage place of human memory and that brains are the source of human intelligence.  Such claims are outdated old belief dogmas of a conformist belief community of neuroscientists.  Such claims are not backed up by evidence, and are are actually in conflict with many facts that have been established by neuroscientists themselves in recent decades. 

Although they have the very bad habit of constantly making groundless claims that brains explain minds, scientists have no understanding of how brains could create or be responsible for any of the most important aspects of the human mind. Specifically:

•  The idea of a single unified self arising from billions of different brain cells randomly firing in two separate hemispheres makes no sense. It is now widely confessed even in mainstream media that no neuroscientist has ever yet given a credible account of how neurons could produce any such thing as consciousness or self-hood.
• No neuroscientist has ever given a credible account of how neurons could produce conceptual understanding or abstract ideas. 
• Far from resembling an information storage system for storing learned data, the brain has none of the hallmarks of such systems. 
• No one has ever presented a credible theory of how human learned information and conceptual information and episodic memories could ever be translated into neural states or synapse states, and no examination of neurons or synapses has shown the slightest evidence that they store such information. 
• Brains seem to have nothing like a mechanism for reading or writing memories. 
• Information storage occurs through the repetition of symbolic tokens. In a book these tokens are letters (characters). In a computer these tokens are massively repeated binary numbers such as 1 and 0. No one has ever discovered any non-genetic learned information stored in any animal brain, nor has anyone discovered any of the massive token repetition that would exist if brains stored memories.  No one has ever been able to read the slightest bit of learned information from the brain of someone who recently died. 
• Scientists lack any credible explanation of how a brain could instantly retrieve a memory.  The brain lacks any of the things that allow instant memory to be retrieved in books and computers, things such as sorting, addressing and indexing.  

Such items are mainly just shortfalls in which neuroscientists have failed to produce the type of evidence they would need to produce to substantiate claims that brains produce minds and that brains store memories.  There are also many known facts and discoveries that discredit such claims, including the following:

• Common facts of human experience (such as our ablilty to instantly form permanent new memories) stand in opposition to widely spread but groundless claims that brains store memories through slow mechanisms such as "synapse strengthening." 
• The average lifetime of proteins in synapses (the reputed storage place of memories) is less than two weeks, 1000 times shorter than the maximum length of time that humans can remember things (more than 50 years). There is no place in the brain that is a credible site for the storage of memories that can last for decades. 
• Human minds and memories are well preserved even when half of a brain is surgically removed to stop severe epileptic seizures, which completely contradicts the claim that the human brain is the source of the human mind and the storage place of memories. 
• There are many case histories of people with good minds and average or above-average intelligence even when almost all of their brains were destroyed by disease. 
• Inside the human brain there exists many types of severe signal noise which should make it impossible for the human brain to be the explanation for memory recall when can occur almost flawlessly in many people, and accurate human calculation such as occurs in savants.  Humans such as Hamlet actors who recite 1480 lines without error, Wagnerian tenors who perform similar recitation feats without error and religious memorists who perform even more impressive feats (such as remembering 5000+ lines) are all performing feats of recall that should be impossible given a brain in which each synapse transmits information with a reliability of 50% or less. 
• Because signal transmission is relatively slow in synapses and dendrites, human brains should be way too slow to explain instant human recall and very fast numerical calculation such as we see in mathematical savants. Some "math savant" humans with "hypercalculia" (such as Zerah Colburn and Jacques Inaudi) can or could do very complex and accurate math calculations "in their heads" at extremely high speeds. While some signals (such as pain signals and sensory signals) can travel at fast speeds, the cumulative effect of a huge number of synaptic delays (the delay caused when signals have to jump across chemical synapses) should mean that the average brain signal moves too slowly to allow for very fast thinking. 
• Abundant evidence for human extrasensory perception (evidence which has been systematically gathered and published for almost 200 years) suggests the human mind must involve something far beyond the brain, such evidence being inexplicable under any neural hypothesis. 
• Contrary to claims that brains produce minds, animals with tiny brains often perform as well in mental tests as organisms with large brains. Referring to birds such as ravens, a Science Daily article tells us, "Some birds are capable of astonishing cognitive performances to rival those of higher developed mammals such as primates." A scientific paper states that despite having tiny brains, mouse lemurs perform pretty much as well as primates with brains hundreds of times larger. 
• A large body of evidence for out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences (such as discussed here, here, here and here ) suggest that the human mind can operate outside of the brain, and that the mind can often keep operating well when the brain has shut down during cardiac arrest.

Because of such facts and many others, claims that brains store memories and that brains produce thinking and intelligence are untenable.  But such claims have been accepted "hook, line and sinker" by transhumanists, who generally do not seem to be serious scholars of the brain-mind issue.  Most transhumanists show no signs of being serious scholars of the low-level facts established by neuroscientists, and most transhumanists show zero signs of being serious scholars of the massive evidence suggesting mind is a spiritual phenomenon rather than a neural phenomenon. 

The fact that so many of the transhumanists come from a Silicon Valley background is ironic.  The birth of Silicon Valley and personal computers was a case of norm-defying rebels who bucked the conventional wisdom of mainstream authorities. Around 1977 quite a few or the powers-that-be in the computing industry were pooh-pooing the idea of desktop computers.  One such authority (Ken Olsen) famously said in 1977, "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."  Personal computers were developed when some rebellious geniuses such as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak dared to recognize that mainstream authorities were pushing unfounded dogmas (such as the dogma that serious computers had to be at least as big as a refrigerator).  A video that visualizes this rebellious spirit was the famous 1984 commercial of Apple Computers:

But now we see many transhumanists from the high-tech industry advancing a philosophical program that is all based on a credulous "hook, line and sinker" acceptance of the unfounded dogmas of a conformist mainstream priesthood of neuroscientists.   Such uncritical kneeling to the pronouncements of authority figures is the opposite of the spirit which gave birth to the personal computer and the Internet. 

There is another way in which transhumanists show a credulous "hook, line and sinker" acceptance of unfounded claims of some biologists: their acceptance of common but extremely false claims about DNA.  As discussed here, there is no truth to claims that DNA is a blueprint or a recipe or a program for making a human being. Rather than containing high-level information such as instructions on how to make a human body or any of its organs or any of its cells, DNA only contains very low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up a protein.  The idea that a human body arises because a plan for body construction is read from DNA is a myth told by some biologists.  Not only does there not exist such a plan in DNA, but there does not exist below the neck in the body anything that could read and understand and carry out such fantastically complicated instructions if they happened to exist.  At the end of this post, you can read statements by 20+ science experts (mostly biologists and chemists) who deny that DNA is a blueprint or a recipe or a program for building a human. 

People in the high-tech industry should tend to understand better than the average person that HTML code for specifying the look and behavior of a web page is worthless without some extremely complicated software (a web browser) for interpreting such instructions, and also C++ code for specifying the look and behavior of an app or program is worthless without some extremely complicated software (such as compilers and operating systems) capable of interpreting and carrying out such instructions.  In the human body there does not exist anything comparable to code or instructions for constructing a human body or its organs or cells, and there also does not exist anything below the neck capable of understanding and executing such instructions if they happened to exist (something which would require interpretive and constructive capabilities far greater than in any web browser or a compiler or operating system).   

 

So how does the extremely hierarchical organization of the human body (with so many levels of vast organization and functional complexity) arise without such things,  with such a state of organization arising over nine months from a vastly simpler speck-sized ovum? How does a speck-sized ovum progress so that we end up with a human body in which subatomic particles are organized into atoms, and atoms are organized into amino acids, and amino acids are organized into protein molecules, and protein molecules are organized into organelles, and organelles are organized into cells, and cells are organized into tissues, and tissues are organized into organs, and organs are organized into organ systems with fantastically fine-tuned functional biochemistry? This is a mystery a thousand miles over the heads of today's biologists, who don't even understand how a single eukaryotic cell is able to reproduce.  The fact that organisms most mysteriously achieve such states of physical organization (which are states more organized than in any electronic device) is a major additional reason for disbelieving in the idea that our minds come from our brains.  If our bodies arose through some mysterious process far beyond our understanding and far beyond explanation by physical science, we should have no qualms about thinking that our minds also arose through some mysterious process far beyond our understanding, far beyond any explanation known to physical science.

Returning to transhumanists, we find in some of their writings a credulous "hook, line and sinker" acceptance of mythical notions that DNA is a blueprint for building bodies, minds or both. An essay by philosopher Nick Bostrom is entitled "Human Genetic Enhancements: A Transhumanist Perspective." We read 27 references to "germ-line enhancements," and we read the eugenics-friendly claim that "In the case of germ-line enhancements, the potential gains are enormous."  There is no good evidence that manipulating any gene can produce an increase in memory or intelligence.  Studies with animals claiming that modifications of genes such as NR2B or GRIN2B or PDE4B or FOX2P can produce enhancements of learning or memory are examples of junk science. As discussed here, a careful examination of such studies (which use only mice or rats) will show that they are guilty of the Questionable Research Practices so common in modern neuroscience: a lack of pre-registration, a failure to follow a blinding protocol, and the use of way, way too small sample sizes. Given such far-too-small sample sizes, we should think that such studies have produced nothing other than false alarms. 

Transhumanists tend to state very chimerical claims very much lacking in realism. One transhumanist has an essay entitled "Why We Should Embrace Our Superintelligent AI Overlords," in which we read this very untrue and extremely ridiculous claim: "Most experts in AI believe that once we finally create an AI with human-level intelligence, the next day it will be an Einstein, and the day after that it will be equivalent to 100 Einsteins."  Another article by the same author is entitled, "How to Prepare Your Data and Brain to Have Your Mind Uploaded to a Computer."

A remarkably skimpy PhD thesis (only 25 double-spaced pages) by one author tells us about the hopes of one transhumanist. We read this in the PhD thesis entitled "Becoming gods":

"By genetically manipulating the human genome it may be possible to create beings which are as far removed from humans in intelligence and comprehension as humans are from chimpanzees. If this experiment succeeds then these newly created beings will have a much better chance than humans of realizing the unity of thought and being. It is argued that these beings might merit the name 'gods'."

The idea is extremely erroneous. There is nothing in the genome of humans (the same as human DNA) which accounts for the intellectual difference between a man and a chimp. There are no conceivable manipulations of DNA which could cause the appearance of some organism "as far removed from humans in intelligence and comprehension as humans are from chimpanzees."  Our transhumanists have fallen "hook, line and sinker" for the materialist myth that DNA is a blueprint for making a body. DNA merely contains low-level chemical information, and does not contain any high-level structural information. DNA does not even designate the structure of any cell, or specify how to make any cell or any of a cell's organelles.  

A 2019 study involved scanning the brains of 300+ people who had taken intelligence tests. The study found no clear link between brain parameters such as (grey matter volume or white matter volume) and intelligence or knowledge.   Another study found that men have 33% greater synaptic density than women, but there is no difference between men and women in intelligence or memory. The idea that we will build smarter humans by breeding humans with more neurons or thicker synapses is erroneous.

At the link here, you can read for free the first 5 issues of the transhumanist magazine H+.  If you read such magazines you will get the impression that transhumanism is mainly about far-out technological fantasies with the flavor of science fiction.  Transhumanism centers around very specific beliefs about the brain, but when reading such issues I get the impression that transhumanists are neither serious scholars of the brain nor serious scholars of human mental phenomena. Human mental phenomena in all its strangeness must be studied in depth in order to get a proper notion of whether brains can explain minds (for very many anomalous human experiences and anomalous case histories contradict conventional dogmas about the brain and mind). 

There is much talk in the H+ magazine issues about the Singularity (an imagined event when machines or humans become vastly more intelligent than present-day  humans). Such an imagined event is treated by transhumanists rather the way fundamentalists treat the Second Coming of Jesus.  In Issue 3 of H+ a leading Singularity theorist defines the Singularity as when humans will be able to create or become creatures of superhuman intelligence. He says he will be suprised if this does not happen by the year 2030.  This prediction seems as bad as Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book-title prediction that "the Singularity is near" (17 years later, there seem to be no signs of it nearing). In Issue 2 of H+ we read this statement by a prominent transhumanist: "The primary purpose of the Singularity will be seen, after the fact, to be Awesome Sex."  

Transhumanists love to speculate about a future state of higher human intelligence and perception (speculations with a science fiction flavor). But transhumanists strangely seem to have zero interest in studying the only types of reports we have in which humans said they briefly reached such a state of higher human intelligence and perception: reports from paranormal experiences such as near-death experiences. Maybe this is because such reports (very often involving people saying they observed their bodies from positions outside of their bodies) conflict with a central assumption of transhumanism, that the mind is merely the product of the brain.  A person who properly studies such reports and makes a full study of paranormal phenomena (reading the books listed at the front of this post) will tend to feel no need for the transhumanist fantasy of immortality by uploading your mind into some future "cloud" of networked computers.