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Transhumanist Bill of Rights

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The Transhumanist Bill of Rights is a crowdsourced document that conveys rights and laws to humans and all sapient entities while specifically targeting future scenarios of humanity. The original version was created by transhumanist US presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan and was posted by Zoltan on the wall of the United States Capitol building on December 14, 2015.

History

In act reminiscent of Martin Luther, Zoltan Istvan was filmed writing the Transhumanist Bill of Rights on steps of the US Supreme Court on December 13, 2015. The following day, while being surrounded and warned by Capitol police he was going to be arrested for trespassing, Zoltan posted the one-page bill to the northside wall of the US Capitol, an act which is partially documented in the documentary Immortality or Bust. The bill quickly fell off the building.

Version 2.0 was published in Wired magazine by Bruce Sterling. By the time Version 3.0 was published in December 2018, the document had quadrupled in size from version 1.0. Versions 2.0 and 3.0 were developed using electronic ranked-preference voting that involved the members of the U.S. Transhumanist Party proposing articles and then selecting among the proposed wordings.

Istvan has spoken about the bill at the World Economic Forum (Global Council Meeting), Congreso Futuro, the World Bank, and the US Navy.

Content

The most current version of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights focuses protecting the rights of: Human beings; genetically modified humans beings; cyborgs; digital intelligences; intellectually enhanced, previously non-sapient animals; any species of plant or animal which has been enhanced to possess the capacity for intelligent thought; and other advanced sapient life forms. The section on morphological freedom has received particular attention in both the press and scholarly literature.

The Transhumanist Bill of Rights has been widely discussed - major media has published information on it, books have discussed it, and academics have written papers about it. Its 43 articles cover items such as the right to abolish all suffering, the right for morphological freedom, the right to universal basic income and healthcare, the right to strive for radical life extension, and the legal requirement for sentient entities to protect themselves against existential risk. To help guard against existential risk and ensure a bright future for humanity article 5 of the bill mandates that governments "take all reasonable measures to embrace and fund space travel". The bill also requires aging to be classified as a disease by all governments.

Criticism

In an article at The American Spectator titled a “A Transhumanist Bill of Wrongs” perennial transhumanist critic Wesley Smith argued that the laws in the Transhumanist Bill of Rights would cost too much and harm human exceptionalism. Dr. Michael Cook questions why transhumanists even need a bill of rights, and, instead, asks whether society would need a bill of rights against transhumanists and their goals. When critiquing Version 2.0 of the Bill, Michael Cook along with commentator Jasper Hammill of The Metro erroneously assumed that when Article IV references a right to "ending involuntary suffering", it was referring to euthanasia. As U.S. Transhumanist party chair Gennady Stolyarov II has explained, no such implication was intended and the text is actually a reference to David Pearce’s idea that suffering itself should be abolished for entities who desire this, as expressed in his philosophy of abolitionism.

Text of Version 1.0

Preamble: Whereas science and technology are now radically changing human beings and may also create future forms of advanced sapient and sentient life, transhumanists establish this TRANSHUMANIST BILL OF RIGHTS to help guide and enact sensible policies in the pursuit of life, liberty, security of person, and happiness.

Article 1. Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms are entitled to universal rights of ending involuntary suffering, making personhood improvements, and achieving an indefinite lifespan via science and technology.

Article 2. Under penalty of law, no cultural, ethnic, or religious perspectives influencing government policy can impede life extension science, the health of the public, or the possible maximum amount of life hours citizens possess.

Article 3. Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms agree to uphold morphological freedom—the right to do with one’s physical attributes or intelligence (dead, alive, conscious, or unconscious) whatever one wants so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.

Article 4. Human beings, sentient artificial intelligences, cyborgs, and other advanced sapient life forms will take every reasonable precaution to prevent existential risk, including those of rogue artificial intelligence, asteroids, plagues, weapons of mass destruction, bioterrorism, war, and global warming, among others.

Article 5. All nations and their governments will take all reasonable measures to embrace and fund space travel, not only for the spirit of adventure and to gain knowledge by exploring the universe, but as an ultimate safeguard to its citizens and transhumanity should planet Earth become uninhabitable or be destroyed.

Article 6. Involuntary aging shall be classified as a disease. All nations and their governments will actively seek to dramatically extend the lives and improve the health of its citizens by offering them scientific and medical technologies to overcome involuntary aging.

References

  1. ^ Fuller, Steve (19 December 2016). "Morphological Freedom and the Question of Responsibility and Representation in Transhumanism". Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics. 4 (2): 33–45. doi:10.3384/confero.2001-4562.161206.
  2. Istvan, Zoltan (22 October 2019). "Do cyborgs need their own legal rights?". Quartz. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  3. Fuller, Steve (6 June 2017). "Philosopher's Corner: Does This Pro-science Party Deserve Our Votes?". Issues in Science and Technology. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  4. ^ Stolyarov II, Gennady (2019). "The United States Transhumanist Party and the Politics of Abundance". The Transhumanism Handbook. pp. 89–149. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-16920-6_5. ISBN 978-3-030-16919-0. S2CID 239166316. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  5. Follows, Tracey (25 June 2020). "Immortality Or Bust: Transhumanism In The White House". Forbes. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  6. Istvan, Zoltan (21 December 2015). "Immortality Bus Delivers Newly Created Transhumanist Bill of Rights to the US Capitol". HuffPost. Huffington Post. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  7. Istvan, Zoltan. "Forget Trump, Zoltan Istvan wants to be the 'anti-death' president". No. 8 November 2016. Wired UK. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  8. Sterling, Bruce (28 August 2018). "The Transhumanist Bill of Rights version 2.0". Wired. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  9. "Transhumanist Bill of Rights – Version 3.0 – U.S. Transhumanist Party". US Transhumanist Party. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  10. Richmond, Tim (19 February 2019). "Becoming one with technology, with Zoltan Istvan". Medium. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  11. Abbas, Waheed (12 November 2017). "Coming up: humanoids, body chips". Khaleej Times. Retrieved 11 October 2021 – via PressReader.
  12. "Congreso Futuro: Desde la automatización y el transhumanismo al mundo cyborg". El Mostrador (in Spanish). 16 January 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  13. Maughan, Tim (29 November 2015). "Meet Zoltan, the presidential candidate who drives a coffin". www.bbc.com. BBC News. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  14. Hamill, Jasper (5 November 2018). "'Robots need human rights': Why activists want a better life for machines". Metro. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  15. Sloat, Sarah. "Why Morphological Freedom Is a Fantasy: Your Body Isn't Just Your Own". Inverse. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  16. Szabados, Krisztian (2017). "Morphological Freedom as a Basic Human Right: Three Arguments". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3091656. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  17. Fuller, Steve (2020). Nietzschean meditations : untimely thoughts at the dawn of the transhuman era. Basel. ISBN 978-3796539466.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  18. Fuller, Steve (19 December 2016). "Morphological Freedom and the Question of Responsibility and Representation in Transhumanism". Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics. 4 (2): 33–45. doi:10.3384/confero.2001-4562.161206.
  19. Zorea, Aharon W. (2017). Finding the fountain of youth : the science and controversy behind extending life and cheating death. Santa Barbara, California. ISBN 978-1440837999.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  20. Öngün, Erdem (2019). An Evaluation of Transhumanist Bill of Rights From Current and Future Perspective: The Adventure of Technohumanism and Rights.
  21. Skågeby, Jörgen; Arvola, Mattias; Rahm, Lina (19 December 2016). "Editorial: Transhumanist Politics, Education, and Design". Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics. 4 (2): 5–9. doi:10.3384/confero.2001-4562.161219. S2CID 151500432.
  22. Latzer, Michael (2021). "Digital Trinity – Controllable Evolution – Everyday Religion. Characteristics of the Socio-Technical Transformation of Digitalization" (PDF). SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3854485. S2CID 238004598. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  23. Istvan, Zoltan. "Space exploration will spur transhumanism and mitigate existential risk". TechCrunch. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  24. Pearlman, Alex (25 April 2016). "The Opposing Leaders of the Transhumanist Movement Got Salty in a Debate". www.vice.com. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  25. Martin, Sean (11 June 2016). "US Presidential hopeful Zoltan Istvan: 'We will be able to live FOREVER in 25 years'". Express.co.uk. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  26. Smith, Wesley (23 October 2018). "The Transhumanist Bill of Wrongs". The American Spectator. Retrieved 11 October 2021.
  27. Cook, Michael (2 November 2018). "Do transhumanists need a bill of rights?". MercatorNet. Retrieved 11 October 2021.

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