a} Yes, TVP is transhumanist. In his book, Jacque actually calls machines the next phase of human evolution. I'm not sure I agree, but it doesn't
have me reaching for a shotgun, either. I happen to like computers, personally.
b} There is no inherent relationship that I am aware of, between transhumanism and selfishness. There probably are various reasons why transhumanist
ideas would result in less physical, face to face social interaction, yes; but those are primarily technical, and not because transhumanists are
inherently antisocial assholes.
c} Yes, Peter Joseph wants power, or did. I identified that fairly early on. One person being a megalomaniac, however, does not necessarily have
any relationship with the ideas being discussed.
d} Automated labour is a wonderful idea. Stop and think for a minute; you can either manually chop wood, cook, or build houses yourself, or you can
sit on the lawn behind your house, and smoke bowls with your friends, while robots do it for you. I know which of those two scenarios I'd prefer.
Speaking of which, if you have an electric can opener, you're already a user of automated labour. You'd better make sure you smash that with a
crowbar to prevent the impending cybernetic revolt.
3. AGI (‘Skynet’) Supercomuters controlling most aspects
of politics and society, including rationing global resources to global citizens. If they actually thought this out they'd know that soon enough
machines will need more resources than humans.
Skynet wasn't strong AI. It was weak; very smart weak, but (broken) weak nonetheless. It ultimately couldn't adapt to John Connor's guerilla
tactics, and it couldn't bring itself to stop mindlessly killing things, because that was what it was programmed to do. If it had succeeded in
wiping out humanity, it would have started on feral cats and dogs, next.
Also yes, TVP is Utopian; but again, you say Utopian like it's a bad thing.
6. Cashless (non-backed by Gold/etc) economic system. A ‘Resource Economy’ has been tried before… in the Soviet Union.
Except Communism presupposed the Zero Sum Game; just an equal measure of said scarcity. TVP presupposes abundance. Ergo, people don't get an equal
share of a limited amount of stuff, but as much out of an unlimited amount of stuff as they want. That is quite a large difference.
7. Population Control. To meet these targets as policy sounds like a slippery slope to me.
Not at all. Jacque thinks that Earth can sustain 10 billion people with his methods.
8. The global government run by a global 'god-on-earth' AGI computer network
No. Each city would be run by a priority weighted database (an element of
weak AI) that is actually called an
Expert System.
And that’s what I’ve gathered just glancing over it.
Yes; the level of depth with which you've looked at it, was fairly evident.
It’s already a worshipful, Cult-Of-Personality movement.
Yes, TZM was a cult. When I said so, Peter banned me from the forum, and threatened me with a lawsuit if I went back. Like I said, he had issues;
but him having issues doesn't mean that TVP doesn't have good ideas.
Another interesting thing is that he claims that all humans can be re-educated to make them uncompetitive.
I would look at it more, as creating a scenario in which people were given incentives, to channel their competitive tendencies in other directions;
like becoming known as someone who is able to produce the most awesome inventions. Competition doesn't *have* to be a bad thing, at all. It just
needs to be constructive.
