[gabruoy]

Do you believe that humans improving themselves or their society through technological advancement is always a good thing? Or do you think that glasses are a good technological advancement, but maybe nuclear weapons or a theoretical totalitarian AI-ran government are not good advancements in technology?

[BugsJustFindMe]

> Do you believe that ... improving ... is always a good thing?

"Improving" is good by definition. Otherwise it would be called something else. The questions become what you personally consider to be improvement and what scales and scopes you personally choose to consider when determining whether a change improves things.

[dcow]

I don’t think you fundamentally understand what makes a transhumanist. The differentiating line is not improve vs harm. Everyone wants to improve life with tech save maybe the Amish. It’s human vs not. A transhumanist is willing to entertain technology that enhances (carefully chosen term) some conscious experience even if it replaces our humanity. Others generally don’t take that stance axiomatically. A transhumanist would support replacing our dna with nanobots programmed to do things that keep a body alive if it means we can reduce the replication error rate and avoid cancer. Good outcome, dubious means. A transhumanist wouldn’t debate this and accept the nanobot outcome. Most others would at least debate this tech, even if we ultimately collectively come to the shared conclusion we can humanely replace parts of our DNA to cure cancer. The point is the transhumanist wouldn’t care about retaining our humanity, as evolving into “machines” is an acceptable outcome.

[gabruoy]

Then we need a moral belief system to determine what improvement is and isn’t. This will eventually lead to a codified set of beliefs that look a lot like religion. And I don’t really like most of the moral statements I’ve heard from self proclaimed transhumanists. That’s why I’m not a one of them, even though I wear glasses.