The Adding

Some of the possibilities that you will no doubt hear discussed in the coming years are quite extreme and sound like science-fiction. Consider the following:

Superintelligent machines

Superintelligence means any form of artificial intelligence, maybe inspired by a better understanding of the computational architectures and learning algorithms used by human brains, that is capable of outclassing the best human brains in practically every discipline, including scientific creativity, practical wisdom, and social skills. Several commentators have argued that both the hardware and the software required for superintelligence might be developed within a few decades.

Lifelong emotional well-being through re-calibration of the pleasure-centers.

Even today, mild variants of sustainable euphoria are possible for a minority of people who respond especially well to clinical mood-brighteners ("antidepressants"). Pharmaceuticals currently under development promise to give an increasing number of "normal" people the choice of drastically reducing the incidence of negative emotions in their lives. In some cases, the adverse side-effects of the new agents are negligible. Whereas street drugs typically wreak havoc on the brain's neurochemistry, producing a brief emotional "high" followed by a crash, modern clinical drugs may target with high specificity a given neurotransmitter or receptor subtype, thereby avoiding any negative effect on the subject's cognitive faculties - (s)he won't feel "drugged" - and enables a constant, indefinitely sustainable mood-elevation without being addictive. David Pearce advocates and predicts a post-Darwinian era in which all aversive experience will be replaced by gradients of pleasure beyond the bounds of normal human experience. As cleaner and safer mood-brighteners and gene-therapies become available, “paradise-engineering” may become a practicable possibility.

Personality pills

Drugs and gene therapy will yield far more than shallow one-dimensional pleasure. They can also modify personality. They can help overcome shyness, eliminate jealousy, increase creativity and enhance the capacity for empathy and emotional depth. Think of all the preaching, fasting and self-discipline that people have subjected themselves to throughout the ages in attempts to ennoble their character. Shortly it may become possible to achieve the same goals much more thoroughly by swallowing a daily cocktail pill.

Space colonization

Today, space colonization is technologically feasible but prohibitively expensive. As costs decrease, it will become economically and politically possible to begin to colonize space. The thing to note is that once a single self-sustaining colony has been established, capable of sending out its own colonization probes, then an exponentially self-replicating process has been set in motion that is capable - without any further input from the planet Earth - of spreading out across the millions of stars in our galaxy and then to millions of other galaxies as well. Of course, this sequence of events will take an extremely long time on a human time-scale. But it is interesting to notice how near we are to being able to initiate a chain of events that will have such momentous consequences as filling the observable universe with our descendants.

Molecular nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the hypothetical design and manufacture of machines to atomic-scale precision, including general-purpose "assemblers", devices that can position atoms individually in order to build almost any chemically permitted matter-configuration for which we can give a detailed specification - including exact copies of themselves. An existence-proof of a limited form of nanotechnology is given by biology: the cell is a molecular self-replicator that can produce a broad range of proteins. But the part of design space that is accessible to present biological organisms is restricted by their evolutionary history, and is mostly confined to non-rigid carbon structures. Eric Drexler was the first person to analyze in detail the physical possibility of a practically universal molecular assembler. Once such a gadget exists, it would make possible dirt-cheap (but perfectly clean) production of almost any commodity, given a design-specification and the requisite input of energy and atoms. The bootstrap problem for nanotechnology - how to build this first assembler - is very hard to solve. Two approaches are currently pursued. One of them builds on what nature has achieved and seeks to use biochemistry to engineer new proteins that can serve as tools in further engineering efforts. The other attempts to build atomic structures from scratch, using proximal probes such as atomic-force microscopes to position atoms one-by-one on a surface. The two methods can potentially be used in conjunction. Much research is required before the physical possibility of Drexlerian nanotechnology can be turned into an actuality; it will certainly not happen in the next couple of years, but it might come about in the first few decades of the 21st century.

Vastly extended life spans

It may prove feasible to use radical gene-therapy and other biological methods to block normal aging processes, and to stimulate rejuvenation and repair mechanisms indefinitely. It is also possible that nothing short of nanotechnology will do the trick. Meanwhile there are unproven and in some cases expensive hormone treatments that seem to have some effect on general vitality in elderly people, although as yet nothing has been shown to be more effective at life-extension than controlled caloric restriction.

Extinction of intelligent life.

The risks are as enormous as the potential benefits. In addition to dangers that are already recognized (though perhaps inadequately counteracted?), such as a major military, terrorist or accidental disaster involving nuclear, chemical, viral or bacteriological agents, the new technologies threaten dangers of a different order altogether. Nanotechnology, for example, could pose a terrible threat to our existence if obtained by some terrorist group before adequate defense systems have been developed. It is not even certain that adequate defense is possible. Perhaps in a nanotechnological world offense has a decisive intrinsic advantage over defense. Nor is it farfetched to assume that there are other risks that we haven't yet been able to imagine.

The interconnected world.

Even in its present form, the Internet has an immense impact on some people's lives. And its ramifications are just beginning to unfold. This is one area where radical change is quite widely perceived, and where media discussion has been extensive.

Uploading of our consciousness into a virtual reality.

If we could scan the synaptic matrix of a human brain and simulate it on a computer then it would be possible for us to migrate from our biological embodiments to a purely digital substrate (given certain philosophical assumptions about the nature of consciousness and personal identity). By making sure we always had back-up copies, we might then enjoy effectively unlimited life-spans. By directing the activation flow in the simulated neural networks, we could engineer totally new types of experience. Uploading, in this sense, would probably require mature nanotechnology. But there are less extreme ways of fusing the human mind with computers. Work is being done today on developing neuro/chip interfaces. The technology is still in its early stages; but it might one day enable us to build neuroprostheses whereby we could "plug in" to cyberspace. Even less speculative are various schemes for immersive virtual reality -- for instance, using head-mounted displays that communicate with the brain via our natural sense organs.

Reanimation of cryonics patients.

Persons frozen with today's procedure can probably not be brought back to life with anything less than mature nanotechnology. Even if we could be absolutely sure that mature nanotechnology will one day be developed, there would still be no guarantee that the cryonics customer's gamble would succeed -- perhaps the beings of the future won't be interested in reanimating present-day humans. Still, even a 5% or 10% chance of success could make cryonics contracts a rational option for people who can afford it and who place a great value on their continued personal existence. If reanimated, they might look forward to aeons of subjective life time under conditions of their own choosing.

Conclusion

The foregoing discussion shows that transhumanism is partially workable

because it can preserve our bodies and thereby save us from death by

stopping the process of dying and reversing it in the future; it can save our

minds form potential damages by uploading their contents into computers

and by the same token make incurable diseases being curable; it can also

help to develop strong artificial intelligence and to raise the level of social

development. But all of these points to the fact that transhumanism will

not be fully accomplished. 

The first reason of impossibility of transhumanism’s implementation

fully is that the theory of evolution seems to be insufficient to encapsulate

a human being in all aspects and in whole complexity. The second one is

the assumption that all people will have equal access to the latest tech-

nologies changing them into transhumans and posthumans. It is probable

impossible (because of political reasons among others) and would divide

societies into better ones and worse and this could lead to war. Finally, 

mind uploading even if possible to realize, it will not duplicate a person’s

identity and consciousness. Uploaded mind will not be a person but rather

their brain scanned neuron by neuron. To sum up, we can answer for the

title question: transhumanism is heading towards Utopia. It does not rule

out that can contribute to the development of new technologies and raise

the level our lives

Transhumanist Genetic Enhancement: Creation of a 'New Man' Through Technological Innovation

The transhumanist project of reshaping human beings by promoting their improvement through technological innovations has a broad agenda. This study focuses on the enhancement of the human organism through genetic modification techniques. Transhumanism values and a discussion of their philosophical background provide a framework to understand its ideals. Genetics and ethics are employed to assess the claims of the transhumanist program of human enhancement. A succinct description of central concepts in genetics and an explanation of current techniques to edit the human genome serve to assess the capabilities and limitations of editing techniques. Potential benefits and liabilities of human enhancement through genome editing are discussed to appraise its feasibility. Ethical considerations of genome editing inform a reflection on the implications of introducing heritable changes in the genome of individuals. It is concluded that the transhumanist program is underpinned by a large number of hypotheses rather than by sufficient evidence.

The links

https://nickbostrom.com/old/transhumanis

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350918680_Is_transhumanism_heading_towards_redefinition_of_human_being_or_towards_Utopia

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33955830/