EF41 (S2-E2): Transhuman Fallibility: The Existential Risk of a Superhuman Future




Evolve Faster with Scott Ely show

Summary: Will Storia is a graduate student whose PhD work in history and evolutionary psychology is evolving into a manifesto about radically changing the trajectory of civilization. On his show, The Next Evolution, he argues to a global audience that we are at the edge of an abyss, about to hand off what remains of our humanity to machines. His latest guest is John Weber, a revolutionary techie, who believes technology will solve all of humanity’s problems. As they publicly clash with the world watching, Will worries how people might twist his ideas; because it’s increasingly obvious that John’s transhuman ideology has already become a religion. To explore if technology might be the quick solution for every problem humanity is facing, we must look deep into the core of what makes us tick — human nature. Transhumanism will likely exponentially multiply all of our human weaknesses. Does the hard-wired human desire to seek power over others pose a serious problem for our inevitable evolution of wanting to be superhuman? Also, Yuval Noah Harari believes dataism — the trend towards reducing humans down to our data and trusting AI to make all our decisions — has civilization on a crash course with becoming useless. Is this our fate? Or will technology open doors to new heights for humanity?