Anyone who's read Lady of Mazes should know that I do want people to be able to control their own technological destinies. That's what that whole book is about. However, this is exactly the wrong time and the wrong issue to be left up to the invisible hand of the market. Nick Bostrom has a good paper (which I can't currently find on his site) about this which concludes (and I agree) that a free market of evolution will eventually weed consciousness out of the system in favour of efficiency. Peter Watts has an upcoming book that explores this idea further. Bostrom ultimately concludes that any directed evolution must be controlled by what he calls a "singleton" which is, to quote another paper of his, "a single decision-making agency at the highest level." In Lady of Mazes the singleton is known as the Anecliptics, and they're a nightmare. I don't like the idea of singletons, but I like even less the result of "None! No group, no government" controlling the process, because the inevitable result of that appears to be extinction (at least, extinction of consciousness and all other human, all-too human inefficiencies in the system). This is also, you'll note, what happens to every inhabitant of the galaxy's Matrioshka brains in Charlie Stross's Accelerando.

In fact, I spend a fair amount of time doing foresight studies (forecasting exercises) with people from walks of life far more diverse than the "relevant fields" (everything from medical ethicists to educators to municipal engineers and meteorologists). When I'm not writing I am often participating in the collective social effort of building our future. Everybody has an interest in the future including plumbers and nurses; from the perspective of many such groups, it is precisely the transhumanists who seem to be trying to become a "ruling elite" by controlling how the issues are framed. (You just blasted me for framing the issues in another way.)

Questions: what would count as a decision by "all of humanity" to you? What would that look like? How would it be expressed? If it actually were a decision to halt technological progress, what would you do? --These are not rhetorical questions; I'm actually asking you.

Because unless you can give me a precise answer to these questions, it certainly appears that you're putting forward the same "argument from helplessness" that I critiqued above. --I.e. that we should do nothing, and simply let technological change wash over us because it will anyway. As if it were a good in itself.

And by the way, the whole "who should decide" riff was an allusion to Nietzsche; and as I've said to others by private email, talking about transhumanism without knowing Nietzsche is like discussing physics without knowing Einstein. (At minimum, I would expect someone who wants to be politically engaged in this discussion to have read Beyond Good and Evil, Twlight of the Idols and Thus Spake Zarathustra, as well as a lot of commentators such as Tracy Strong, just as primers.)

So--suppressing progress? No, I am talking about finding out what progress means, what it really is, and taking charge of it collectively and as individuals. That appears to be so radical a concept that people can't even wrap their heads around it. But it's not the same as simply letting the market decide.

Nor am I suggesting that we let an elite decide. Both characterizations assume a blind forward drive to technological development that is either channeled, blocked, or allowed to run free. As described in exhaustive detail in Lady of Mazes, I advocate a humanistic process of deciding what we want, and then developing appropriate technologies to facilitate it. The transhumanists say that we have to do it the other way around; and that is where I disagree.

I'll admit the only writings of yours I've read are Permanence and the blog post to which I replied; I think at least some of the rest, particularly Lady of Mazes, needs to go on my reading list. (Nietzsche is already on it, hindered only by the usual lack of time.)

Your questions are good ones. "If it actually were a decision to halt technological progress, what would you do?" is the easiest - if it actually came about that I was the only person alive who wanted technological progress, my presence would no longer be of positive utility and I would take steps to remedy the situation, with a last smile to all that had been possible (literary allusion intended).

In the much more likely situation where it's say 90% of humanity who don't want progress and 10% who do, my preference would be to take myself off with as many as were willing of the 10% and go our path without interfering with the 90%. Good fences make good neighbors. If you like anchovies on pizza and I don't, shall whichever of us is the quickest on the draw with a .45 determine both our diets? I think it's much better if you eat anchovies and I eat an alternative topping, and we both get what we want and neither of us needs to draw a gun (or, as it is in practice, delegate the use of guns to the police).

Which leads on to your other questions. Here's my best idea of what the future should look like: Domain Protection.

There is another point on which I disagree with you, but I'll reply to it under 'Instead of Transhumanism', which I think is more directly related to the topic.

(Meta-note: I did check the notify box, but haven't received any email notifications; should I have? Not complaining, just that I'm obviously not familiar with the software this page uses so in case I'm missing something.)