On “techno-humanism”

Also: Me in dialogue on progress studies vs. effective altruism

The next installment of The Techno-Humanist Manifesto is delayed and will be published next week. Instead, a few links, and some notes for paid subscribers on the term “techno-humanism,” and who else has used it.

Progress studies, effective altruism, and Nietzsche

I did a dialogue with Clara Collier of Asterisk magazine on the effective altruist and progress communities—what they have in common and how they're different. (This came out in June and I shared it on social media, but forgot to put a link in this blog, so here you go.)

It was a good conversation. One key quote:

I think EA tends to see progress as pretty much inevitable: It’s barreling ahead and almost unstoppable, and if we throw all of our weight against it we might, at best, be able to slow it down a tiny bit — and thereby give ourselves a decade or two in which to prevent human extinction. In contrast, the progress community sees progress as fragile, in need of constant protection, and highly contingent on people driving it forward.

Also: Scott Alexander has a long read on Nietzschean “master morality” vs. “slave morality,” in which he references me and progress studies. Worth a read.

On the term “techno-humanism”

When I set out to describe my philosophy of progress, I needed a name for it, and I wanted it to indicate two key ideas: the value of technology, and the central role of human well-being as the ultimate goal of technology. I settled on “techno-humanism.”

When the word came to me, I wondered: has anyone already claimed this name? Or even used the term? And did they use it for something I would agree with? So I looked around, and here’s what I found.