Most importantly, as Gerlertner points out: to ban subjectivity is to ban humanity. Which you would think most humans would consider to be a bad thing but the high priests of science aren't most hunans or perhaps aren't humans at all (I think we should get a DNA swab from the editors of the big science journals, just to be on the safe side). Most of them work directly or indirectly for the state (awesome tax subsidies and grants are available for academic wonks) and most have no higher purpose in life than advancing their own careers in the bureaucratic rats nest that is academic science.
And it would be bad enough if they were good at their jobs. But even in biomedical research, where one would thing scientific rigor would be at its peak Amgen and Bayer could only replicate a small fraction of the 100 or so top rated scientific findings published in the top peer reviewed journals. The Economist article that summarizes this is here - required reading for anyone who has ever cited a 'scientific finding'. Evidently science has built much of it's towering reputation on crap redefined as ambrosia by the peer review system (aka: their back scratching pals) So now we're supposed to hand over our humanity to these government funded charlatans?
Gerlertner specifically focuses on the lynching of philosopher Thomas Nagel for not following the Darwinian party line. It's frightening when you see establishment journals like the Chronicle of Higher Education organizing what in effect is a show trial to denounce Prof Nagel for 'thought crimes' against their religious orthodoxy. Particularly when Nagel has the better argument.
Gerlertner denounces what he calls the Kurzweil cult:
The voice most strongly associated with what I’ve termed roboticism is that of Ray Kurzweil, a leading technologist and inventor. The Kurzweil Cult teaches that, given the strong and ever-increasing pace of technological progress and change, a fateful crossover point is approaching. He calls this point the “singularity.” After the year 2045 (mark your calendars!), machine intelligence will dominate human intelligence to the extent that men will no longer understand machines any more than potato chips understand mathematical topology. Men will already have begun an orgy of machinification—implanting chips in their bodies and brains, and fine-tuning their own and their children’s genetic material. Kurzweil believes in “transhumanism,” the merging of men and machines. He believes human immortality is just around the corner. He works for Google.
Whether he knows it or not, Kurzweil believes in and longs for the death of mankind. Because if things work out as he predicts, there will still be life on Earth, but no human life. To predict that a man who lives forever and is built mainly of semiconductors is still a man is like predicting that a man with stainless steel skin, a small nuclear reactor for a stomach, and an IQ of 10,000 would still be a man. In fact we have no idea what he would be.
Tragically, unlike other cults, the Kurzweil cult's members include many if not most prominent politicians, business executives, scientists, journalists and other bien pensants. It's the deathwish of the elites.
They should remake that Charles Bronson movie Death Wish as a paen to transhumanism. Sadly, Michael Jackson is no longer alive to play the lead. Maybe he can be replicated. Interesting throughout.
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