Hazards and Humour in Transhumanism.

While Nick Bostrom alsways preaches his doom and gloom-story about transhumanism and possible dangers for extinction, Anders Sandberg made some warning signs for transhuman technologies. You can view them on his weblog. As always, it’s a good thing not to take yourself too seriously. OTOH, people fear future technologies, just because there is always the unknown. That’s why Anders proposes a code for the level of threat, possibly extended with the “outrage scale” as developed by Peter Sandman.

Anders Sandberg is also busy editing a Transhumanist Jokebook. His motto is “The goal of transhumanism is to make gods that can pun.” That reminds me of a post by Amara Graps, with an extropian “lightbulb”-joke.

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How many extropians does it take to change a lightbulb?
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A.  Don’t worry about that!  We’ll just wait for the singularity.

A.  None!  In any properly run galaxy, we’ll just MOVE THE STARS to put
their light exactly where it is needed.

A.  None!  Lightbulbs don’t burn out in virtual-reality…

A.  Extropians believe in dynamic optimism, which should hold that
with the availability of a suitably advanced nanotechnology
lightbulbs could become self changing, and indeed, self repairing.
Failing that, the standard 1 extropian will do to change the bulb,
while 12 stand by flaming.

A.  264. One to change the light bulb and 263 to argue about whether a
universe exists where the lightbulb is still burning.

A.  One original, and as many copies as are necessary.

A.  None. They’ve insured the lightbulb with their protection agency.

A.  None. Why invest in such obsolete technology when nanotech is
imminent?

A.  Wait, is it on an island?

A.  What is an extropian, I mean, really?

A.  None; they’ll just switch their visual systems to infrared.

A.  ”Not now; we’re trying to get free light from the quantum vacuum
         fluctuation.”

A.  %^4FgT^hH%RR#$GH*857GHWr5@$%T 23$Tb@3546bskldvhj2934
      (Hmmm, this answer appears to be encrypted…)

A.  Two:  one to install a perpetu-bulb, and the other to blame the State for the crappy design of the first bulb.

A.  None, because that would infringe on the neighbors’ riparian right to darkness.

A.  None; we’ll let the State do it and then explain how we could have done it better.

A.  I don’t know, but with full nanotech we could make as many Extropians as we needed…

A.  Depends on what you want to change it into…

A.  All of them:  one to hold the bulb and the rest to rotate the Universe.

A. 1.. no…  wait-a-minute 5.. no.. the-answer-is 3 .. try 12.. ..
    (memes competing in my head)

A. Wait while I convert that statement to E-prime!

A. I don’t know, but let’s use betting markets to generate a consensus! 

Extropians claim they haven’t got any sense of humour, but they know how to put their own ideas in proper perspective!