I Think, Therefore I Am

Transhumanism, also known as the philosophical idea of using technology to enhance human intellect, proposes the idea that human life is ‘nasty, brutish, and short.’ This definition of transhumanism makes an assumption that human life needs to be enhanced in some way. There is no explanation as to how or why—simply because we, hypothetically, could. Of course, people could do a lot of things. Computers work faster than a human brain does (and doesn’t complain as much either), but unlike humans, lack the ability to create logic behind what is being done.

Computers work because humans tell them what to do. Humans created computers and programming languages; programming, may I remind you, is the ability to tell a computer what to do. You can tell a computer to do something, but it doesn’t have the capacity to understand why it should do that thing. One could argue that AI learning counters this, but AI learning is all about the computer using trial and error to reach a goal given to them by people. If you tell an AI to walk without telling it how, then it will try to learn. It will stumble along aimlessly until it learns to move. It doesn’t even have to walk properly; as long as it moves, it has accomplished its assigned goal. The AI will not understand why it should walk—nor does it have sentience—but it learns to do so for the sole purpose of ‘I was told to.’

Using computers and technology to ‘enhance’ human biology could work in theory, yes, but a computer will not make the human race smarter. A computer can help you do things faster—but it won’t help you understand why math properties exist in the first place. Computers are actually pretty stupid. In all of my programming classes, they compare computers to children who have no common sense and must be told exactly what to do or else they will fail miserably. It’s possible that a human could tell the computer what to do, yes, but that wouldn’t accomplish the original goal of transhumanism. Incorporating technology into human biology will not make people smarter. It could make them think faster, not smarter.

The only instance where augmentation of the human brain using technology would make people smarter is where computers have evolved past just being computers. They will be like an entirely new being; something with the capacity for sentience. We have not reached this point yet, and there is no guarantee that we ever will. Technology advances further with each given year, but it’s possible that there is an unforeseen ceiling in our capabilities. So far, computers are still just computers and will most likely stay that way for years to come.

So, no, transhumanism does not have the ability to make people smarter. Human life cannot be brutish because of the advancements we make every year. It’s almost like a paradox—we are creating the technology to recreate ourselves. Before transhumanism, we are considered ‘brutish,’ but after reaching that point, we are suddenly smarter? Would we not have been smarter before, when we created such an incredible feat without the help of transhumanism in the first place? It makes me wonder what happened to “I think, therefore I am.”