Nick Bostrom – Transhumanist Essays (space-relevant)

Overview

• Work_type:: non-fiction philosophy and technology foresight
• Setting:: Future where enhancement, AI, and uploading become possible
• Scale:: Interplanetary to interstellar via digital civilizations

Trans-human form

• Transhuman_type:: digital
• Mechanism:: Gradual enhancement → potential whole-brain emulation and substrate-independent minds
• Degree_of_change:: Extreme; humans may be replaced or subsumed by vastly more capable digital descendants

Survival logic

• Survival_strategy:: Create long-lived, highly capable post-human agents that can survive deep time and harsh environments
• Key_technologies:: Superintelligence, whole-brain emulation, high-density computation, advanced space infrastructure
• Main_constraints_addressed:: Biological mortality, limited cognition, and environmental fragility

View on baseline humanity

• View_on_baseline:: mixed
• Attitude:: Baselines are morally important but may be outcompeted or transformed; emphasis on preserving “value” not specific biology
• Identity_question:: Focus on continuity of preferences and value structures more than bodily continuity

Notes

• Themes:: Astronomical value of the far future, existential risk, moral weight of post-human futures
• Open_questions:: Can digital descendants still be meaningfully “us”? How to align them with human values?
• Links:: Trans-human Space Survival Schema