I know what transhumanism is, but people who are not, for example, academics in a related field calling themselves a transhumanist makes no sense to me. Like, as a transhumanist, what do you do?
Are these people just identity-hungry fans of a genre of sci-fi? Are they saying we shouldn't work to solve societal problems because technology will do it for us? Do they just watch a lot of youtube videos about it?
It’s an optimistic way of branding the idea that using science and technology we can rid society of inferior genetics
What is the relation between transhumanism and eugenics? I used to be into it a long time ago when I was a lib and I'm critical of it now but I never got that impression.
It's been in it for a long time and got louder after 2010 when a few prominent figures outed themselves as NeoReactionaries..
Yes in the 90s the ones saying the quiet part out loud like the Promethean fascists were ousted, but the libertarian and liberal factions were always, for instance, pro eliminating downs syndrome children pre birth instead of, say, developing treatments that removed the negative aspects.
There's an old blog somewhere called Amor Mundi, I think, that attacks Transhumanism from a (reformist academic, it's the 2000s) socialist, tech optimist view. Noted actual "I am a fascist" fascist, Michael Anissimov, described it as "being awash in a sea of postmodernism"
Individual reactionaries identifying with transhumanism, isn't the same as transhumanism being reactionary. What I'm asking more is how the ideas of transhumanism are relevant to eugenics. The claim that "transhumanism is just eugenics with different branding" implies that the two are inseparable, and that's what I disagree with. For me, I was into it not because I secretly wanted to do eugenics, but because I thought science was cool, and I believed in unrealistic futurist fantasies because I was young and naive (and being an egg may have contributed). There are certainly valid criticisms of transhumanism from that perspective but I don't think it's correct to dismiss it as inherently reactionary or just a rebranding of eugenics.