Customer Reviews

Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I find it very difficult to stop reading any book I've started, but in this case it wasn't much of a problem. I sympathize with Young's view, I really do, however I found this book quite laborious.

I was very frustrated by Young's inventing a word every few paragraphs for concepts that already are well represented by the english language.

I found his chapter on psychology extremely fallacious. Unless I'm mistaken I believe he
was trying to argue the point that all psychological problems are simply a lack/excess of
a small subset of specific chemicals. To me that would be like trying to change the
political theme of a TV show by adjusting its color balance.

I also found he was contradicting himself throughout the book.
He would argue that humans are biologically deterministic entities driven by a chemically driven brain when addressing those who believe in a soul, yet at the same time describes humans as free agents that have some magical will outside their biologically based memes.

I made it through 30% of this book, until I couldn't read much more.
Perhaps Young should take this original book, condense it to 50% of its length,
and rework many of the bad arguments.

Until then, I feel these glowing reviews were quite misleading.

For an author who is self admittedly not a scientist, Simon Young executed this book perfectly. It goes to show that anyone with passion can still write an intelligent book. This book as of 2011, will still make you reflect at you own personal beliefs, which is a more than positive thing. For those keeping an open mind, despite your personal philosophy this is an extremely fascinating read. Some of the words are not in laymans terms but the explanation is, which makes this an easy read. This would make for anyones library or, dare i say, an addition for a book discussion.

This book will give you the vocabulary and fundamentals to understand the world as an evolved result of life's history. I pick it up and read it very often; just opening it up from a random spot and reading about evolutionism. If you feel empty inside and need a way to explain this evolved life, this book will give you purpose to evolve and love life again. We did evolve to get here! And you can be part of the movement to evolve more! Humans have a purpose and Young's book lays out the past, present, and future ideas that we need to bring on the evolutionary change of today.

Debates about genetic engineering often revolve around what makes human beings 'human' or 'transhuman', and DESIGNER EVOLUTION: A TRANSHUMANIST MANIFESTO is bound to be at the heart of future debates, with its focus on the emerging new philosophy of Transhumanist doctrine, which supports the attempt to change the human body to eliminate disease, death, and even expand the mind beyond current boundaries. Young calls for a rejection of superstition in favor of a renewed faith in human progress through rational scientific progress.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

God, this book was a chore. Here I was hoping for at least a moderately well-reasoned treatment on such things as the morality of genetic enhancement or futuristic aesthetics and instead I got 300+ pages of rambling, poorly reasoned ideas based on a flawed understanding of some rather basic scientific principles. At several points Young puts forth ideas that sound intriguing and seem, for purely visceral reasons, to be desirable, but when his "reasoning" is considered it makes no sense. He contradicts himself wildly, obviously doesn't understand the theory of evolution, intentionally misquotes people to support his ideas, uses annoyingly repetitive sound-bites and catch-phrases in lieu of reasoned arguments, and commits that most egregious of all scientific errors of selecting only confirming evidence and ignoring all disconfirming evidence while trying to make his points. Basically, Young reads like someone who took a few philosophy courses in undergrad, then read a whole bunch of pop-science books and now considers himself to be some kind of highly cerebral autodidact on the cutting-edge of everything, yet succeeds only in sounding like an adolescent neo-Randian lobbying for the development of biotech that will give all of us KEWL POWRZ 'cause that would be AWESOME. The one thing that I may end up taking from this is further reading matterial: Young lists several sources as inspiration, sources he may have wildly misunderstood (if his "understanding" of things like evolution is any indication), so I can at least do some back-tracking through his sources and see if any of them are more logical than he was.

As a note to future readers, this book does not cover any science or the technologies associated with transhumanism. It is a very broad over view of transhumanism as a complete philosophy to life (at least from the authors perspective). It covers everything from metaphysics to politics to ethics to religion and more. Young also criticizes well over a dozen other philosophies and presents in a clear and concise manner their faults and why transhumanism is better suited. One of the main themes behind Young's book is the Will to Evolve, which goes beyond the notions of natural evolution and into designer evolution. Further more this book presents the idea of agnoskepticism, a combination of agnosticism and healthy skepticism. This is the first I've heard of this idea and became quite hooked to it for it does away with both theism and atheism.

Overall the book is laid out in a way so you can literally open up to any page and start reading. Chapters are organized as a combination of essays which make this book a very easy read. Most, including myself, will not agree with everything in this book. However it is certainly a fascinating and addictive read for anyone interested on gaining more insight on the philosophical aspects of transhumanism.

Manifesto: A public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions, especially of a political nature.

And this is exactly that. His theme is that genetic engineering and biotechnology offer us a future that atttempts to eliminate disease, defeat death and enhance the body and mind beyond the limitations of the ate-old human condition.

Humanist: of or pertaining to a philosophy asserting human dignity and man's capacity for fulfillment through reason and scientific method and often rejecting religion.

The author's comment is that 'Goodwill to all men' is a rational tactic for mutual survival and well-being. We no longer need God in order to be good - though a suicide bomber needs him to be bad.

If this book gets enough circulation to attract attention, it should be able to annoy nearly everyone. Yet this is certainly one of the directions in which the world is headed.

Fascinating.

This book is a must read. Not just because it gives an idea as to how our future civilization may appear, but it gives an amazing overview of our entire journey to the present. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in how civilizations evolve. It also gives ammunition to the rational members of our society when called upon to respond to the most ignorant among us. Well done, sir.

This book offers crisp and insightful views into the potential future as well as providing solid scientific facts and logic as the foundation for its arguments against those who criticize advances in technology, both medical and technological.

This book is a must read for anyone who is a proponent of Human evolution and technological/medical progress.
Those who are opponents to progress would do well to read this book as well, for it may disillusion the ignorance with which they oppose.

This is a very good, and very thought-provoking book. One of the best reads I have had in several years.