True Left

Responding to your first link:

EXTROPY — the extent of a system’s intelligence, information, order, vitality, and capacity for improvement.

EXTROPIANS — those who seek to increase extropy.

So extropians want to "increase capacity for improvement". Yet for improvement to be meaningful, the more you improve, it should follow that the less capacity remains for you to further improve. If you start off with 10 flaws, you have the capacity to eliminate 10 flaws. If have already eliminated 9 flaws, you now only have the capacity to eliminate 1 more flaw. This is genuine improvement, and hence reduction in the capacity for improvement. On the other hand, so-called "improvement" that increases the capacity for "improvement" logically cannot be improvement at all. It is progress. The difference is that improvement is measured relative to an endpoint, whereas progress is measured relative to a starting point.

Extropianism is a transhumanist philosophy. The Extropian Principles define a specific version or "brand" of transhumanist thinking. Like humanists, transhumanists favor reason, progress, and values centered on our well being rather than on an external religious authority. Transhumanists take humanism further by challenging human limits by means of science and technology combined with critical and creative thinking. We challenge the inevitability of aging and death, and we seek continuing enhancements to our intellectual abilities, our physical capacities, and our emotional development.

You want to challenge aging and death because you are following your natural survivalist impulse. How then can you claim to want emotional development, which should really be about questioning whether a mere natural impulse ought to be followed in the first place? How can you claim to use critical thinking without first critiquing survivalism itself?

Transhumanists are just Yahweh-worshippers who use machines to do their worship. "Values centered on our well being" is the giveaway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

I am that I am is a common English translation of the Hebrew phrase אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה‎, ’ehye ’ăšer ’ehye ([ʔehˈje ʔaˈʃer ʔehˈje])– also "I am who I am," "I will become what I choose to become", "I am what I am," "I will be what I will be," "I create what(ever) I create," or "I am the Existing One."[1] The traditional English translation within Judaism favors "I will be what I will be" because there is no present tense of the verb "to be" in the Hebrew language.

Their disdain for "external religious authority" is in reality disdain for the possibility for authentic emotional development (beyond what is natural).

We see humanity as a transitory stage in the evolutionary development of intelligence. We advocate using science to accelerate our move from human to a transhuman or posthuman condition.

And what will you do once you get there? Will you then see transhumanity as another transitory stage, and then advocate using whatever machine is available then to accelerate the move from transhuman to transtranshuman? And after that, then what? Transtranstranshuman? And then transtranstranstranshuman? Without a fixed endpoint, progress is all you will ever have, never true improvement.

(One thing is for sure, though: transhumanists, just like humanists, are anthropocentrists by assigning special status to humans in their worldview:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/ancient-world/antropocentricism-the-most-dangerous-ideology-in-the-world/ )

The Extropian philosophy embodies an inspiring and uplifting view of life while remaining open to revision according to science, reason, and the boundless search for improvement.

What is inspiring or uplifting about boundlessness? Whatever is boundless is necessarily meaningless. Extropianism is no less shallow than investing money to make more money, and then investing that larger sum of money to make even more money, and so on. But at least investors do not act like there is something deep about what they do. This makes them less annoying than Extropians.

1. Perpetual Progress — Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an indefinite lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities. Expanding into the universe and advancing without end.

Wisdom? There is no wisdom in doing anything that has no ending.

2. Self-Transformation — Affirming continual moral, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, through critical and creative thinking, personal responsibility, and experimentation. Seeking biological and neurological augmentation along with emotional and psychological refinement.

"Moral" and "experimentation" in the same sentence..... Only a Westerner can write this ****.

3. Practical Optimism — Fueling action with positive expectations. Adopting a rational, action-based optimism, in place of both blind faith and stagnant pessimism.

Translation: victims of our initiated violence now do not matter, so long as there may be a payoff for ourselves later (and if there isn't, we will just initiate violence against more victims while we wait - there has to be a payoff eventually, right?).

4. Intelligent Technology — Applying science and technology creatively to transcend "natural" limits imposed by our biological heritage, culture, and environment. Seeing technology not as an end in itself but as an effective means towards the improvement of life.

If you have actually transcended nature, you would not want the stuff you just said (in 1.) that you want. Your so-called
"transcendence" is therefore not transcendence, but mere overcoming of inability to get what you want (which is still what nature tells you to want).

5. Open Society — Supporting social orders that foster freedom of speech, freedom of action, and experimentation. Opposing authoritarian social control and favoring the rule of law and decentralization of power. Preferring bargaining over battling, and exchange over compulsion. Openness to improvement rather than a static utopia.

In such a society, the winners will be the ones supplying the (constantly updating) newest machines that others want to use. This is why we support statism: it takes state intervention to realistically stop the machine ratrace.

6. Self-Direction — Seeking independent thinking, individual freedom, personal responsibility, self-direction, self-esteem, and respect for others.

Those with machines obviously do not mind coexisting with those without machines, because the latter will be less powerful. In contrast, those without machines are totally justified in opposing (including via retaliatory violence) coexistence with those who are constantly making themselves more powerful via machines.

7. Rational Thinking — Favoring reason over blind faith and questioning over dogma. Remaining open to challenges to our beliefs and practices in pursuit of perpetual improvement. Welcoming criticism of our existing beliefs while being open to new ideas.

Then answer my challenge as outlined above.