The Hidden Scale Of Human Modification

It's always been an interesting question for me to really ponder what is the true nature of humanity.

One of the interesting parts about this has got to do with this idea of where do we take our development as a species.

When I discovered in about 2013 to 2015 there was a series called Orphan Black that came out and it blew my mind.

For those of you who don't know,

In the first episode this woman goes onto a subway platform and she meets her exact double who then commits suicide.

She then assumes the identity of the double and all hell breaks loose as it turns out that she is one of several clones.

That's just like the opening couple of episodes.

So cloning as a species,

The idea of how far are we willing to go,

What are the values of the species that we want to incorporate in this.

Within that,

It poses the question of humans are what?

What is our dominant trait?

What do we think is the best part of our species?

It introduced me to this concept of transhumanism.

We've all heard of this before,

This idea of modifying the species to become more than what it is naturally.

In this TV show they talked about a couple of different types which we'll define very quickly.

Bio-transhumanism which is changes to our biology versus techno-transhumanism which is of course like the addition of some piece of machinery to our organism.

The interaction between the cybernetic and the bio-organic shall we say.

I call it techno-transhumanism versus bio-transhumanism.

It raises a very interesting question because nowadays we're seeing people do certain things.

I realize that myself and a lot of my friends aren't on board with this.

Or my friends are and I'm not.

Or I am and they're not.

What does that look like?

I realize that there's almost an agreeability scale to this as well.

I want you to think on one side there are people who are open 100% to any changes.

They will welcome any advancements or modifications to their body.

And on the other side are people who are unwilling.

Absolutely complete rejection of it.

What I call transhumanism conservatism versus transhumanism agreeability.

How agreeable would you say you are?

Just straight off the bat.

How agreeable are you to modification?

Putting something in your body that will change your body.

Even if it's a short-term modification.

Most short-term modifications will have long-term impacts.

An example of this.

Let's talk about steroid use.

Testosterone replacement theory.

Any kind of hormone replacement therapy.

Ultimately what you're doing is you're modifying your body.

So it's bio transhumanism essentially.

And in the long term yes when you stop taking it your body needs to step up its production again.

But in taking it tissue is forever changed.

Processes in your body are forever changed.

Even the fact that you stop taking it your body needs to then start producing it again.

And there may be long-term effects.

For example testosterone and taking steroids could seriously impact your fertility rate forever.

So in that regard there's always a long-term change to the body.

And you are making a forever change to your body.

So we need to also talk about the idea about augmenting versus enhancing.

You've heard of the enhanced games where athletes are allowed to take as many drugs as they want.

Juice themselves up to the gills.

So enhanced games,

Enhancement.

Versus an augmentation.

So let's say the new meta Ray-Bans kind of glasses.

That's an augmentation.

Your phone in your pocket is a techno augmentation.

You know you just using the calculator on your phone is a techno augmentation.

You don't have to use your own brain.

Your brain is augmented by this piece of technology that you've got.

So it's quite interesting when it comes down to it.

And if we look at just some statistics that are out there with regard to this type of stuff.

We can almost draw two axes.

So like the x-axis where we can talk about internal to external.

And the y-axis we can talk about this idea of reversible versus transformative.

So is it something we're doing inside our body versus outside our body?

Is it something that's transformative and lasting?

Or is it something that could potentially be reversed?

So I want you to think about the idea of transformative and internal.

It's something like steroids.

We can also talk about things like Neuralink,

The implants.

LASIK,

Cosmetic surgery,

Hormone manipulation,

Anything like that.

Whereas reversible,

Maybe external,

We can talk about this idea of augmentation.

Like an exoskeleton,

Augmented reality headset,

Heads-up display glasses,

VR training,

Wearables,

Any kind of wearable.

These are reversible.

You take them off,

It's external to you.

You take it off and it's gone.

The augmentation is gone.

So augmentation is like a little power-up.

It's external,

It is reversible.

Whereas enhancement is something that's internal,

It's transformative.

So if we're looking at it like that,

It becomes quite interesting as well.

Now,

You may ask,

Well,

What does most of the population say?

So there was a lot of interesting data that came out of this.

So if we talk about biotranshumanism,

Let's take a look.

Where are my stats?

Large Japanese survey on enhancement.

Only 20% of responders said that they would personally use enhancement technologies.

So we're talking about 20%,

20%.

80% were not willing,

Straight off the bat,

Which is,

Of course,

On that agreeability spectrum that's much more conservative.

Even though 80% were tolerant of other people using them,

They did not support the ban.

So that's quite interesting.

Not for me,

But sure,

If other people want to do it,

That's okay.

The higher willingness clustered around minimally invasive interventions.

And so it usually came in with higher education or people who had felt that they've already hit their limits.

So,

For example,

If you've maxed out all of your behavioral interventions,

Perhaps you'd think about these other enhancements as well.

So this is where it goes.

An AARP,

It's a U.

S.

Survey,

43% of U.

S.

Adults were very or somewhat interested in a medical intervention to boost cognition beyond normal.

Interest drops to 34%,

So approximately 10%,

When the same enhancement is via an implantable device.

So people are much more open to the bio versus the technotranshumanism,

Straight off the bat.

So even among enhancement curious people,

There's a clear bias towards the bio intervention over invasive tech,

Which is quite interesting.

And you think about it,

People like Brian Johnson,

The most measured man,

Mr.

Blueprint himself.

He went to an island somewhere in the Caribbean,

I think it was just off the coast of the northern parts of South America,

Where their laws are very lax.

And he went and had a gene editing therapy based off CRISPR technology.

If you're not familiar,

CRISPR technology is a gene editing technology to permanently alter the genes.

Now,

At the time when they did surveys on CRISPR technologies for babies,

And I'm sure we can see some agreeability and some conservatism,

Some disagreeable opinions when I put forth the scenario.

All right,

Your baby in your womb has got a debilitating,

Life-altering disease.

It's going to be with them for life,

They're going to have a full life,

But it's going to be a hard life because they've got this disease that they're going to have to learn to live with.

It's going to really mess with them.

We can use CRISPR gene editing,

A bio-invasive enhancement,

To be able to alter the DNA,

Which means that we can eliminate this disease and you're going to have a quote-unquote normal kid.

And on the other side,

Parents who say,

Well,

I want my kid to have blue eyes.

There's nothing wrong with the kid,

But I want to enhance the kid.

I want them to have more muscle mass.

I want them to be less prone to type 2 diabetes so they can eat whatever the hell they want.

So this type of enhancement,

This type of,

Oh,

My child needs it versus,

Oh,

I want it for my child.

That's where a lot of this comes into play.

How do we control it?

Where is that line between the two where we think it's going to cause them an issue versus like,

Well,

Statistically speaking,

It's not going to cause them an issue,

But the data could be bias or something like that.

So there is this idea of where do we draw the line,

Number one.

Number two,

There seems to be an empirical anchor first for behavior versus molecule first preferences,

Even in clinical settings.

People are more inclined to try and change their behavior before they are open to permanently changing their bodies.

Right.

Some type of internal bio or techno intervention.

So if I told you we had to put a pacemaker in your heart,

This is now techno transhumanism.

Right.

Because in the past,

The pacemaker was not available.

That kind of operation never even dreamt of.

You would die from just opening you up like to that degree.

So even pacemaker technology is transhumanism.

Right.

And if you think about it like that,

If I said to you,

Hey,

You if you carry on doing these behaviors,

You're going to need a pacemaker.

You would very quickly try and do changes of behaviors first before you actually took on the implanted device.

Write a permanent invasive procedure to put a device in your body.

Or let's say I could offer you an injection,

Which would mean it would regulate your heart rate by changing the genes around the heart or something like that,

Or the hormone signaling in the brain to tell it to beat more steady or something like that.

Which one would you be more agreeable to the behavior first,

The molecule first or the device first?

Like and in which order would that go?

Would that be first behavior,

Then device,

Then molecules?

Or would it be first molecules,

Then behavior,

Then device?

You know,

I'm sure the molecules would,

You know,

Strip away the need for the behavior.

But still,

Maybe let's let's imagine a scenario where there is behavior.

If you had to rate those,

How would you rate them?

And for me,

This is where it comes up.

I am a behavior first person,

A behavior first person.

I almost feel like a person has to earn the right to take these.

Otherwise,

It's in the scenarios of,

Let's say,

Health threats.

Even then,

I don't see any problem with death and dying.

This is a natural part of human cycles.

It's a natural part of life around us.

Right.

So everybody has to die.

It's just a matter of when.

Right.

It's not a matter of if it's a matter of when we are all going to die.

Right.

So I don't believe in trying to live longer.

Like there's nothing wrong with living longer.

There's no problems with it.

But ultimately,

You have to ask yourself this question.

At what point are you just living because you want to be the one who carries on living?

Versus,

Well,

You know,

Like I've lived a good life and I've installed values on those around me.

I've created a lot of value and a lot of like structures around me,

Which have given purpose to a lot of people.

And I'm happy with what comes next,

Whether that be more living or whether that be dying.

That's OK with me.

So I'm very much in that camp.

And I'm also in the camp of the behavior first,

Because ultimately these behaviors are behaviors that maybe they're hard or difficult,

But they're behaviors that our body responds to quite naturally.

And our body is the greatest technology ever made.

It is more complicated than we understand.

We still don't understand a lot of the mechanisms,

But we understand inputs and outputs.

And so the behaviors,

The inputs,

The output is going to be a desired result.

So,

For example,

Like,

Oh,

Give up smoking and you're going to live longer.

No,

I'd rather take a pill.

You know,

Some kind of intervention first rather than behavior first.

Right.

So asking yourself those kinds of questions is quite interesting to see where your values lie as well.

What do you think is the important part of being human?

And for me,

It's embracing how we were made.

Like,

What are the ingredients we were given?

The resource that we were given and the ingredients that we were given to cook with are our biology.

Right.

So what else is there to being human?

I am not against.

I want to say this.

I'm not against the science that intervenes that allows kids to then fulfill potential.

Adults to then continue to grow and create and things like that.

I am,

Let's say,

Against the concept of engineering a human that could live forever.

I'm against that concept.

I don't think that that's necessary.

I don't think we need it.

At least there's not a need that I can see right now.

Or let's put it this way.

I'm not sold on this idea yet.

All the arguments that I've heard out there,

Yeah,

I'm not buying.

So if you've got an idea that's out there about longevity,

Living forever or whatever and how this could work,

I'd love you to share.

There was a great episode of Love,

Death and Robots,

Which proposed this question,

Which is if all humans develop the technology to live forever,

Then ultimately we have a population cap to manage resources.

Right.

And let's say that population cap is 100 billion.

Even at 100 billion,

We reach that population cap.

Once we've reached it,

We have to stay there and plateau there for the management of our resources and our society.

And so in this scenario,

Kids and having babies is outlawed.

You can't have them because there's there's not enough space in the party to invite new people in,

Essentially.

So this guy was literally a policeman who would go around and control people who were having children.

Right.

That is a serious issue.

Right.

And so when we make our decisions,

We need to make our decisions based against this idea of like,

Well,

Are we then stopping the entire lifecycle?

You know,

We don't have infinite expansion.

Or do we?

I don't know.

What are your thoughts?

I definitely know someone who's in that camp.

I'm not convinced.

Like I say,

He hasn't put forth good arguments.

So,

Mr.

Graham,

If you're listening,

Please put forth some better arguments.

So there we go.

The idea of transhumanism.

So think about here's some some ideas about this as well.

OK.

Biotranshumanism.

Facts.

Trends.

Psychology.

Peptides and biohacking.

Unregulated peptide use.

GLP-1s.

Things like Ozempic.

BPC-157.

If you've never heard of BPC-157,

It's it's for recovery.

So people use it to,

You know,

Get over,

Recover faster at the gym,

For example,

Or any tweaks and sports and things like that.

Even though it's not one of the recommended use,

It's an off-label use,

You know.

So unregulated peptide use has exploded,

Especially among younger tech-adjacent men seeking weight loss,

Productivity,

Cosmetic changes or longevity.

That's according to the New York Times.

The FDA warns of serious safety risks from impurities and immune reactions.

Many products are for research,

Research use only with inconsistent enforcement.

Right.

And so the idea is that the subculture of the biohacker bro,

Let's say,

Rationalized risk as personal experimentation.

The end of one types of data trials,

Let's say,

Driven by distrust of traditional medicine and amplified by influencers as well.

So,

Yeah,

The amount of people that I know that are rather keen to take all the pills and the supplements rather than getting a good night's sleep,

Going to the gym,

Getting good workouts,

Good cardio,

Flexibility routines,

Muscle resistance training routines,

And then eating clean.

And they don't want to do it.

They still want to eat dirty.

And they're trying to,

Like,

Minimize the eating dirty parts,

Which is just,

I don't get it.

Cognitive enhancers reviews note growing nonmedical use of stimulants and nootropics to boost attention,

Memory,

Or wakefulness,

Raising concerns about fairness,

Coercion,

And long-term safety.

And so this is another thing.

It's like the idea about learning the behavior first is about regulating yourself and learning how to manage your own machine.

It's kind of like an owner's manual,

Like,

Let's say,

Operator's manual for your machine if you learn how to regulate yourself.

I used to be the brain power,

Brain productivity booster coach,

Right?

And a lot of people,

The issue with their productivity and their cognition came in that they were unregulated emotionally,

Which then puts you into a fly-to-flight mode,

Which already decreases creativity by,

I think,

The stats are 40% to 60%,

Right?

You stop seeing options and you start seeing black or white kind of options,

Right?

There's either this or that.

There are these absolutes,

Right?

Your thinking goes down.

Your creativity goes up.

Literally,

Your blood flow to the prefrontal cortex decreases,

And blood flow to the fly-to-flight centers of the brain,

The limbic system,

Increases,

Right?

So you're literally getting less blood to the thinking part of your brain because you're emotionally unregulated.

And that's now where I make my bread and butter as a coach with businesses,

Business owners,

Business leaders,

Right?

But a lot of it has got to do with dysregulation of the mind.

How do we regulate the mind?

How do we create a mind that is actually more perceptive?

And then there's a bunch of tools out there as well,

Like mnemonics and all kinds of other focus tools that we can use to train our mind to regulate itself and to actually be more productive.

And so I'm a huge believer in automating the productivity of the mind rather than having to focus to bring up the productivity of the mind.

So there's a whole host of things that go adjacent to that as well,

Which is insane.

Insane.

A decade-long sentiment analysis of posts about brain-computer interfaces,

Or BCIs,

Have found about 59% neutral,

33% positive,

8% negative,

With a dominant blend of anticipation,

Trust,

And fear.

Very interesting.

UK and US community studies on brain-control interfaces show that people support therapeutic uses,

For example,

The interventions if someone's blind and using something like this to see or paralysis or whatever,

But have become much more uneasy about elective enhancement citing data,

Privacy,

Identity,

Or social consequences.

I'm very much in that camp as well.

One US survey,

77% supported brain chips to help people with paralysis.

Yep,

That makes sense.

But 57% were worried that such chips could worsen socioeconomic inequality.

I think there's a really cool scene from the Blade Runner film,

The second one,

The Blade Runner 2049 with,

What's his name,

Ryan Gosling in it,

Where Jared Leto's character is blind,

But he's able to connect to these cameras that are floating around him.

And so he can see things through the eyes of the camera.

So that's definitely some kind of tech enhancement,

Where we're talking about,

Obviously,

Techno-transhumanism,

Where he can,

You know,

Objectively can see much more than anyone else,

Which is very interesting.

So if we talk about this from the standpoint of,

Like,

Well,

What does it mean to be human?

Like,

What do you value to be human?

Let's ask that question.

Work on attitudes towards technological advancement found that positive attitudes correlate with achievement,

Self-direction,

Scientific worldview,

Evolutionary forms of humanism,

Right?

They correlate negatively with tradition-orientated values.

So one of the books that I really want to write is about this topic as well.

And I realized that before I had a way to kind of describe,

You know,

Let's say conservatism,

The attitude of being very conservative towards transhumanism,

I thought about two groups of people already.

Group number one are like me,

Where they think that the human body is the greatest technology and messing with it,

You're creating more problems than it's worth,

Right?

And so what it means to be human is to fall in love with the natural state of the human body and learn about it and grow with it.

And it's just beautiful,

Right?

So there's a value of beauty of nature,

Right?

The other part of this conservatism conversation is going to be people who are religiously conservative.

So,

For example,

If you think about,

Was it the Jehovah's Witnesses?

Or I'm trying to think as well,

You know,

Your Mennonites,

Your Amish,

You know,

You've got groups of religious people.

Those are just a few.

I'm sure you can think of more where they will reject modern medicine,

Even,

You know,

Modern interventions because it's God's will.

And who are we to get in the way of God's will?

Now,

Some people might think that that's also like,

You know,

Take medicine,

Get better.

Yes.

But if your body naturally is going to die at a certain time,

If your clock is up,

Ultimately there can be a lot of purpose around the limitation of life.

A lot of purpose and meaning comes out of our limited spectrum.

And so I find that that's quite interesting to think about.

It's not that I agree with it,

But it's interesting to think about.

So definitely the worldview of tradition-orientated values from the religious perspective doesn't agree with scientific worldview,

Evolutionary forms of humanism,

Etc.

So the transhumanist camp that embraces biomedical and technological interventions to improve human capacities and well-being,

This is a,

You know,

Definitely a very interesting part of this.

You know,

The people,

Even many early of the transhumanist people were opposed to the early CRISPR baby experiments as well.

It's a very,

Very interesting debate.

So I want you to imagine a scale of 0 to 10 on,

You know,

The agreeability to transhumanism.

And at zero,

You only accept the behavior-first habits,

Right?

So sleep,

Food,

Anything like that.

That's zero,

Right?

And that tells me your values are going to be more traditional,

Perhaps more religious,

Perhaps more natural beauty as well,

Right?

As we said,

The specialness of natural life,

Right?

The appreciation of it.

Whereas at a 10,

You know,

You're basically chomping at the bit for gene edits,

You know,

Brain chips.

You want to see the evolution of the human species,

Let's say,

Change their entire biology,

Become such a different species that it's unrecognizable to humans today.

I want you to imagine there's a movie on Netflix with Sam Worthington called Titan,

Where NASA sends a group of astronauts or they're training them and editing their genes to be able to live on Titan,

Which is one of the moons of Jupiter,

Which is probably the best place in our solar system to try to colonize.

It's not Mars.

Mars sucks.

Don't be sold.

Mars has good marketing and terrible realistic implications.

Yeah,

Definitely check out all the videos on YouTube that talk about Titan rather than Mars.

There's much more on Titan for us to go to.

So this movie with Sam Worthington,

They start editing his genes and eventually he's able to like breathe levels of methane gas.

You know,

That's insane.

He like changes his skin color,

Grows wings,

Is able to talk through touch.

There's all kinds of weirdness and things like that that come up.

But that's because of the gene editing.

And maybe you are so happy with that.

You're like,

Yes,

Let's do that.

So let's gene edit so we can put humans underwater.

We can literally then branch out and start populating the world underwater.

If most of our world is water,

Most of our body is water.

Would it make sense to edit our genes so we can have underwater civilizations as well?

You know,

What would that look like?

We'd need to breathe underwater.

We'd need to be able to survive pressurized depths as well.

Forms of communication underwater,

Which would change our vocal cords to be more high pitched.

You know,

Like in squeaks and clicks like dolphins.

Perhaps also then editing our eyesight so we can see in low light environments,

Because obviously light doesn't necessarily penetrate below a certain level,

A certain depth of the ocean.

You know,

Things like that.

It would be very,

Very interesting to see.

But how quick are you rushing to that?

And that is at that 10 out of 10 on that scale of agreeableness.

Now let's talk about that as a philosophy.

As in you see the values of humanity as being advancement,

Change,

Growth,

Adaptation.

Right.

And now let's introduce a couple of topics.

Peptides.

GLP-1s like Ozempic.

Neurotropic drugs.

How agreeable are you to those?

Let's talk about technotranshumanism.

Brain control interfaces like Neuralink.

Some type of like augmented reality overlay like,

You know,

Implanting a chip in your eye.

Implanting your phone in your ear so you literally like touch your ear or touch your throat.

A lot of different TV shows that are futuristic sci-fi shows have got these kind of implanted devices to communicate with people.

You know,

How open are you to those?

How many people are comfortable with tweaking technology like injections and pills rather than writing,

Rewriting the actual coding?

Let's say so like genetics versus peptides.

You know,

That's two different things as well.

How do you feel about it?

So it gets to be a very interesting conversation.

And I just realized that you have to understand this when you come up with a lot of people.

I've got a friend who's very happy to take,

You know,

Peptides.

I'm a lot more conservative with it.

You know,

It's very interesting.

And so I just realized like we have different perspectives on it because we value different things as well.

So it's very interesting.

Where do you sit on this agreeability spectrum?

Do you prefer to change your habits,

Your environments first?

Do you prefer to tweak biology with molecules,

With peptides?

Do you prefer to jack into a device?

Are you happy with rewriting your complete DNA?

What does that look like to you?

You know,

The mainstream now,

According to the data,

Is still very heavily behavior first,

Selectively bio curious,

Techno cautious.

However,

You know,

Just look at the Ozempic stuff and you see how quickly people took to that,

Even though we don't even know what the long term downstream effects are.

OK,

This is going on a little bit long,

But think about some some transhumanism that's available today.

Vaccines as preventative enhancement to immune function.

You know,

Caffeine use for cognitive or physical performance.

Sports,

Nutrition,

Supplements,

Creatine,

Protein used to push strength,

Endurance beyond the normal training.

Pharmaceuticals to perform beta blockers for people who are nervous.

And so we can say like if you're in an orchestra,

I saw this in the documentary Bigger,

Stronger,

Faster many years ago about enhancements and performance enhancers.

And they say,

Well,

If steroids are illegal for baseball players,

What about beta blockers,

Which is something to to stop the stress response,

The adrenaline and cortisol dump in your body from stress?

Stopping beta blockers being allowed with concert pianists,

For example.

You know,

We've already got hormone manipulation therapy with testosterone replacement therapy.

You know,

It's the enhancement to use is still accepted in some circles.

I mean,

The UK is one of the biggest consumers of,

You know,

Testosterone and steroid using in a young adult population.

We still have intervention technologies like,

You know,

In vitro fertilization,

Embryo selection,

Things like that.

We've still got cosmetic surgery,

Tons and tons of acceptance and even more so nowadays.

Functional surgeries versus cosmetic.

Very different.

You know,

Laser eye surgery versus,

Let's say,

Breast augmentation.

What about,

You know,

Injecting things like fillers into the face to,

Quote unquote,

Make us more beautiful or more aesthetically pleasing?

Well,

You know,

When you're technically injecting botulism like a toxin into your face.

So there's there's a lot to consider here.

It's very,

Very interesting to think about.

What are you natural?

You know,

What's the appreciation of the natural beauty?

How much does transhumanism come into your life today?

Very interesting topic.

Let me know what your thoughts are.

I would be so interested to hear where everyone sits on this for now.

That's all for me.

This has been a very interesting episode for me.

I do apologize if it's gone on a little bit longer than most people like.

I will see you in the next one.

Take care.