Transhumanist Anders Sandberg: Embrace Strangeness

Posted on: July 22, 2012 / Last Modified: June 30, 2024

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Dr. Anders Sandberg is a well-known transhumanist, futurist, and computational neuroscientist who is currently a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. I enjoyed talking to him last time he was on Singularity 1 on 1 and was happy to have him back for another one.

During our second conversation with Anders, we cover a wide variety of topics such as transhumanism and the ethics thereof; the limits of being human; the Epic of Gilgamesh and our quest for immortality; overcoming death and enhancing life; life expectancy and our willingness to take risks; the potential for enhancement arms-races; the likelihood of armed conflict between transhumanists and neo-luddites; the most likely path to human enhancement; personal versus collective enhancement; hive-minds, distributed intelligence, the Borg and individuality; post-humanism and mind uploading.

My favorite quote that I will take away from this interview with Dr. Sandberg is:

That which does not kill us only makes us stranger.

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Who is Anders Sandberg?

Anders Sandberg’s research at the Future of Humanity Institute centers on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as estimating the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. Topics of particular interest include enhancement of cognition, cognitive biases, technology-enabled collective intelligence, neuroethics, and public policy. He has worked on this within the EU project ENHANCE, where he also was responsible for public outreach and online presence. Besides scientific publications in neuroscience, ethics, and future studies he has also participated in the public debate about human enhancement internationally. Anders also holds an AXA Research Fellowship.

He has a background in computer science, neuroscience, and medical engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, Sweden, for work on neural network modeling of human memory. He has also been the scientific producer for the major neuroscience exhibition “Se Hjärnan!” (“Behold the Brain!”), organized by Swedish Travelling Exhibitions, the Swedish Research Council, and the Knowledge Foundation that toured Sweden 2005-2007. He is co-founder and writer for the think tank Eudoxa.