Millions of augmented humans now walk among us. Their implants, tweaks, and enhancements aren’t always visible. But medical technology — which gave Americans cardiac pacemakers in the ’50s, and now artificial hearts — keeps pressing forward, and the human species keeps evolving beyond its former limitations.
In academia, this progression is called transhumanism, and Zoltan Istvan — a Hungarian-American writer and entrepreneur based in San Francisco — founded the Transhumanist Party in 2014 to fuel a conversation about the future of human enhancement. Now he’s running for president.
The Advocate interviewed Istvan by phone last weekend.
Valley Advocate: Is your name really Zoltan?
Istvan: Yes, it’s my birth name. It’s one of the most common names in Hungary.
Few people have heard of your party. What’s the elevator pitch?
We are aiming to put science and technology at the forefront of American politics. Medical tech is upending the human species, especially over the last 10 or 15 years. We want to put policy down right now that prepares us for what’s to come.
Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton will probably be nominated. I don’t think either of them are going to talk about designer babies. But the technology to alter your baby’s genetics is already here. Our main candidates aren’t going to touch the issues around that — it’s still hard to talk about abortion, even. Same with artificial intelligence — I don’t think any other candidates will talk about how much research we need.
It sounds like the conversations you want to have are a blend of observation and speculation.
Since I almost certainly won’t be elected, I have the opportunity to come up with some extraordinary policies. Some are predictions, but some aren’t. They’re policies that the larger parties will eventually be discussing.
I was recently interviewed by an Australian girl who was writing about sex in virtual reality using haptic suits. She had spoken with somebody who was raped in virtual reality. And I thought, wow, we have no laws whatsoever about this. Millions of people now use virtual reality, and the guidance to safeguard people isn’t there. We’re trying to bring awareness to issues like this.
Who is your voter base?
We have great support and some good press, but the party is totally underfunded right now. Third parties never win, so people are reluctant to give us money. But I’m finding that transhumanism really strikes a chord with high school and college students and recent grads. We’re about 25,000 people right now, and 90 percent of the growth of the movement has been within the 16 to 34 age range. When we start our bus tour in six to eight weeks, we’ll be doing lots of university talks, meeting with student groups and visiting science departments.
When people have a mortgage and kids, they’re not interested in a completely new political platform and ideology. So the growth hasn’t been quick with voters age 40 and above.
In early May you published an article on Gizmodo in which you wrote that “unlike the other Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls, my campaign is not very technically political.” What did you mean by that?
I’m not spending my campaign talking about Social Security or national defense. I’m talking about health. The first thing I would do as president is divert money away from national security and toward the advancement of medical technology.
Heart disease is the number one killer in the world; 35 percent of everyone you know will die from heart failure. It’s crazy that we don’t spend more money trying to wipe that out. Some companies already do robotic heart transplants. Heart disease is something we could eliminate today, given enough funding to make them affordable for everyone.
These are enormous overhauls. What does the economy looks like if you’re President? How do taxes work? Where are the jobs?
I support a flat tax that everyone pays. We’re also pushing for a universal basic income. There’s no reason to deny that robots are taking many of our jobs, and those jobs will never be regained. But when we rid ourselves of physical ailments, we will live longer. And with a universal basic income, everyone will have more time on their hands.
So why not make it a law that everyone should go to preschool, and to college? As life spans grow, so should educational periods. In a nation where everyone is educated, crime drops, and people make better choices. I also think there should be options for free education on every level, including four-year colleges.
I think we can ignite a brand new economy. I’m not trying to take away defense funding entirely. But to spend 20 percent of GDP on defense as opposed to 2 percent on medicine and tech and science… That’s a tragedy.
Your base must be a strange mix of real-world pragmatists and sci-fi utopian dreamers.
Some of the younger people have a lot of pie-in-the-sky ideas, it’s true. I have to walk a fine line between that and being a realist. I’m 42. I have businesses, a house, a wife, and two kids. A lot of my supporters are too young to see why it’s hard to start a revolution. Utopian visions can be brilliant, but they can be dangerous.
I’m trying to balance those exciting ideas with how our government really works. Take too much of a utopian view, and you lose your credibility. Most members of Congress can’t even use Twitter — they grew up with black-and-white TV sets. They haven’t caught onto most of our ideas. But until we get the old fogeys out, we’re in trouble. We need to conceive of AIs that are smarter than humans, of 3D printers that can make bombs. Soon we’ll have cranial implants, and we’ll be able to use telepathy. Technology changes the terms quickly.
I have some libertarian ideas, but I think of myself as a centrist guy. I take a functional, utilitarian approach to doing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Some of our ideas about liberty are going to change — like about surveillance — and we may be held back by people who aren’t up to speed on the ways that technology can be beneficial.
Government surveillance isn’t a problem?
The surveillance debate is already over. You can’t walk down the street without being filmed. You can’t prevent people from tracking you just by turning off your cell phone. Wherever you’re driving, a satellite can photograph you. We can say we want to protect our liberties, but they’ve been chewed away by our adoption of technology. Surveillance has arrived. We should get used to it and maximize it in order to apply those tools as stringently to the government as the government applies it to us.
You’re also advocating for research into indefinite life extension, so that people might eventually life forever. You’ve described the extension of live as “the only rational thing to do.” But aren’t lots of things good because they’re temporary? Are you making the argument that good things should never end?
I can see that to die is to appreciate life more. That’s a solid argument. But the other side of it is even more enticing to me. We’re not even going to be humans in 50 years. Living forever as augmented beings — transhuman — would mean finding new ways to increase our IQ, our ability to be creative, to understand new realities. Scientists are even trying to regenerate cell function to get you back down to your optimum health.
I’m not afraid to die. I just take an explorer’s point of view. What am I missing out on if I don’t upgrade myself? I’m deeply curious. Radical technology might mean becoming a cyborg, or uploading my mind to a computer. We might just be pure energy at some point, existing in virtual worlds.
It’s not just about living longer. It’s about completely expanding the horizons of what it means to be alive.
As an atheist, are you taking on religion when you talk like this?
It’s difficult. Our nation is 85 percent Christian. We don’t want to eliminate that, but maybe we can retain some of our spiritual ways and also embrace science in ways that uphold our beliefs. In the 21st century, religious culture shouldn’t stand in the way of our health and wellbeing. Let’s not cut funding for research on AI, or on stem cells. We should be past that.
Culturally, America is somewhat anti-technology, at least when it seems too radical. But the next great civil rights debate will be about whether we can embrace these pro-science, pro-technology values.•
Contact Hunter Styles at hstyles@valleyadvocate. com.
