From Left Field: The March to Transhumanism

The Global Spiral has a truly unusual posting about how the future of the human race might only be through Transhumanism. What is transhumanism?:

Transhumanism is the thesis that we can and ought to use technology to alter and improve human biology.1 Some likely targets for the technological makeover of human nature include making ourselves smarter, happier, longer-lived and more virtuous. The operative assumption here of course is that intelligence, moods, longevity and virtues each have deep roots in our biology. By altering biology transhumanists propose to improve human nature to the point of creating a new genus: such as posthumans.

Talk about giving evolution a push! The argument here is that we need to produce "posthumans" to avoid future harm. Why is this?

If forced to put some hard numbers to these scenarios, I would venture to suggest there is a 90% chance of civilization surviving the next two centuries if we follow the transhumanist path, while I would put the chances of civilization surviving a steady-as-she-goes policy at less than 20%. But then, I am an optimist.

Mind you, he gives no evidence that this will be the case. He simply believes it. That, in and of itself, is enough to jump on the posthuman express. The rest of the article posits that, since we are already in uncharted waters with genetic engineering, we might as well throw caution to the winds and just keep experimenting. Sound judgment. There is nothing like taking artificial selection and running with it.