[Adopted by the 02016 TNC convention 27 Feb 02016]

The following platform is the basis for the TNC’s transhumanist agenda that will be lobbied for in the United States by the TNC.

Transhumanist Declaration Policy Plank

The TNC starts with policy based on the Transhumanist Declaration as the Starting Point for Policy and platform development as the ideological foundation of what the TNC does and believes in where the rest of the platform is a representation of our current goals and policy change efforts. this includes:

1. Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.

  • see Longevity Policy Plank
  • see Education in the United States Policy Plank
  • see Intellectual Property Policy Plank

2. We believe that humanity’s potential is still mostly unrealized. There are possible scenarios that lead to wonderful and exceedingly worthwhile enhanced human conditions.

  • see Longevity Policy Plank
  • see Education in the United States Policy Plank
  • see Intellectual Property Policy Plank

3. We recognize that humanity faces serious risks, especially from the misuse of new technologies. There are possible realistic scenarios that lead to the loss of most, or even all, of what we hold valuable. Some of these scenarios are drastic, others are subtle. Although all progress is change, not all change is progress.

  • Resilience and Risk Policy Plank
  • see Education in the United States Policy Plank
  • see Intellectual Property Policy Plank

4. Research effort needs to be invested into understanding these prospects. We need to carefully deliberate how best to reduce risks and expedite beneficial applications. We also need forums where people can constructively discuss what should be done, and a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.

  • Reduction of Existential Risk Policy Plank
  • see Education in the United States Policy Plank
  • see Intellectual Property Policy Plank

5. Reduction of existential risks, and development of means for the preservation of life and health, the alleviation of grave suffering, and the improvement of human foresight and wisdom should be pursued as urgent priorities, and heavily funded.

  • see Longevity Policy Plank
  • see Resilience and Risk Policy Plank
  • see Education in the United States Policy Plank
  • see Intellectual Property Policy Plank

6. Policy making ought to be guided by responsible and inclusive moral vision, taking seriously both opportunities and risks, respecting autonomy and individual rights, and showing solidarity with and concern for the interests and dignity of all people around the globe. We must also consider our moral responsibilities towards generations that will exist in the future.

  • see Platform Policy Causation Policy Plan
  • see Education in the United States Policy Plank
  • see Intellectual Property Policy Plank

7. We advocate the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligence’s to which technological and scientific advance may give rise.

  • see Resilience and Risk Policy Plank
  • see Education in the United States Policy Plank

8. We favor allowing individuals wide personal choice over how they enable their lives. This includes use of techniques that may be developed to assist memory, concentration, and mental energy; life extension therapies; reproductive choice technologies; cryonics procedures; and many other possible human modification and enhancement technologies.

  • see Resilience and Risk Policy Plank
  • see Freedom of Self Policy Plank
  • see Education in the United States Policy Plank
  • see Intellectual Property Policy Plank

– from the declaration to which all TNC policy follows this intent.

Platform Policy Causation Policy Plan

Based on the declaration including the following declaration point 6.

The TNC believes in consulting with scientific experts on the risks, costs and expected outcomes of each policy before it is adopted into our official platform. The TNC believes that while it is not always possible to establish clear causation in all cases, it is a requisite for those policies that lend themselves to establishing causation. The TNC also believes policy programs should be subject to continual analysis, and programs that are not empirically validated should be removed or replaced. Furthermore, the TNC believes that outcomes should be optimized, so a moderately successful program should not be continued for the sake of tradition if a better option is to present itself.

Where ‘Causation’ is defined as referring to the following: The act or fact of causing. The relation of cause to effect; causality. Anything that produces an effect; cause.

Resilience and Risk Policy Plank

Based on the declaration including the following: (3, 4, 5, 7 and 8)

In support of the United States and our civilizations Resilience the TNC supports in the inclusion of resilience building activities and risk management thinking as part of the ethical the advancing of technology in so much that it does not impeded such advancement.

The TNC believes that existential risk should be dealt with on a case by case basis regardless of the type of threat. The TNC supports programs that support a long term approach to understanding how what we do as a society affects others and our long term sustainability and resiliency as a civilization. The TNC is focused on insuring that society is cognizant of the risks of what we do as a society. Programs that include education and promote a wider long term view or approach to problems will help society the most and these are programs the TNC seeks to support. The TNC would like to see long-term thinking a more common part of our culture so programs that align with line of thought should be funded as responsible citizens.

  • An example of the kinds of programs the TNC may support include the Long Now Foundation whose vision states that the Long Now has the goal of being the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to today’s accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. The LongNow hopes to foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years. Including long term projects like the Clock of the Long Now and the Library of Civilization.[1]

Longevity Policy Plank

The TNC advocates for the treatment of aging as a disease and the positioning of longevity medicine as a key focus on of government in the United States. This include’s advocacy for focusing on and enabling the development of therapies for all diseases, as well as therapies to stop or reverse biological aging and its consequences and, ultimately, the elimination of involuntary death whenever it is possible and if the person wishes such. Our most advanced sciences and technologies allow us to foresee the possibility of extreme longevity for human beings, as well as the rational and ethical elimination of many of our other related health problems. We advocate the prompt, judicious use of these new technologies in order to eliminate as soon as possible the cause of 2 of every 3 deaths in the world (100,000 deaths per day) from aging.

Key elements can include:

  • Improving the regulatory environment for research and longevity medicine,
  • Increased research funding in the form of grants for longevity medicine,
  • Removing legal restrictions as much as possible including the Repeal or Remove all State and Federal restrictions to the funding and use of stem cell research,
  • Legalize germline genetic modification of humans as well as removal of restrictions on voluntary human trials,
  • Repeal or Amend the Controlled Substances Act to allow increased research opportunities on all currently controlled substances,
  • Reform of clinical trail paths for enhancement drugs and genetic and anti-aging.

and the widening of research related incentives around longevity medicine.

Key reference from the declaration include: 1, 2 and 5

Education in the United States Policy Plank (draft)

Based on the declaration including the following: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8)

The United States has believed in basic education since the revolution. The TNC believes in keeping with what basic education was in the 1700’s relative to the state of technology given the advancement in society that ‘basic’ education should be defined as college and that a key part of our agenda is to help encourage a more successful generation by paying for a ‘basic’ education up to and including college degree’s.

see [Education in the United States]

World Political Transhumanist Movement Policy Plank (draft)

The TNC recognizes that the United States is part of a larger community in the world and in recognizing a larger need supports international efforts such as the World Transhumanist Party in forwarding an international political agenda around transhumanist thought especially as it relates TNC policy and platform agenda items.

Universal Basic Income Policy Plank (draft)

The TNC supports a Universal Basic Income. Currently, the United States spends more than 1 trillion US Dollars on welfare related expenses. That sum would be reduced significantly if it was used to replace the current welfare system with a basic universal income. This would lower costs, reduce government bureaucracy, provide more support for more people, be less invasive and paternalistic, and can be done without work disincentives.

The TNC supports a policy structure for a basic income that could be as simple as a tax for everyone of 15% and then take 15% of the US budget, divide it by population and send it to everyone that files a tax return portioned out monthly where the filing and bureaucratic nature of this process is mostly managed by individual employers to keep over all bureaucratic or administrative costs to a minimum.

Freedom of Self Policy Plank

Based on the declaration in particular declaration item 8.

The TNC is focused on the rights of the any sapient individual to do as they see fit with themselves and their own reproductive choices. The ethical obligation of Sapience from the TNC’s standpoint is that such obligations apply to and are the purview of the individual to be responsible for and that no one group, individual or government has the right to limit those choices including genetic manipulation or other biological manipulation or any other modifications up-to and including biological manipulation, mechanical manipulation, life extension, reproductive choice, reproductive manipulation, cryonics, or other possible modifications or enhancements or morphological freedoms.

It is only when such choices directly infringe of the rights of other sapient beings that the TNC will work to affect such policy.

Intellectual Property Policy Plank

Based on the declaration in particular declaration items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

The TNC supports an approach to Intellectual Property (IP) Rights that insures that knowledge is disseminated or prevented from locked out for long periods of time to the general population. The TNC recognizes that while restrictions on commercial application through patents does help cover the cost of development, provide incentives for invention and allow inventors to profit from their work and recoup those expenses such advancements should not nor can they ethically be withheld from the use any all when such IP improves the lives of any citizen. Therefore the TNC looks to support laws and policy that is more considerate to the rights of the population and does not create monopolies on technology especially health and medicine technologies. The TNC also seeks to expand fair use legislation to allow any input that can be taken in via any normal sense which can be copied and used for fair use as long as it is not for commercial purposes or otherwise abused. This in particular applies to people as they become enhanced with various technologies in which their digital ‘memory’ and cybernetic systems count as any other sense and therefore have the right to record and reuse privately anything they like with in the confines of themselves just as is true of biological memory today.

 

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