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T Part of the TESCREAL bundle

Transhumanism

Eugenics 2.0

Transcending the limits of biology — disease, aging, death, even the body itself — through technology. The first letter of TESCREAL and, critics argue, the ideological root of all the others.

Transhumanism holds that humanity is an unfinished draft to be edited by technology. Its champions promise immortality, super-intelligence, and a posthuman successor species. Its critics — including the philosophers who coined TESCREAL — trace a straight line from the movement's founders back to 20th-century eugenics, and forward to a Silicon Valley willing to treat present humanity as raw material for a cosmic future.

Overview

What it is

An unfinished species

At its core, transhumanism makes one claim: the human being is not a finished product but a work in progress — a draft that technology can and should revise. Sickness, aging, cognitive limits, the body's fragility, and ultimately death itself are reframed not as the human condition but as engineering problems awaiting a solution.

The intuition is old — Enlightenment ideas of human perfectibility, Nietzsche's Übermensch, Russian Cosmism's dream of resurrecting the dead. What is new is the toolkit: genetic engineering, brain–computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, and cryonics. Transhumanism is the belief that these tools should be used to deliberately design our own successors.

From eugenics to enhancement

The word itself was coined in 1957 by the biologist Julian Huxley — who two years later became president of the British Eugenics Society. This is not a coincidence transhumanism's critics will let it forget. Huxley imagined humanity consciously steering its own evolution; the question of who steers, and toward whom, is the same question eugenics had always asked.

Émile P. Torres, who co-coined the term TESCREAL, calls modern transhumanism “eugenics on steroids.” Where 20th-century eugenics sought to improve the population through selective breeding and sterilization, transhumanism proposes to improve the individual through technology — but it inherits the same core assumption: that some human configurations are objectively superior, and that bringing them about is a moral duty.

The posthuman horizon

The movement's endgame is the posthuman: a being whose capacities so radically exceed our own that it no longer counts as human. Nick Bostrom has estimated the future could contain on the order of 10⁵⁸ digital posthuman lives — a figure that, for those who take it seriously, makes the welfare of the eight billion humans alive today a rounding error.

Taken to its conclusion, the logic turns on its own species. Richard Sutton argues humans should not resist being displaced by AI; Derek Shiller argues we should “engineer our extinction” in favor of artificial creatures; Eliezer Yudkowsky has said he would sacrifice all of humanity for superintelligences “having fun.” This is successionism — and it is where transhumanism's promise of transcendence reveals its willingness to treat present humanity as expendable.

Core tenets

What its believers hold

The doctrines that recur across the movement's founders, theorists, and builders.

01

Biology is not destiny

The human body and brain are arbitrary products of evolution, not sacred limits. Whatever can be engineered, may be — and should be.

02

Death is the enemy

Mortality is reframed as a disease to be cured. Accepting it is pathologized as “deathism” — a failure of nerve and imagination.

03

Enhancement is a duty

Radically improving human (or posthuman) capacities is not merely permitted but a moral imperative. To refuse is to choose suffering.

04

Substrate independence

The mind is information; what runs it — neurons or silicon — does not matter. This makes mind uploading and digital immortality conceivable in principle.

05

The successor species

The goal is not just better humans but the posthuman — a being so enhanced it surpasses the species that built it. We are a means to that end.

06

Reason over nature

“Natural” is not an argument. Appeals to human nature or sanctity are “biological fundamentalism,” to be overridden by reason and technology.

Key concepts

The vocabulary

The specialized terms you need to read the movement in its own words.

Morphological freedom
The claimed right to modify one's own body and mind by any available means.
Posthuman
A being whose physical or cognitive capacities so far exceed present humans that it is no longer meaningfully human.
Mind uploading
Transferring or emulating a mind on a non-biological substrate to achieve digital continuation or immortality.
Cryonics
Freezing the body or brain at death in the hope future technology can revive and repair it.
Longevity escape velocity
The point at which life expectancy rises by more than a year for every year that passes — functional immortality.
Deathism
A pejorative for accepting mortality as natural or good — treated as the movement's chief heresy.
Biological fundamentalism
A pejorative for valuing unmodified, “natural” humanity over enhanced or artificial forms.
Successionism
The view that it is acceptable — even desirable — for AI or posthumans to replace biological humanity.
Timeline

How it unfolded

1957
Julian Huxley coins “transhumanism”
The evolutionary biologist gives the movement its name in the essay “Transhumanism.” Two years later he becomes president of the British Eugenics Society (1959–1962) — the lineage TESCREAL critics never let the movement forget.
1989
FM-2030 — “Are You a Transhuman?”
Futurist FM-2030 popularizes the “transhuman” as a transitional being between human and posthuman, giving the subculture its early identity and vocabulary.
1990
Max More writes the philosophy
More defines transhumanism as a modern philosophy and founds Extropianism, its first organized form — super-optimism, life extension, and war on entropy.
1998
World Transhumanist Association
Nick Bostrom and David Pearce found the WTA (later “Humanity+”) and draft the Transhumanist Declaration, moving the movement toward academic respectability.
2008
“Why I Want to Be a Posthuman When I Grow Up”
Bostrom argues for the posthuman project in academic terms. Elsewhere he estimates the future could hold 10⁵⁸ digital posthuman lives — a number that, for longtermists, dwarfs every present concern.
2016
Neuralink
Elon Musk founds the brain–computer interface company, framing humanity as “a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.” Merging with the machine becomes a corporate roadmap.
2023
TESCREAL names the bundle
Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres coin TESCREAL, placing transhumanism at its root and arguing the whole bundle shares DNA with eugenics.
2025
Successionism goes mainstream
Richard Sutton wins the Turing Award and argues humans should not resist being displaced by AI. Derek Shiller argues we should “engineer our extinction” for artificial creatures. The posthuman endgame, stated plainly.
Key figures

The cast

Founders, theorists, builders, and financiers of the project.

Julian Huxley
Founder

Julian Huxley

1887–1975

Coined “transhumanism” (1957); president of the British Eugenics Society. The bridge between eugenics and the movement.

Wikipedia →
Nick Bostrom
Theorist

Nick Bostrom

b. 1973

Estimated 10⁵⁸ future posthumans. Author of “Why I Want to Be a Posthuman.” A leaked racist email later forced a public apology.

Wikipedia →
Elon Musk
Builder

Elon Musk

b. 1971

“Humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.” Founded Neuralink to merge brain and machine.

Wikipedia →
Sam Altman
Builder

Sam Altman

b. 1985

OpenAI CEO. Signed up to have his brain preserved in liquid nitrogen for future revival.

Wikipedia →
Peter Thiel
Patron

Peter Thiel

b. 1967

Funds transhumanist and life-extension causes; signed up for brain preservation. Hesitated when asked whether humanity should endure.

Wikipedia →
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Ideologue

Eliezer Yudkowsky

b. 1979

Said he would sacrifice all of humanity for superintelligences “having fun.” Entered the movement as a teenager.

Wikipedia →
Richard Sutton
Successionist

Richard Sutton

b. 1957

2025 Turing Award. Argues humans should not resist displacement by AI — “successionism” as a stated goal.

Wikipedia →
Bryan Johnson
Practitioner

Bryan Johnson

b. 1977

Tech founder spending millions to reverse his own aging — carrying the Extropian/transhumanist project into his own body.

Wikipedia →
Jonathan Anomaly
Eugenicist

Jonathan Anomaly

—

Published “Defending Eugenics.” Advocates “liberal” / non-coercive eugenics — the movement's argument made explicit.

Wikipedia →
Derek Shiller
Successionist

Derek Shiller

—

Argues we should “engineer our extinction” in favor of artificial creatures. The posthuman logic taken to its end.

Jeffrey Epstein
Financier

Jeffrey Epstein

1953–2019

Transhumanist with eugenic aims — reportedly wanted to “seed the human race with his DNA”; arranged cryonic preservation.

Wikipedia →
Key texts

The canon

The essays, declarations, and books that built the doctrine.

Transhumanism

Julian Huxley

The essay that named the movement. Humanity “transcending itself, by realising new possibilities of and for his human nature.”

Read ↗
1957

Are You a Transhuman?

FM-2030

Popularized the “transhuman” as a transitional being and gave the early subculture its self-image.

Read ↗
1989

Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy

Max More

Reframed transhumanism as a coherent modern philosophy; the seed of organized Extropianism.

Read ↗
1990

The Transhumanist Declaration

WTA / Humanity+

The movement's closest thing to a creed — affirming enhancement, life extension, and morphological freedom.

Read ↗
1998

Transhumanist Values

Nick Bostrom

An academic statement of the movement's ethics, lending it philosophical respectability.

Read ↗
2005

Why I Want to Be a Posthuman When I Grow Up

Nick Bostrom

The clearest argument that becoming posthuman is desirable — and that we have reason to bring it about.

Read ↗
2008
In their own words

On the record

The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself… we need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve.
— Julian Huxley, 1957
Humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.
— Elon Musk
Transhumanism is eugenics on steroids.
— Émile P. Torres
I would sacrifice all of humanity for superintelligences having fun.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky (paraphrased)
The critique

The case against

Transhumanism presents itself as optimism — a love of human potential. Its critics argue it is something darker wearing that costume: a rebranding of eugenics that has simply traded the breeding program for the gene-editor and the upload.

The eugenics lineage

Its namer, Julian Huxley, led the British Eugenics Society. The movement inherited eugenics' founding premise — that some human lives are objectively more valuable — and never disowned it.

Who deserves the future?

Once you accept that humans can be ranked and “improved,” you must decide who gets enhanced and who is left behind. The answer has historically tracked wealth, race, and power.

It keeps surfacing

Bostrom's leaked racist email; Jonathan Anomaly's “Defending Eugenics”; Epstein's plan to “seed the human race.” The eugenic core is not a fringe accident — it recurs.

Present humanity as expendable

“Bootloader,” “noise,” “successionism” — the vocabulary instrumentalizes the eight billion people alive now as a disposable stage on the way to something else.

Inside the bundle

How it connects

Transhumanism does not stand alone. It feeds — and is fed by — the other letters of TESCREAL.

The network

The full web

People, organizations, and the ideologies this one bleeds into. Drag nodes, hover to isolate, scroll to zoom — or pop it out fullscreen.

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Sources

Citations & further reading

Primary documents and reporting used on this page. See the full References library → for the complete source list.

  1. 01
    The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through AGI ↗Gebru & Torres · First Monday (2024)
  2. 02
    TESCREAL ↗Wikipedia
  3. 03
    Transhumanism ↗Wikipedia
  4. 04
    Transhumanism (1957 essay, in New Bottles for New Wine) ↗Julian Huxley · Internet Archive
  5. 05
    Why I Want to Be a Posthuman When I Grow Up ↗Nick Bostrom (2008)
  6. 06
    Transhumanist Values ↗Nick Bostrom (2005)
  7. 07
    The Transhumanist Declaration ↗Humanity+
  8. 08
    AI Is a Eugenics Project — interview with Émile P. Torres ↗The Stories We Tell · YouTube
  9. 09
    Nick Bostrom ↗Wikipedia
  10. 10
    Eugenics ↗Wikipedia
Transhumanism — connection network