Iain McGilchrist, in The Master and His Emissary, offers many clinical examples of people with debilitating (or temporarily induced) impairments to the right brain hemisphere failing to perceive embodiedness. To these people, bodies are just collections of parts, sometimes wooden and lifeless. The world to them is abstract, floating, as it were, out of any physical context. Thought within these right-impaired brains systematically favors certain, linear constructs extending indefinitely—as opposed to cyclical, tangled, or ambiguous realities. Death is unacceptable: does not compute.

The techno-optimist cheerleader, therefore, not only reminds me of a dangerous ideological zealot—ready to eliminate any number of species for the next awesome gadget—but also of a tragically-impaired creature missing half his brain.

#TESCREAL #longtermism #effectivealtruisim #effectiveaccelerationism #eacc #technooptimism