A new social function of transhumanism can be explaining (teaching at a very basic level, see stage 2 at 3-stage model) that technological progress is radically changing everything.

It's not about specific visions. It's about saying: "Look, the radical change is happening as we speak, these are the basic Future History 101 facts and tools, courtesy of transhumanism, please use these facts and tools to understand the future and make up your mind on what to expect, what to do, etc."

There are some things about which there is little debate. Things like "human-level AI is possible, dry nanotech is possible, immortality is possible". No transhumanist (or just informed and intelligent person) is going to argue about that. But the general public doesn't yet know about it. And this is a "service" that transhumanism can provide to the society, a possible niche for us and a way to make ourselves useful and interesting to everyone.

Future is important and interesting

We should interest the person in learning and communicating to others ideas about the future. We should show that the future is important and interesting (illustrate with a personal story of someone living through the whole 20th century - how much change - our time is even more exciting).

We can build a sequence of ides/theses/statements, e.g. future is important -> media is not telling the whole story (the truth) -> scientific progress defines the future -> radical new inventions are being made now and are expected in the coming decades -> we should expect radical change -> tell what changes exactly.

I saw a technique used recently to explain about the future. The situation was a radio show.

The guy who was centered everything around "3 futures that the science & technology communities talk about:"

• Heaven -- technology will do amazing and wonderful things for us; it is good
• Hell -- technology will make life impossible, or, possibly worse: torterous
• Prevail -- we will be able to just make it through to the future, we will be okay

He also consistently reported:

• The scientific & technical communities take all three of these very seriously.
• Everybody needs to know about these things.

Now, what's the importance of this? We all know this. But why is framing things this way, over and over, so very important? What's the value in it?

The value is this: When people called in to ask him a question, he would put it into one of the categories. In that way, he gave a space and context for peoples hopes, fears, and sense of realism.

So, a caller called in, and said, "Won't blah blah blah horrible thing happen? Isn't this really bad?"

To which he replied: "That's one of the Hell scenarios, and I take it very seriously. It's entirely plausible. And I look at that dead in the eye. Everybody should."

I thought this was a very good way to talk about these things.

He also had an interesting Peak Oil response; In fact, he had a number of good responses. We should keep an argument templates database, here, where we list different ways of approaching different questions, and providing links to provide to people.

Another thing he did was Anchoring -- he said, "I'm only going to talk about technologies that are immediately in the works." And he repeated that, over and over. "I'm only going to talk about what's immediately happening." And, he provided some things for people to look up. We are online, we can do even better.

-- LionKimbro

"Conversion"

In my experience just knowing about all the future technologies was enough to let me synthesize a vision of the future and gradually become a transhumanist. my vision in 2001. -- Danila Medvedev