>[!citation] >Regis, E. (1990). *Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition*. Addison-Wesley. https://gwern.net/doc/transhumanism/1990-regis-greatmambochickenandthetranshumancondition.pdf > [!abstract] > *Great Mambo Chicken and the [[Transhumanism|Transhuman]] Condition* is a 1990 non-fiction book by Ed Regis, an American author and educator, that presents a lighthearted look at scientific visionaries planning for a future with "post-biological" people, space colonization, nanotechnology, and cryonics (Wikipedia, 2025). > [!quote] > "When I was but a little lad, in the days of my wild and reckless youth, I thought I would grow up to be a physicist, like my father before me (who was at that time a physicist). I'd read QED by age nine, and I even understood most of it. I was contentedly headed for a life on the frontiers of the fourteenth decimal point. > > Then along came a book called "Great Mambo Chicken". As I recall, it was taken out as a library book and given to me, for the duration of the loan, by a grand-uncle. Undoubtedly attracted by the title, of course. And inside this book was... > > Cryonics! The colonization of space! Fun with high explosives! Humanity's conquest of the Universe! Artificial intelligence! Genetic engineering! Nanotechnology! The Omega Point! Ultratechnologies by the dozen! > > I knew, in that moment, that I'd be doing one of those things for my career. (I thought it'd be nanotechnology, actually; I didn't get converted over to AI and cognitive science and computer programming until I read Gödel, Escher, Bach.) I read this book, and I realized it was possible to solve all the problems of the world, that nothing was beyond the reach of intelligence, that my generation and maybe even my grandparents' generation was going to be immortal, and I decided that I was going to help make it happen, and that's what my life would be." ([[Yudkowsky, 2008]]). > [!quote] > "To be born human is an affliction, Ettinger thought. It shouldn’t happen to a dog." (Regis, 1990, p. 145). > [!note] > Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger (1918–2011) was an American academic, known as "the father of cryonics" because of the impact of his 1962 book *The Prospect of [[Immortality]]* (Wikipedia, 2025). > [!quote] > "It’s hard to imagine that human engineers could be any messier or clumsier than that old spatters Dame Nature. The normal processes of [[evolution]] are wasteful and cruel in stupefying degree. Dame Nature considers every species and every individual expendable, and has indeed expended them in horrifying numbers. Even an occasional calamitous error in planned development could scarcely match the slaughter, millenium in, millenium out, of fumble-fingered Nature." (Regis, 1990, pp. 147–148).