Report on the 2005 WTA Member Survey
Report on the 2005 Interests and Beliefs Survey of the Members of the World Transhumanist Association
Prepared by
James J. Hughes, Ph.D.
Executive Director, World Transhumanist Association
May 2005
For more information please contact
James Hughes Ph.D.
Executive Director
World Transhumanist Association
http://transhumanism.org
director@transhumanism.org
Box 128, Willington CT 06279 USA
(office) 860-297-2376
Copyright © 2005 by WTA
All rights reserved
Executive Summary
The survey was fielded in March 2005 over the course of two weeks. The survey was fielded to all people who had signed up through the Join page at the website since 1998, or who had joined as full members, who still had working email addresses. Only approximately 2200 email addresses work of the 3000 people we count as members. 586 people responded to the survey, compared to 591 people in the December 2003 survey, amounting to a roughly 26% response rate, down from the 36% response rate on the 2003 survey.
The survey respondents have been categorized into two groups, US and non-US residents. Respondents represented US and non-US members, basic and full members, and our too-few non-male members, in a reasonably balanced way. The percent of non-US respondents rose in this sample from 49% in 2003 to 56% however, reflecting their actual proportion in our membership base. As in 2003, roughly 90% of the sample was male. The median age of the respondents in both 2003 and 2005 is roughly the same, about 30-33.
Comfort with “Transhumanist” Identity
The second question on the survey was about how comfortable the respondent felt about identifying as a transhumanist. Although all respondents had signed up as WTA members through the website membership form, some had done so in order to get access to the website and newsletter. For the subsequent analyses the 5% who said “I am not a transhumanist” were excluded. Also, compared to 2003, there was an increase in the percent of respondents who were full members and a decrease in the percent who did not consider themselves transhumanists.
Satisfaction with the WTA and Transhumanism
Satisfaction with the WTA remains very high. Fully 87% of the respondents say they are satisfied with the WTA overall, down slightly from the 90% satisfied in 2003. Satisfaction of US and non-US members is roughly equal.
Satisfaction with the Transvision conferences (for those who attended) was also relatively high, while satisfaction with the “WTA activism” was relatively low. About half thought our activism was fair or poor, compared to only 24% who thought the WTA News and WTA website was fair or poor.
Three quarters of transhumanists say they are likely to recommend that someone join the WTA. Non-Americans are significantly more likely to want to recruit people to the WTA.
Activism and Financial Support
As in 2003, “interest in transhumanism” was the principal reason noted for joining, followed by “intellectual stimulation.” Activism was only cited as a reason by 40% of members, and networking only by 20%.
Even though full membership dues had doubled between the last survey and the 2005 survey, the majority of respondents still thought the dues were “about right” (77% last time and 71% this time). Non-US respondents were only slightly more likely to think full membership dues were too high (15% versus 13%). Only 13% of all respondents said they would never pay full membership dues.
Setting aside the respondents who answered before the question on willingness to donate fixed on the survey form, there was still an up-tick in the percent of respondents willing to donate to support the WTA from 20% to 28%.
Conferences
Non-US respondents are more likely to say they would attend a WTA conference in their own country than Americans are to want to attend conferences in the US (non-Americans are 88% willing and Americans 73% willing). Non-Americans are also far more likely to want to attend WTA conferences in countries other than their own than Americans are. Only 16% of American respondents said they would attend conferences outside the US, down from 24% in 2003, contrasted with the 35%-43% of non-Americans who would travel outside their country.
Attitudes
One part of this survey was a set of attitudes that respondents were asked to agree or disagree with, which we are examining in order to establish a 10 question self-diagnostic for whether someone is a likely transhumanist. We have also examined these questions in terms of the groups that they cluster into. There are five basic value clusters that the questions we provided fell into:
(1) Human-Enhancement attitudes about life extension, intelligence augmentation, cryonics and uploading
(2) Humanism attitudes about human self-reliance and whether there are divine limits on human reason
(3) Tech-Optimism attitudes about embracing or banning new technologies, such as nanotechnology, genetic engineering and human enhancement technologies
(4) Personhood attitudes about valuing the well-being of all sentient beings, including rights for great apes and robots, and conversely about fetal rights and permitting abortion
(5) Reproductive rights attitudes about abortion, human cloning and the genetic enhancement of children
The top ten questions on which the respondents (who considered themselves transhumanists) agreed were:
• Do you believe that people have a right to use technology to extend their mental and physical (including reproductive) capacities and to improve their control over their own lives?
• Do you think that by being generally open and embracing of new technology we have a better chance of turning it to our advantage than if we try to ban or prohibit it?
• Do you expect human progress to result from human accomplishment rather than divine intervention, grace, or redemption?
• Do you think it would be a good thing if people could become many times more intelligent than they currently are?
• Is your concept of “the meaning of life” derived from human responsibility and opportunity rather than divine revelation?
• Do you believe women should have the right to terminate their pregnancies?
• Does your ethical code advocate the well-being of all sentient beings, whether in artificial intellects, humans, posthumans, or non- human animals?
• Do you think it would be a good thing if people could live for hundreds of years or longer?
• Would you consider having your mind uploaded to computers if it was the only way you could continue as a conscious person?
• Should parents be able to have children through cloning once the technology is safe?
If we use agreement with half of these statements as a self-diagnostic for whether someone is probably a transhumanist, this would include 96% of all the respondents to this survey who were comfortable calling themselves transhumanists. Conversely agreement to any seven of these questions would probably yield few false positives among the general public.
On other questions, almost three quarters of respondents support human rights for enhanced chimpanzees, and 70% support human rights for “robots who think and feel like human beings, and aren’t a threat to human beings.” Only 62% think liberal democracy is the best of available political systems however, and only a third believe in an imminent Singularity, defined as “an abrupt, cataclysmic, worldwide social change by 2040” caused by emerging technologies.
Perhaps most disturbing is that only a plurality (46%) of respondents believe that “humans and posthumans will be able to coexist in one society and polity,” while 41% were unsure, and 12% believed they could not coexist. There were three questions on which Americans were significantly different than non-Americans: cryonics and parental rights to clone or enhance children.
Slogans
The most popular slogans involved themes of personal “evolution” beyond the human body, and more general references to creating the future through science and technology.
• “The best way to predict the future is to help create it”
• “Evolve!”
• “Human by birth; Transhuman by choice”
• “If evolution is outlawed only outlaws will evolve”
• “Better living through science and technology”
• “This body is just a first draft.”
The least popular slogans referred to having a second machine body, becoming a Jupiterbrain or god, or the imminent “TechnoRapture.”
Politics and Religion
Asking about political self-identity, there are only marginal changes from 2003, but interesting ones nonetheless. The percent of the respondents who consider themselves left-wingers of one sort or the other increased from 36% to 39% while the percent who were libertarians (including Euro-liberals, Objectivists, and anarcho-capitalists) remained at 22%. Conservatives remained only 3-4% of membership, but those who consider themselves “far right” declined from 1.2% of membership to 0.4% of membership. The percent apolitical declined from 15% to 12%
In regards religious views, the 2005 respondents are again almost identical to the 2003 respondents, with slight down ticks in both secularism and religiosity, and an up tick in “none of the above.” One quarter of the respondents are religious in some sense, although some of the religious categories, such as “spiritual,” “religious humanist,” “Buddhist,” “Unitarian Universalist” and “Raelian”, could also identify as humanists or atheists.
Other Organizational Memberships
The most impressive thing about respondents’ reports of other organizational affiliations is the jump in the percent of respondents who consider themselves to be members of a local WTA chapter, which increased from 7% to 17%, and of those who belong to wta-talk, which jumped from 17% to 27%. This represents a deepening of our membership identification and involvement. Most other organizational affiliations stayed pretty much the same, with joint Extropy Institute memberships ticking down to 15% and joint Immortality Institute memberships ticking up to 13%. A much larger percent of Americans report membership in a political party.
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