165:(Oxford University Press) Agar challenges the view that great things will come from technological progress that will lead human flourishing. He describes a phenomenon called "hedonic normalization" that Agar claims leads us to significantly overestimate the power of technological progress to improve our well-being. According to Agar, we overlook hedonic normalization when we suppose that because we would be unhappy to find ourselves permanently transported back in time to the middle ages that people living back them must have been miserable too. The same distortions apply when we imagine a future with cures for cancer and colonies on Mars. Technological progress may make us happier but not nearly so much as we imagine it. Agar discusses the implications this has for our collective prioritization of technological progress.
172:(The MIT Press) Agar addresses challenges posed by automation and artificial intelligence to human work and agency. Agar argues for a hybrid "social-digital economy". The key value of the digital economy is efficiency. The key value of the social economy is humanness. A social economy would be centered on connections between human minds. Agar argues that we should reject some digital automation because machines will always be poor substitutes for humans in roles that involve direct contact with other humans. In a hybrid social-digital economy, people do the jobs for which feelings matter and machines take on data-intensive work.
128:(Blackwell Publishers). Agar has argued that a vigorous defense of procreative freedom could turn the morally misguided authoritarian eugenics into a morally defensible liberal eugenics. Agar has argued that a liberal state should ban choices judged injurious to children's well-being. And should exercise the same kinds of control over harmful genetic choices that it currently does over choices about how to raise children.
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146:(The MIT Press) Agar defines transformative change as altering "the state of an individual's mental or physical characteristics in a way that causes and warrants a significant change in how that individual evaluates a wide range of their own experiences, beliefs, or achievements." He uses examples from the movie
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once they have undergone it. We may predict that we will enjoy life as a radically enhanced being but nevertheless be justified in rejecting it.
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The sceptical optimist : why technology isn't the answer to everything
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The
Sceptical Optimist: Why technology isn't the answer to everything
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The
Sceptical Optimist: Why Technology Isn't the Answer to Everything
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Truly human enhancement : a philosophical defense of limits
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co-written with Stuart
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Humanity's end : why we should reject radical enhancement
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How to Think about
Progress: A Skeptic's Guide to Technology
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Truly Human
Enhancement: A Philosophical Defense of Limits
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Humanity's End: Why We Should Reject
Radical Enhancement
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Liberal eugenics : in defence of human enhancement
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Academic staff of
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126:Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement
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519:Victoria University of Wellington alumni
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36:too closely associated with the subject
434:How to be human in the digital economy
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304:. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
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279:The New Zealand Herald
235:Life's Intrinsic Value
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