Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a New Zealand philosopher who’s written a lot about the human enhancement debate. Philosophers are well known for their willingness to defend unpopular conclusions against all critics. Sometimes they engage in what I call “philosophical shit-stirring". You may think that’s a profanity but it’s actually a technical term. I’ve advocated some deliberately unpopular shit-stirring conclusions in the past. One of these is liberal eugenics - the idea that you can turn an evil like eugenics into something good by prefacing it with the feel-good term “liberal”. These dialogues are the beginning of a philosophical stock-take on what we should or might become.


I wrote

Dialogues on Human Enhancement

By Nicholas Agar,

Book cover of Dialogues on Human Enhancement

What is my book about?

Dialogues on Human Enhancement is a philosophical discussion about human enhancement in the form of a Platonic dialogue. You can…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

Nicholas Agar Why did I love this book?

There’s a lot of thoughtless talk by techno-optimistic philosophers about futures in which we all get to become superintelligent and live for thousands of years if we can apply the right tech to ourselves.

Sykes describes fascinating research on the Neanderthals, beings who were almost, but not quite, us. Reading her book, I wondered what it might have been like to grow up as the child of a union between a Homo sapiens and a Neanderthal. I found this especially useful when we consider future relationships between people determined to remain human and others who want tech to make them posthuman ASAP.

There’s so much information to gleen from Sykes to help us guess at how posthumans might treat beings whom they view as different and possibly inferior.

By Rebecca Wragg Sykes,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Kindred as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

** WINNER OF THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE 2021 ** 'Beautiful, evocative, authoritative.' Professor Brian Cox 'Important reading not just for anyone interested in these ancient cousins of ours, but also for anyone interested in humanity.' Yuval Noah Harari Kindred is the definitive guide to the Neanderthals. Since their discovery more than 160 years ago, Neanderthals have metamorphosed from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins. Rebecca Wragg Sykes uses her experience at the cutting-edge of Palaeolithic research to share our new understanding of Neanderthals, shoving aside cliches of rag-clad brutes in an icy wasteland. She reveals them…


Book cover of The Hydrogen Sonata

Nicholas Agar Why did I love this book?

This final work in Banks’ Culture sci-fi series is all about technologically advanced species making the decision to sublime – to depart the “real world” to reside in “higher dimensions”.

As I read the book I found my philosopher’s brain bullied to understand what subliming could possibly be. When techno-enthusiasts propose radical human enhancement are they effectively suggesting that we should sublime? When the aspiring trillionaires of AI are asked about the future in which they make AIs much smarter than us, they get vague about the details.

The throwaway line of OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella is “all bets are off” after they achieve their stated goal of artificial superintelligence. Should we approach the future gifts of AI much in the way that Banks’s characters approach the offer of subliming?

By Iain M. Banks,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Hydrogen Sonata as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The tenth Culture book from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a modern master of science fiction.

The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, the End Days for the Gzilt civilisation.

An ancient people, organised on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilisations: they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new…


Book cover of The Three-Body Problem

Nicholas Agar Why did I love this book?

I’m awed by Chinese sci-fi author Liu Cixin’s imaginative daring in depicting barely conceivable challenges to humanity. Cixin takes us from a China making first contact with an alien civilization through an increasingly bewildering series challengings into a barely comprehensible future.

Humanity has faced some nasty surprises of late. Cixin’s series is a breathtakingly imagined depiction of futures in which the real challenges are not those we’ve been expecting and preparing for, but barely imagined ones. One of the themes of my book is that we must make the most of our species’ imaginative resources if we are to cope with the future’s surprises. If humanity follows the path of radical enhancement we’re going to have to prepare for a lot of the crazy weirdness described by Cixin.

Netflix is releasing a series based on the novel. Please let them capture some of the craziness of Cixin’s imagination.

By Cixin Liu, Ken Liu (translator),

Why should I read it?

13 authors picked The Three-Body Problem as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Read the award-winning, critically acclaimed, multi-million-copy-selling science-fiction phenomenon - soon to be a Netflix Original Series from the creators of Game of Thrones.

1967: Ye Wenjie witnesses Red Guards beat her father to death during China's Cultural Revolution. This singular event will shape not only the rest of her life but also the future of mankind.

Four decades later, Beijing police ask nanotech engineer Wang Miao to infiltrate a secretive cabal of scientists after a spate of inexplicable suicides. Wang's investigation will lead him to a mysterious online game and immerse him in a virtual world ruled by the intractable…


Book cover of A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back

Nicholas Agar Why did I love this book?

Schneier’s book taught me that hacking isn’t just something that occasionally happens to your laptop. The powerful hack the laws that govern our society too.

I wondered how the hacking mindset could apply to enhancement techs. Which enhancement techs will the elite reserve for themselves and which might they impose on the gig workers of the future? Suppose Neuralink does manage to get its tech into our heads. Imagine Musk finds himself just short of the funds needed to found his planned Martian city. Might beneficiaries of his brain-computer interfaces find themselves abruptly subject to overpowering urges to immediately own ten Teslas? This sounds absurd.

Perhaps the right question to ask is how crazy it is relative to cities of a million on Mars by 2050. Is it beyond the reach of Musk’s rule-breaking, can-do imagination?

By Bruce Schneier,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Hacker's Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A hack is any means of subverting a system's rules in unintended ways. The tax code isn't computer code, but a series of complex formulas. It has vulnerabilities; we call them "loopholes." We call exploits "tax avoidance strategies." And there is an entire industry of "black hat" hackers intent on finding exploitable loopholes in the tax code. We call them accountants and tax attorneys.

In A Hacker's Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyse the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to politics. He reveals an…


Book cover of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

Nicholas Agar Why did I love this book?

What can you do if you’re gloomy about the state of the world? Rushkoff’s is a book in which the rich have largely given up on the all-in-it-together ideology of earlier times.

If the system is crumbing, can you get rich enough to escape before its final collapse? Reading Rushkoff’s book I wondered if the replacement of earlier times’ get-rich-quick schemes by today’s get-super-rich-super-quick offers explained how so many people were gulled by the fraudulent offers of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto hedge fund.

Suppose you do manage to quit these schemes with sufficient money before they crash. Where can you flee? New Zealand, Mars…? During the Pandemic we in New Zealand heard much about people who wanted to shelter in Jacinda Ardern’s Aotearoa. If rich escape fantasists Google “New Zealand” and “climate change” they might want to hold out for Mars.

Some of the characters in my book hope that enhancement technologies could be another form of escape. Will the future see super-rich posthumans impervious to environmental damage that defeats the rest of us?

By Douglas Rushkoff,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Survival of the Richest as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Five mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The subject? How to survive the "Event": the societal collapse they know is coming. Rushkoff argues that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can escape a disaster of their own making-as long as they have enough money and the right technology.

Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. Through fascinating characters-master programmers who want to…


Explore my book 😀

Dialogues on Human Enhancement

By Nicholas Agar,

Book cover of Dialogues on Human Enhancement

What is my book about?

Dialogues on Human Enhancement is a philosophical discussion about human enhancement in the form of a Platonic dialogue. You can buy drugs that credibly enhance some human capacities at the Amazon Marketplace. We’re seeing experiments on DNA influencing human cognition. Elon Musk wants to give us enhancements in the form of cybernetic brain implants. These suggest we are about to enter an Age of Human Enhancement. My Dialogues present four characters who vigorously disagree on how technology can, or should, change us. I hope readers view the Dialogues as an invitation to add their voices to the discussion. Speak now or perhaps forever hold your peace.

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The Mazatlan Showdown

By Patrick Weill,

Book cover of The Mazatlan Showdown

Patrick Weill Author Of The Mazatlan Showdown

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

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What is my book about?

Jeff Walker is a champion surfer haunted by the mystery of his father’s murder and his mother’s broken heart. After finding a job as a lifeguard, a rescue mission at sea plunges him into a far-reaching criminal conspiracy.

Walker and his closest friends aid the police in their investigation, through which it is revealed that the leader of the crooks is his father’s killer! The tension builds from that point on until he finally faces his nemesis in a confrontation that will leave only one man standing. 

This first episode of The Park and Walker Action Thriller Series will whisk…

The Mazatlan Showdown

By Patrick Weill,

What is this book about?

Meet Jeff Walker, a champion surfer haunted by the unsolved mystery of his father’s murder and his mother’s broken heart. When he relocates to sunny San Diego and secures a job as a beach lifeguard, a rescue mission at sea plunges him into the dark underworld of international crime.

Along with his closest friends, Walker supports the police in their investigation, and in doing so discovers that the leader of the smugglers is his father’s killer, the man he’s been looking for since he was a teenager! From that moment on, the tension builds, until Walker finally faces his nemesis…


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