U.S. Transhumanist Party General Discussion Thread for 2025
The purpose of this post is to facilitate member comments pertaining to transhumanism and the U.S. Transhumanist Party (USTP), which might not specifically fit the subjects of any other post or article on the USTP website. This is the place for members to offer suggestions or converse about any areas of emerging technologies and their political, moral, societal, cultural, and esthetic implications. The general discussion thread is also an ideal location to suggest or propose platform planks that may be considered for future platform voting, and/or bring our attention to emerging legislative and societal developments that may affect the course and impact of emerging technologies.
The USTP will endeavor to open one of these general comment threads per year. This comment thread pertains to the year of 2025.
Type in your comments below. Please note that, to protect against spambots, the first comment by any individual will be moderated. After passing moderation, a civil commenter should be able to post comments without future moderation – although we cannot guarantee that the technical aspect of this functionality will work as intended 100% of the time.
17 thoughts on “U.S. Transhumanist Party General Discussion Thread for 2025”
I propose we remove section XXXVI of our platform
I second this proposal!
I second this
I third this.
I support that too
I support this as well
Healthcare policy proposal:
The USTP supports a national healthcare system funded, but not controlled, by the federal government. The USTP supports doctor and patient healthcare decision making in place of government and insurance company decision making.
R. Nicholas Starr, given the significant differences of opinion among USTP members as to how healthcare should be funded, it is most appropriate to have a transparent, formal, public debate on the issue before holding an exposure period on various proposals. One excellent venue for holding such a debate would be the Virtual Enlightenment Salon, where we have previously held debates on AI safety, the war in Ukraine, and the future of technological progress. I would like to offer you the option to represent your position in such a video debate. I will also find another USTP member who would be willing to advocate for the opposite position – that healthcare should remain largely privately funded – and I can think of several USTP members who could articulately express that view. The debate would provide each side with equal time and some flexibility in allocating that time.
I would moderate the debate to ensure a fair and equal time allocation and civility but would not decide a “winner” and would act impartially in the course of moderation. There would also be an option for USTP panelists, as the judges, to discuss the points made by each side afterward. The outcome of the debate would not bind the USTP in regard to its position, but the recording would be made available thereafter and linked during the subsequent exposure period and perhaps on the ballot as well.
If you agree to participate in this debate and make the arguments for your position, then we would have openings on Sunday, July 20, at 4 p.m. Eastern Time, as well as every Sunday in August except August 3. Let me know if you are willing to take on this role.
Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II
Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party
We’ve been having this debate on party platforms laying out the evidence for years. The party legislative team has also debated the issue extensively. You and anyone else could have engaged at any time. Also, you are FAR from impartial. The answer is a giant no. I will not debate your Heritage Foundation representative nor will I engage you on platforms where you have final editorial control on issues. You are untrustworthy and will always attempt to use that editorial power unfairly to control the narrative. If you want to debate the issue, you know where to find us
At present, the United States Transhumanist Party has extremely limited guidance for party elections contained in its constitution (Article III Section VII). As a party that prioritizes an open tent approach, and the desire to organize a diverse collection of political viewpoints for a common purpose, establishing a fair, accurate, and timely election process is an imperative for fair representation. Additionally, previous mismanagement and abuse of our electoral process provides further impetus to establish clear responsibilities and ground rules for party elections. As such I propose the following framework to provide the necessary guidance.
When to hold elections:
The United States Transhumanist Party (USTP) will establish and enforce the following framework for party elections as described below.
The USTP will hold general membership wide elections on proposed changes to our constitution a minimum of once a year. If there is a backlog of proposals that require them to be spread across multiple elections for effective and successful votes a minimum of twice a year elections, spread as equally over the year as possible, is required. An exposure period of two weeks (14 days) shall precede any election. Elections are then required to start no later than one week (7 days) after the conclusion of the exposure period. Members shall be given two weeks (14 days) to complete and submit their ballot.
The USTP will hold special elections on candidates seeking party endorsement for elected office. These are to be held in a timely manner as to not interfere with the candidate’s electoral timeline. To accommodate this condensed exposure and voting periods of one week (7 days) each will be used.
The USTP will hold special elections before issuing statements on behalf of the entire party. As releasing statements relevant to current events may require timely action, condensed exposure and voting periods of one week (7 days) each will be used.
The USTP will hold elections on inter-organizational merges and alliances. These can be held following party constitutional voting rules as needed.
The USTP will hold elections for USTP Chairman. These are to be held every four years and before the USTP presidential primary, should the party hold one.
The USTP Chairman may also, at the Chairman’s discretion, call for an election to the position of Chairman with at least two months of advance notice.
How elections are to be run:
USTP elections are to be organized and held by either the USTP chairman or an individual selected by party leadership, dependent on the selected individual’s acceptance of the role.
USTP Membership shall be formally informed of an upcoming election via the email address they joined the party with. Ballots will be sent to the same email address. The USTP should also make an effort to inform members via other methods like the USTP webpage and social media.
USTP elections are to be held electronically. The USTP should endeavor to use the most efficient and effective platform possible to hold elections. However, elections should not be delayed or withheld because existing methods, such as the currently used Google Forms method, may be less efficient so long as members can fairly and accurately cast their ballot.
Ranked choice voting shall be used when multiple options exist for the same item or as otherwise applicable. Such applications should include, but aren’t limited to, electing party chairman, the USTP presidential primary, other candidate endorsements should more than one person seek the same position, or when there are multiple wording options for platform proposals that contain wording that conflict with each other. Platform proposals with multiple wording options that do not conflict shall be considered with a yes or no method to allow multiple additions as necessary.
Questions on the ballot should be proposed in the following way:
Option 1) with only the text of the proposal.
Option 2*) with brief for and against arguments, no longer than two sentences, focusing on how the proposal functions. Arguments for shall be written by the person who made the submission. Arguments against can be made by members and fairly compiled by someone within USTP leadership.
At no [other*] time should party leadership or an individual tasked with creating the ballot place their personal opinions, requests, or other information onto a question.
No quorum shall be required unless a separate voting roll of active members is created. This is to prevent operational stagnation should widespread party inactivity hinder the election process for those still engaged. Becoming an inactive member does not prevent or exclude the member from voting
As this creates and formalizes a new standard, all previous relevant guidance, partial or whole, published or implied, in conflict with this will be superseded.
To all who may read this: Please note that R. Nicholas Starr is hereby permanently expelled from the U.S. Transhumanist Party as a result of a hostile takeover attempt in his proposal to unilaterally initiate impeachment proceedings against U.S. Transhumanist Party and New York Transhumanist Party leadership, a process that is not called for in either the USTP Constitution or the NYTP Constitution. Please note that any attempts to take over either organization and/or to expel legitimate Officers in good standing will henceforth be treated as acts of hostility of the highest kind and will result in the immediate expulsion of such individuals from either the U.S. Transhumanist Party or any State-level Transhumanist Party, per the emergency authority vested in the Chairman pursuant to Article IX of the U.S. Transhumanist Party Constitution.
Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II
Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party
You know, it’s a shame really. All I’ve asked for is giving the membership a voice. Advocating for elections and providing a means for the membership to hold its representatives accountable. That’s apparently a threat to the Chairman. Group decision making, which somehow is now defined as unilateral action, is a danger.
A leader is their weakest when they’re banning members for dissent. I’m not even mad. I’m just disappointed. I’m disappointed and I pity you, Gennady. You’ve proven my point to everyone and strayed so far from the newly minted chairman I met eight years ago.
R. Nicholas Starr, I have not taken any adverse action against you in the past for any advocacy for elections or, as you say, “giving the membership a voice.” Your action that crossed boundaries was, firstly, specifically calling for my removal and the removal of Daud Sheikh as Chairman of the New York Transhumanist Party, and, after you were given a warning and a 28-day suspension for that action, your insistence on advocating for an impeachment process to remove sitting officers, whereby a single member could start the process with the affirmation of one other member – effectively giving you and any one person you managed to get to agree with you the power to paralyze the USTP by subjecting any Officer whom you disliked or disagreed with to time-consuming impeachment proceedings, essentially a “guilty until proven innocent” situation where the Officer would have had to defend himself or herself and spend considerable time and effort that could have better been directed at advancing the work of the USTP. Theoretically, this prerogative could have been exercised not only by you, but by anyone else who happened to join as a member for free (as you know, it is quite easy and free to do) and thereby greatly elevated the risk of entryism by hostile actors who would have signed up for membership solely to initiate such impeachment proceedings. At best, this would have created a vetocracy, where any dissatisfied member could have threatened impeachment and even tried to carry it out, because he or she was not getting his or her way. I know how you would have used this power had it been granted to you. Your recent intentional escalation of the conflict within the NYTP – when I had been attempting to smooth it over and mediate a solution – was just a buildup for you to make the case for precisely this kind of power. I think this was all premeditated and designed with the intent to oust the existing USTP and NYTP leadership. Of course, you have not been allowed and will not be allowed to do so.
Any USTP member is free to dissent and criticize. You have yourself done that for years, including by the use of name-calling and other unpleasant expressions. You were not banned for that at any time, nor would you have been, if that were all that you continued to do. You are even free to criticize me at present. As you can see, I did not remove your last critical post. What I did, which any leader who cares about self-preservation and the preservation of the organization he leads would do, was to remove you from USTP membership in order to prevent you from further attempting to subvert the USTP’s processes or engineering a hostile takeover. Dissent is one matter; usurpation is another entirely. I have not taken adverse action against you for dissent, and your remain free to criticize me as you have done. I have simply prevented you from doing further damage to the USTP as an organization.
Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II
Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party
Your narrative that this was a hostile takeover is nothing but a conspiracy you’ve created. My motivation for creating a means of accountability is simple: don’t fuck with our votes. You do that and there should be consequences. Daud cancelled our policy vote for his own personal reasons, just like you did right before seizing control of the NYTP and installing him as chairman. I hold you both responsible for that action. That’s it. That’s the whole story. Don’t fuck with our votes and don’t fuck with our voice.
A means of accountability for wrong doing is a standard government principal. If you really think that’s a problem then there is grave concern about your ability to lead.
R. Nicholas Starr, you keep referring to “our” votes, but what precipitated the NYTP restructuring in 2022 was that you, without anyone appointing you to any leadership role, decided to unilaterally hold a “vote” of just a tiny number of people who agreed with you in order to try to compel the NYTP to adopt a pro-abortion stance that did not represent the full membership. There was no “our vote” – there was *your* unilateral attempt to speak for the NYTP, which led me to the conclusion that clearly defined leadership structures were necessary.
More recently, when Luis arranged the NYTP vote on the citizens’ referendum question, I had no problem with that vote proceeding but advised Luis to extend the voting period by a week and remove the access restrictions on the voting form, since literally only three people had voted, and my hypothesis was that restricting the form to specific e-mail addresses that it was shared with prevented most members from accessing the form (this is common glitch with Google shared documents). I did not try to interfere with or stop that vote, and I specifically advised Daud to let it happen. This does not look remotely like interference with a vote.
The core problem, though, and the reason why Daud was inclined to subsequently call off the vote, was that Luis tried to designate him as “inactive” – a ridiculous action by a Vice-Chairman against a sitting Chairman who was, in fact, active and directly corresponding with Luis! I advised Luis to give the matter some time to win Daud’s trust back, but then your public calling for Daud’s, and my, ouster just further fanned the flames. If I could have managed the situation in the way I envisioned, I might have eventually achieved an outcome where the citizens’ referendum question was adopted. But you did not want that; you wanted your whole leftist agenda railroaded through, and you escalated when you saw that this conflict would not provide you with an opportunity to do so.
Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II
Chairman, United States Transhumanist Party
You’re forgetting everything that lead up to the NYTP vote on abortion statement. There was a massive discussion across the party on the issue. I may have been the one to take the first step in making that vote happen, but it was a group effort the whole way through. As a matter of fact, the vote couldn’t have happened at all without help from Luis. He was the one you gave the state party email list too and thus the only person who could have made this party vote a reality. And every single member was contacted, not just a small handful of people who agreed with me. So saying this was a unilateral action by me is clearly false.
As for what Luis has done during this vote process that is an issue you need to direct toward him. I don’t make decisions for him and he’s not part of some conspiracy we’ve hatched up to take you and Daud down. He made his own decisions and has his own personal stake in this situation. I’m not responsible for that.
Trying a second (really, third) time to post this as the second, which is stuck in moderation, got pasted poorly and the formatting wasn’t visible before hitting post. Hopefully this helps. Just deleted the second from moderation if this looks better. If not, delete this. You know what it says anyways.
This has been long requested and I’m requesting it again. We need a formal mechanism in our constitution to hold leadership accountable to the membership. I am proposing a member driven impeachment process for all leadership positions. To be clear, just like the first time this was proposed, this is not a call for immediate removal of a party leader. This is to establish a group based process, not a unilateral tool, pending a vote of the membership as per the party’s established proposal process.
As the USTP constitution is the building blocks for each state party constitution, this impeachment process will cover both national and state leadership.
—Proposal text—
To begin an impeachment process a voting member, of either the national or state party depending on context, must formally request one, have a ‘second’ from another voting member, and provide supporting evidence for the accusation. Such evidence may, through the course of the following proceedings, be eventually disproven but that is not a reason to stop the proceedings from going forward through the first phase. Once that is achieved there must be an immediate seven day exposure period to begin phase one, followed by a membership voting period. If the individual is impeached, a second phase proceeding will follow to determine whether they are removed from office, again decided by a membership vote.
The lead of these proceedings must not be the accused and must be a provably neutral party, to the satisfactions of both the accused and accuser.
Reasons for calling an impeachment must be worthy of serious action, such as, but not limited to, harm to the function of the party (eg- election interference, failing to fulfill the duties of the position).
—End of proposal text—
Why is this necessary? Because there are now several examples of leadership, both on the state and national levels, abusing their power and unilaterally acting in ways that are detrimental to the party’s functionality, health, and well being. Examples include repeated problems with a party chairman unilaterally ending elections based on personal preference (or in one case complete misunderstanding of the text), using the party for personal goals when such goals are to the detriment of the party as a whole, banning members based on personal assumptions and self created conspiracy theories with little to no evidence to support the claims, and leaders acting out of “self preservation” rather than party preservation. When a leader, especially a chairman, acts in such a way the membership needs a means to hold them accountable for it. It simply can’t go unchecked or abuses can continue in the future. A process to remove members already exists, and has been used, sometimes inappropriately, in our constitution. Having a group process of accountability for leadership added to our constitution will create necessary balance. Presently the only means of accountability members have is publicly calling out individuals. That isn’t enough. Shaming a leader isn’t likely to stop future problems without additional deterrence like the possibility of removal. This is even more important while there are no elections for leadership positions.
It’s also important for a small party like ours to create guardrails to prevent those gifted with authority from abusing it and killing the party before it can grow and thrive.