Here is a very interesting presentation given at TED by Mark Roth, who has conducted research into ways in which people could be 'de-animated' in order to allow more time for them to be treated if they are suffering from some sort of trauma. Roth uses the example of a heart attack, and says that the methods he's pioneered along with his fellow researches, involves lowering oxygen levels as well as the introduction of very small amounts of hydrogen sulfate to the patient, would allow us the ability to make a trauma patient 'hibernate' so that their metabolic functions slow almost to a halt. This would buy essential time in order to treat the patient before re-animating them. Here is the video -- while Roth may not appear to be the greatest public speaker, the ideas he sets forth are not that complicated, and the huge benefits we could see (and are already seeing) from this research could save thousands of lives:
I admit, when I first saw the title of this video, I was rather skeptical. Is suspended animation really in our grasp? As Roth says, he is not talking about the sort of suspended animation we might be familiar with in science fiction, where astronauts are 'frozen' and re-awakened years later when they reach their destination. Rather as I outlined above, this is a very practical sort of suspended animation which would be used in the medical field. Perhaps this technology is just the beginning of the sort of suspended animation we have seen in science fiction. However what I think is most important is that this research is being done in the medical field -- 'far out' possibilities may be fanciful, but I am at least glad to see some so called 'transhuman' sort of technology like this being used to make our own mortal lives a bit better; to buy one time or to give one a second chance where injuries may be so severe that the patient dies before any treatment can be administered.
Of course, that is the ideal side of this research. The fact is, as Roth mentions (and at least he is open and honest about this) much of his research is funded by DARPA, which researches science and technology for use in military and defense applications. As I said, I think it is wonderful to see that some of these life saving products are already being used and helping people. At the same time, however, I think it's sad that in the world we live in, the organization funneling much of the money for this research is associated with the American military. I know, it is probably better them than some rogue nation, but I just think that it would be nice if we, as a species, could fund research like this without the technology's application for the military being the primary impetus for its development. I suppose that DARPA has the money, and has the interest, in such technology, and it is good that it has been developed so quickly and can now be used to help people all over the world. I just think it would be wonderful top live in a world where technology was not primarily driven by a nation's desire for success in war. Yet, war seems to be a part of life for humans -- especially these days, it seems there is always some armed conflict occurring somewhere in the world -- so perhaps that is too much to hope for.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Frankenstein (My "To Read" List)
As the title suggests, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is now on my 'list of books to read before I die.' I was used to the cheesy, black and white Hollywood re-imaginings of Frankenstein, however we watched an illuminating documentary on the development of the story and how it has since been treated in theater, cinema, and other media.
I want to read this book for two reasons. The first is that, the themes explored in the novel -- one such theme, creating life and then turning away from it, or having it turn away from its creator, is also a common theme in other science fiction stories as well as mythology (like Lucifer or Adam and Eve from the Christian tradition for instance). Others mentioned in the documentary, include the scientists creating a 'monster', something he or she is not prepared for -- opening Pandora's box as it were. These stories, I argue (quite often and vehemently), offer not only the professional scholar but also everyone else the opportunity to gain some exposure to these ideas and issues, which may (in the area of transhumansim) very soon begin to affect us all. The second is simply that I love reading science fiction, so I would like to read this book simply because it belongs to a genre I enjoy anyway, aside from the 'food for thought' science fiction can offer everyone.
I want to read this book for two reasons. The first is that, the themes explored in the novel -- one such theme, creating life and then turning away from it, or having it turn away from its creator, is also a common theme in other science fiction stories as well as mythology (like Lucifer or Adam and Eve from the Christian tradition for instance). Others mentioned in the documentary, include the scientists creating a 'monster', something he or she is not prepared for -- opening Pandora's box as it were. These stories, I argue (quite often and vehemently), offer not only the professional scholar but also everyone else the opportunity to gain some exposure to these ideas and issues, which may (in the area of transhumansim) very soon begin to affect us all. The second is simply that I love reading science fiction, so I would like to read this book simply because it belongs to a genre I enjoy anyway, aside from the 'food for thought' science fiction can offer everyone.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Last Flesh
Since I was ill last seminar, I decided to begin re-reading Christopher Dewdney's Last Flesh. We looked at this book in my Introduction to Philosophy course, and it is nice to be able to come back to it, after I have had a few years to study more philosophy and to learn more about culture, which are important for understanding Dewdney's ideas.
One things I find interesting about Dewdney's writing on the topic of transhumanism, is that he examines the aspects of western culture that he feels are bringing us to a transhuman age, rather than simply the science and technology, which thinkers such as Kurzweil tend to focus on. I think considering culture is rather important, and sadly it's something that tends to be neglected nowadays by scientists and philosophers (in fact one of the only philosophers I've read who pays serious attention to culture was Nietzsche, and I would argue that Nietzsche's thought is very important with regard to transhumanism...so important it may require an honours thesis dedicated to the subject...but I digress).
Further, Dewdney is also cognizant of what he calls a "new hubris" which is occurring amongst some of the scientists and philosophers who could be called transhumanists. This, combined with what he points out concerning the availability and rapid dissemination of misinformation (for instance, he points outs a sizable number of people believe in ghosts, UFOs, etc), leaves us vulnerable to a "new dark age" (something I've often pondered about on my own and which I could probably dedicate a whole entry to). Those are just a few of the ideas that I am re-discovering as I re-read this book, and I shall elucidate on some more of them as I continue to read and as we examine Dewdney's work in class.
One things I find interesting about Dewdney's writing on the topic of transhumanism, is that he examines the aspects of western culture that he feels are bringing us to a transhuman age, rather than simply the science and technology, which thinkers such as Kurzweil tend to focus on. I think considering culture is rather important, and sadly it's something that tends to be neglected nowadays by scientists and philosophers (in fact one of the only philosophers I've read who pays serious attention to culture was Nietzsche, and I would argue that Nietzsche's thought is very important with regard to transhumanism...so important it may require an honours thesis dedicated to the subject...but I digress).
Further, Dewdney is also cognizant of what he calls a "new hubris" which is occurring amongst some of the scientists and philosophers who could be called transhumanists. This, combined with what he points out concerning the availability and rapid dissemination of misinformation (for instance, he points outs a sizable number of people believe in ghosts, UFOs, etc), leaves us vulnerable to a "new dark age" (something I've often pondered about on my own and which I could probably dedicate a whole entry to). Those are just a few of the ideas that I am re-discovering as I re-read this book, and I shall elucidate on some more of them as I continue to read and as we examine Dewdney's work in class.
Food Inc., and how humans use "stuff"
A couple of seminars ago our class watched the film Food Inc. by Robert Kenner. This is a documentary film about how our food production, according to the claims made in the film, is bad for us, bad for animals and plants, and even bad for our wallets. The film has received very positive critical reviews, but of course has also generated its share of controversy among major food producers (or food "engineers," as one might start to call them after seeing this film). I myself felt that it was probably a fairly accurate portrayal of the food production industry and the oligopoly that controls so much of North America's food.
Of course there's no need to get into too much detail about the film in order to see just how it relates to our discussions in seminar. The one thing that stands out to myself the most, then, is simply the way that (if you accept the argument in the film) food producers wish to save time and money at the cost of providing food that actually meets the requirements that food should meet. What I mean is, food ought to satisfy our nutritional requirements while at the same time not bestow upon the eater an excess of things which they do not actually need for their bodies to function. Of course, everyone likes to eat a little junk food now and then. My kickboxing instructor for instance, despite instructing us on how important it is not to eat poorly and to make sure your body gets all of its necessary 'fuel' in the right proportions, maintains that if one were to eat this healthy all the time, eating wouldn't be any fun. So, a little bad food once and a while is fine. However from the impressions I got from those who were interviewed in the film, the food industry seems to be sacrificing the requirements that food ought to meet in order to save themselves time and money.
The decline in product quality to save companies time and money is something that, since I watched the Food Inc, seems to be abundant throughout all sorts of markets today. It is shocking that even the food production industry is suffering from this, but perhaps not so shocking in other industries. One thinker whom we've discussed who immediately comes to mind is Ray Kurzweil, who often demonstrates to his audience the manner in which technology has become more cheap and more powerful as the years go by. But what sounds good to Kurzweil in technology studies would probably seem rather odd in the food industry. Yet, that seems to me to be exactly what is happening -- food is cheaper and more available than ever in the west, however, a lot of these foods are very bad for us, and are having an impact on our health that we are only starting to realize. So perhaps it is not always desirable to have the cheapest, most plentiful sorts of food at our disposal. If I have to pay a little more money to eat meat that has come from a local farm and not a 'factory farm' where the animals are kept in horrible conditions, living in their own excrement, and eating food that their bodies are not naturally evolved to process, then frankly that seems perfectly acceptable to me, even if I can not afford to eat meat as often as I do now (...of course I can make up the difference by eating fewer potato chips and more broccoli, etc).
Of course all of this brings up some deeper philosophical questions, some of which Ben touched on in lecture (which got me thinking more and more about technology and nature). It is difficult enough to draw the line between natural and artificial. Just now, I said I should eat more vegetables than junk food, junk food being highly processed and perhaps even 'unnatural' (a potato chip is not the natural form of a potato). Yet the very potatoes that my crisps come from are not the same potatoes that grew wild before humans began cultivating them. Even our 'natural' potatoes are the product of years of artificial selection -- thus the variety of potatoes one finds at the grocery store today. All this started me thinking that what is natural and what is artificial are two questions that have only one part in the question of technology and nature.
If the artificial (such as domesticated vegetables and animals) has been a part of human life since the agricultural revolution, then I think the next part of the above mention question is to determine how best to incorporate our artificiality with the naturality of nature. Nature is, according to many things we've learned about it so far, simply "stuff" -- matter in motion, that obeys certain laws, as it were -- there's no pre-ordained purpose in anything in nature. This has perhaps been taken as an opportunity for humans to simply do what we will with nature, like using animals as sources of food in factory farms. However we often seem to forget that however purposeless nature can seem, it still seems to form a system of living and non living things of which we are a part, and I would argue that we cannot manipulate that system to the degree that we currently are and expect nothing bad to happen to us, for we are a part of that very system as well. It sounds a little cheesy, but we really are part of a 'circle of life,' and we cannot simply try to remove ourselves from this system by creating these artificial systems that use "stuff" from nature. Of course, nature will probably be fine whatever we do to it...but we may not be fine. We may make ourselves sick (for instance, because of the abundance of e. coli in factory farms, due to the animal's atypical diet of corn) or unhealthy (by eating foods human beings are not evolved to eat like corn products, which are in so many of our processed foods). Thus I would further argue that any sort of 'environmentalism' or 'naturalism' should really come down to what is good for human beings as well as the planet, not simply the planet.
Such are some of my thoughts about how what is presented in Food Inc. relates to the material we've been covering in class. Since this is a rather 'stream of thought' entry, I think I'd like to do some more research into philosophers who talk about science and technology. I've had the good fortune to have studied science and scientists in school (Darwin in this course, for example), and now I believe I would like to learn more about thinkers like Heidegger and Arendt, who discussed how technology affects us at many pointsd in their philosophy (so I hear).
Of course there's no need to get into too much detail about the film in order to see just how it relates to our discussions in seminar. The one thing that stands out to myself the most, then, is simply the way that (if you accept the argument in the film) food producers wish to save time and money at the cost of providing food that actually meets the requirements that food should meet. What I mean is, food ought to satisfy our nutritional requirements while at the same time not bestow upon the eater an excess of things which they do not actually need for their bodies to function. Of course, everyone likes to eat a little junk food now and then. My kickboxing instructor for instance, despite instructing us on how important it is not to eat poorly and to make sure your body gets all of its necessary 'fuel' in the right proportions, maintains that if one were to eat this healthy all the time, eating wouldn't be any fun. So, a little bad food once and a while is fine. However from the impressions I got from those who were interviewed in the film, the food industry seems to be sacrificing the requirements that food ought to meet in order to save themselves time and money.
The decline in product quality to save companies time and money is something that, since I watched the Food Inc, seems to be abundant throughout all sorts of markets today. It is shocking that even the food production industry is suffering from this, but perhaps not so shocking in other industries. One thinker whom we've discussed who immediately comes to mind is Ray Kurzweil, who often demonstrates to his audience the manner in which technology has become more cheap and more powerful as the years go by. But what sounds good to Kurzweil in technology studies would probably seem rather odd in the food industry. Yet, that seems to me to be exactly what is happening -- food is cheaper and more available than ever in the west, however, a lot of these foods are very bad for us, and are having an impact on our health that we are only starting to realize. So perhaps it is not always desirable to have the cheapest, most plentiful sorts of food at our disposal. If I have to pay a little more money to eat meat that has come from a local farm and not a 'factory farm' where the animals are kept in horrible conditions, living in their own excrement, and eating food that their bodies are not naturally evolved to process, then frankly that seems perfectly acceptable to me, even if I can not afford to eat meat as often as I do now (...of course I can make up the difference by eating fewer potato chips and more broccoli, etc).
Of course all of this brings up some deeper philosophical questions, some of which Ben touched on in lecture (which got me thinking more and more about technology and nature). It is difficult enough to draw the line between natural and artificial. Just now, I said I should eat more vegetables than junk food, junk food being highly processed and perhaps even 'unnatural' (a potato chip is not the natural form of a potato). Yet the very potatoes that my crisps come from are not the same potatoes that grew wild before humans began cultivating them. Even our 'natural' potatoes are the product of years of artificial selection -- thus the variety of potatoes one finds at the grocery store today. All this started me thinking that what is natural and what is artificial are two questions that have only one part in the question of technology and nature.
If the artificial (such as domesticated vegetables and animals) has been a part of human life since the agricultural revolution, then I think the next part of the above mention question is to determine how best to incorporate our artificiality with the naturality of nature. Nature is, according to many things we've learned about it so far, simply "stuff" -- matter in motion, that obeys certain laws, as it were -- there's no pre-ordained purpose in anything in nature. This has perhaps been taken as an opportunity for humans to simply do what we will with nature, like using animals as sources of food in factory farms. However we often seem to forget that however purposeless nature can seem, it still seems to form a system of living and non living things of which we are a part, and I would argue that we cannot manipulate that system to the degree that we currently are and expect nothing bad to happen to us, for we are a part of that very system as well. It sounds a little cheesy, but we really are part of a 'circle of life,' and we cannot simply try to remove ourselves from this system by creating these artificial systems that use "stuff" from nature. Of course, nature will probably be fine whatever we do to it...but we may not be fine. We may make ourselves sick (for instance, because of the abundance of e. coli in factory farms, due to the animal's atypical diet of corn) or unhealthy (by eating foods human beings are not evolved to eat like corn products, which are in so many of our processed foods). Thus I would further argue that any sort of 'environmentalism' or 'naturalism' should really come down to what is good for human beings as well as the planet, not simply the planet.
Such are some of my thoughts about how what is presented in Food Inc. relates to the material we've been covering in class. Since this is a rather 'stream of thought' entry, I think I'd like to do some more research into philosophers who talk about science and technology. I've had the good fortune to have studied science and scientists in school (Darwin in this course, for example), and now I believe I would like to learn more about thinkers like Heidegger and Arendt, who discussed how technology affects us at many pointsd in their philosophy (so I hear).
Friday, February 19, 2010
The Dignity of Artificial Life: Animatrix and Caprica
In one of our recent seminars we watched two episodes of The Animatrix, a collection of animated shorts that have to do with the universe of The Matrix films. The two which we watched in this particular class were "Flight of the Osiris" and "The Second Renaissance," and it is the latter about which I've though up a few things to write down in my journal.
"The Second Renaissance" describes the events which led to the war between humans and machines, from the advent of AI, to the creation of a nation of machines, to the destruction of the sky and the creation of the matrix, all important back-story points in The Matrix. However this is also important in one other way: it is important to consider as an example of speculative, science fiction (just like Atwood's Oryx and Crake). Indeed one particular scene from this short stood out the most at me. This was the scene where the audience sees a mob encroaching upon who is apparently a young woman. When the crowd of men begins to attack her, gradually, as more and more pieces are torn off, we see that it is not a human woman, but a robot who simply appears as one. As the mob continues to beat 'her,' we hear the robot's final words, shouted over and over at the attackers, "I'm real!"
So, that started me thinking about what I realized when I was writing my previous entry on Julian Savulescu, namely, that the question 'is humanity unfit for life?' has the potential to become a very divisive question the moment 'post-humanity' comes into being. I suppose this scene struck me as this possible divisiveness playing itself out. Granted, many other scenes in "The Second Renaissance" portray equally divisive possibilities, for instance, the competitive edge the robots have in world economic affairs produces animosity amongst the humans which reminds one of Moravec's point -- which Bill Joy also mentions -- about how even if artificial life were benevolent, its vast superiority at doing whatever robots do may simply push us, who are no longer fit to compete, out of the struggle for life (this has already happened to a large extent within the manufacturing industry). However out of all these other scenes, the one recounted above stands in my mind the clearest -- I think it is because of that machine's dying words.
All of these things in turn got me thinking even further on the matter of how on earth it could be possible for humans and artificial lifeforms to co-exist amicably. After all, all of this dark science fiction stuff aside, humans have had a pretty lousy time just getting along with other humans! (Although perhaps we've made some larger strides in the right direction these past few centuries?) In any case, if one is cognizant of how different human cultures and nations have had such a time of co-existing peacefully, then one doesn't need to read Bill Joy or Margaret Atwood to know that such a post-human future could pose some significant obstacles for the human race to contend with.
One glimmer of optimism comes from the ironically dark world in which Battlestar Galactica, which I've mentioned before, takes place. In a new series entitled Caprica, which recounts the creation of the Cylons -- robot soldiers developed for the military who rebelled against their masters -- and the war between human and Cylon, the question of the dignity of artificial life is constantly being explored. Much of this centres around a digital copy of a young girl, whose creator was killed in an act of religious terrorism early on in the story. This girl's avatar eventually finds its way, through a rather devious scheme on the part of her father and his new lawyer/mafia friend whose daughter and wife were killed in the same bombing (both of whom wanting to see their loved ones again), into one of these robot soldier prototypes. The result is essentially a new being, made of the original designer of the avatar, the avatar itself, and the robotic body, operating in unison. This robot is carted around and worked on as if it were a piece of simple machinery, but the audience is constantly shown this treatment, not from a machine's perspective, but from a human's -- the avatar of one Zoe Greystone. Such are the opportunities to explore the possible nature of artificial life, and reasons to accord it some measure of dignity as a type of life-form, in Caprica: many of the characters view this 'person' simply for what they see on the outside, a piece of machinery, a 'tool'; others see it/her as a 'work of art' and treat it with the respect they feel 'it' deserves'.
All in all, I felt that watching The Animatrix was a good springboard for launching myself into a meditation about transhumanism(s). Indeed, much of the science fiction we've been able to look at in this seminar, as well as some of the works I've encountered on my own, tie in very well with what we've been learning from the more scholarly transhumanist thinkers, especially in all the explorations these authors and thinkers make, about how we might co-exist or fail to co-exist with a post-human species of some kind. I think how we regard these possible future forms of life will probably have some influence on how they come to regard us, so devoting some study toward the question of the dignity of artificial life might be very worth our while indeed.
"The Second Renaissance" describes the events which led to the war between humans and machines, from the advent of AI, to the creation of a nation of machines, to the destruction of the sky and the creation of the matrix, all important back-story points in The Matrix. However this is also important in one other way: it is important to consider as an example of speculative, science fiction (just like Atwood's Oryx and Crake). Indeed one particular scene from this short stood out the most at me. This was the scene where the audience sees a mob encroaching upon who is apparently a young woman. When the crowd of men begins to attack her, gradually, as more and more pieces are torn off, we see that it is not a human woman, but a robot who simply appears as one. As the mob continues to beat 'her,' we hear the robot's final words, shouted over and over at the attackers, "I'm real!"
So, that started me thinking about what I realized when I was writing my previous entry on Julian Savulescu, namely, that the question 'is humanity unfit for life?' has the potential to become a very divisive question the moment 'post-humanity' comes into being. I suppose this scene struck me as this possible divisiveness playing itself out. Granted, many other scenes in "The Second Renaissance" portray equally divisive possibilities, for instance, the competitive edge the robots have in world economic affairs produces animosity amongst the humans which reminds one of Moravec's point -- which Bill Joy also mentions -- about how even if artificial life were benevolent, its vast superiority at doing whatever robots do may simply push us, who are no longer fit to compete, out of the struggle for life (this has already happened to a large extent within the manufacturing industry). However out of all these other scenes, the one recounted above stands in my mind the clearest -- I think it is because of that machine's dying words.
All of these things in turn got me thinking even further on the matter of how on earth it could be possible for humans and artificial lifeforms to co-exist amicably. After all, all of this dark science fiction stuff aside, humans have had a pretty lousy time just getting along with other humans! (Although perhaps we've made some larger strides in the right direction these past few centuries?) In any case, if one is cognizant of how different human cultures and nations have had such a time of co-existing peacefully, then one doesn't need to read Bill Joy or Margaret Atwood to know that such a post-human future could pose some significant obstacles for the human race to contend with.
One glimmer of optimism comes from the ironically dark world in which Battlestar Galactica, which I've mentioned before, takes place. In a new series entitled Caprica, which recounts the creation of the Cylons -- robot soldiers developed for the military who rebelled against their masters -- and the war between human and Cylon, the question of the dignity of artificial life is constantly being explored. Much of this centres around a digital copy of a young girl, whose creator was killed in an act of religious terrorism early on in the story. This girl's avatar eventually finds its way, through a rather devious scheme on the part of her father and his new lawyer/mafia friend whose daughter and wife were killed in the same bombing (both of whom wanting to see their loved ones again), into one of these robot soldier prototypes. The result is essentially a new being, made of the original designer of the avatar, the avatar itself, and the robotic body, operating in unison. This robot is carted around and worked on as if it were a piece of simple machinery, but the audience is constantly shown this treatment, not from a machine's perspective, but from a human's -- the avatar of one Zoe Greystone. Such are the opportunities to explore the possible nature of artificial life, and reasons to accord it some measure of dignity as a type of life-form, in Caprica: many of the characters view this 'person' simply for what they see on the outside, a piece of machinery, a 'tool'; others see it/her as a 'work of art' and treat it with the respect they feel 'it' deserves'.
All in all, I felt that watching The Animatrix was a good springboard for launching myself into a meditation about transhumanism(s). Indeed, much of the science fiction we've been able to look at in this seminar, as well as some of the works I've encountered on my own, tie in very well with what we've been learning from the more scholarly transhumanist thinkers, especially in all the explorations these authors and thinkers make, about how we might co-exist or fail to co-exist with a post-human species of some kind. I think how we regard these possible future forms of life will probably have some influence on how they come to regard us, so devoting some study toward the question of the dignity of artificial life might be very worth our while indeed.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The Singularity as religion
I was working on a entry on this very video, and then before I finished, I had yet another occasion to reflect on it because we watched it in seminar. Id like to make a few small notes on this video, since I never got my last entry finished, and since this is one of those topics I really need to get writing about. The video:
The question, in a nutshell, is whether or not 'the singularity' is a religious movement within the scientific community, which is typically seen as 'cold' and atheistic'? Kurzweil indicates that it isn't, because Kurzweil claims he is not motivated by the same things as religion is. Instead he says that he was merely interested in technology trends, and that his ideas about the singularity grew from there. Although, he concedes, his ideas on the (apparently) coming singularity do indeed fulfill some of the things religion sought to fulfill: a rational means to forestall death (science and technology) instead of rationalizing death as a positive thing when to rations means around it could be found (religion).
I do not agree with Ray Kurzweil's predictions with regard to the singularity, but I do agree that science, and seeking to understand, can provide a sort of fulfillment that I can only best describe as 'spiritual' -- spiritual in a 'Carl Sagan' or a 'Friedrich Nietzsche' sort of way. However I also think that religion and spirituality are pretty obviously two very different things. Also, Kurzweil himself seems to confuse the issue with the words he uses; he claims "the singularity doesn't start with religion," yet his own writings are replete with religious terminology. The subtitle of the book we read in seminar is "When humans transcend biology." Kurzweil could have chosen any number of more philosophical words here if he wanted do, for as he says at the outset, "[the singularity] has philosophical implications." Perhaps, "when humans overcome biology?" Don't get me wrong, I have no problem if a scholar wishes to frame their system of thought with such terms as this -- just as long as that scholar at least acknowledges what they are doing.
The questioner then repeats his question -- actually, after watching the video a few times, I'm beginning to wonder if the questioner could have thought of a better way to put his questions -- in any case, Kurzweil repeats his position, adding that religion is pre-scientific. I remember there was a little disagreement about whether science is a religious activity or not in seminar, but I agree, science is not religious: indeed even the very first scientists, like the presocratic philosopher Thales, sought to explain nature (phusis) without recourse to the gods. So my problem isn't so much with Kurzweil's claim that religion is pre-scientific. Rather it is with his claim that the idea of the singularity is scientific.
We've all studied and talking about this quite a bit in seminar so I don't need to go into too much detail here: suffice to say that after getting to study Kurzweil's ideas a little, it seems to be the case that his singularity idea is just a very big abstraction on our science and technology, out into the universe and the great metaphysical beyond of the immense past and the distant future. To sum it up, I think David Hume would have a field day with Kurzweil's book (might he have committed it to the flames because of its sophistry and illusion?). Granted Kurzweil's research into technological and scientific progress within recent history seems very sound, I just don't believe his singularity idea follows from this -- the connection between the two is a vague abstraction as I so far understand it.
So, to conclude: is religion pre-scientific? Sort of -- at the very least, science, as it began, was 'post-religion'; but is the singularity itself a scientific idea? I think Kurzweil would like to think so, although I certainly have some disagreements with regard to that.
The question, in a nutshell, is whether or not 'the singularity' is a religious movement within the scientific community, which is typically seen as 'cold' and atheistic'? Kurzweil indicates that it isn't, because Kurzweil claims he is not motivated by the same things as religion is. Instead he says that he was merely interested in technology trends, and that his ideas about the singularity grew from there. Although, he concedes, his ideas on the (apparently) coming singularity do indeed fulfill some of the things religion sought to fulfill: a rational means to forestall death (science and technology) instead of rationalizing death as a positive thing when to rations means around it could be found (religion).
I do not agree with Ray Kurzweil's predictions with regard to the singularity, but I do agree that science, and seeking to understand, can provide a sort of fulfillment that I can only best describe as 'spiritual' -- spiritual in a 'Carl Sagan' or a 'Friedrich Nietzsche' sort of way. However I also think that religion and spirituality are pretty obviously two very different things. Also, Kurzweil himself seems to confuse the issue with the words he uses; he claims "the singularity doesn't start with religion," yet his own writings are replete with religious terminology. The subtitle of the book we read in seminar is "When humans transcend biology." Kurzweil could have chosen any number of more philosophical words here if he wanted do, for as he says at the outset, "[the singularity] has philosophical implications." Perhaps, "when humans overcome biology?" Don't get me wrong, I have no problem if a scholar wishes to frame their system of thought with such terms as this -- just as long as that scholar at least acknowledges what they are doing.
The questioner then repeats his question -- actually, after watching the video a few times, I'm beginning to wonder if the questioner could have thought of a better way to put his questions -- in any case, Kurzweil repeats his position, adding that religion is pre-scientific. I remember there was a little disagreement about whether science is a religious activity or not in seminar, but I agree, science is not religious: indeed even the very first scientists, like the presocratic philosopher Thales, sought to explain nature (phusis) without recourse to the gods. So my problem isn't so much with Kurzweil's claim that religion is pre-scientific. Rather it is with his claim that the idea of the singularity is scientific.
We've all studied and talking about this quite a bit in seminar so I don't need to go into too much detail here: suffice to say that after getting to study Kurzweil's ideas a little, it seems to be the case that his singularity idea is just a very big abstraction on our science and technology, out into the universe and the great metaphysical beyond of the immense past and the distant future. To sum it up, I think David Hume would have a field day with Kurzweil's book (might he have committed it to the flames because of its sophistry and illusion?). Granted Kurzweil's research into technological and scientific progress within recent history seems very sound, I just don't believe his singularity idea follows from this -- the connection between the two is a vague abstraction as I so far understand it.
So, to conclude: is religion pre-scientific? Sort of -- at the very least, science, as it began, was 'post-religion'; but is the singularity itself a scientific idea? I think Kurzweil would like to think so, although I certainly have some disagreements with regard to that.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Is humanity biologically unfit for life?
That is the question which Julian Savulescu, who is "Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, Head of the Melbourne–Oxford Stem Cell Collaboration, and a former editor of the prestigious Journal of Medical Ethics," asks in a talk given at the 2009 Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, Australia, entitled "Unfit for Life: genetically enhance humanity or face extinction." (More Info) I'll admit that the first time I watched this video, I was rather taken aback by Savulescu's rather cavalier attitude regarding his very own ideas about how to solve the problems humanity faces in the near future. However watching it a second time has allowed me to better reflect on the talk. I'll make some comments now which I've made out of the notes I took while watching Savulescu's lecture.
This time, I noted what it said in the description next to the video on the web page upon which this video is posted: "[Savulescu] argues that humans' biology and psychology are unfit for the kind of society we live in and we must either alter our political institutions, severely restrain our technology or change our nature. Or face annihilation by our own design." Upon my first watching I was, as I said, a little dumbstruck (this is a rather dense presentation after all), but I decided to keep these words in mind -- that it could be all of humanity and not one particular element of it that may be unfit for life. This offered a promising freedom from the usual connotations of Nazism which can follow from the words of transhumanists, and so I decided to make sure that Savulescu's speech really was consistent with the words in the video description. Maybe, after all, all of this transhumanism(s) business isn't that dark and scary at all when it comes to our future?
Thus I set down for my re-watching of this video. Savulescu begins with some good ol' Stephen Hawking, who has said that between all sorts of threats such as asteroids, nuclear war, climate change, et cetera, that humanity's best chance of long term survival survival is to spread out into space. "However," he continued, "perhaps genetic engineering could be used to make us wiser and less aggressive" in the mean time. Beginning with Hawking's words, Savulescu begins his argument: humanity itself simply isn't biologically fit for the life in the society we would imagine ourselves living in. Upon my second watching -- and thus the relief from the dumbfoundedness of my first watching -- I realized Savulescu seemed to be stressing 'fitness' in a Darwinian sense. That is, we are not well adapted to our environment. What is our environment? To Savulescu, it could be represented in a triangle made up of Radical technological Power, Liberal Democracy, and Human Moral Limitations -- we exist, with our natural moral limitations, in a tenuous relationship with our rapidly growing technology and our liberal democratic way of life. So much for our environment, and if we find ourselves unfit for life in such an environment, then something must change. Savulescu goes on to argue that humanity might opt to change itself, by altering our genes to eliminate aggression and instill altruism -- to effect our own evolution, in an environment we've partially created (liberal democracy and our technology are both obviously human inventions). However if we've had a had in created our own environment, I cannot help but stop and ask, why can we not change our environment rather than ourselves? I shall return to this in a moment...
Savulescu then goes through a number of examples of how humanity is unfit for life in our current environment. In fact his examples all seem to illustrate something else, beyond our unfitness for the current situation -- indeed he argues we are 'stuck in the past' -- humanity is perhaps, very well evolved for life in small, hunter gatherer societies, but not for life in a liberal democratic society that possesses high science and technology. One example in particular which I shall discuss is that of love. In so doing perhaps my feelings about Savulescu's lecture might become less ambiguous.
Savulescu puts forward the idea that humans are simply not well adapted for life long monogamous relationships -- in other words, we're not fit to live up to the idea of love that has come down through the ages to us in religious institutions, et cetera. To illustrate this he provides the audience with a number of statistics and facts: 50% of marriages end in divorce, across cultures; our genes tend to make it so that we are not pre-disposed to long term monogamous relationships, and so on. If we want to live up to/fulfill our own ideas about love, then humanity requires a change in its basic nature, Savulescu continues. A change, he says, which we are now capable of making thanks to the continually advancing science and technology of genetics. This is the point at which I once again find myself stopping and asking, "Why change our genes? Why not change our ideas about ourselves?"
Take the example of love once again: if we find ourselves unable to live up to our own ideas about love, then perhaps what is needed is not to change ourselves but to simply change our ideas. Indeed, what is so bad about being wrong? If indeed it is the case that humanity is not well suited for life long monogamous relationships, then perhaps our ideas of love ought to become a little more flexible in order to accommodate relationships that could be considered more akin to our 'natural' tendencies with regard to pair bonding and reproduction? (Of course, this idea has implications of its own with regard to Savulescu's triangle, as we'll see).
Savulescu continues with a number of other examples: firstly he discusses the danger he sees us facing in the near future, where "psychopaths" (Savulescu never clarifies exactly what he means when he talks about "terrorists, psychopaths and sociopaths" -- although I tend to think that he means people like Crake from Atwood's Oryx and Crake), combined with the ease of producing lethal weapons (Savulescu notes it is now possible to manufacture a super lethal strain of human small pox, and that there is also enough insecure fissile material in the world for 20,000 nuclear bombs) spells significant reason for alarm, so he says. This, combined with our natural moral limitations -- in other words, because we function best in small, hunter gatherer societies of about 150 or less -- means that we are unlikely to survive the next century. He cites a number of authorities on this including Astronomer Royal Martin Reese, who puts our chances of surviving the next 100 years at 50%.
This, along with the fact that our previously mentioned natural limitations with regard to morality, also means we are not suited for the sort of liberal democratic society we want to live in. Indeed if everyone on the planet were to assume the same standard of living enjoyed in the West, we would quickly use up every resource on the Earth! So what is the best solution to all of these impending problems? Once again, it is to change our genes in order that we might make ourselves "wiser and less aggressive." However I once again stress the importance of changing one's ideas instead of changing one's genes: perhaps we ought to consider changing some of the ways we live? Who knows? Savulescu argues that we would all have to undergo a significant reduction in our standards of living and well as forsake some of our liberal democratic values, but this does not have to mean we'd become like some kind of Orwellian global commune. Granted, we probably would have to all undergo a drop in material wealth, or have to give up meat -- but if this were done democratically to preserve our human rights and freedoms, then would this not be an expression of freedom rather than a stifling of it? I admit, it does sound a little far fetched, but I think that the day when all of us can agree to be more responsible toward each other, and toward the planet, will be a welcome one, and a step forward for the human race. In any case, an idea such as this can always be changed. We can change our minds, but once we change our genes, those changes start to become a permanent part of the species, so I would argue that we shouldn't be as hasty as Savulescu thinks when it comes to making such changes.
That is pretty much all I have to say on Savulescu for now, although I realize, as I've mentioned, that his lecture his a dense one. I could probably write a whole thesis on these ideas if I wanted to be that meticulous, however I shall just say one more thing (I will return to look at the Q & A section on part 2 of the lecture, since it is interesting and deserves some of its own treatment in another entry). The question Savulescu asks, "is humanity unfit for life/the future?" seems a harmless enough question while we are still confined to the world of philosophical speculation and technological and scientific estimation -- to my mind, at least. However, I offer this: as soon as a 'neo-human' exists, this question will be yanked from the realm of speculation and estimation and into our real, practical, human affairs; as soon as a number of neo-humans exist -- a species of neo-humans, if you will -- then the question "is humanity unfit for the future?" has the potential to become one of the most divisive questions ever asked. Which way could all of this go? Will post-humanity live along side humanity in peace? Or will we simply be surpassed by a superior -- a more fit -- species of our own design? Thus, the very means Savulescu would have us take to avoid our own demise may also, ironically, bring in about, in the worst of all possible scenarios.
This time, I noted what it said in the description next to the video on the web page upon which this video is posted: "[Savulescu] argues that humans' biology and psychology are unfit for the kind of society we live in and we must either alter our political institutions, severely restrain our technology or change our nature. Or face annihilation by our own design." Upon my first watching I was, as I said, a little dumbstruck (this is a rather dense presentation after all), but I decided to keep these words in mind -- that it could be all of humanity and not one particular element of it that may be unfit for life. This offered a promising freedom from the usual connotations of Nazism which can follow from the words of transhumanists, and so I decided to make sure that Savulescu's speech really was consistent with the words in the video description. Maybe, after all, all of this transhumanism(s) business isn't that dark and scary at all when it comes to our future?
Thus I set down for my re-watching of this video. Savulescu begins with some good ol' Stephen Hawking, who has said that between all sorts of threats such as asteroids, nuclear war, climate change, et cetera, that humanity's best chance of long term survival survival is to spread out into space. "However," he continued, "perhaps genetic engineering could be used to make us wiser and less aggressive" in the mean time. Beginning with Hawking's words, Savulescu begins his argument: humanity itself simply isn't biologically fit for the life in the society we would imagine ourselves living in. Upon my second watching -- and thus the relief from the dumbfoundedness of my first watching -- I realized Savulescu seemed to be stressing 'fitness' in a Darwinian sense. That is, we are not well adapted to our environment. What is our environment? To Savulescu, it could be represented in a triangle made up of Radical technological Power, Liberal Democracy, and Human Moral Limitations -- we exist, with our natural moral limitations, in a tenuous relationship with our rapidly growing technology and our liberal democratic way of life. So much for our environment, and if we find ourselves unfit for life in such an environment, then something must change. Savulescu goes on to argue that humanity might opt to change itself, by altering our genes to eliminate aggression and instill altruism -- to effect our own evolution, in an environment we've partially created (liberal democracy and our technology are both obviously human inventions). However if we've had a had in created our own environment, I cannot help but stop and ask, why can we not change our environment rather than ourselves? I shall return to this in a moment...
Savulescu then goes through a number of examples of how humanity is unfit for life in our current environment. In fact his examples all seem to illustrate something else, beyond our unfitness for the current situation -- indeed he argues we are 'stuck in the past' -- humanity is perhaps, very well evolved for life in small, hunter gatherer societies, but not for life in a liberal democratic society that possesses high science and technology. One example in particular which I shall discuss is that of love. In so doing perhaps my feelings about Savulescu's lecture might become less ambiguous.
Savulescu puts forward the idea that humans are simply not well adapted for life long monogamous relationships -- in other words, we're not fit to live up to the idea of love that has come down through the ages to us in religious institutions, et cetera. To illustrate this he provides the audience with a number of statistics and facts: 50% of marriages end in divorce, across cultures; our genes tend to make it so that we are not pre-disposed to long term monogamous relationships, and so on. If we want to live up to/fulfill our own ideas about love, then humanity requires a change in its basic nature, Savulescu continues. A change, he says, which we are now capable of making thanks to the continually advancing science and technology of genetics. This is the point at which I once again find myself stopping and asking, "Why change our genes? Why not change our ideas about ourselves?"
Take the example of love once again: if we find ourselves unable to live up to our own ideas about love, then perhaps what is needed is not to change ourselves but to simply change our ideas. Indeed, what is so bad about being wrong? If indeed it is the case that humanity is not well suited for life long monogamous relationships, then perhaps our ideas of love ought to become a little more flexible in order to accommodate relationships that could be considered more akin to our 'natural' tendencies with regard to pair bonding and reproduction? (Of course, this idea has implications of its own with regard to Savulescu's triangle, as we'll see).
Savulescu continues with a number of other examples: firstly he discusses the danger he sees us facing in the near future, where "psychopaths" (Savulescu never clarifies exactly what he means when he talks about "terrorists, psychopaths and sociopaths" -- although I tend to think that he means people like Crake from Atwood's Oryx and Crake), combined with the ease of producing lethal weapons (Savulescu notes it is now possible to manufacture a super lethal strain of human small pox, and that there is also enough insecure fissile material in the world for 20,000 nuclear bombs) spells significant reason for alarm, so he says. This, combined with our natural moral limitations -- in other words, because we function best in small, hunter gatherer societies of about 150 or less -- means that we are unlikely to survive the next century. He cites a number of authorities on this including Astronomer Royal Martin Reese, who puts our chances of surviving the next 100 years at 50%.
This, along with the fact that our previously mentioned natural limitations with regard to morality, also means we are not suited for the sort of liberal democratic society we want to live in. Indeed if everyone on the planet were to assume the same standard of living enjoyed in the West, we would quickly use up every resource on the Earth! So what is the best solution to all of these impending problems? Once again, it is to change our genes in order that we might make ourselves "wiser and less aggressive." However I once again stress the importance of changing one's ideas instead of changing one's genes: perhaps we ought to consider changing some of the ways we live? Who knows? Savulescu argues that we would all have to undergo a significant reduction in our standards of living and well as forsake some of our liberal democratic values, but this does not have to mean we'd become like some kind of Orwellian global commune. Granted, we probably would have to all undergo a drop in material wealth, or have to give up meat -- but if this were done democratically to preserve our human rights and freedoms, then would this not be an expression of freedom rather than a stifling of it? I admit, it does sound a little far fetched, but I think that the day when all of us can agree to be more responsible toward each other, and toward the planet, will be a welcome one, and a step forward for the human race. In any case, an idea such as this can always be changed. We can change our minds, but once we change our genes, those changes start to become a permanent part of the species, so I would argue that we shouldn't be as hasty as Savulescu thinks when it comes to making such changes.
That is pretty much all I have to say on Savulescu for now, although I realize, as I've mentioned, that his lecture his a dense one. I could probably write a whole thesis on these ideas if I wanted to be that meticulous, however I shall just say one more thing (I will return to look at the Q & A section on part 2 of the lecture, since it is interesting and deserves some of its own treatment in another entry). The question Savulescu asks, "is humanity unfit for life/the future?" seems a harmless enough question while we are still confined to the world of philosophical speculation and technological and scientific estimation -- to my mind, at least. However, I offer this: as soon as a 'neo-human' exists, this question will be yanked from the realm of speculation and estimation and into our real, practical, human affairs; as soon as a number of neo-humans exist -- a species of neo-humans, if you will -- then the question "is humanity unfit for the future?" has the potential to become one of the most divisive questions ever asked. Which way could all of this go? Will post-humanity live along side humanity in peace? Or will we simply be surpassed by a superior -- a more fit -- species of our own design? Thus, the very means Savulescu would have us take to avoid our own demise may also, ironically, bring in about, in the worst of all possible scenarios.
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