I was watching a show on the History Channel on Star Trek’s influence on scientific research– there’s a guy in Britain, as I recall, who is trying to connect everyone to the Internet, and engage in cyborging, etc.
This is, actually, rather more widespread an ideal than one would think, particularly among both neo-libs and communistic types; theoretically, a non-intrusive connection would “benefit everyone” and allow complete connection without the need of a government to work together… theoretically.
I think it’s a pile of horseshit, naturally– and will happily proclaim my reactionaryness about keeping my bits and pieces together as God intended them (flesh, unless they fail first).

gg- yeah I share your concerns. I also strongly- STRONGLY dislike the idea of “life extension.” There comes a point when it’s time to fuckin’ die, people. Don’t prolong life more than you have to- gently pass away and let new generations take over.

Oh, and by “connect to the Internet�, I mean “In their brains, via ’borging�.
Also– cybernetic limbs and organs are all well and good, though I severely dislike the idea of people making themselves �better� by grafting electronics onto themselves in place of otherwise fine fleshy bits. I also rather shudder to think about the application of Enlightenment “perfectibility of man� ideals in this sort of debate; not that I’m shy about my belief that the Enlightenment is an overrated intellectual period, but it is one of the most influential parts of human epistemology and ethics (rightly or wrongly), and the Materialist Ethic can be applied in pretty scary ways– and this is one of them. It’s concerning, but a ways off, probably (we’ll be the grouchy old conservatives by that point, no doubt).

I do. I mean, it’s just another application of technology to improve quality of life.

Edmund- Now that I think of it, the first place I’d ever encountered transhumanism was over at Yglesias’ place. Here’s what a guy who calls himself “transhumanist” says about the future:

As for nuclear and biological warfare, they are insignificant to the survival of the species, although in the worst case scenarios they could impede technological progress sufficiently to slow down the Transhuman ascension (something we Transhumans DO intend to do something about.) They are unlikely to eliminate technological progress, and might in fact speed it up.

Finally, “humanity” is not going to survive regardless of the technological developments. “Humanity” needs NOT to survive – it needs to be replaced. And it will be, in this century. “Humanity” will not colonize space, because “colonization” is a human concept, not a Transhuman one. In fact, “survival of the species” is mostly a human concept, not a Transhuman one. Transhumans seek personal survival – they only care about species survival to the degree that the species is necessary for technological progress prior to their own ascension. After that, they can handle their own survival quite nicely, thank you.

Transhumans are as likely to be concerned about their “species” as the average sci-fi dragon – let alone humans.

Bottom line: technology WILL solve all social problems without “collective action” – except “collective action” in the sense of the general focused pursuit of science and technology – which is not what liberals are talking about.

Does this not sound like the rantings of a total fucking lunatic to you? Or am I missing something?

I miss Shadowrun, too, Glenn.

Long live the new flesh!

The fact is my reality is already 100% video/Republican hallucination.

I have learned to learn to live in a very strange new world. Whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience. Therefore, television/Republican talking points is reality, and reality is less than television/Republican talking points.

Sadly, No!, I’m so glad you came to me….

Gary- you’ve just explained Glenn Reynolds to me. Thx.

I used to sort of subscribe to transhumanism, but it was just because I’m scared of dying. And I didnt get it from Star Trek, I got it from Arthur C. Clarke.

But like with Randianism, people grow out of such things. Normal people. Then there are others…

I think now that technology is much more likely to be the death of us.

Anyway, personal immortality is the most megalomanical concept ever, I guess it goes without saying. But more to the point, it’s just a thumb in the eye to the concept of evolution, which most of these crackpots do believe in (to their credit).

A desire for the immortality of the species, however, is very compatible with evolution. No, not the act of it (extinction is the norm), but the desire for it. You’re born to replicate and die, replaced by your offspring, so that the species might persevere and better adapt — which is pretty sad for the great meaning of life argument, but there it is. It’s not much of a purpose but that’s what we’re wired to do. But personal immortality renders the replication part moot — immortals will eventually choke the resources of their children^20, but then that’s many generations down the road, and so it’s no great surprise, this resource-war against the future, coming from idiots who sell out their children and grandchildren’s welfare for the sake of tax cuts and spending on big wonderful bombs.

Sorry Brad, this stuff is real. Ray Kurzweil has been writing about this for years, and while some of his predictions are probably overblown, he makes a incredibly convincing case in his latest book, The Singularity is Near.

Basically, his argument is that technological progress is exponential rather than linear. We’re near the “knee of the curve” of technological growth, and things are just starting to take off. As computers become more and more powerful, they in turn allow us to build even more powerful computers, yadda yadda yadda…artificial intelligence.

It’s a shame this idea is being co-opted by nut-bags like Reynolds, because it’s an incredibly progressive and humanistic idea. If anything’s going to solve our energy and overpopulation problems, it’s technology.

And I have to say, this is just plain elitist bullshit:

InstaPundit resides in a world where technology can be harnessed by any semi-literate with a PC. His hero is the guy without any expertise who can see through the palaver of elites. There’s no need to accumulate expertise through years of study or experience, because the Internet has become the great repository of knowledge and experience.

Bloggers of all people should have faith in the democratizing power of the Internet. It wasn’t the World Wide Web that created 30 million brainwashed wingnut assholes — it was talk radio.

I used to sort of subscribe to transhumanism, but it was just because I’m scared of dying. And I didnt get it from Star Trek, I got it from Arthur C. Clarke.

I want to die. Not right now, but at some point.

Having limited time on this mortal coil is a terrific motivator. If I lived forever, I’d never feel motivated to do anything. I’d just sit around on the couch scratching my robo-nuts and eating Crisco. Which come to think of it is probably the dream life for a lot of these cybergeeks anyway…

Aren’t you the same people who make all the snarky remarks about Ann Coulter being transhuman? And you talk about “puppy execution” like it’s a BAD thing.

Had a stroke when I was two. Now my left hand/arm don’t work too well.

What’s not too well? Well, if someone told me to stick `em up, I could do that. But if he told me to drop the gun in my left hand, that might be difficult.

A cybernetic hand, controlled by implants in my brain? Sign me up! And if I could use that for other things, too, like maybe driving a car? I’d be all for that, too.

But count me out of the digital copy of my brain shit.

I used to sort of subscribe to transhumanism, but it was just because I’m scared of dying. And I didnt get it from Star Trek, I got it from Arthur C. Clarke.

I wasn’t afraid to let my body die.

Aren’t you the same people who make all the snarky remarks about Ann Coulter being transhuman?

That’s transexual.

Buck- you could take that passage as elitist. I do not.

The point of that graf isn’t that bloggers are stupid- it’s that the bloggers REYNOLDS MINDLESSLY AND UNQUESTIONINGLY LINKS TO are stupid.

Good writers- writers who actually give a damn about having well-reasoned opinions- are constantly thinking through their positions, questioning their assumptions and making cases that stand up to scrutiny. Reynolds is the opposite. He links to FreedomPundit’s exclusive report about an Iraqi school being painted and goes “Heh.”

Rosen thinks- correctly in my view- that good writing and thinking require lots of work, research and peer review. For me, the wonder of the blogosphere is that people like Brad DeLong, Juan Cole and Glenn Greenwald have found an outlet for their ideas that wasn’t provided by the mainstream press. Indeed, when people like Cole go head-to-head with mainstream pundits like Goldberg… well, the results ain’t pretty.

Transhumanism sounds like an old, discarded, made-up den Bestism.

Transhumanism sounds like an old, discarded, made-up den Bestism.

Whatever happened to den Beste anyway? Is he still reviewing anime?

Brad,

Point taken. But what I’m saying is that these hordes of people pumping up Reynolds’ page views are the ones who were already brainwashed by years of the one-way conduit that is Rush et al. When they got online, they were already well-trained in being to be spoon-fed.

The next generation is growing up with easy access to information, and despite the large number of crap-speweing blogs out there, the truth is just too easy to find out for that stuff to take hold long term. Despite growing up with a racist asshole of a father (in Sheboygan, WI of all places), my sisters have a rather dim view of his opinions, mostly because they’ve been surfing the Web willy-nilly since around the time they were learning to read.

Instapundit and Malkin maybe be rolling in vistors now, but I have faith that as more and more people learn to [gasp!] use Google, those who aren’t already lost causes will find their way to places that actually traffic in verifiable reality.

Of course, I’ll probably still be singing this same song when Jeff Goldstein‘s commandos come breaking down my door.

I’m converting. I could really use a pair of robot arms and some death-ray eyes.

I don’t think Instahack was who Teilhjard de Chardin had in mind when he wrote of Omega Point.

I’m converting. I could really use a pair of robot arms and some death-ray eyes.

Oh, totally! Yeah, I need the arm, but I think that I could convince them to throw in heat vision. Well, assuming that I get a Tleilaxu doctor.

A lot of bait-and-switch goes on in this trans-human, post-biological extropian line of rhetoric.

I mean, take the case of nanotechnology. When Drexler coined the term, he was quite specific about what it meant – it was going to be the application of sensible engineering principles at the molecular level. All that useful stuff – proteins and cellulose and whathaveyou – were being assembled in cells in an old-fashioned biological way, and it wasn’t good enough for Drexler. Too messy, too unsystematic. It relies on random motion to get amino acids where they were needed, when any rational system would use assembly lines. Blissfully unaware of the limitations of quantum uncertainties or communication bandwidths (not to mention thermodynamics), he seriously thought that 4 billion years of evolution was no match for him when it came to designing systems for molecular-level assembly.

Anyway, the word ‘nanotechnology’ meant something then, even if the concept was barking mad. And it was too good a label to abandon, even when the infinite nuttiness of Drexler’s great notion became apparent, so now it’s one of those free-floating signifiers that you throw around to show that you are a Progressive Thinker, and a member of the Party of the Future. Suffice to say that whenever a clever micro-miniature technology or slightly new material is described as ‘nanotech’, it is likely to differ in several crucial ways from Drexler’s definition of nanotech, one of which is that it probably works. I don’t know what Drexler thinks about this redefinition; perhaps his acolytes keep him shackled.

I’m not sure where this line of argument is going… only to say, Don’t put money into those cryogenics shares.

And it speaks volumes that Ray Kurzweil has been ‘writing for years’ about the impending nature of the singularity.

Remember when Gavin said “We’ll downplay the New York Post hit piece on Jerome”

Not a stunning statement, as Markos ordered the liberal blogosphere to coverup the Armstrong story, which is why no major media outlet is covering this news.

Anyways. I don’t expect you all to cover the fact that WMDs were found in Iraq.

Just keep chanting “No WMDs”.. but the fact is that hundreds of deadly WMDs have been found, clearly proving that Saddam had WMDs.

Today, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) held a press conference and announced “we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.� Santorum and Hoekstra are hyping a document that describes degraded, pre-1991 munitions that were already acknowledged by the White House’s Iraq Survey Group and dismissed.

Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are “not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.�

The University of Suck just had a Singularity symposium. We had Mr. Transhumanism Society who proposes that reality could just be a simulation by some super race, so why the hell not Borg everyone. We now continue to joke about glitches in the sumulation, such as Ruppert’s comment above.

“Impending” as in 2040-2060. Don’t be silly.

And who cares what Eric Drexler meant when he coined the term? There’s no specific definition of “nanotechnology”, but it’s generally accepted as referring to the branch of science and engineering that deals with things smaller than 200 nanometers or so.

Intel is currently producing transistors around 50 nanometers. That’s 50 billionths of a meter. It might not be the “engines of creation” Drexler was thinking of, but it’s nanotechnology. Here. Today. What will we be seeing tomorrow?

Trnashumanism is kind of like the ultimate in objectivism, I mean what could be greater progress?

I feel a lot better after my outburst of silliness.
“What will we be seeing tomorrow”? It depends on whether I can get a pair of those heat-vision eyes.

Personally, I’m looking forward to the jet packs, talking dogs and robot maids.

If there’s one thing I agree with ‘transhumann’ on, it’s that technology has the potential in the next century to change human life on earth in radical ways, almost beyond recognition.

What I give a miss is the attitude of (cue Beavis voice) “It’ll be cool.”

Greg Bear’s Blood Music is a fascinating read–but warm and sunshiney it’s not.

And I have real misgivings about nanotech. My curmudgeonly position is that we already have nanotech: it’s called physical chemistry. But materials technology tends to change our lives in radical ways.

Conquering death? Designing ourselves? A desktop synthesizer that could construct anything from food to gasoline to complicated electronics from raw materials i found in your backyard? All quite possible.

But, over against “woo hoo lemme at it!” attitude, science fiction writers –the serious ones–have treated these themes and found something other than utopia there.

In general, I’m reminded of a Mulla Nasrudin story: a Nasrudeen is talking to a woman about her son. “He has just finished his studies.”
“Never fear!” cried Nasrudin, “God will most assuredly send him new ones!”

Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are “not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.�

I think it’s a shame that some in the Department of Defense are quick to run from the truth when it comes to Iraq.

As well, no comment from Sadly No when it comes to Kos’s shilling of books that are made by Chelsea Green. He didn’t put a notice on his site then like he supposedly did for Dean.

The fact is that the Culture of Corruption is running wild when it comes to Armstrong (an SEC violator) and Kos (a lucid shill).

Hey, you gotta get out more. Science fiction writers have been writing about this stuff so long it’s almost passe. Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon might be a good place to start…

MKK

Well, I’m not sure it’s going to take someone to “implement” the ideas of transhumanism. It’s already happening. It’s a mild example, but look at the pacemaker. People who would have died 200 years ago, flat out, do not pass go, do not collect $200, are now living with a little computer inside their chest that causes their heart to beat regularly. Same goes for the latest advances in implantable hearing aids or cochlear implants. Tiny microchips make hearing (or at least an approximation of it) possible for many people.

The next wave I would predict is the “cyborg eye” for those who have lost an eye (or two).

Hell, I’d volunteer to have an eye replaced with a device that looked just like my normal eye, but functioned as a 200x zoom video camera, still camera, night vision, etc. etc. etc. I don’t see that prospect as “joyless” – it would increase my quality of life. There are a lot of people who will never have any “work” like this done, and that’s fine. I don’t think any politician is going to run on a campaign of “forced ear implants for improved hearing for all!” But the options will be available. And there will be people who want to take advantages of some of these technological advances. I think it will shake out as a generational thing – our generation probably won’t be so keen on stuff like this, as a whole. A couple of generations from now, it will be the norm to have some kind of “improvement” done, whether for better sight, hearing, or strength.

I wouldn’t mind living forever, if it were possible to get the fuck off the planet and really see the universe. I’d also like to see my kids grow up and have kids, and I’d like to see what new fun developments come up in the next several centuries. And don’t you want to see history excoriate the BushCo Administration? The problem with death is that it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and I don’t like that. I’d much rather stick around and try to figure out all the answers. Transhumanism — for all that it embraces some serious nutjobbery — is a kinda cool idea for how to get there. (I once had a friend who was going to make a fortune by promising and delivering “painless immortality through perfect android bodies.” For all I know, he’s hard at work on that very thing.) The idea of a singularity is also kind of cool, and I’d much rather live through it than just miss it.

This has always been the basis of my affinity for science fiction: it is essentially a literature of hope, because whether it takes place 10 years, 10,000 years or 10 million years from now, it all generally presupposes that humans have survived to that point. Things may have gone to shit, but there are still people around and they are still doing human-type things, and I find that incredibly hopeful. Mopey novels where mopey things happen to mopey men and women in mopey modern suburbs… they just seem to promote a sense of futility or ennui. Not sf. From the space operatic to the dystopian, from the ultra-techie to the barely scientific, there is always a thread of striving for — and achieving — some sort of human advancement or transcendence. How bad could that be?

When we have morphological freedom I assume we’ll be able to marry the partner of our choice, even if the partner is of the same gender. I assume the distinction will be trivial in this Brave New World.

This all sounds so 19th century, actually – so much like a repackaged ‘hip’ version of Comte’s rationalist Positivism. The Enlightenment’s particular version of historically inevitable Progress unseated God as the final justification of History, but replaced Him with Nature, then Man and, eventually, History itself. Tied up with all of this is technology, of course, driving this view of reaching some ‘point’ at which History will end. A “Singularity”, if you will.

It’s no surprise that transhumanism always seems to be described as ‘inevitable’. Progress is always spoken of ‘inevitable’ (or ‘impending’). Darwin’s narrative of evolutionary progress in the natural world greatly influenced the social Darwinism of Spengler and Comte – hence this quote:

“In fact, “survival of the speciesâ€? is mostly a human concept, not a Transhuman one. Transhumans seek personal survival – they only care about species survival to the degree that the species is necessary for technological progress prior to their own ascension. After that, they can handle their own survival quite nicely, thank you.”

Such an obviously human attitude.

None of this means that the technology is not possible, of course. It’s simply a comment on the positivist assumptions that lie, essentially unexamined, underneath it all. We keep falling for the same delusion, over and over again – that through inevitable technological progress (and social progress too – tranhumanism’s got novelty value because it confuses the two so neatly) we’ll reach the end of point of History.

BTW, looks like Gary’s really earning his shekels today, keeping those talking points coming…

I totally agree, Dan. I always lamented the fact that I was born at a time where we could imagine the possibilities of the future without ever having any real chance of seeing it — like someone from Verne’s time longing to see submarines and rocket ships.

But if you believe even half of what guys like Kurzweil have to say, we’re going to see some crazy-ass sci-fi shit in the next few decades. Just hope I / we hang around long enough to witness it.

Looking at the Primo Posthuman (a product of Ageless 2003), I see that someday Glenn will have a healthy orange to red glow (depending, I suppose, on how warm he is) and a cardio flow and function monitor in place of his heart. What is really nice is that he will have an “Error Correction Device” in his brain, something noticeably lacking in the current model.

It’s no surprise that transhumanism always seems to be described as ‘inevitable’. Progress is always spoken of ‘inevitable’ (or ‘impending’).

Sure, I guess it’s entirely possible that the thrust of technological research and development could stop on a dime. We could all just be thrust back into the dark ages with the push of a button. I get the critique of “progress” (as in, conflating moving in a particular direction technologically [smaller, faster, stronger, etc.] with “the good” or otherwise framing it positively). Still, whether it’s good or bad or somewhere in between, smaller/faster/stronger happens, and it is happening. So based on our current trajectory, barring some catastrophe, it will probably keep happening.

I don’t know. Maybe we won’t all have souped-up pacemakers in the future. I never got my flying car, so it’s certainly a possibility.

If anything’s going to solve our energy and overpopulation problems, it’s technology.

Or a very large meteor.

When we have morphological freedom I assume we’ll be able to marry the partner of our choice, even if the partner is of the same gender. I assume the distinction will be trivial in this Brave New World.

Dear god man! Male cyborgs marrying male cyborgs? That would be unnatural!

The fascination with immortality and “longevity drugs” amongst some in the science fiction-cum-pop philosophy crowd (I’m looking at you, Robert Anton Wilson) has always creeped me out. For one, we’ve got too damn many people on the planet anyway, and there’s no real signs of us ceasing our incescent rutting anytime soon. Secondly, most of those poor bastards can’t fill up the average Sunday afternoon, much less grapple successfully with the prospect of an extended lifespan.

This sort of talk always strikes me as the same sort of stroke that fuels your general run of religions that preach an attainable life everafter. To wit, “I am going to die someday and that’s not fair.” Way too many people way too concerned with the inevitable end of life – or theirs, anyway – they neglect to enjoy much of the life they already have.

I get the critique of “progress� (as in, conflating moving in a particular direction technologically [smaller, faster, stronger, etc.] with “the good� or otherwise framing it positively). Still, whether it’s good or bad or somewhere in between, smaller/faster/stronger happens, and it is happening. So based on our current trajectory, barring some catastrophe, it will probably keep happening.

Well, sure. Like I said, the technological developments will probably keep occurring. We can’t ‘go backwards’ in that sense. But that was my point with ‘transhumanism’ – you take the inevitability of technology (once we bite the apple we can’t go back, etc, etc) and make it the same thing as society or the social. You know, if social development is technological then it’s also inevitable. We’ll keep developing new inventions, so then we’ll obviously and inevitably keep improving and developing as individuals and societies. It’s a silly linkage, but it’s one we’ve been making for a very long time.

As Comte put it:

“But the same character of positivity which is impressed on all the others (sciences) will be shown to belong to this (social science)� .

That is, the onwards development of technology will inevitably be applied to social development. We’ll also inevitably improve (socially and morally) as our technology does.

Comte wrote that in 1896.

We’ll also inevitably improve (socially and morally) as our technology does.

Well… haven’t we? Maybe there’s no causal relationship between the two, but they do seem to march in lockstep if you take the long view.

I’ve always preferred the term “post-humanity” to transhumanism. I think because “trans” carries a connotation of both the “whole” of humanity and the crossing over form one kind of humanity to another. Posthumanity implies, instead, the end of humanity as we know it and the acceptance of a new way of being. Which is not to say that I’m much of an immortality fan or a robot fetishist. But, posthumanity has real applications to real problems in real life. Isn’t the entire radical notion of gender and sexuality, a notion that’s becoming more and more mainstream, a kind of posthumanity, in which the human impulse to regulate and classify breaks down? Or take one of my favorite things to complain about: steroids. It is clearly a logical fallacy to condemn performance enhancing drugs without also condemning performance enhancing technology. Yet we don’t bat an eye at Nike developing new shoes for specific runners, or new kinds of swimsuits. We aren’t particularly bothered by technological improvements in bows and rifles and tennis rackets. But the idea that a human might actually change his own chemistry! How appalling! As if good old exercise isn’t also, at heart, a means of changing chemistry. The human body is not a particularly glorious thing. It is prone to disease and infection and disintegration and has very limited physical capacities. So, why shouldn’t we enhance our bodies chemically, physically and technologically? Of course we don’t have to do this — I have no desire to change my body and I genuinely hope I die at a reasonably decent age. But it can cut both ways. Euthanasia is also a form of posthumanity — taking control over death from the other end of the stick. One way to “control” death is to stave it off infinitely with cybernetics, another way is to beat it to the punch and choose your own method and time of death. Suicide has long been one of the few great acts of the free human spirit, and euthanasia just codifies this as a basic human right.

And as for this making life more “joyless” — well, that’s poppycock. It’s nothing more than reactionary romanticism for the “natural” world. As if the natural world isn’t responsible for virtually all the ills we face. Of course, many transhumanist ideas are equally idiotic. I won’t deny that the immortality crowd makes me ill — is this world really so wonderful that anyone should wish to remain in it for five thousand years? But the basic, underlying permise — that humans have the ability and potential to change our biologies and psychologies, to take individual control of our actions and fates without regard to social controls or pressures is liberating. Whether we take it only to the rathe mild extremes I prefer (legalization of drugs, steroid-fueled athletics, and penis enchancement) or to the extremes discusses by William Saletan in his recent Slate piece on a transhumanist convention he attended.

Steroids? Just wait until pitchers start having elective Tommy John surgery.

Well… haven’t we? Maybe there’s no causal relationship between the two, but they do seem to march in lockstep if you take the long view.

Well, actually, I think that’s debatable (and I certainly wouldn’t argue that there was a causal relationship between the two). But then that’s probably why I think Bladerunner or Alien are vastly superior to Star Trek…

Don’t forget that utopia means No place. I’d be happier if we could look at technology without the rose coloured glasses we’ve been wearing for a long time.

Enjoyed this discussion!

I’d love to stay, but I’ve got a dinner rendezvous (with a hot transhuman tri-gendered cyborg dolphinoid)…

😉

Matt: Considering the target market for all this sort of “transhumanism” stuff tends to be populations that are breeding far beneath replacement level, it seems unfair to haul out the “too many humans ruttin'” argument. It isn’t the transhumanists having huge families, it’s those to whom transhumanism would be seen as an abomination.

Personally, I’m all in favor of transhumanism, posthumanism, or what-have-you. While it’s dangerous to get tied up in the “screw conservation and foresight, technology will solve everything” line of thought, the “technology that didn’t exist when I was a child frightens and confuses me” line seems much more “joyless” to me.

As for “it should be time to die”, Brad… Why, exactly? Leaving religion out of the equation and assuming the less-than-replacement birthrates (which would drop to next-to-nothing among immortals), what’s the downside of having a popuation that actually gives a rat’s ass about what’s going to happen 40 years down the road? Short lifespans, and the myopia they cause, seem to have done a lot more damage lately than lengthening lifespans have.

A race of insanely educated and experienced humans would seem to be much more desireable than the current variety.

Josh: anybody who expects to be in this world (assuming that it isn’t “the” world, with nothing on the horizon) for 5000 years is probably going to do their damnedest to make it a better one, instead of just riding things out until the afterlife.

And who besides dorks like Reynolds and Adam Yoshida really wants to become a goddamn cyborg?

Anyone who needs a pacemaker.

RobW- c’mon, that’s not what I’m talking about.

My major objection to a lot of this stuff is that it magically assumes that technological advancement in and of itself will produce a better life for humanity. Personally, I think Americans have become extremely isolated and rather miserable people the more technology has advanced. Many of our major purchases (computers, ipods, flat screen TVs, TIVO, etc) are all designed to keep us within the confines of our own homes. Now I think technology is a good thing in and of itself, but it seems to me that it can’t replace genuine community and person-to-person intereaction- something that there’s less and less of. Maybe it’s just because I live in a city like Boston where we don’t really talk to each other, but I feel like people in this country have become far more isolated from each other and the world over the last decade.

But the idea that a human might actually change his own chemistry! How appalling! As if good old exercise isn’t also, at heart, a means of changing chemistry.

Ah. This reminds me of that outake from SPINAL TAP where they’re asked if they do drugs. “Well, water’s a drug. In fact, it’s the strongest drug because it wakes you up when you splash it on your face.”

Buck B. — Kurzweil is obviously a way clever chappie, who has been right about many things, but also he has been wrong about a whole lot of things. And I don’t want to cast asparagus at the accomplishments of the microphotolithography people, and if anything, my concern is that when you describe what they’re doing as ‘nanotechnology’, then it becomes tainted with all sorts of bad associations. And covered in muddy pawprints

My misgivings about getting all carried away with the idea of how scientific breakthroughs will bring the millenium (not to mention immantalising the Eschaton) comes under three headings:
(1) reluctance to see young people enjoying themselves
(2) dubious track record of previous prophets of ‘transcending the human condition through new technology’. [Not like the track-record of those nay-sayers of scientific breakthroughs; we know how right they’ve been — oops]
(3) vague and poorly-articulated ideas about misallocation of scarce research resources — AI as case in point —

Oh whatthehell, let’s stick with (1).
Hey you kids, get off my front yard!

Oops, mis-spelled ‘millennium’.

pbg:
“we already have nanotech: it’s called physical chemistry”
— I wish I’d said that.

dubious track record of previous prophets of ‘transcending the human condition through new technology’.

And I don’t see the human condition in and of itself as something that needs transcending.

I guess part of it is because I’m an entropy kinda guy. I relish chaos and I loathe living in an ordered, structured way.

Yeah, that does sound loopy. But that’s Ayn Rand me-firstism that’s the problem, not Prometheanism.

To start with the more general assertion, that technology can fix social problems: start with the axiom that all problems are, ultimately, economic, that is to say, problems of want. From there, it’s only a matter of noting that technological growth happens in the marketplace to show that such growth helps satisfy people’s desires (“The Internet is real-ly real-ly great…”). I’m not arguing that every advance is good for everyone everywhere, and I don’t think anyone sane is; but we’re talking about entire civilizations here, so we have to take a pseudo-statistical tack.

And what happens to a person whose basic desires are all fulfilled? Yeah, some people might vanish into solipsistic orgies — but a lot of the people who scale Maslow’s pyramid will do more than admire the view from the top. When people reach the point where they can help others for free, then they will. At the limit of technological development, we’re in an economic singularity, so the usual capitalist or socialist theories really no longer apply; whatever demand exists can be fulfilled without needing to take from someone else’s supply.

In this limit, too, we don’t have to worry about getting bored. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem proves that there are some sets of knowledge that are formally infinite, that we can only explore given infinite time. Gödel’s original proof concerned the unlimited supply of interesting mathematical theorems, but this can be mapped to anything creative you like: an infinite number of symphonies, an infinite number of debates on morality, an infinite number of novels or poems or horny coeds or whatever. And beyond this, an infinite number of unique people to meet and share everything with.

So having provided a “how” and “why”, we have to ask “why not”?

Where does morality come from? Morality is the set of rules that society creates so that people can live with each other. Yes, I’m being incredibly fucking relativist here, but if we accept that there are common basic human desires and needs then we can reasonably say that certain moral precepts will generally tend to emerge in whatever society. Call that “natural law”. Like everything else above, it comes out of limited resources.

Indeed, ultimately, why do people die? Or rather, why has evolution, which has come up with all these other goodies, built into all complicated organisms the fact that eventually they will stop, end, dissipate? Once again, and again, and a third time: limited resources. A sea of immortal fish does fill up. A world filled with long-living humans does get crowded. Parents, then, have to die in order to ensure that the genes of their children can propagate. There’s only so much food to eat and only so much land to raise it on.

For transhumans, the above is no longer a problem. In the limit of technology, you eat sunlight and you take up a quantum dot of space, and so do your infinite children. The only reason you need to die is, maybe, tradition.

And yes, I do know that this is science-fiction fantasy that will probably never happen, or at least no time soon. But it’s a goal, and I really do think that in order to make the world better, we need to make people better: that is, make them happier, give them fewer reasons to take other people’s stuff, and motivate them to become better thinkers. The best way to do this is to make it easier for people to get what they want and improve opportunities for people to improve themselves. So long as it works, and so long as we preserve basic human dignity in doing so, I don’t see that it makes a difference if we do it by making plumper tomatoes or letting people plug into wall current.

So long as it works, and so long as we preserve basic human dignity in doing so, I don’t see that it makes a difference if we do it by making plumper tomatoes or letting people plug into wall current.

Well see, we’re not gonna see eye-to-eye on this.

Ever read THE WATCHMEN? Remember the scene where Ozymandias thinks he’s saved the world from certain destruction? And remember when Dr. Manhattan looks at him and says “Nothing ever ends?” That’s kinda how I feel about technoutopians.

I admit I haven’t thought through or researched these issues as thoroughly as I should have. If I got into a formal debate with you, Edmund, I’d assuredly get my ass handed to me. However, when I started reading about transhumanism, I immediately got an intellectual allergic reaction. I can’t always explain WHY I get reactions like these, but I’ve learned that when I do get them, I should pay attention (previous examples include my first encounters with Randroids and neocons).

Or maybe it’s just the thought of an entire world of Glenn Reynoldses WHO LIVE FOREVER that has me completely freaked out. Maybe if I’d encountered these ideas without automatically associating them with the thought of a (*shudder*) immortal Glenn Reynolds, I wouldn’t be so down on them.

“I relish chaos and I loathe living in an ordered, structured way.”
I hate chaos! I would love to live in an ordered, structured way! But somehow it never seems to happen.

Buck B.,
“I always lamented the fact that I was born at a time where we could imagine the possibilities of the future without ever having any real chance of seeing it — like someone from Verne’s time longing to see submarines and rocket ships.”

I suggest that anyone in Verne’s time had a perfectly realistic prospect of seeing submarines. Let’s see [pulls old dead-tree encyclopedia off the shelf… sorry, no links.] Jules Verne, 1828-1905. Published 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1873. Meanwhile, “the first practical submarines were the Holland class ordered by the British Admiralty in 1899.” (not to mention earlier, less practical experiments].

Rocket ships — not such realistic prospects.

My point, though, is that we tend to overlook the amount of scientific expansion that took place in periods when we weren’t around to observe it. There is probably a technical term for this tendency but I can’t be bothered looking it up. But the Victorians were just as convinced as we are, that *they* were living in the age of the “knee in the curve of technological growth”. And arguably with more cause… submarines! Telegraphs! Gas lighting! Babbage calculating machines! But did it bring them any closer to the Singularity? [he asked rhetorically, waving his arms in an expansive gesture and spilling his beer] Sadly, no!

Four little words: “Marie Jon’ Sex Bot”

“There is probably a technical term for this tendency but I can’t be bothered looking it up.”
One of these days I am going to write a long eloquent essay exploring this idea of retrospective myopia, or whatever it’s called. With lots of footnotes and far too many appendices. Alas, some cruel bastard will then boil it down to the Shorter Herr Doktor Bimler:
“Kids these days, got no idea of their history”
— and that would be sad.

I also strongly- STRONGLY dislike the idea of “life extension.â€? …My major objection to a lot of this stuff is that it magically assumes that technological advancement in and of itself will produce a better life for humanity. Personally, I think Americans have become extremely isolated and rather miserable people the more technology has advanced.

As opposed to the simple, timeless joy of watching your baby brother die of whooping cough. Brad, I think you’ll change your mind about life extension technology when you start needing clotbusting drugs, or an angioplasty, or a hip replacement…
Life expectancy two thousand years ago, in Rome, heart of civilisation, was 25 years. Now it’s pushing 80. Personally, I want to live to see my grandchildren graduate from university. I want to see Halley’s Comet come back. I want to study mediaeval history, and work for MSF, and write novels, and learn to skydive, and learn Arabic. I want to see the Ross Ice Shelf and Ladakh and the Barrier Reef. I want to have more time – there’s too much to do in the world for one lifetime, and I pity people who find the world so little fun that they think one short lifetime is enough and queue up for their strokes and cancers uncomplainingly.

I’m with Brad. In spite of the utopian claptrap surrounding it all, it’s hard not to imagine…well, how about this for example?

Ever read THE WATCHMEN? Remember the scene where Ozymandias thinks he’s saved the world from certain destruction? And remember when Dr. Manhattan looks at him and says “Nothing ever ends?� That’s kinda how I feel about technoutopians.

Yeah, it’s a great comic. And I agree with you that whenever you change a society, you create new, difficult problems in an intrinsically-unpredictable fashion; it’s a tenet of chaos theory (the real kind even, not just the bullshit Jurassic Park kind).

But everytime you say “Watchmen”, I get to say “The Authority”.

herr doktor,

I know what you mean, but still, Holland class submarines had about as much in common with the Nautilus as space shuttles do with the Enterprise. Except for the whole violating the rules of physics thing, I mean.

Regardless of what Victorians thought at the time, the knee-curve idea isn’t based on random speculation. Unless you’re REALLY interested or have a lot of free time on your hands, I don’t expect anyone to read Kurzweil’s long-ass article about the Law of Accelerating Returns. But take a minute and just scroll down through all the graphs.

One of the most affecting things about The Singularity is Near is the diagrams Kurzweil keeps throwing at you. Now, not everyone agrees with all his data. But after you see graph after graph showing a linear trend on a logarithmic plot (I know just enough math to get what that means), it becomes hard to deny that technological progress is growing at an increasing rate. Whether we’re actually at the knee-bend, that’s debatable. But if you keep multiplying the rate of change by a constant (and even that constant may be growing), eventually things are going to start to get crazy. That could be 10 years from now, that could be 40. It will almost certainly be within our lifetimes, however.

As far as allocation of research dollars — hey, that’s what capitalism is for. Besides, whoever finally implements AI will probably have been aiming for something totally different. You’re trying to write a program that can teach your dog not to piss on the carpet and boom &mdash you’re having a conversation with your 15th-generation iPod.

Brad R. — Mad props anytime you can work a Watchman reference into the conversation.

RobW- c’mon, that’s not what I’m talking about.

Well, if you’re merely mocking utopianism, or the touching belief some have in the unavoidably improving impact of gizmos, have at it. I was simply pointing out that what the transhumanists yearn for differs merely in degree from what we have already, itself a result of the inevitable way in which humanity is transformed by the technologies we use. It’s only recently that this inherent feature of humanness has become obvious, as it manifests itself in more intimate, physical ways, whether good (such as medical prosthetics) or bad (such as steroid abuse). Nothing particularly transhuman about it, so perhaps they can stop using that very silly word.

Oh, and you also shouldn’t imagine this intellectual hobby is the preserve of the Randroids. I’m not saying you’d necessarily count these people amongst your fellow kitten-lovers, but rightists they’re not.

Transhumanism has some dippy proponents but they have it more right than neo-Luddites (e.g. Bush and his “anti-human-animal-hybrid-Island-of-Dr.-Moreau” position). Also, minorities have especially benefited from technological progress. Women are immeasurably better off today with things like antibiotics that mean we don’t die in childbirth all the time. It’s going to be very interesting when advances in genetics lead to gay couples having children. A little bit of engineering would make it possible for children of two lesbians (or gay men, with a surrogate) to have two equally biological parents. Even if we outlaw it in America clinics in Europe would do it. This is going to drive cultural conservatives absolutely crazy.

Whatever. ‘Long as I get to be an Adrienne Barbeaubot.

Transhumanists believe that humans can and should use these technologies to become more than human.

Shit, now I’ve got White Zombie’s “More Human Than Human” stuck in my head. Damn you! And damn Reynolds, too!

“We aren’t particularly bothered by technological improvements in bows and rifles and tennis rackets.”

Tell that to Jack Nicklaus, who is currently trying to get PGA balls to fly 10% shorter. Improve bows such that Stephen Hawking can put 8 out of 10 shots dead center…something tells me archers might be a tad bothered.

More generally, transhumanists support the convergence of emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC). . .

Holy crap. I wrote a chapter for the most recent NBIC convergence book; I didn’t realize that the ideas were being hijacked by nutcases.

Instahack emailed me – here is part re Ed Morrissey – “Ed, with his major role in bringing down the Canadian government, has certainly transcended his dayjob as a call center manager.” Yep, that’s it, a call center manager brought down the Canadian government. GR suffers from something – delusions of grandeur perhaps.

In the transhumanist future, society will be modeled on the Vulcans, who breed once every seven years. For many this will mean less breeding. For some, much much more.

imagine the hackers delight, to hack the whole race in one go… and who whould be incharge of the OS, Microsoft??

As opposed to the simple, timeless joy of watching your baby brother die of whooping cough. Brad, I think you’ll change your mind about life extension technology when you start needing clotbusting drugs, or an angioplasty, or a hip replacement…

Oh Jesus, that is not what I’m arguing.

The type of technoutopianism I’m critiquing is the sort espoused by Glenn Reynolds and his vatuous lot of pseudo-libertarians. I’m am not attacking the use of cybernetics and nanotech to save lives or replace severed limbs for fuck’s sake.

Ed, with his major role in bringing down the Canadian government The heavy reporting in the press of the corruption had nothing to do with it, oh no. Ed didn’t break the story, he wasn’t the only one covering it, and I daresay he wasn’t the person most folks turned to for information. Plus, how many people reading CQ vote Liberal? My guess, Mr. Ed had little or no role in anything.

Whatever happened to den Beste anyway? Is he still reviewing anime?

Cosplay. Indeed.

The original i-wanna-be-a-transhuman gang seems to be toning it down these days and calling themselves Proactionaries. Which is a shame as they used to be wild and crazy guys circa 1990. It’s a bit sad not to see those old declarations of how they’e going to deepfreeze their heads so they can be thawed out, uploaded to sexbots and take their rightful place in the radiant, nano-tastic future. Maybe when the Ole Perfesser showed up they decided living forever and listening to his schtick could get to be a drag after the first 10,000 years, heh, indeedy.

St Lemur, is that you?

Have a hug, ya great lunk, and a two faced kitten. I don’t give those to just anyone you know.

Say, didn’t they do about a hundred episodes of “The Outer Limits” warning about the dangers of this stuff?

Is it so hard to close your fucking tags?

Ever read THE WATCHMEN? Remember the scene where Ozymandias thinks he’s saved the world from certain destruction? And remember when Dr. Manhattan looks at him and says “Nothing ever ends?� That’s kinda how I feel about technoutopians.

Seconded. And I was thinking of it like this and I’ve read The Watchmen and I thought that was an important part of the story and everything, but I didn’t make the connection. Oh well.

As others have pointed out, we already have cyborgs. Someone with a pacemaker or several other types of medical machines is a cyborg by any reasonable definition. We just don’t think of them like that because they’re… normal people. Crotchety old grandfathers and I think some people with diabetes, not T-800s or Nathan Dayspring Summers. They aren’t cyborgs because they aren’t weird. Q.E.D.

There are two kinds of people: those who expect massive and sweeping change upending every social order in the near future, and those who are sane. And call me a kneejerk gratuitious centrist, but I think it’s fair to lump all the apocalypists (apocalyptics?) together, whether they are awaiting the Rapture, the singularity, the revolution or The Day After Tomorrow.

To be fair, sometimes I guess it’s reasonable. I’m too young to remember the height of the Cold War, but I understand nuclear war did look pretty likely. Overall, though, there are certain constants to life, and it’s stupid to wait for a phone jack behind everyone’s ear to usher in a Golden Age.

St-Lemur is yes me. Um. Who this?

! Holy crap, just parsed it. How’s the Squidqueen?

Waving tentacularly, thanks, over at URL below. (Apols for the unclosed tags, preview don’t work in Opera 7.)

I appreciate you distaste for Reynolds. I find your attitude toward transhumanism to be quaint.

“I find your attitude toward transhumanism to be quaint.”

Many of us find Technotopia Dreamin’ equally so.

Ummm…. Brad?

‘it’s that the bloggers REYNOLDS MINDLESSLY AND UNQUESTIONINGLY LINKS TO are stupid…’

He linked to you and that’s how I got here.

I’m sorry to hear you have such a low opinion of yourself. Chin up fella, at least you too ‘resides in a world where technology can be harnessed by any semi-literate with a PC’

My Appologies.

Glenn didn’t link to you. He linked to Atrios. Atrios linked to you. Apparently I need to spend more time looking where I’m going… I hope I drive better than this.

I was wrong I admit it.

at least you were able to apologize Chris, but seriously, even if you weren’t wrong, that is one of the lamest “Why are you hitting yourself” insults I have seen this side of the second grade. You have to do better than that if you expect to represent for Glenn Reynolds and his “posse”.

I want a cybernetic liver. Then I could Jam the steel reserve like nobodies business.

Oh and Gary, if that is the real Gary, I can’t beleive even someone as deluded as you could think that if there wasn’t an evil liberal conspiracy, that the mainstream news media would be all over the Jerome Armstrong business. Because that’s where the real scoop is.

Jesus Christ.

Adolescent fantasies have a way of ignoring the obvious. Transhumans can “take care of their own survival” you say? Just how do they expect to generate even a fraction of the energy they would need to function? So far as I know, a perpetual motion machine of any kind does not exist. Individual power plants? Can they be carried with you? If not, what will prevent the next guy from stealing or killing yours with no social contract? Total, blithering nonsense.

Also, Brad, the unclosed link in one of the posts prevents clicking into your comment form, I had to tab in.

I don’t want this to become an Off Topic run on this message board but I do want to add this.

My honest reaction was… ‘I just got here from Reynolds site… and now I’m being told that this destination is the blog of a stupid person.’ It made me giggle. I was actually trying to be a little funny. Judging by your reaction I did an extremely poor job of it. Was it an attack on Brad? yeah I suppose it was, I don’t know Brad and can’t provide a justification for it. Sometimes things are funny when you think/say/type them but aren’t quite as funny when they are Heard/read. I made the mistake(s) and I admit them. Fire away. Brad, I’m sorry. I’ll keep reading any click on a few ads if you have any.

As for the GR ‘posse’. I don’t represent them at all. I don’t even claim to represent them. Heck, I didn’t even realize that they were organized. I do think that they would be happy that you hold them to a standard higher than at least 2nd grade. As for myself… I surf blogs like many people surf TV channels. Now that I’ve visited this one I’ll probably come back. I promise that I won’t claim to represent the Sadly, No! ‘posse’ though. Your honor and high standards will be left intact Kathleen.

Transhumanism is t3h r0x0r!

I want to be an adrian barbeau-bot! With chainsaws for arms!

What about backscatter x-ray eyes? Adam Yohida might then actually see a GIRL! naked.

Santa, for Christmas this year I just want a suit of power armor. And a jet pack. And a flying car.

OOOOOOH!! And a spaceships that could take me to the bottom of the Marianas trench and then to the planet where that green skinned chick with the big hooters on Star Trek came from. And telekinesis. Then I could scratcth my robo-nuts with my MIND!

Now I think technology is a good thing in and of itself, but it seems to me that it can’t replace genuine community and person-to-person intereaction- something that there’s less and less of

For as long as I’ve been concious of my existence, I’ve found being around other people excruciating. I don’t suffer fools at all, let alone gladly–yes, Gary Ruppert, you twat, I’m thinking of you–and I basically believe that Sartre wrote one of the most profound things ever when, in his play No Exit, one of the characters says “Hell is other people”. The Internets have been a real boon to a loner misanthrope like me–I can have the *illusion* of human contact on blogs and message boards so that I don’t go insane in my own head and possibly start spraying lead in to strangers in supermarkets, but I don’t have to deal with people any more than I want to and the terms of any interaction are set by me. Viva technology in that sense.

There’s a great opera by Janacek called The Makropolous Case that deals with a woman who acquired a potion for eternal life. She’s lived 350 years and has to take another sip of the potion to continue. She declines because she’s so freaking *bored* with life. My worst nightmare, bar none, is that I live to be 80.

Brad-

When is it a good idea to associate a concept with the first person you hear it from?

I’d say its rarely a good idea. Because, in general, the first time you hear about a concept in the media its going to be from people who like to be in the media- people that like the spotlight or people that the media likes to interview. And I think its fairly random whether or not a person in the spotlight represents the mainstream of whatever the concept is.

Same for when a blogger writes about topics that aren’t core to who the blogger is. Not that it can’t happen that a blogger happens to be like a typical advocate of a concept. But its going to be random.

So for example I’d guess that Reynolds believes in evolution. But I’d be wrong to extrapolate that either “most people who like Reynolds” also believe in evolution, or that “most people who believe in evolution” are like Reynolds. Or, more narrowly, I know that Reynolds likes John Scalzi’s book “Old Man’s War,” because I’ve been reading Scalzi’s blog for a while. And from that I’d know that Reynold’s liking the book doesn’t tell me much about Scalzi.

Many ideas of transhumanism are incompatible with conservative, religious right-wing beliefs. (And here Reynolds’ libertarianism is definitely not conservative. Does Reynolds himself write about the contrast?) The idea that the body isn’t well designed: not compatible with creationism. The idea that we can make the world better- that humans get to improve themselves through human-made science: not compatible with ideas that a Higher Power calls the shots on earth.

What’s the Rapture, other than the idea that humans ultimately have no self-determination, that at any time a Higher Power can come down and kill anyone or everyone. Each day 100,000 people die, and we’re supposed to be ok with that, because its God’s will. Transhumanism isn’t compatible with that.

Read Leon Kass- Bush’s bioethical advisor. Medicine is only ok if it cures illlnesses. But we’re definitely not allowed to try to fix the systems that causes illness. Stem cells- right out. Making drugs that improve memory for Alzheimer’s patients? Probably really bad, because what if ordinary people use the drug to enhance themselves? God forbid. Fixing genes that severely increase the probability of getting Alzheimer’s? Wrong, evil. Using a person’s own cells to regrow a hand or an eye? That requires cloning technology, and because that same technology could also be used to grow a twin, we can’t go there. Again, not compatible.

I have to disagree, Henry. People can and will grate – I’m a supermarket cashier by trade, believe me I know – but such sweeping misanthropy is beyond me, downright unhealthy sounding in fact.

Alls I know is, there are people I’ve known online for years, and when I got the chance to speak to them face-to-face, there was just no contest.

Hope I grow old before I grow mold…but I’d still rate “being torn apart from the inside out by barbed tentacles slithering up your urethra” higher on my scale of horror.

Your point…meanders, Of Troy.

Well, assuming that I get a Tleilaxu doctor.

Color me impressed, Andrew S. Gill.

I just recently read Ray Kurzweil’s ‘The Singularity is Near.’

He actually makes a fairly narrow claim– it is only computing and information- information technologies- that fit into his ‘law of accelerating change.’ The only 100 year graph he shows is what $1000 will buy you in computing power. It isn’t about rockets, or razors, or jetpacks (yet) because these aren’t about computing (yet). All that’s going to happen over the next few decades is cheaper computing.

But this narrow claim is interesting because sciences other than computer science are increasingly about information. MRI and PET scans. The human genome project. Being able to sequence the SARS virus in a month instead of years, and future new viruses taking days instead of weeks. Modeling the geology of the earth, or the dynamics of the sun… we couldn’t have these without ever cheaper computers. The human genome project assumed that computers would get cheaper- that sequencing would definitely get much cheaper than dollars per base pair (now just a fraction of a penny per base pair).

The human genome project “only” took 15 years and cost 3 billion dollars. But now that the genome exists as information, its the foundation for new sciences and new medical research which just couldn’t be possible without faster computing. The more recently done chimp genome cost 30 million. In a few years getting your own genome will cost just a few thousand dollars. Not that this information alone will help a person, but the information will exist in the context of the rest of medical discoveries happening because of cheaper computing.

My problem with transhumanism (or at least the Reynolds brand) is that it so often is promoted by the same kind of people who think that the world is made up of the “deserving” and the “undeserving.” Of course, they’re alll firmly in the “deserving” camp, so Immortality and Beyond! for them. The rest of you can suck it. I am pretty firmly skeptical of those grandiose we-are-on-the-verge-of-the-future types because they only mean the future for them, and for people like them. No welfare queens need apply, thank you. And we’ll start on the sexbots just as soon as we close the border so those damn Mexicans don’t get their hands on any. It just strikes me as cybernetic xenophobia.

One of the most affecting things about The Singularity is Near is the diagrams Kurzweil keeps throwing at you. Now, not everyone agrees with all his data. But after you see graph after graph showing a linear trend on a logarithmic plot (I know just enough math to get what that means), it becomes hard to deny that technological progress is growing at an increasing rate. Whether we’re actually at the knee-bend, that’s debatable.

“Technological progress” is not a physical phenomenon, like atmospheric CO2 or ocean temperature. It’s someone’s highly subjective and selective analysis of various social activities. And said activities may or may not continue as they have gone in the past, for any number of complex reasons. Graphing “progress” is dodgy to begin with; extrapolating such a graph into the future (as if we’re talking about some force of nature like sunspots or gravity) is pretty much pure superstition.

The dumbest thing about the Singularity cult is this kind of pseudoscientific crap. I guess if you do stare at a lot of graphs, without stopping to consider that the information in them is mostly meaningless wishful thinking, you MIGHT be hornswoggled into believing this stuff.

Remember: there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

The Singularity is NOT science. It’s an article of faith: the Rapture for nerds.

Argh. For a supposedly brilliant man, Kurzweil doesn’t seem to understand basic math. Exponential curves are (by definition) self-similar. There is no “knee of the curve”. All parts of the curve look identical when blown up to equal magnification. If you don’t believe me, play around with Excel a bit. Or remember one of the basics of Calculus: the derivative (slope) of an exponential function is that same exponential function.

Of course, this makes perfect sense. All eras throught they were at the “knee of the curve” because in all eras, the rate of “progress” was the largest it had ever been up until that point. Again, a natural consequence of exponential growth.

The big question is whether that exponential growth in progress will continue. I’ve always been intrigued by the suggestion of Piers Anthony’s that progress is proportional to population. Therefore, exponential progress will only continue as long as exponential population growth does. Which may not be more than another century or two, depending on which doomsday scenario you believe. I think it makes sense on one level, although it’s probably overly simplistic.

I’ve also always thought that the focus on longevity is a really bad idea. Immortality would result in the stagnation of humanity.

cybernetic xenophobia.

sums up my feelings amazingly well.

Brad-

When is it a good idea to associate a concept with the first person you hear it from?

It isn’t. I jumped the gun on a lot of this before learning more about it. It happens.

This is, incidentally, why I like having open comments- people who get pissed at my ignorance about something will let me know about it openly and unapologetically.

My problem with transhumanism (or at least the Reynolds brand) is that it so often is promoted by the same kind of people who think that the world is made up of the “deserving� and the “undeserving.�

Yeah, that’s the sort of attitude I encounter in a lot of Randians. It’s a bastardized version of Nietzsche’s Overman, except Nietzsche was much less of a douchebag (and a billion times smarter).

“Technological progress” is not a physical phenomenon, like atmospheric CO2 or ocean temperature. It’s someone’s highly subjective and selective analysis of various social activities.

Well, gee, Maximus, I guess that’s why Kurzweil aggregates 15 different lists of technological milestones (Carl Sagan, American Museum of Natural History, Encyclopedia Britannica, etc.). They ALL show the same exponential trend.

And you know what IS a physical phenomenon? The price-power of computing. Moore’s Law has been in effect for 40 years now, and Intel says that they can continue to follow it until at least 2015. But I’m sure 50 years of a highly predictable trend is just coincidence.

Hey, you know what else has shown the same upward trend in growth? Real GDP, gross capita GDP, manufacturing efficiency, the decrease in size of mechanical devices, the price-power value of RAM, the speed the adoption of new technology and the average price of transistors, to name just a few. Are those “highly subjective and selective analysis of various social activities” too? If you don’t understand why these trends are hugely important, you don’t understand implications of exponential growth.

And said activities may or may not continue as they have gone in the past, for any number of complex reasons. Graphing “progress” is dodgy to begin with; extrapolating such a graph into the future (as if we’re talking about some force of nature like sunspots or gravity) is pretty much pure superstition.

Kurzweil addresses this, of course. Too bad no other fields of study are based on extrapolating current trends into the future.

The dumbest thing about the Singularity cult is this kind of pseudoscientific crap. I guess if you do stare at a lot of graphs, without stopping to consider that the information in them is mostly meaningless wishful thinking, you MIGHT be hornswoggled into believing this stuff.

Since you give no ACTUAL evidence to refute Kurzweil’s claim other than “I don’t believe him”, then all you’re offering is your own brand of wishful thinking. Personally, I never for a second stopped to apply any critical thinking to his work. I like to read dense 500-page treatises with hundreds of sources so that I can parrot back their conclusions without any deeper understanding of the idea behind it. Wheeeee!

I guess when I said “I don’t expect anyone to read Kurzweil’s long-ass article”, what I really meant was “I don’t expect anyone to read Kurzweil’s long-ass article, but you’d better take the time if you’re going to argue against his theories”. Here’s an idea: read the fucking article, or better yet the book, before you claim it’s psudeoscientific crap.

Wow, this thread’s still going. OK…some decent transhumanist sci-fi for a saner perspective on the subject:
* anything by Greg Egan, but especially Diaspora and Quarantine; argues that there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain by embracing technological selves
* Iain Banks’ Culture novels, especially Player of Games; people have near-total freedom and live in near-total comfort, and yet society progresses and grows out of sheer vibrant curiosity

On the more anti-transhumanist side:
* Man Plus by Frederik Pohl, a seminal work in the genre in which the protagonist volunteers for enhancement and loses his human identity piece by piece
* Transcendent by Stephen Baxter, which discusses how transhumanism inevitably means a loss of humanity
* Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, which depicts an ultra-capitalist Earth where the poor can literally lose their bodies to the rich

(I don’t read much philosophy.)

The other thing I meant to mention with regard to exponential curves is that Kurzweil calls his theory “The Singularity”. Usually, this means some point at which the function becomes undefined (usually, it goes to infinity). But exponential curves have no vertical asymptote, that is, there is no point on the x axis (time) at which the value of the function (progress) is infinite. So there is no “Singularity”.

Psuedoscientific? I’ll just go for innumerate.

Technology does amazing things. Unfortunately, it rarely does the amazing things that people like Kurzweil think it will.

The notion that human beings – as we know them today – are the endpoint of evolution is not only arrogant, but ignores the evidence of everything that came before us.

Ditch the sophomoric, cartoonish comparisons with the Terminator and instead look at cochlear implants. Right there is a cybernetically enhanced organism, or cyborg.

F,

Yes, but Kurzweil explicitly says that he’s not using “singularity” in the mathematical sense. “Technological singularity” is kind of based on gravitational singularities concealed by event horizons: essentially, a point beyond which we lose all power to make predications.

In *my* vision of the future, it will be possible to grow trees and shrubs to any desired shape, by tinkering with their DNA. Pure geometrical shapes… dinosaurs…you name the shape, you can have the tree grow that way. Step two in my vision is slightly nebulous, but in Step 3, the result is a happy society full of fulfilled productive people.

I call it “Utopiary”.

You’re all scoffing now, but you’re gonna feel mighty stupid when teledildonics finally achieves its potential.

so long as I have saws for hands and I am programmed for whimsy, I’ll be happy.

You never heard of transhumanism, so it must be dumb?

It can’t be denied that a lot of the people that are into this “movement” (a bad way of describing it) are sci-fi freaks. Much of this is theorizing about the future we are building, not about what the future should be.

The line between human and artificial is becoming blurred RIGHT NOW, and is likely to become only more blurred. The enthusiasm of people that want to hurry this along doesn’t change the fact that this is a trend that will continue, and something that should be of interest to us all, if only because it’s nice to know what the future may hold for us.

Test tube babies? Heart transplants? Artificial hearts? Dialysis machines? The Sims? All of that would have sounded very Frankensteinish a hundred years ago. Imagine going back in time to 1906 and trying to ask relatives to donate their dead son’s heart for a heart transplant. People would have thought it was ghoulish, unnatural, something only a sick mind could think of. That is still the reaction in much of Europe to requests for voluntary organ donorship.

Talking about the direction of technology is fun stuff, but it’s not silly. This puerile mocking reflects poorly on your own curiosity.

Woodrowfan:
“so long as I have saws for hands and I am programmed for whimsy, I’ll be happy”

Can’t I persuade you to have scissors for hands, and be programmed to sculpt shrubbery?

The fact is that, according to noted Libertarian author Philip K. Dick, if the people of Earth live forever, journey into space, colonize other planets, etc., we will just replicate our boring, sprit-crushing AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE!!!!111!!.

Our civilization here sucks. Why export it across time and space? The whole idea of eternal life revolts me. “To everything there is a season,” and so on.

So, people are going to pay heaps of money to live forever, even though they don’t think living a little longer is enough reason to give up smoking, drinking or bacon cheeseburgers?

The only way I see this coming about is as the final triumph of consumerism. Make everyone want it, make it so expensive it takes essentially an eternal mortgage to pay for it, and you can enslave humanity forever! It won’t happen, but it would make a nice little black-humor sci-fi short story. I’m sure it’s been written, probably twice.

F-
“Singularity” as a concept name was coined by Vernor Vinge. Kurzweil specifically mentions in the book that it and the “knee of curve” terms are metaphors. Of course the doubling times for an exponential curve don’t change. But when people notice a trend- that changes. The knee is the perception of a curve.

The average person didn’t notice the number of internet hosts going from 1,000 to 2,000. Going from 1M to 2M- the internet was ‘suddenly’ on many more people’s radars. When $1000 went from being 1/200th to 1/100th the cost of one computer- again, not too noticable. When $1000 goes from getting you 1 laptop to getting you 2 (or even from 5 to 10- the $100 computer project)- same trend, different effects.

Njorl –
Kurzweil promotes eating a high-veg, low sugar, low-fat (except the good fats) diet. He writes that without good eating habits (and exercise, not-smoking, and reducing stress, etc) a person isn’t going to live long enough to take advantage of newer medical technologies. i.e. Heaps of money won’t make up for eating saturated fats. Kurzweil is (according to at least one of the sadly,no writers) the leader of the group.

sorry Dr., but “programmed for whimsy” is non Negotiable….. one must have standards.

oh, and being able to say “resistance is futile” would be cool too but I’m flexable on that…

On the off-chance that this thread is still live —
Demosthenes said “anybody who expects to be in this world (assuming that it isn’t “theâ€? world, with nothing on the horizon) for 5000 years is probably going to do their damnedest to make it a better one, instead of just riding things out until the afterlife.”

The argument does not convince me. It’s not as if having a life expectancy of years or decades is the limiting factor in my own inability to make long-range plans any further ahead than tomorrow’s pizza. And can you seriously tell us that the tripling in average life expectancy in the last 2000 years, between imperial Rome and now, has brought any corresponding increase in cultural foresight? I am imagining 5000 years of immediate gratification…

Aaaaggghhh!!! The biggest link to a two-faced kitten EVAH!!!one! Aaaagghhh!!1!!

I’m just curious. Do Sadly, No’s powers-that-be not close open tags in comments because they enjoy fukt-up comment threads, or is it because all five of you are lazy bastards? Oh, and don’t take “lazy bastards” as an insult–I is one also, as well. Like I said, I’m just curious, ‘cos these “giant link” threads bother me a lot more than the stuck italics or the open bold ones do.

Undone! Huzzah and kudos! Take-5s, even!

No doubt the thread is completely dead by now, but I had a thought, so just in case it’s not…

The argument does not convince me. It’s not as if having a life expectancy of years or decades is the limiting factor in my own inability to make long-range plans any further ahead than tomorrow’s pizza. And can you seriously tell us that the tripling in average life expectancy in the last 2000 years, between imperial Rome and now, has brought any corresponding increase in cultural foresight? I am imagining 5000 years of immediate gratification…

Maybe, but maybe not. Because you’re sort of comparing apples to oranges here. Average life expectancy may have tripled over the last 2,000 years. In fact, over a much shorter time period, I think, but that depends entirely on exactly what you’re measuring. But I believe the upper limit on lifespans is about the same or has increased only slightly. Most large towns in medieval Europe might have had one dodderer who made it to 80, compared to most extended families today. But today just like back then, we still aren’t seeing anyone live to 150. Even if people do live for the moment as much today as they did 2,000 years ago, that’s not too surprising because the hopes are the same even if the reasonable expectations have increased.

To put it another way, as a 23-year-old American today, I have a very good chance of making it past 75. A thousand years ago, a 23-year-old would already have beat the odds. But whether in 2006 or 1006, I’m not going to see my great-great-grandchildren, I’m not going to be around when a tree I plant today falls, the institutions I take for granted will (probably) outlast me regardless of what I do… and so on.

It’s not certain, of course. Hell, agelessness could make things even worse, if birth rates don’t drop proportionally. Endless war as population control instead of normal age and disease. But advances like that really would make a pretty big difference in lifestyles and/or ways of thinking.

It’s not the wild speculation I object to, that can be fun. It’s the people who are utopian about it all without considering the possible downsides, or avoid thinking about practical ways of handling problems in favor of waiting for something to come along and make it all better.

[…] transhumanist and passive-aggressive advocate of genocide and assassination Glenn Reynolds = Mark Mothersbaugh of […]

[…] Well the so what is that many of the items on the transhumanist or anarchist agendas would probably be black swans if there were to happen. I know that sometimes we like to sit around in the each chamber we’ve made for ourselves and treat things like the singularity, nano-fabrication, and a viable revolution as givens but let’s not forget that most people think we’re crazy. […]

old post, I know, I know.

Transhumanism is just the next step in technologically advanced life – are you opposed to people who use hearing aids or pacemakers? Improving quality of life by developing technology to sustain a fully functioning body isn’t stupid or pointless, it’s already happening and it’s saving people’s lives.

its nice to see these old ideas come and see light again, i am assuming that at some point some has jst re-read olaf stapeldons first and last men. I dont pretend to know the future of mankind but doubt it will be encapsulated in anything so crude as silicon or optical relays, however increased life yes all for it and cyborg (a synthysis?) of man and machine well at what point do you draw the line, a leg a foot, a head LOL, we will all be cyborgs i just hope they figure out cybernetic prostrate glands before mine turns to stone in the gorgons glare.