Fink Tanks: Wingbot Edition
To follow up both Bradroquette’s post on transhumanism, and Atrios’s funny reply to it, I offer the following treasure of wingnuttery:
The Lifeboat Foundation, an NGO whose purpose is “to ensur[e] that humanity adopts the increasingly powerful technologies of genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics safely as we move towards a technological singularity.”
“Safely”? So we’re talking about ethics here, huh? An agency that might, say, concern itself with Francis Fukuyama’s reasonable concerns about unethical technological applications? That would be a noble enterprise, right? Indeed it would be, but somehow I doubt that the crackpots who compose Lifeboat take any grounded ethical concerns to heart.
Rather, their collective mind is singularly fixed on immortality for a select few. Their leader is Ray Kurzweil, known as a loon or a visionary, depending on whom you ask.
But never mind Kurzweil: let’s examine what intellectual clout this think tank can command. Who are their experts, who are the geniuses they call on to solve the sticky problem of achieving an oligarchy of immortals while preventing the necessary technology from destroying everyone (or, at least, everyone that matters) in the process?
Well, one such expert is Jeff Goldstein, who I think advises them on how Moore’s Law applies to quantum-paste microchips. Yes, it’s that Jeff Goldstein. What’s funny is that on Lifeboat’s member page you have a long list of names with “Ph.D.” behind them and squeezed-in among them is simply “Jeff Goldstein” with no affixed credentials. How lonely it must feel!
Oh, but farther down he does have some company. Pamela of Atlas Shrugs, on whose profile (on this site of serious intellectual concern) one is invited to “see Atlas in her Superwoman outfit!” I’m not sure what services she provides Lifeboat, but then neither do I understand what benefit she could get out of it: she’s already a half-silicone Randroid, how much more transhuman can she hope to be?
Oooh as confirmation of this group’s crackpottery we have a veteran of one of the biggest astroturf enterprises of all time, James Pinkerton.
And, finally, as if to emphasize what a bunch of bullshit the whole Lifeboat thing is, we have Lev Navrozov who was one of the whackjob sources cited by the infamous Straussian creeps of Team B — which I think sets in high relief what this stupid Lifeboat thing is all about.
These people are self-evidently idiots, frauds and crackpots. And I think they know it, which is why they put the truly decent people on their list at the top of the publicity shelf, so to speak. Maybe some of these decent people didn’t know what they were getting into. At least, I hope that’s the case for Wole Soyinka, who, bless him, wouldn’t know what Atlas and Pinkerton and Pasty are all about.
If you don’t know who Wole Soyinka is, you ought to. He’s a man with a lot of moral clout, a lot of courage, talent, and credentials: he’s the sort of man whose shadow a talentless chickenhawk insane coward like Jeff Goldstein doesn’t deserve to walk in. Which is precisely why the Lifeboat crew bandies his name about so much.
Yet he doesn’t have any scientific credentials, and maybe just signed something hastily, inadvertantly casting his lot with these clowns. Or maybe not. But it does seem strange that Soyinka, the polytheist-animist who, according to the NYRB article has a deep concern over his (old fashioned, in the dirt and permanent) final resting place should sign up with a bunch of nuts who want to be transformed into robots or uploaded into a computer because they are so scared of death (and are elitists in the worst kind of way, desiring immortality for the privileged who can afford it). Maybe someone should let Soyinka know what kind of creeps he’s involved with. But then maybe Soyinka is playing with stupid-evil here intentionally, as he’s been known to do.
At any rate, hasn’t at least one of these morons at the Lifeboat Fink Tank had his consciousness uploaded into a computer before? “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” makes sense if you consider that it was Jeff Goldstein‘s “authorial intent” coming through the pixels.
Pepe: Oh, Papa Homer, you’re so learn-ed.
Homer: “Learned (one syllable),” Pepe. It’s learrrrrned.
on Lifeboat’s member page you have a long list of names with “Ph.D.� behind them and squeezed-in among them is simply “Jeff Goldstein� with no affixed credentials.
“Yes, we chartered this boat. This is Dr. Cheswick, Dr. Scanlon … the famous Dr. Scanlon, Dr. Taber, Mr. Harding …”
Just my luck. I want to upload my brain to a computer but I’ll have to share memory space with The Sweater Puppies and Captain Klonopin. Fuck it, I’ve decided to die a natural death after all.
What does Gene Ray have to say about all this? Oh, what’s that Gene, you’d like to add something to the discussion?
“He who speaks, preaches, teaches, condones or practices SINGULARITY– an evil that equates DEATH by cancellation of universal OPPOSITES – hemispheres, sexes, seasons, races, temperatures, marriages and divided cell (the human cubic who rotates a 4-corner stage family rotating metamorphic lifetime) – should have their evil lying tongue cut out.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Gene.
Damn, that Gene Ray quote is pure schizophrenia. Don’t drink soap! Dilute! Dilute!
If I erase “She Blinded Me With Science” from my Diamond Rio player I think I’ll have enough free memory to upload the contents of Jeff Goldstein’s brain.
If you think Jeff Goldstein slapping you in the face with his cock is bad, just wait until he’s slapping you with his robo-cock. Then you’ll all be sorry for making fun of him.
I think all of this is marvelous. The sooner we turn all these freaks into pulsating brains under glass, the less loony life will be for the rest of us. Let Pammy, Jeff and the rest live out eternity in Sims Online.
“If I erase “She Blinded Me With Scienceâ€? from my Diamond Rio player I think I’ll have enough free memory to upload the contents of Jeff Goldstein’s brain.”
And still have room for Devo’s “Mongoloid.”
“turn all these freaks into pulsating brains under glass”
But with Jeff, it won’t be his brain pulsating under glass, geddit?
Lifeboat? More like B-Ark. And does Goldstein’s porn stash contain old episodes of Doctor Who with K-9 the robot dog?
Alas, poor Jeff. We knew him too well…………………….
There’s a great book on this topic called “Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition”. It describes all the crackpots, but remember that some of it isn’t crackpottery. For instance, in the book (written in the 90s) it describes groups that do ‘science fiction’ stuff like cloning… and now we seriously debate human cloning.
My absolute favorite bit of the book is one group that plans to meet up at the other side of the galaxy and throw a big party. The party-planning committe expects so many guests to turn up that they have a sub-committee devoted to solving the “Bean Dip Catastrophe”: there are so many guests that the bowl of bean dip is large enough to undergo gravitational collapse.
I think this proves that at least some of them have a sense of humor about it.
It’s like they are an obtusery of Objectivists.
A ragtag of Randroids.
A singularity of Singulatarians.
My god, it’s full of stars total fucking douchebags.
How many monkey Butlers will there be?
One at first, but he’ll train others.
Hey! that previewed correctly. what gives? no strikethrough.
pretend that the previous comment has a slash through the word “stars”.
then laugh a terrible, terrible laugh.
fucking ghana.
“turn all these freaks into pulsating brains under glass�
As long as I get me a hot, scantily-clad drill-thrall, I’ll be happy.
But with Jeff, it won’t be his brain pulsating under glass, geddit?
*tsk*…How vulgar. This is Sadly, No,, I hope you realise.
/prig
Screw transhumanity. Let’s talk posthumanity.
http://www.vhemt.org/
It looks like it’s a good thing they’re bringing along “atlas”, without her, that super-computer with everyone’s brain in it would just be a virtual sausage-fest.
It’s a shame, there are some pretty good neuroscientists/neuropsychologists on their board..
There are only two really prominent AI people on their board, unfortunately, and one of them is emeritus.
ALL OF YOUR PASTE ARE BELONG TO US
Wingnut transhuman configuration is a done deal. Rush.mp3+mp3 player+Repeat. You only need one sample of the DNA on a chip, and since wingnuttery involves just the Artificial part of Artificial Intelligence and is circular logic (without the hard logic part), it can be easily downloaded onto a chip! The problem is finding anyone interested in listening, since they all want their own version and they only want listeners who aren’t interested.
FYI for anyone who reads FDL – Jane’s mother just passed away.
Oh COMEON, this has got to be a joke. There is a “Scott Borg” on the board.
Peeleeze…
-D…
Cybertorum warns of hot man-on-robot sex.
Yeah, transhumanists can be a wacky bunch. Alcor is wracking up millions draining peoples insurance policies after they die. Perhaps the greatest marketing plan ever, Alcor never has to worry about their customers going somewhere else because they are dead. But to dismiss transhumanism as a goofy cross between Star Trek nerds and Ayn Rand worshippers is dangerous. Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil may be loony to you, but Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems didn’t think they were nuts when he wrote Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us. The singularity that excites Kurzweil and Minski terrifies Joy. Transhumanists were enthusiastic about things like nanotechnology, cloning, genetic engineering way back when we thought they were crazy crackpot ideas that came from reading too many SF books. Now, however we have to confront the very real possibility that we are altering the fundamental life algorithm that is evolution. Couple that with what we are learning in cognitive science and your very definition of what a human being is, may be nothing more than fantasy.
Goldstein sits on their Ethics Board. Both Goldstein and Pamela of Atlas Shrugs sit on their Futurists Board. Lifeboat Foundation members enjoy special services and discounts on things like candles, pet products, and religious items. Members can also apply for the foundation’s college scholarships.
You people are objectively pro-aging process.
You guys should check out some of the Lifeboat Foundation’s FAQ:
I don’t want to wait until 2020 to go into outer space. Can you help me?
All Lifeboat members are eligible for 5% discounts on Space Adventures terrestrial tours, zero-gravity and supersonic jet flights, sub-orbital space flights, and a $200,000 discount on trips to the International Space Station!
I suppose they had to invite a dozen or so paste-o-nauts along for the ride to show they were non-elitist in their transhumanism.
(Is there paste on other planets?)
You people don’t want to live forever? Then you must obviously be the Party of Death. Ramesh was right!
(Is there paste on other planets?)
No- just a bunch of grey goo.
Buck’s law:
“There is no idea sufficiently pure that it cannot be co-opted by dipshits.”
Not a surprise that someone like jeff goldstain would be associated with transhumanists, really. The big words that almost mean something, the crazy ideas, fantasies about things that will never happen.
you know, classic manshake protein.
Let me second the recommendation for Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition. I was just thinking of rereading it the other day, to see how it has held up over the years. If I recall correctly, the author also wrote the delightfully-titled Who Got Einstein’s Office?.
All I know about the Future is that, according to recent projections, by the year 2035, fully one-half of the human race will be members of Morning Musume.
But you’ve missed the obvious question in all this: where’s our Glenn? That board contains every cock-eyed futurist to ever get over-excited about a hypercapitalist tomorrow except the Ole Perfesser.
And maybe Derb oughta be informed. I hear the age of consent on Tau Ceti is 0.00003 flogentargs.
“Wait…………that’s not paste he’s eating!! It’s grey goo!!!!”
But you’ve missed the obvious question in all this: where’s our Glenn? That board contains every cock-eyed futurist to ever get over-excited about a hypercapitalist tomorrow except the Ole Perfesser.
‘Tardo and I were discussing it. We both concluded that the Perfesser’s absence is shocking and unexplainable. He must already be under the control of the grey goo.
Reynolds shows up on the Lifeboat Foundation’s quotes page, but I don’t think this means much in terms of his affiliation with them. It looks like they’ve pulled together diffuse statements that touch on their areas of interest and which they consider supportive of their cause.
“Futurists Board”? You’d think these people would know their own terminology. Marinetti was a futurist. These guys are futurologists.
It should be noted that there are plenty of transhumanists who think the Lifeboaters and other Randroid-ubermensch types are complete fuckheads. cyborgdemocracy.net is well worth a look, for example.
Todd-
“altering the fundamental life algorithm that is evolution” is exactly the issue that transhumanist are raising- they’re asking if we can do better than evolution. The idea that we have to accept ourselves as we are right now either because “this is how we evolved” or “this is how the Designer made us” isn’t a given, is it?
I can see why creationists (as I argued in the other thread) hate the idea of transhumanism: they’re implying that they can do better than God. But why give the same level of respect to evolution?
Just because we came from evolution doesn’t mean we have to think what we have is worth never changing. Evolution is ad-hoc and gives us what is just good enough- there’s nothing particularly special about our biochemistry or neurology.
Think about sickle cell anemia, for example. It’s a “good enough” response to malaria from an evolutionary perspective. Having one sickle gene is protective, even though it means that the children of two protected parents can get both genes- causing the intense pain of the illness. But since the sickle variation gave more protection than pain- and evolution doesn’t particularly care about pain- it got selected for in malarial zones.
We humans don’t have the ability to make vitamin C because of a broken gene from 80 million years ago. We all carry the gene, it just doesn’t work (a vestigial gene). All primates have to eat for vitamin C or get scurvy (not very helpful for monkeys in famine times). All other mammals except guinea pigs do make their own vitamin C: should we never contemplate fixing this gene because of, what, solidarity with our primate family?
Question for you:
There’s an area in Italy where most people don’t get any kind of heart disease, because of one person’s single-nucleotide mutation that happened 300 years ago. Doesn’t matter if they eat a really good or a really bad Mediterranean diet- all that matters is if this one fellow was an ancestor. Or on the flip side, variations on a single gene can make one person many times more susceptible to getting Alzheimer than another, regardless of how well they eat, exercise, and take care of their health.
Researchers are learning how to fix specific stretches of DNA – tools developed in the past 10 years let them make precise and predictable changes. In the past, gene therapy didn’t work because they only had a shotgun approach- blast the new gene into a cell and hope it gets to the right place.
If in 10 years medical research could offer people the ability to either get the good mutation, or remove the bad one, would you oppose it? Sure, these specific fixes might not be necessary, because research might find ways to work around them. A person could carry the Alzheimer’s gene but get a vaccine against amaloid plaque, for example.
The accelerating pace of research means that we’ll have specific details of exactly what and why variations in genes cause health problems. We’ll also know why there was positive selection pressure for a particular variation-analogous to sickle cell anemia- so we’ll know the exact risks and benefits of changing a person’s gene variation. At that point, if a person knows they carry the nasty Alzheimers variant and wants to change it, would you want to tell them “No”?
“Wait…………that’s not paste he’s eating!! It’s grey goo!!!!â€?
Soylent Gray is made out of non-trans-human people!
R. Montalban-
You say that these transhumanists are “fixed on immortality for a select few.”
Where do you get the “select few”? What I’m reading says the exact opposite- that Kurzweil, for example, wants to stop diseases and debilitating aging. He has no “but only for some” in his writing. His basic assumptions would make that impossible.
For example, they’re predicting better health for everyone given cheaper, faster, and far more widespread medical research and technologies. Each year’s increase in raw computing power will make more knowledge available to more people- medical training, medical journals, support groups.
Better tools for medical research means more diseases can be studied and better cures (or fixes) can be made for the same amount of money and research time. Kurzweil claims that the cost of research will go down, because the technology needed keep on getting cheaper.
In fact, he’s saying that there’s almost no way to stop the growth and sharing of medical knowledge, short of having a dictatorship take over.
Helen of Troy asks:
“If in 10 years medical research could offer people the ability to either get the good mutation, or remove the bad one, would you oppose it? Sure, these specific fixes might not be necessary, because research might find ways to work around them. A person could carry the Alzheimer’s gene but get a vaccine against amaloid plaque, for example.”
Absolutely not. There is nothing wrong with pursuing any of the ideas that transhumanists envision, only with pursuing them with wide eyed optimism without the necessary skepticism on both a technology’s limitations and its dangers. Most transhumanists are idealistic optimists, which is actually quite refreshing, but critical thinking in some circles like the Extropians tends to be a bit of an after thought. The trick is to fall somewhere between the unbridled optimism of Hans Moravec and the doom and gloom pessimism of Bill Joy.
You say that these transhumanists are “fixed on immortality for a select few.�
Where do you get the “select few�?
Do I really have to spell it out for you? Randroids and Wingnuts and Tech Central Station hacks are involved; of course it will be social darwinist “free market” bullshit, I don’t care what Kurweil says for PR purposes on that site.
As for the rest of your argument, I’m gonna do one more post on the subject and I’ll try to fairly deal with it there.
Here’s a quote for you, Retardo, from Hardy’s “Mathematician’s Apology”:
““A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life.â€?
And a slightly more optimistic quote from J.B.S. Haldane [bows in ritual obeisance while using the name of Haldane. Spills coffee over keyboard]:
“I think then that the tendency of applied science is to magnify injustices until they become too intolerable to be borne, and the average man whom all the prophets and poets could not move, turns at last and extinguishes the evil at its source.”
‘Tardo and I were discussing it. We both concluded that the Perfesser’s absence is shocking and unexplainable. He must already be under the control of the grey goo.
He’s no doubt their legal counsel, an expert in “space law,” you see. As such, he must maintain a low profile — and a façade of integrity.
Mr. R. Montalban, do you care what Kurzweil says on his site, http://www.kurzweilai.net/, or is that just PR as well? I don’t think it is to your credit to attack people without providing some kind of evidence. You singled out three people out of a list of hundreds, and condemned the whole group. It just isn’t convincing to rely on collective guilt. I’d be curious to hear more, if you have it.
It is certainly possible that you, or I, might disagree with the direction this group is going. Unfortunately your post provided no information on what this group is up to. A cursory glance at the site left me with no fear that they are going to establish a class of ubermensch — could you post the link?
If Jeff being on some board bugs you, and from your recent expose I can see why it would, why don’t you just email them and request information about what role he plays? You might also provide a summary of Jeff’s behavior, and suggest that they might want to reconsider. Sure, it might seem like stalking, but then, this post seems a bit like stalking anyway.
Yours — Ally
Speaking for myself, I’m not a Luddite anti-extropian but it’s just that the very presence of pastemongers like Goldstein and Mrs Shrugs drags the whole Lifeboat business down to the level of a joke despite dozens of smart guys like Greg Benford and agreeable weirdos like Doug Rushkoff. You put one clown in a roomful of nobel prize winners and it’s the big shoes and baggy pants you notice not the brilliant minds. Go read a few Atlas Shrugs entries and tell me you want to spend a few thousand years in a space capsule with that.
If all there technology ends up like something creepy out of Transmetropolitan or the headtanks in Futurama, I don’t want ANY part of it. Creepy fuckers.
Their* Argh. Someone give me a goddamn loom to smash!
Helen – this kind of statement is exactly what is being mocked “The accelerating pace of research means that we’ll have specific details of exactly what and why variations in genes cause health problems. We’ll also know why there was positive selection pressure for a particular variation-analogous to sickle cell anemia- so we’ll know the exact risks and benefits of changing a person’s gene variation. “.
there is literally nothing that proves or even indicates that these things will come true, much less that they are somehow *destined* to come true. This is why the optomisitic, hyperbolic, technology-will- create-utopia talk is lame.
Kathleen-
Short answer:
because the research is already being done. Finding gene variants’ links to disease isn’t new. RNAi clinical trials exist.
[If you could find out your variants on these for a reasonable price and medical privacy, would you turn the information down for BRCA1, Apo E, GSTM 1…? Know anyone with the wrong variant of BRCA or Apo E? I do. Is cutting your breasts out always going to be the best solution for the bad BRCA? I don’t think so.]
Long answer:
Given the human genome project, given the work being done in Iceland, given that the National Institutes of Health (not usually given to wild speculations) assumes that the cost of sequencing 3 billion base pairs (i.e. 1 human) will be 1/100th the cost it is today in 10 years, how would we not have much better information on genetic links to disease?
A simple search on PubMed for “gene polymorphisms” gets 3,500 hits. The latest 5 as of 10:15pst:
“Vitamin D and estrogen receptor gene polymorphisms and the risk of colorectal cancer in Bulgaria.”
“Glutathione S-Transferase Gene Polymorphisms in Italian Patients with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss.”
“Cyclin D1 and epidermal growth factor polymorphisms associated with survival in patients with advanced colorectal cancer treated with Cetuximab.”
“Non classical HLA genes and non-HLA genes in a population of infants at familial risk of atopy.”
“Polymorphism of beta-adrenergic receptors and susceptibility to open-angle glaucoma.”
A simple search on PubMed for Apo-E results in over 9,000 hits.
Some of the most recent:
“Apolipoprotein e genotypes: relationship to cognitive functioning, cognitive decline, and survival in nonagenarians.”
“APOE epsilon variation in multiple sclerosis susceptibility and disease severity: some answers.”
“Apolipoprotein B gene variants are involved in the determination of blood glucose and lipid levels in patients with non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus.”
RNA interference gets over 6,000 hits, the first from *1998*:
“RNA interference for antiviral therapy”
“Small Interfering RNA-Mediated Silencing of cytochrome P450 3A4 Gene.”
“Transgenic RNAi: Accelerating and Expanding Reverse Genetics in Mammals”
Would you be less mocking if instead I’d written:
“The accelerating pace of research means that we’ll have more details of exactly what and why variations in genes cause health problems. We’ll also know more about why there was positive selection pressure for a particular variation-analogous to sickle cell anemia- so we’ll know more about the exact risks and benefits of changing a person’s gene variation.” ?
R. Montalban,
ummm… “which is why they put the truly decent people on their list at the top of the publicity shelf,”
The list is in alphabetical order.
It looks like there’s a bit over 125 people on the list. If one could do a scatterplot for “left to right political spectrum” (at least for the Americans on the list) and “ranting blogger or not” (or “really ought not to be a public spokesperson”) there’s bound to be a few people in the far corners. What, exactly, should a group do about the far corners of their membership?
Oops on the close italics
I firmly believe that, in the near- to mid-term future, advances in robotics and cybernetics will allow human brains to produce thousands — maybe millions — of times as much stupidity as they can today.
I believe that the Singularity will happen, but that afterwards, no two people will ever agree on exactly when it happened, or what it was.
Our pandimensional posthuman robot bodies may well ascend the brightest heaven of invention, but only so that they can try to peek down the front of Lindsay Lohan’s blouse from their lofty vantage point.
We will use the god-like powers bequeathed to us in this New World to imprint holographic Angelina Jolie fan pages and mildly pornographic Buffy vs. Battlestar Galactica crossover fanfic directly onto each others’ brains.
And the Chicago Cubs still won’t make it to the goddamned World Series.
Helen of Troy –
Just because we came from evolution doesn’t mean we have to think what we have is worth never changing. Evolution is ad-hoc and gives us what is just good enough- there’s nothing particularly special about our biochemistry or neurology.
Right, except Evolution has an edge over all transhumanists nerds:
You don’t see Evolution’s failures because they all died out before you had a chance to see them.
And as you noticed the overall performance is quite poor in spite of the huge number of trials.
Do we really want to bet on the success/failure ratio of the singularitarians?
No need of grey goo to make a disaster.
Just look at software, amazing nowadays, isn’t it?
Except from time to time you have to reboot and/or reinstall.
What does rebooting yourself would mean, huh?
BTW, I made a similar comment on the Biosingularity blog http://biosingularity.wordpress.com/2006/06/19/reprogramming-biology/
And it does not appear, it has been CENSORED.
Not even to speak of ethics, politics or scientific credentials, who really thinks we can trust this kind of people.
The whole Singularity bandwagon is very close to a cult, well known as “Rapture of the Nerds”
I’ve just uploaded my consciousness into a computer.
Sadly, Yes! The computer was a Commodore 64.
Just you wait–once Jeff is all-electronic and portable, he’ll be able to administer your cock-slapping to the inside of your skull too. Then you’ll be sorry.
Actually, I’m already sorry I even thought of that.
Helen – the answer is yes. There is a huge difference between those two comments, which I hope you can see.
and this demonstrates my point again: Kathleen-Short answer: because the research is already being done. Finding gene variants’ links to disease isn’t new. RNAi clinical trials exist.
the fact that research is being done does not prove that anyone of the asserts you made *will* happen. I am in favor of research. I am in favor of medical advances. I am in favor of philosophical and ethical debates about technology and medicine, and their consequences. But the language you are using tells me that you are putting too much faith into technology and research to solve humanity’s problems. It won’t happen.
“Our pandimensional posthuman robot bodies may well ascend the brightest heaven of invention, but only so that they can try to peek down the front of Lindsay Lohan’s blouse from their lofty vantage point”
I prefer this version —
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up skirts”.
kathleen-
Why did you write originally write “there is literally nothing that proves or even indicates that these things will come true, much less that they are somehow *destined* to come true. This is why the optomisitic, hyperbolic, technology-will- create-utopia talk is lame”?
There are thousands of researchers who’ve already published plenty on these. People already can get tested for variants- not too many now, and too expensive now, but the price is dropping exponentially. How is this not indicative? I’d been writing about SNPs. My beliefs that we’ll know what variants are associated with disease – and why variants cause disease- is based on evidence that we already have been doing this.
My unspoken assumptions are that this research is like the human genome project. Right now we’re about, say 1% of the way to putting together a database of these. And in the early 1990’s we were about 1% of the way to completing the HGP.
If in 1990 I’d written about the HGP as “The accelerating pace of research means that we’ll have specific details of exactly what the human genome is,” would that have been a mockably predictive way of putting it?
And how does solving the problem of ‘human ignorance of genetic links to disease’ “solve humanity’s problems”? All it is is information, medical knowledge. People will have more certainty about the probabilities of health problems, that’s all. Won’t solve the problem of how neighbors who’ve lived next to each other for 40 years can suddenly try to kill each other.
Reminds me of a short story I read years ago:
A Rip Wan Winkle wakes up in 2050. Her doctor takes her around, showing her the low-pollution hydrogen-powered economy, the schools and gardens and national parks, the healthy and relaxed people from all areas of the world…
RVW asks “Where are the hospitals and the military bases?”
The doctor says “We don’t need them. We’ve solved disease, and hunger, poverty and war.”
“Wow, so this must be a paradise!”
“No. Now we have real problems.”
Why did you write originally write “there is literally nothing that proves or even indicates that these things will come true, much less that they are somehow *destined* to come true. This is why the optomisitic, hyperbolic, technology-will- create-utopia talk is lame�?
I wrote that becuase it is true. I’ll say it again: the fact that research is being conducted, and the fact that previous research has made discoveries and advances our knowledge, in no way proves that “The accelerating pace of research means that we’ll have specific details of exactly what and why variations in genes cause health problems. We’ll also know why there was positive selection pressure for a particular variation-analogous to sickle cell anemia- so we’ll know the exact risks and benefits of changing a person’s gene variation. “ So maybe it is my fault for taking you at what you wrote, and I am glad that you believe this, because of your beliefs. My beliefs tell me that technology and science is always far more complicated than we imagine, and I really think you are kidding yourself to think that we will “have specific details” of “exactly what and why”, as well as knowing why there was “postive selection pressure” and so we can know “the exact risks and benefits”. Seriously, the human body is far too complicated and unique. not saying we can’t try, I am just saying that your assertions are too broad, too optomistic, and don’t provide a good foundation for a rational argument.
I am glad to see you agree that medical and technological advances won’t solve humanity’s problems, and I apologize for misattributing ideas to you. However, it seemed a reasonable inference, since the position you seemed to be taking was opposed to mocking of the transhumanist links the Brad and RM were talking about.
If your only point is that medical research is good, and we should be happy for medical advances, well then I just don’t really see any opposition to that here at SN, nor at why you feel the need to post about it. Have at it, of course. Most of my comments are irrelevant.
Ooooh. Looks like someone just Transcended before she could post a message.
I’m jealous.
[…] Like I hinted at in this post, Kurzweil’s stated aim on the Lifeboat thingy is okay to a point: he wants to encourage vigilance with regard to dangerous technologies. […]
Christ, this transhumanist robo-cloned future is bullshit. If you can craft the stuff of bio-nano-technology into a cheap and reliable aphrodisiac and whip us up some really good drugs that don’t keep us up all night shaking and sweating, that’ll do. Except: if there is a plan to go interplanetary that explicitly leaves everyone who has ever worked at TCS behind, I’m interested.
[…] Fink Tanks: Wingbot Edition […]
[…] Atlas Shrugged, Wole Soyinka and the newly appointed Huckabee campaign consultant Jim Pinkerton. Sadly No! points out Lev was an inspirational figure for the infamous Team B, the neocon hawks of the […]