transhumanism

In the fall of 2013, I lectured to 200 college freshmen on the subject of transhumanism.

Their reaction was one of shock mixed with an apprehension for the years ahead of them. Certainly not my intent and I was fortunately able to bring the discourse back around to one of balance and even, dare I say, optimism. But those students were first semester freshmen. While digital natives, they were also doe-eyed and tattered in the face of that daunting experience that is the first few months of college. It was a gamble that they had any sleep the night before and there I was talking to them about concepts like cybernetics.

Surely, I thought, I would not have the same reception teaching my semester-long course on transhumanism to seniors about to graduate. These would be seasoned veterans after all. Tempered and forged in three and a half years of critical thinking, they would at least be aware of how technology is changing the human experience, if not humanity itself. They would be able to entertain a concept while disagreeing with it. Certainly they would receive the notion of the Singularity with a measured response.

No, it was pretty much the same…only with a bit less crying.

I exaggerate. A little. Let me back up a bit.

The class started last January. It did indeed cover the technical aspects of transhumanism but the focal point of the course was ethics. Should we or shouldn’t we be doing these things? What are the benefits? What are the consequences? What do you think?

The text for the class was Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. I encouraged the class to disagree with Kurzweil’s writings if they chose to. “Goodness knows a great many people already do,” I told them. We held discussions over the reading, peppered with what’s been happening since the publication of Kurzweil’s book, such as Watson’s victory on Jeopardy! and the warnings from Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk over artificial intelligence. The students then wrote a 20 page capstone paper on an ethical question of their choosing and presented that paper to the class.

When we met for the last time, I asked the class for a few final thoughts on transhumanism. These were their responses with names changed to protect privacy.

“I never even knew any of this stuff existed,” said Alyssa, a 22 year-old majoring in athletic training.

I expressed shock: They’ve never known a world without an Internet and they have only the dimmest of memories of life without mobile devices. Why is something like artificial intelligence such a fear leap?

“But computers that can think for themselves? That’s different,” she responded. “And I never even knew what nanotechnology was before taking this class.”

“Many times I left class having an existential crisis,” said Veronica, a soon-to-be school social worker. “Where are things like artificial intelligence taking us? What does it even mean to be human anymore?”

As is the case with many people, not simply college students, it is sometimes easiest to express things in pop culture terms. Lance, a graduating senior who had just accepted a position with a marketing firm, put his change of thoughts this way:

“When I would hear about robots or ‘machines that can think,’ R2-D2 and C-3PO were the first things that would come to my mind,” he said. “I never considered there might one day be an Ultron.”

“There are no strings on me…” I answered, doing my best James Spader and getting a collective shudder from the class.

“Who needs the meatbags?” Lance responded through a laugh, imitating Bender from Futurama.

“I don’t know. I feel hopeful.”

That came from Jessica. She’s a psychology student on her way to grad school.

“If I…God forbid…ever get in a car wreck and lose a limb or something, there may be cybernetics that will let me live the life that I want to,” she said. “If I get cancer, there may be nanotech that will help me get better.”

“At first, my reaction was to reject all of this and say it’s wrong. But this is happening,” said Kate, a major in mass communications. “We’re going to have devices that are autonomous and self-aware. We need to deal with it.”

My interest piqued, I asked Kate just what she was proposing.

“Education,” she answered simply. “People need to know about things like AI. And as we develop super AI, we need to do so with our own sense of ethics in mind. We need to give it a moral compass.”

One student named Matt reminded us of Rev. Christopher Benek, a Presbyterian pastor who wrote an op/ed piece about AI. Benek asserted that AI could “participate in Christ’s redemptive purposes” and “help to make the world a better place.”

“But I don’t believe in god and neither do a lot of other folks,” Veronica said. “So I have to place my faith in people. And I don’t know if we can make the right decisions with this stuff.”

“Then we will need education in ethics just as much as our devices will,” Kate said. “None of the technology that we’ve talked about is really good or bad. It depends what we decide to do with it.”

Kate stole my closing line. She really did. While there were undoubtedly students from the class who will be just fine if they never hear the terms “nanotechnology” or “genetic engineering” again, Kate got the takeaway if there indeed was any single one. Whether transhumanism results in a utopia, a dystopia, or the more likely muddy middle, it will not be due to the technology itself but rather it will result from our choices as a species.

After seeing the work of my students, I am left with hope those choices will be good ones.

 

About the Author:

Jon Nichols is a science fiction writer who blogs about transhumanism and other topics at Esoteric Synaptic Events.  He teaches English and Humanities at a small Midwestern university.

 

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“Most thinkers…have started out with a very specific view of human nature,” reflects Dr. Nayef Al-Rodhan, Center Director of Geopolitics and Global Futures at the Geneva Center for Security Policy. “My view of human nature is actually the foundation of my outlook – to me, man is an emotional, amoral, egoist…it turns out that our moral compass is governed primarily by our perceived emotional self interest, and the perception bit is just as important as reality.”

Our moral compass is malleable, according to the context of our situation and emotions. The only thing not malleable, says Nayef, is our “Predisposed Tabula Rasa” (PTR). Al-Rodhan believes that humans are not born innately clean and clear of influences. “I challenged that a few years ago and I called it PTR…we have an inbuilt biological microchip that is pro-survival, so when survival is at stake, all bets are off…the most moral creature will not behave as we predict.”

This leads into the “5 Ps”, desires and needs that Al-Rodhan believes motivate you, me, and all other human beings, i.e. ”Power, Pride, Profit, Pleasure and Permanence (longevity).” “It’s ironic that our very human nature…is what will drive us to change our human nature,” remarks Al-Rodhan. Since we are driven by these needs and desires, it is a legitimate challenge for humans to withstand wanting more of the 5 Ps.

Within the concept of Transhumanism, this inevitable innovation in human nature can be defined as the “enhancement of physiological function beyond normal physiology”, these motivators are a philosophical must. Transhumanists aim to pursue these enhancements, not just for the sake of repairing what has been lost or broken, but also in going beyond what is physiologically designed by nature – the unmatched innovator.

Nayef reminds us that “physical enhancement has been with us for a long time,” citing a range of examples of corrective technology, from reading glasses, to makeup, to replacement knees and hips. These types of enhancements don’t seem to worry most human beings from an ethical standpoint. The intuitive concerns kick in when the topic veers toward the arena of cognitive enhancements. “What defines us…is our brain – if we mess with that, which we will, we will change what it means to be human,” says Al-Rodhan. In meddling with our inner gears, we raise all kinds of untouched ethical and equality issues, as well as geopolitical, moral, and existential ramifications.

Where and how are the 5 Ps tugging us in our adoption of new technologies today? This is a question that can be taken in a myriad of directions. Nayef mentions synthetic biology, a field focused on developing abilities to synthesize bits of DNA and protein that do not exist in nature. This is different from the increasingly publicized field of biotechnology, in which scientists play with existing entities. Al-Rodhan notes that synthetic biology is taking off in a major way. “It is really the marriage between synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, nonmaterial and material sciences, that’s enabling us to do some very fancy things, and very troubling things.”

In Europe, the approval of a three-parent embryo, for example, prods us to ask from an ethical point of view, “When and where do we erect boundaries?”  Nayef emphasizes that these are precautionary lines of thought, and that these considerations are not about stifling innovation, which he deems central to our species’ future; however, we will undoubtedly encounter risks, and the global conversations that we have should be focused on how to mitigate and encourage emerging technologies.

This unprecedented and monumental field of thought will require cooperation at the individual, corporate, state, and transnational levels. “Corporate entities are the last people we would expect that would want to be regulated…I’m sure there are lots of responsible people, but it’s not their motivation, it’s not what they’re trained to do,” says Al-Rodhan. Solving tough problems requires taking into account all parties’ contextual objectives and concerns.

As far as the five Ps are concerned, in Nayef’s mind, all are active in different shades in all enterprises and all are rooted in human emotions. “Emotions as a separate entity from rational beings is a misnomer,” remarks Al-Rodhan. “Research actually shows that they are part of our rational thinking.” We are a complex entity, and the view that emotions are ‘extra baggage’ and are primordially residual is not true. “It turns out that our most rational decisions have to have some positive emotional aspect.”

Using some of the 5 Ps as a frame, Nayef reflects on the three-parent embryo innovation: pride is related to the desire to develop a fully-functional human being, pleasure is linked to wanting to help avoid faulty DNA, and permanency is linked to a sense of longevity through generations. Each of these factors drives our innovative ambitions, and as we strive to fulfill our global and systemic responsibility in producing the best outcomes for the future of the human species, none of these perceptions should be left out of the rational decision-making process.

About the Author:

Dan Faggella is a graduate of UPENN’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology program, as well as a national martial arts champion. His work focuses heavily on emerging technology and startup businesses (TechEmergence.com), and the pressing issues and opportunities with augmenting consciousness. His articles and interviews with philosophers / experts can be found at SentientPotential.com

It is important that the transhumanist movement establish a consensus on the meaning of life. Failure to do so will result in conflict, the extent of which is difficult to predict. As it stands today, transhumanism is a divided movement of various competing interests promoting values which are contradictory in nature. It seems the only agreement the movement has reached thus far is that the proper course of action is to promote the widespread adaptation of transhumanism.

From what I have seen, the three primary justifications for transhumanism are utilitarianism, freedom and meaning, all of which conflict with one another to a certain degree. The first of these, utilitarianism, is based on the idea that the overall ‘utility’ for sentient beings must be maximized. Utility in this case refers to the increased propensity for sentient beings to experience positive emotions while minimizing negative ones. Utilitarian reasons are commonly used to justify transhumanism; i.e. transhumanism will lead to biological immortality, less sickness, greater physical and cognitive capabilities, etc.

It is important to bear in mind Aldous Huxley’s 1932 science fiction novel Brave New World when discussing utilitarianism, especially when it is within a transhumanist context. Brave New World describes a dystopian society in which utilitarianism has run awry. The citizens of Brave New World are subject to a life totally free from conflict. There is no pain, no suffering and no failure. People are conditioned from birth to appreciate their lot in life using a variety of transhumanist techniques, such as hypnopaedic learning, subliminal advertising, genetic engineering and copious drug use. Illness in every form has been eliminated and citizens are conditioned to accept aging and death completely without worry. There are no families as that introduces too much variability into social order. Instead children are developed ex vitro using carefully refined laboratory techniques and raised through a very strict social structure.

From a utilitarian perspective, Brave New World is describing a utopia. Indeed, this utopia is in line with modern-day abolitionist ideology which seeks to use transhumanism to totally abolish the suffering of sentient beings (hence the name ‘abolitionism’). An important point to take away from Brave New World is that this utilitarian utopia has no use for freedom. Freedom gives one the choice to make poor decisions which could potentially lower the overall utility for the individual and perhaps even society as a whole. Many proponents of utilitarianism, both in the past and present, have defended individual freedom on the grounds that the individual knows best how to increase their own happiness. But these theories are describing humans, not transhumans. As Huxley argued, transhumans can be programmed against their will, so to speak, to be happier than if they were given the freedom to make decisions for themselves. And therein lies the conflict between utilitarianism and freedom.

The second conflict is between utilitarianism and meaning. Again, Brave New World serves as a pertinent reference. The citizens of Brave New World lead totally meaningless lives. The art is shallow and the interpersonal relationships superficial. Overcoming adversity, commonly regarded as one of the most meaningful activities in the human experience, is irrelevant as there is no adversity to overcome. Not to mention that people are conditioned not to care about such things. But they are happy and the utilitarian goal of total elimination of suffering is met.

The third conflict is between freedom and meaning. This conflict is more difficult to summarize than the previous two, but there is still an important issue to address. Altruism, the act of making some type of personal self-sacrifice on behalf of another, is another highly regarded source of meaning. But this form of altruism is predicated on a lack of freedom, both for the giving and the receiving parties. The giver’s freedom is compromised by the moral obligation to limit their personal freedom in order to help the receiver. And the receiver’s freedom is compromised by the situation that makes them disadvantaged in the first place. The type of world where altruism is allowed to manifest in this manner is completely at odds with a freedom-based society.

This is not some bizarre thought argument, there are many practical examples where altruism is displayed in this manner. The most prominent is the parent-child relationship, arguably the most revered interpersonal relationship, regardless of the society being examined. The reason parents are universally held in such esteem is the fact that they make such huge personal sacrifices on behalf of a person other than themselves. Mind you, the child has very little freedom in this type of arrangement (in fact they have no choice whatsoever in whether or not to enter this type of arrangement). Their wellbeing is completely dependent on their parents’ actions. Yet many grow up to revere their parents and look fondly upon this time when they were so strongly dependent on someone else.

Utilitarianism, freedom and meaning are all commonly used to justify transhumanism. Many times they are used in conjunction with one another. Utilitarianism I have already covered, but transhumanism is also justified on the grounds that people should have the freedom to do whatever they please with their bodies. Whether this freedom is justified on utilitarian grounds or the idea that it will lead to more meaningful lives is seldom made clear. Freedom is justified simply on the grounds that freedom is a desirable thing. Meaning is oftentimes employed on the basis that higher modes of consciousness will lead to greater levels of meaning. But as I have explained, all of these values are conflicting with one another to a certain degree.

For now the transhumanist movement can ignore this issue by using the argument that transhumanism helps facilitate more utilitarianism, freedom and meaning. But something has to give eventually. Eventually the movement will have to come to terms with the fact that these three values are contradictory to a certain degree. Some sort of compromise will have to be reached. If this does not happen, then there may be conflict, the extent of which is difficult to predict.

About the Author:

Matt Frohlich is a scientific researcher who writes about subjects related to the technological singularity in his spare time.

I feared I did it all wrong.

They just stared at me with moon eyes.  They resembled car crash victims, dizzy and bewildered in the aftermath of a rear-end collision.  I began to suspect I was the one who just drove the truck into their back bumper.

Five minutes previous I had given a lecture to 300 college freshmen on the subject of transhumanism.  The class had been reading Feed by M.T. Anderson, a novel about future youth who get the Internet delivered directly to brains via neural implants.  As a professor in the class, I wanted to stress to students that such transhuman technology is not a flight of fancy but is very much on its way to being a widespread reality.

Examples from the lecture included the “stretchy gold material” developed at the University of Michigan that could soon allow for the neural chip implants described in Feed, pictures of cybernetic limbs that are already helping the disabled to walk, and updates on how quantum computing will open many new doors of possibility, even the act of uploading one’s consciousness into either a computer as Ray Kurzweil suggests or an android body such as proposed by Dmitry Itskov.

Students, I asserted, could soon overcome certain learning impediments via “smart drugs” developed at the University of Pennsylvania that could enhance both memory and cognition.  Iron Man, I argued, no longer belongs solely to the realm of comic books but to the reality of the 21^st Century battlefield.  Finally, as sex seldom seems to be far from the mind of college students, I described the subculture of individuals who own rudimentary “sexbots” and what may happen in the future as artificial intelligence systems increase in sophistication by orders of magnitude, causing a “mentational reformation.”  Could Pris from Blade Runner be that far off?  An exaggeration perhaps, but I wanted to spark discussion.

And discussion was of course the ultimate goal for the small group sessions after the lecture.  I eagerly wanted to hear perspectives from this, the most technologically savvy class of college freshmen to date, on what I believe to be exciting advancements in the integration of humanity and technology.  As they sat in their chairs, however, wrapped in their college “uniforms” of flip flops and baggy sweats, excitement was not what I received.

They were scared.  I could almost smell it mixed with the aroma of their coffees.

“This freaks me out,” one of them said.

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s not natural,” she responded.  “It’s not human.”

“This technology comes from human intelligence and ingenuity.  Does that not lend it a bit of humanity?”

“You’re not human anymore if you’re just your brain uploaded into a computer,” a young man insisted.

“What stops you then from being human?” I asked.  “Do you value your body more than the contents of your mind?”

“Well a human is something that eats, sleeps, and breathes,” another freshman said.

“Does that mean my dog is human?”

Polite laughter ensued, prompting a playful roll of the eyes from the student.  It was not the best definition, but then most first semester freshmen are just taking their first steps towards becoming great critical thinkers.  Still, the apprehensive comments kept coming.  The students envisioned a world of disembodied “ghosts in the shell” and “terminator” drones that could think for themselves and hated humanity.  But I had tried to convey so much excitement about the potential of transhumanism.  In fact, I actually had to work to keep from painting an aureole around Kurzweil.

Oh no, I thought.  I’ve really screwed this up.

So I requested they name at least one positive benefit of the technologies described in the lecture.  I watched them think and there then came a dribble of benefits, mostly examples of how transhumanism could improve the quality of life for the disabled or infirmed.  Then one student’s thoughts changed the whole tenor of the discussion.

“How much time and money do we spend just trying to stay alive?” she asked.  “What if we didn’t have to do that?”

A wave-like grumble came across the class as they considered this.  One student recalled my own, “overly basic” definition of “transhumanism” from lecture: “using technology to improve human existence.”  I said that no matter how many vitamins you take or numbers of hours you spend in the gym, a human body is still a squishy thing, vulnerable to the inevitable entropy of age and disease.  “Might there not be a better way?” I asked the freshmen.  I decided to further press the thought.

“What about all the time and money we spend just to look ‘good’?” I asked.  “All of the shampoo, the toothpaste, the cosmetics, and on the far end of things, plastic surgery?  What if we didn’t need any of that in order to keep up a body that is gradually breaking down?”

“We could accomplish a lot if we didn’t have to think about any of that,” one student said.

“But it’s just not natural,” a man with short cropped hair said.  “My faith says that only God can create and that we’re not supposed to mess with what God creates.  We’re also not supposed to live forever.”

There came silent nods of agreement.  A young man seated next to the previous speaker raised his hand.

“As technology advances I can imagine God saying, ‘what are they doing?’” he said.  “But what if it’s the opposite?  What if He looks at us and says, ‘Good!  They figured out the secret just as I planned.  Now they can handle their biology themselves’?”

The students, while perhaps not wholly onboard, were at least forced to contemplate the proposition.  It made too much sense to ignore.

In no way did I wish to scare them.  True, I wanted to show them the possible pitfalls of transhuman technology, but I certainly did not want them to fear the future.  Their reactions of shock and their retreat to conservative stances took me by surprise.  Then, as the students considered the situation calmly and rationally, at least a few of them began to see the technology as symbolic of human creativity and imagination and not an erasure of our humanity itself.  With a bit of thought, automatic rejection gave way to open consideration.

Perhaps there is a lesson in that for the rest of the world as well.

 

About the Author:

Jon Nichols is a science fiction writer who blogs about transhumanism and other topics at Esoteric Synaptic Events.  He teaches English and Humanities at a small Midwestern university.

 

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• Zoltan Istvan: The Transhumanist Wager Is A Choice We’ll All Have To Make

There was this unique bird. It was endemic to a small island called Mauritius. It flourished there for thousands of years. It then went extinct. It was called the Dodo.

There was this some-what intelligent species. It was endemic to a small blue planet called Earth. It flourished there for a couple hundred thousand years. It then went extinct. It was called homo sapiens…

This is what history will say some time from now.

“Why so dark and pessimistic?” you may ask.

“On the contrary!” I would reply.

Species go extinct all the time. In fact, a certain percent of species going extinct is a normal part of evolution. Why would the Homo Sapiens be any different?!

Take the dodo, for example. The dodo thrived because it was lucky to live in such a safe environment – with abundance of food and no predators, that it didn’t even need to fly. So eventually it got fat and lost the ability to use its wings. When new predators entered its realm the Dodo was unable to either fight or flight. So, it went extinct.

“Yes, but we are different”, you may want to reply. “We are smart.”

“Not smart enough” I would say. What’s worse is that we’ve gotten fat and comfortable. Complacent. Inflexible. Conservative. Unwilling to change. Most of us have lost their ability to fly i.e. think independently, dream big and have the guts to chase after those dreams.

But we could be so much more. We could be masters of the universe. We could be immortal.

We could be gods!

And some of us will be.

But not those who hang on too tight to “our glorious past,” “human nature” or God, whatever those words may mean.

It will be those who dare to change, to move on, to embrace the new, to risk and to adapt. To embrace technology in a smart way and give wings to humanity.

To be/come transhuman.

And those humans who refuse to change will, like the Dodo, eventually go extinct. Perhaps not at once. But gradually, in time, they will die… off.

And those who thrive and prosper will not be mere humans any more. They will be more. A lot more.

So, the only thing that matters to you is this:

Are you ready to evolve?!

Or are you dead as the Dodo?!

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