Primal transhumanism

Primal Tanshumanism.

Oxymoron? Maybe.

Burgeoning lifestyle choice for a growing number of futurists? Most definitely.

Look, it’s 2011 and it’s glaringly obvious that we’re still quite a ways off from achieving the much heralded posthuman condition. The sad truth is that all interventions or augmentations currently available are fairly low impact by any measure. There aren’t a whole lot of high tech and sophisticated options available to radically alter human performance, experience, or life expectancy.

So what’s a transhumanist to do? Just sit around and wait for something better to come along?

Hardly. An increasing number of transhumanists are taking matters into their own hands by working with what they got. And by doing so, they're pushing the limits of their genetic potential.

While a significant segment of the transhumanist community is content to let their minds and bodies go to waste in anticipation of future interventions, there is a growing conviction amongst a number of adherents who feel that there is no better time than the present to optimize their bodies using the limited resources available. And strangely, some of these body-hacks involve an apparent technological step back.

Call it Paleo-Transhumanism

Indeed, there are a number of things we can do to extend our capacities and optimize our health in a way that’s consistent with transhumanist ideals—even if it doesn’t appear to be technologically sophisticated. While the effects of these interventions are admittedly low impact from a future-relativistic perspective, the quest for bodily and cognitive enhancement is part of the broader transhumanist aesthetic which places an emphasis on maximal performance, high quality of life, and longevity.

Consequently, anyone who professes to be a transhumanist, but does nothing to improve upon himself, is a poser. These are the people who are waiting for the magic to happen, and by consequence, are neglecting their full potential in the present moment. Transhumanism is something that's applied in the here-and-now; it’s a recognition of the radical present and all that it has to offer.

Sure, part of being a transhumanist involves the bringing about of a radical future, including scientific research and cheerleading. But it’s also a lifestyle choice; transhumanists actively strive to exceed their body’s nascent capacities, or, at the very least, work to bring about its full potential. In addition to building a radical future, a transhumanist is someone who will, at any time in history, use the tools and techniques around them to maximize their biological well-being. And while there are a number of technological interventions at our disposal–things like pharmaceuticals, implants, and hand-held devices—there is an alternative and seemingly old-fashioned approach to bodily enhancement that’s gaining considerable currency in transhumanist sub-cultures.

Much of the fuel that drives this sentiment is the notion that modernity has actually harmed human functioning more than it has helped. Take agriculture for example. While it has (arguably) propelled human civilization forward, it has paradoxically worked to undermine human health. Anthropologists are revealing that, when compared to our Paleolithic-era ancestors, modern humans have less bone density, are smaller, and more disease ridden. Modern foods, most of which are highly processed and infused with salt and sugar, is the primary culprit—as are apparent “natural” foods like whole grains and rice. Compounding this situation is the shift from active to passive existences; modern humans now bask in the glow of their computer monitors instead of the sun. Our bodies were not meant for this kind of sedentary life and we’re now having to cope with a batch of modern diseases.

A solution to all this, it would seem, is adopting a lifestyle that is more suited to our biological needs. While it might sound contradictory to those with a futuristic bent, adopting a lifestyle that more closely approximates that of our Paleolithic ancestors would do more to foster human health than a continuation of modern habits and norms.

Strong and fit is the new geek

Okay, at the risk of sounding like a complete Luddite, I’m not suggesting that you sell your belongings and move into a cave. It’s not like that. I’m still hoping that you cart around your iPad, philosophize about the coming Singularity, and implant magnets into your finger tips. But I also feel that we need to take an evolutionary approach to human health, namely lifestyle choices that place a greater emphasis on primal eating, exercising, sleeping, and other health factors. This is how the modern transhumanist can best unlock her biological potential.

In terms of specifics, these choices include the Paleolithic diet (also called the caveman diet), fully functional interval training executed at high intensity, and 7-8 hours of sleep each night in complete darkness.

Sounds simple, and even too good to be true, but for those of us who live according to these rules the results have been extraordinary.

And when I say us I mean a good number of prominent transhumanists, a list that includes Max More, Natasha Vita-More, James Hughes, Bruce Klein, and Patri Friedman. Max and Natasha in particular have treated their bodies as shrines since the very beginning, setting a positive example for transhumanists for quite some time.

Indeed, being strong and fit is the new geek. Though not a transhumanist by name, author Timothy Ferris’s latest book, The Four Hour Body, highlights a number of techniques and “body hacks” that work to produce what he calls “superhuman” results.

I’m not sure what’s more ironic: that a primitive approach to eating and fitness is the best way to optimize human health and performance, or that computer nerds are catching on and becoming complete bad-asses by engaging in these kinds of body hacks.

Back to basics: Diet and exercise

It's been said that in order to truly comprehend anything in biology it has to be viewed through the lens of natural selection. If we are to improve human health and performance we need to study our evolutionary underpinnings. Our bodies are adapted to a very specific kind of environment, namely the one our ancestors lived in over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. Consequently, because our species has remained largely unchanged since Paleolithic times, we are best suited to live under a very specific set of conditions.

The Paleo-diet is one approach that works to match the specific way our ancestors ate. It's a diet that has gained serious traction in the fitness communities, not because of any commitment to naturalism or Luddism, but because it works. The primal approach to eating is now the go-to diet for many professional and elite athletes. And it's safe to suggest they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't get them results.

Adherents of this diet basically reject any foods that arrived after the onset of the agricultural revolution. To that end, they consume copious amounts of meat (typically free-range, organic, and grass fed) and vegetables, along with some fruit, nuts, and seeds. Primal eaters take a very liberal approach to consuming fats, while remaining wary of gluten, high-density carbohydrates, and sugars of any sort. So, no whole grains, pasta, rice, potatoes, dairy, or processed foods. While it may sound incredibly restrictive, it’s actually not that severe; there’s considerable culinary potential even within those constraints.

But it’s not enough to base an entire diet on a philosophical or aesthetic appreciation of our primal ancestry. There has to be proven efficacy and hard science to back it up. And indeed a growing literature is emerging that both supports and propels this approach to eating. Paleo advocates like Robb Wolf, Loren Cordain, and Mat Lalonde pour through scientific studies revealing the dangers of Neolithic and processed foods while highlighting the benefits of eating whole foods.

Often accompanying the Paleo diet is a fully functional approach to fitness. The old model of going to the global gym, hitting the treadmill, and working on isolation movements in the weight room is increasingly coming to be seen as old fashioned and ineffectual. Instead, there’s a new emphasis on constantly varied compound movements performed at high intensity for short intervals. A functional movement is anything our bodies are meant to do: lift, push, pull, drag, climb, run, and jump. These exercise sessions, which depending on the workout can range anywhere from five to 25 minutes, tend to be both physically and psychologically demanding. But the gains are tremendous.

A fitness model that best exemplifies this approach is CrossFit. It's a strength and conditioning program that combines weightlifting, sprinting, gymnastics, powerlifting, kettlebell training, plyometrics, rowing, and medicine ball training. Founded by Greg Glassman over a decade ago, CrossFit gyms are starting to pop-up around the world. CrossFit's impact has been nothing short of revolutionary; it has turned fitness into an actual sport. Its major claim is that, through its system of tackling all ten fitness domains (cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination, and accuracy) it produces the best results and the worlds fittest athletes.

As a CrossFitter myself, I can certainly vouch for these claims. When I first started nearly three years ago I could barely do a push-up. Back then a 125 pound deadlift nearly made me pass out. These days, a workout involving a hundred push-ups isn't out of the question. I have a 265 pound backsquat and I’m only five pounds away from a 400 pound deadlift. And this from a guy who spent most of his adult life completely inactive. There's no question in my mind that the CrossFit approach is the best one. At least for me.

Being physically strong is no joke or a petty indulgence. And it is of utmost importance to those interested in extending longevity. I would make the case that physical strength does more to prolong healthy lifespan than any other lifestyle factor available today—including caloric restriction. Studies have shown that strength can add as much as a decade to your life.

In addition to proper eating and exercise, the primal lifestyle also advocates a natural approach to sleeping, which means 7-8 hours per night in the complete pitch dark. Indeed, studies have shown that this length of time is optimal and that any kind of light interrupts sleep in non-trivial ways.

Primal transhumanism...for now

I'm going to conclude with a quick reality check.

As stated earlier, the primal approach is a stop-gap measure for transhumanists until something better comes along. Those looking to optimize their health and performance in the here-and-now should seriously consider adopting this lifestyle.

This approach is certainly a "soft" form of transhumanism and it's definitely no match for what's still to come. Our transition away from Homo sapiens will be accompanied by more impactful technologies—interventions like genomics, cybernetics, neuropharma, and molecular nanotechnology. Once we have access to these technologies we will truly be able invoke the "trans" in "transhumanism" as our species migrates into a posthuman and potentially post-biological condition.

And in the meantime, love your body. It's all you got.

Boston Globe sneaks a peek into the deep future

The Boston Globe asks: "What will happen to us?" To answer the question, writer Graeme Wood highlights the work of futurists Nick Bostrom, Sir Martin Rees, Sean Carroll and Ray Kurzweil. Highlights:

The community of thinkers on distant-future questions stretches across disciplinary bounds, with the primary uniting trait a willingness to think about the future as a topic for objective study, rather than a space for idle speculation or science fictional reverie. They include theoretical cosmologists like Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology, who recently wrote a book about time, and nonacademic technology mavens like Ray Kurzweil, the precocious inventor and theorist. What binds this group together is that they are not, says Bostrom, “just trying to tell an interesting story.” Instead, they aim for precision. In its fundamentals, Carroll points out, the universe is a “relatively simple system,” compared, say, to a chaotic system like a human body — and thus “predicting the future is actually a feasible task,” even “for ridiculously long time periods.”
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Also among the cosmologists is Rees, the speaker at the Royal Institution, who turned his attention to the end of time after a career in physics reckoning with time’s beginning. An understanding of these vast time scales, he contends, should have a large and humbling effect on our predictions about human evolution. “It’s hard to think of humans as anything like the culmination of life,” Rees says. “We should expect humans to change, just as Darwin did when he wrote that ‘no living species will preserve its unaltered likeness into a distant futurity.’ ” Most probably, according to Rees, the most important transformations of the species will be nonbiological. “Evolution in the future won’t be determined by natural selection, but by technology,” he says — both because we have gone some distance toward mastering our biological weaknesses, and because computing power has sped up to a rate where the line between human and computer blurs. (Some thinkers call the point when technology reaches this literally unthinkable level of advancement the “singularity,” a coinage by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge.)
---Bostrom, the Oxford philosopher, puts the odds at about 25 percent, and says that many of the greatest risks for human survival are ones that could play themselves out within the scope of current human lifetimes. “The next hundred years or so might be critical for humanity,” Bostrom says, listing as possible threats the usual apocalyptic litany of nuclear annihilation, man-made or natural viruses and bacteria, or other technological threats, such as microscopic machines, or nanobots, that run amok and kill us all.

This is quite literally the stuff of Michael Crichton novels. Thinkers about the future deal constantly with those who dismiss their speculation as science fiction. But Bostrom, who trained in neuroscience and cosmology as well as philosophy, says he’s mining the study of the future for guidance on how we should prioritize our actions today. “I’m ultimately interested in finding out what we have most reason to do now, to make the world better in some way,” he says.
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There is, both in Bostrom’s scenarios and in Rees’s, the possibility of a long and bright future, should we manage to have any future at all. Some of the key technologies capable of going awry also have the potential to keep us alive and prospering — making humans and post-humans a more durable species. Bostrom imagines that certain advances that are currently theoretical could combine to free us some of the more fragile aspects of our nature, such as the ability to be wiped out by a simple virus, and keep the species around indefinitely. If neuropsychologists learn to manipulate the brain with precision, we could drug ourselves into conditions of not only enhanced happiness but enhanced morality as well, aiming for less fragile or violent societies far more durable than we enjoy now, in the nuclear shadow.

And if human minds could be uploaded onto computers, for example, a smallpox plague wouldn’t be so worrisome (though maybe a computer-virus outbreak, or a spilled pot of coffee, would be). Not having a body means not being subject to time’s ravages on human flesh. “When we have friendly superintelligent machines, or space colonization, it would be easy to see how we might continue for billions of years,” Bostrom said, far beyond the moment when Rees’s post-human would sit back in his futuristic lawn chair, pop open a cold one, and watch the sun run out of fuel.

There is one surprising survival scenario of particular worry for Bostrom, however — one that involves not a physical death but a moral one. The technologies that might liberate us from the threat of extinction might also change humans not into post-humans, but into creatures who have shed their humanity altogether. Imagine, he suggests, that the hypothetical future entities (evolved biologically, or uploaded to computers and enhanced by machine intelligence) have slowly eroded their human characteristics. The mental properties and concerns of these creatures might be unrecognizable.

“What gives humans value is not their physical substance, but that we are thinking, feeling beings that have plans and relationships with others, and enjoy art, et cetera,” Bostrom says. “So there could be profound transformations that wouldn’t destroy value and might allow the creation of any greater value” by having a deeper capacity to love or to appreciate art than we present humans do. “But you could also imagine beings that were intelligent or efficient, but that don’t add value to the world, maybe because they didn’t have subjective experience.”

Bostrom ranks this possibility among the more likely ways mankind could extinguish itself. It is certainly the most insidious. And it could happen any number of ways: with a network of uploaded humans that essentially abolishes the individual, making her a barely distinguishable module in a larger intelligence. Or, in a sort of post-human Marxist dystopia, humans could find themselves dragooned into soulless ultra-efficiency, without all the wasteful acts of friendship and artistic creation that made life worth living when we were merely human.

“That would count as a catastrophe,” Bostrom notes.

Humanity+ @ Parsons recap: Beyond enhancement

Just got back from New York City where I attended the Humanity+ @ Parsons conference on May 14th and 15th. I always have a great time at these events, and this conference was no exception.

I'll be writing about the conference over the coming days and weeks, but I will say that it was interesting to see all the emphasis paid not to enhancement per se, but to alternative forms of human re-design and modification. Kinda makes sense if you think about it: it was a design-meets-transhumanism conference after all. But that said, I'm left wondering if it's part of a broader trend.

Transhumanists, it would seem, are not as purely fixated on augmentation as they used to be; it’s becoming more than just about being smarter, faster, or stronger. It’s also about acquiring novel capacities and being able to experience different things.

One thing I did observe, however, was that it was the transhumanists and not the designers who emphasized these points. I am surprised at how little consideration designers, architects and artists still give to the idea of human re-engineering. They're still largely fixated on externalities—things interface design, user experience, and environmental factors.

Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with these things, but we need to also consider making meaningful alterations to the human body and mind as well. As I said during my talk on designer psychologies, it's time to start changing our minds and bodies to suit our environment and technologies rather than the other way around.

Fundamentally, a lot of this reluctance (or just sheer ignorance) has to do with the design community's adoption of an academic posthumanism that's rooted in postmodernist thinking (I will elaborate on this in a future post). This is contrasted with the transhumanist take on posthumanism which is driven by secular Humanist and Enlightenment ideals.

So, as noted, a number of transhumanists addressed the issue of human modification and re-design outside the context of mere enhancement.

Artificial intelligence theorist Ben Goertzel argued that, as we work to create AGI (artificial general intelligence), we'll have to create minds that can interpret and navigate through specific modal environments. Goertzel was addressing synthetic minds, but his point could be applied to humans as well. It made me wonder if we will someday be able to significantly modify human experience as it relates to environmental context.

Neuroscientist Anders Sandberg talked about the advent of novel capacities (such as new senses) that have no objective or easily distinguishable purpose. He gave the example of Todd Huffman's magnetic fingers which allow him to sense magnetic fields. Sandberg likened this to the body modification community. Modification can be done strictly for the sake of it, or just for personal experimentation. Sometimes it’s worth trying something weird or different just to see what happens; there isn't necessarily a problem to be solved. And at the very least it provides a fascinating outlet for human creativity and expression.

Similarly, bio-artist Adam Zaretsky made the claim that we should be more adventurous and imaginative when it comes to augmentation. While his ethics were at times suspicious (he seemed to believe that we can modify and hybridize nonhuman animals indiscriminately), his argument that we should think of biology as both our medium and canvas struck a few chords with conference attendees. Zaretsky's flesh fetish and resultant shock art showed that the potential for out-of-the-box modifications is significant and bizarre, but that it can only be explored given more daring (and an apparent love of icky things). He put it aptly when he said, "Humanity is nature in drag."

Bioethicist James Hughes had a unique take on things with his talk on building resilient minds. While I would agree that this could be classified as a kind of enhancement, the types of cognitive changes that he talked about were fairly fungible and context specific. It seemed more alt-transhumanism to me when compared to traditional discussions about increased memories, enhanced intelligence, and so on. Perhaps Hughes's most interesting suggestion was that we should be able to alter our brain state to match our situation or predicament; we would essentially be changing our natures on the fly in order to cope and adapt. Very post 9/11 transhumanism.

And as for my talk on designer psychologies, I basically argued in favour of creating alternative minds. By using autism as an example, I demonstrated that there is tremendous value and potential through increased neurodiversity, and that we, as neurotypicals, need to be careful about labeling these different kinds of thinking as being pathological. While I agree that some conditions are worthy of such distinctions, we need to be open minded to the possibility that alternative psychologies have an intrinsic value that can yield novel experiences and, as a result, create entirely new expressions, insights and experience (I'll publish my entire talk a bit later).

Now, as the transhumanist diehards are inclined to remind me, much of this isn’t really anything new. Transhumanists have been talking about body modification, alternative minds and novel capacities since day one. But it was nice to see such consensus at the same conference—a strong indication that these ideas are gaining currency and becoming a larger part of the conversation. It’s good to see more lateral thinking when it comes to considering new capacities and the motives behind our desires to reshape the human condition.

Time taps into transhumanism

Transhumanism doesn't get more mainstream than this.

Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.

True? True.

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.

If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.

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Not all of [the singularitarians] are Kurzweilians, not by a long chalk. There's room inside Singularitarianism for considerable diversity of opinion about what the Singularity means and when and how it will or won't happen. But Singularitarians share a worldview. They think in terms of deep time, they believe in the power of technology to shape history, they have little interest in the conventional wisdom about anything, and they cannot believe you're walking around living your life and watching TV as if the artificial-intelligence revolution were not about to erupt and change absolutely everything. They have no fear of sounding ridiculous; your ordinary citizen's distaste for apparently absurd ideas is just an example of irrational bias, and Singularitarians have no truck with irrationality. When you enter their mind-space you pass through an extreme gradient in worldview, a hard ontological shear that separates Singularitarians from the common run of humanity. Expect turbulence.

Zimmer: Can You Live Forever? Maybe Not—But You Can Have Fun Trying

Writing in Scientific American, Carl Zimmer recounts his experience at the 2009 Singularity Summit in New York City:

If the term "singularity" rings a bell, that may be because you've read the 2005 bestseller The Singularity Is Near. Its author, computer scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil, confidently predicts intelligence will soon cross a profound threshold. The human brain will be dramatically enhanced with engineering. Artificial intelligence will take on a life of its own. If all goes well, Kurzweil predicts, we will ultimately fuse our minds with this machine superintelligence and find a cybernetic immortality. What's more, the Singularity is coming soon. Many of us alive today will be a part of it.

The Singularity is more than just hypothetic milestone in history. It's also a peculiar movement today. Along with spaceflight tycoon Peter Diamandis, Kurzweil has launched Singularity University, which brought in its first batch of students in the summer of 2009. Kurzweil is also director of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which held its first annual summit in 2006. The summits are a mix of talks by Kurzweil and other Singularity advocates, along with scientists working on everything from robot cars to gene therapy. For its first three years the Singularity Summit took place around the Bay Area, but in 2009 the institute decided to decamp from its utopian environs and head for the more cynical streets of New York.

I was one of the curious skeptics who heeded the call and came to the 92nd Street Y. Writing about the brain and other scientific subjects had given me a strong immune defense against hype. The Singularity, with all its promises of a technorapture, seems tailor-made to bring out the worst in people like me. The writer John Horgan wrote a devastating essay about the Singularity in 2009 called "Science Cult."

Horgan acknowledged part of him enjoys pondering the Singularity's visions, such as boosting your IQ to 1,000. "But another part of me—the grown-up, responsible part—worries that so many people, smart people, are taking Kurzweil's sci-fi fantasies seriously," he wrote. "The last thing humanity needs right now is an apocalyptic cult masquerading as science."

I decided to check out the Singularity for myself. Between the talks, as I mingled among people wearing S lapel pins and eagerly discussing their personal theories of consciousness, I found myself tempted to reject the whole smorgasbord as half-baked science fiction. But in the end I didn't.

Read more.

Ronald Lindsay: "The Ethics of Enhancements: Spurious Concerns and Genuine Uncertainties" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancements]

Ronald Lindsay now presenting: "The Ethics of Enhancements: Spurious Concerns and Genuine Uncertainties."

Enhancements augments an existing capacity, or introduces a new capacity altogether. Improvement responds to the statistically normal range for humans with that existing capacity.

Arguments against

Michael Sandel has argued that enhancements manifest a misguided quest for mastery and threaten to destroy an appreciated of the "gifted" character of life. "Giftedness" is the sense that we are limited, that who we are exceeds our control. Sandel is mistaken that enhancements would deprive us of that sense. Whether or not giftedness is a fundamental human good, enhancements will not eliminate contingencies. We will not be able to control events that affect us. We will not be able to control our initial conditions - no control over the circumstances of our birth. We are and always will be thrown into this world. Our existence will remain gifted by our existence.

Leon Kass has argued that enhancements will cause a loss of authenticity, a sense of achievement. "Accomplishments" will be meaningless. Short-cuts provided by enhancement will trivialize our accomplishments. This claim ignores the long history of (external) enhancements. They have not destroyed our sense of accomplishment. No matter what one's capabilities, one still has to apply one's knowledge. Changing the means to accomplish the goal does not diminish the goal. There will always be goals that will motivate us and prove challenging.

Fukuyama, McKibben: Enhancements are "unnatural" and threaten to destroy human nature. It is the "nature" of individuals, not the human race as a whole, which is most subject to change. Most enhancements will not implicate any change to the nature of an individual because improved capacities still will be recognizably human. What is wrong with changing our nature? Is our current mix of capacities the optimal mix? It is not immediately clear that the increase of a human capacity will alter what it means to be human or a person's nature. Why is chance so much better than choice such that the latter can be considered immoral? We don't like spinning the roulette wheel.

Can we survive the uncertain changes to society that enhancements may cause? What little experience we have with enhancements suggests we can. Take birth control for example. Moreover, the beneficial social consequences may be enormous.

These arguments fail to eliminate enhancements as a viable option.

Should internal/intrinsic enhancements be developed and regulated in the same was external enhancements are (external enhancements being things like iPads and other technological tools).

Arguments against

Case-by-case evaluation of enhancements is required. One problem: we have no substnative experience in evaluating enhancements qua enhancements. We are not even at first base in determining how they might be regulated.

Enhancements now available were developed and tested as therapies, but the therapy model may not work. Risk-benefit analysis for therapies assumes the therapy will help restore "normal" functioning. Enhancements are not needed for normal functioning, so arguably any risk is too great.

Private sector will not invest substantial resources in the development of enhancements until it is assured an appropriate regulatory framework is in place. Presumably this implies a regulatory framework that is not disease-centered.

Besides the possible toxicity of an enhancements, many other factors need to be considered in evaluating and enhancement has on other capacities, the consequences of using the enhancement....

In addition, various long-term effects need to be considered, such as effects on productivity, allocation of resources, social and political relations, individual rights, aggregate welfare, and future generations.

Does enhancement improve well-being? Not always the case.

Fears and concerns about social divisions and nightmare scenarios

Emergence of a class of super-enhanced individuals who dominate the unenhanced.

Two presumptions about the distribution of enhancements: first, enhancements should be made widely available; second, the fact that enhancements may not be available for all by itself does not provide a reason for denying enhancements to some. Beyond this, we can't say much with confidence.

It's been said the enhanced class poses a risk to liberal democracy.

Would domination of the unenhanced by posthumans be unjust? The relationship may lie outside the bounds of justice. To begin, a world with a stark division between unenhanced and posthuman beings is highly unlikely. However such a scenario arguably lies outside the bounds of justice. Consider: We are not required to form bonds of cooperation with nonhuman animals and treat them as equals. There may be no reason for posthumans to form relations with humans; doing so may be seen as a hindrance. Humans and posthumans are unlikely to have a shared perspective on justice and compel them to be members of the same community.

At the end of the day, sci-fi scenarios are of little use in the assessment of enhancements.

Ethicists have a constructive role to play provided they stick to real situations and overheated discussions.

Patrick Hopkins: "On the Variety of Future Bodies" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancement]

Patrick Hopkins is now discussing the variety of future bodies.

There are as of yet no posthumans. But these ideas are not new, nor are they exclusive to the realm of fantasy and sci-fi. We have long imagined ourselves transformed. Our visions and variations of a transformed humanity are voluminous and often informed by the environmental, social and physical conditions we find ourselves in. Thus, there will be differing and conflicting visions of what the human future can and should look like.

Hopkins presents four different visions of humanity's future: Transformations of the body:

• Barbie bodies: Cosmetic and aesthetic enhancements; attaining a sexual idea; often risky procedures; not to escape limitations of the body, but to create an ideal of the body; a superficial ideal of the transformed body; surface level, "about looks"; body seen as an object that one uses and whipped into shape to conform to the mind's ideal so that the person can feel a certain way about themselves; a shallow human approach; but they may also feel that they may succeed more given a certain type of physicality.
• (Francis) Bacon bodies: These transformations are about functionality; to do more human things more often and for a longer time; extends functionality of the body; mimicking what time and nature already do; function cleanly, clearly and effectively -- but not about appearance; a healthy and long-lived body. 
• Nietzsche bodies: A "super body" endowed with characteristics that "normal" humans do not have; man is something that needs to be surpassed; the body is transformed but not the mind; power to impose one's will on the world? Motivated by human emotions. The "super" human approach. 
• Plato bodies: Separation of 'soul' from the body; body seen as the source of all the trouble, something that chains our minds to the body; we want the mind to be free; we would live in a more noble condition if freed from the constraints and influence of the body; transhuman application is uploading or virtual reality; total disembodiment may not be possible, but something very close may be obtained; maybe a "transhuman" approach. 

Idea of transformation is not a unitary thing. 

Allen Buchanan: "Breaking Evolution's Chains" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancements]

Bioethicist Allen Buchanan is today's first presenter. His talk is entitled, "Breaking Evolution's Chains." Buchanan is a co-author of the book, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, which is a must-read in enhancement bioethics.

Buchanan is talking specifically about genetic modifications. His concern is the "ubiquity of suboptimal design in Unintentional Genetic Modifications (UGM)." Buchanan makes the distinction between UGM and IGM (Intended Genetic Modifications).

Darwin showed that we can explain evolution and diversity without design. Buchanan shows the audience a lengthy list of examples of poor human "design," including human inability to biosynthesize Vitamin C, our poor sinus, human birth canal, lower back, pharynx (dual function, ingestion/respiration--risk of death by choking), urinary tract in male mammals (passes through, not around prostate), etc.

Why is suboptimal design ubiquitous? Answers include insensitivity of natural selection to post-reproduction quality of life, hence cardiovascular degeneration, cancer, degeneration of muscles and joints, neural degenerations, and other aging related disorders.

In UGM, selection does not imply optimality -- it says nothing about the current relation to reproductive fitness. Purely backward looking. Optimality depends on fit between organism and environment (where the environment is constantly changing). So, optimality is fleeting, always changing.

What was optimal may now be fatal. Not a progressive kind of thing at all. What's optimal in evolution may not be aligned with human values. Also, under UGM, spread of desirable mutations may be too slow and too great a cost in human terms; little lateral gene transfer. Another problem of "evolution as usual" are "Pleistocene Hangovers" -- what was adaptive in the EEA may now be maladaptive (e.g. propensity to xenophobia, step-child abuse, attention deficit 'disorder'.

Master engineer? Fickle, morally blind, tightly-shakled tinkerer. Doesn't finish projects, discards much of value. Doesn't aim at human good, achieves it only by coincidence; methods have high moral costs.

Problems with the Master Engineer analogy: (a) making risky changes in the name of improvement and (b)
resting content with the status quo. But in UGM the status quo is constantly changing, precarious.

The existing human organism is not finely balanced, stable, completed product that will continue as is, absent deliberate intervention.

"We may have to enhance, in order to conserve the goods we have."

Possible examples:

• Enhanced reproduction to counteract drastic decline in fertility due to environmental toxins
• Enhancement of resistance to skin cancer if ozone layer depletes
• Cognitive and/or affective enhancements to deal with global scale problems

Bioconservatives: the individual organism is like a seamless web. Traditional social conservatives: Society is like a seamless web. Both imply fragility: Cut one thread and the whole thing may unravel. 

Evidence against seamlessness: modularity of design, redundancy of systems, canalization ("you can make the same dish using different recipes"), natural selection requires incrementalism--being able to change one trait without changing the others. 

The worry about unintended consequences: How can we take the worry seriously? And get beyond vague platitudes like "use caution", "take it slow", etc. We need something more substantive, heuristic based. Otherwise it's too vague. 

Strategy: Take the hardest case: Unintended bad consequences of IGM (germline enhancements). Think about scientifically informed responses. 

Think ontogeny. Has to be sensitive to the ontogenic process. That's the key.

Evolutionary precautionary heuristics for IGM (as opposed to the precautionary principle). 

• The IGM targets genes that lie "downstream" rather than "upstream" in the organism's developmental process
• If successful, would not produce an enhancement that exceeds the upper bound of the current normal range (e.g. boost in cognitive performance beyond anything any human has ever had)
• Effects are containable within the organism 
• Involves a highly modularized system of or subsystem of the organism (mistakes can be contained within that modular)
• Effects are reversible
• Intervention does not require major morphological changes
• If goal is to eliminate a trait, then the causal roles of the trait and of the genes targeted for elimination should be well understood

There is good reason to worry about unintended bad effects of BE in general and of IGM in particular. Reasonable precautions should be based on accurate understanding of evolution, not faulty metaphor of Master Engineer. 

A plurality of precautionary heuristics should change over time. 

The threat of loss of normal human capacities. Pseudogenization of genes needed for normal human capacities (e.g. loss of bitter taste receptors as a result of cooking food, loss of visual acuity, loss of ability to biosynthesize Vitamin C). If selective pressures are eased, mutations increase to the point of making a gene nonfunctional and the associated capacity is lost.

Q&A

Buchanan is essentially "paving the way" for more substantive enhancements; we have to start where we are and in a responsible way.

What's possible and what's sci-fi fantasy? Risky to make predictions. Not confident that we'll be able to conduct meaningful IGM for various reasons.

How can we ever test IGM and go about the ethics of experimentation? More animal testing; need to know more about genetics and implications of modifications; but we shouldn't be complacent about the status quo -- it may be more reasonable or ethical to tolerate a little bit of risk. 

Venter to NASA: Re-engineer your astronauts

Craig Venter recently spoke to a group of scientists at NASA Ames and told them that NASA already does genetic selection when it picks astronauts—he just wants them to get even more systematic about its process:

Inner ear changes could allow people to escape motion sickness...[You could have genes for] bone regeneration, DNA repair from radiation, a strong immune system, small stature, high energy utilization, a low risk of genetic disease, smell receptors, a lack of hair, slow skin turnover, dental decay and so on. If people are traveling in space for their whole lives, they may want to engineer genetic traits for other purposes.

Ethics are a stumbling block, though, and Venter admitted that getting there will be difficult:

Human engineering is one of those things we all agree that you can’t do, because you can’t do human experimentation. Making that leap from genetic selection to genetic engineering will be a very complex one for society to make – if it ever does. I don’t think doing it in space makes it any easier.

More.

Revisiting the proto-transhumanists: Diderot and Condorcet

Think transhumanism is a relatively new social and intellectual phenomenon? Guess again.

Many of the ideas characteristic of the movement have already been bantered about for literally hundreds of years—whether it be such things as radical life extension or the construction of machine minds. The Enlightenment period in particular was a fruitful time for these ideas to take flight, mostly on account of the new sciences, the rise of rationalism and secular humanism, and the waning influence of religion. Two thinkers that best exemplified Enlightenment-era proto-transhumanism were Denis Diderot and Marquis de Condorcet, and their early contributions are worth revisiting.

Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He is probably best known for being the chief editor and contributor to the Encyclopedie, the world's first comprehensive and publically accessible encyclopaedia. But his legacy extends much further than this.

Early in his career he speculated about the connection between reason and the senses, and thought that the blind might be able to read through their sense of touch; he is thus considered a forefather of the Braile system.

In the same book, "Letter on the Blind," Diderot also rejected a number of religious tenants about nature and the place of man, and quite surprisingly, presented a very early and undeveloped concept about variation and natural selection. Specifically, he argued that organisms were the product of self-generation (what we today would call autonomous processes), and that these animals could change over time—and all without Creation and supernatural intervention.

Just as shockingly in terms of insight, he put forward the notion of "thinking matter." He was a materialist in the truest sense, and argued that cognition and consciousness arise from the material realm. Diderot flatly denied the existence of the soul. Needless to say, his ideas got him into serious trouble with the state and he was subsequently imprisoned for some months, often visited by his friend, none other than Jean Jacque Rousseau.

Many years later he wrote "D'Alembert's Dream" in which he once again speculated about the ultimate constitution of matter and the meaning of life. In this book he maintained a completely materialistic view of the universe and argued that human behavior was hereditary. It was here where he introduced his theory on life and nature, indicating that matter is not fixed but instead subject to evolution. Each species in existence transforms itself and gives birth to a new species.

Diderot also believed that the human species was not immune to this kind of evolution and contended that humanity might end up a society of free individuals just as easily as it could regress to a "single animal." In this sense he was no blind advocate of progress, and warned of potentially Borg-like dystopian futures. He wrote that humanity might eventually be able to redesign itself into a great variety of types “whose future and final organic structure it’s impossible to predict.” In Diderot’s dialogues, d’Alembert muses that human beings could devolve into “large, inert, and immobile sediment.” In other words we could, through accident or intention, lose faculties we value, such as our capacities for empathy, creativity, awe or reflection. Subsequently, argued Diderot, we need guidelines and policies to steer human evolution away from the dead ends of selfishness and addictive absorption, and towards greater sociability, self-awareness and reason.

And consistent with his materialism, Diderot also argued that consciousness was a product of brain matter. Consequently, he believed that the conscious mind could be deconstructed and put back together. He felt that science would eventually find a way to bring the dead back to life and redesign animals and machines into intelligent creatures.

Truly a man ahead of his time.

Marquis de Condorcet

Marquis de Condorcet (1744-1794) was a hugely influential Enlightenment era thinker who contributed significantly to the rise of secular humanism and helped plant the seeds of transhumanism. He is said to have best represented the ideals of the Enlightenment.

To this end, Condorcet advocated for a liberal economy, free and equal public education, and constitutionalism. He also advocated for the primacy of reason as way to liberate humanity from the church, authoritarianism, and nature.

He was a brilliant mathematician and political scientist; he forged the two disciplines together and became the first person in history to effectively use mathematical principles to study social science.

Condorcet speculated about utopian possibilities and wrote a piece on the perfectability of society. He gave no concrete definition of a "perfect" human existence, but he believed that the progression of the human race would inevitably continue throughout the course of its existence. His thoughts prompted Thomas Malthus to write his famous paper on unsustainable population growth.

His most influential work from a transhumanist perspective was his book, "Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind", which he wrote when he was in hiding after the French Revolution and subsequently published posthumously.

In this book he argued that reason and science can and should be applied to better develop humanity's intellectual and moral faculties. He thought that all facets of nature should be re-evaluated and conformed to the needs of human intelligence. He wrote,

The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason; when tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage; and when we shall think of them only to pity their victims and their dupes; to maintain ourselves in a state of vigilance by thinking on their excesses; and to learn how to recognize and so to destroy, by force of reason, the first seeds of tyranny and superstition, should they ever dare to reappear among us.

He pin-pointed a number of factors that he believed were responsible for the various inequalities and injustice that inflicted humans—a list that included disparities in wealth, status, education, and of interest to transhumanists—length of life.

Indeed, Condorcet was an early advocate of life extension and saw no reason why it shouldn't be a part of humanity's inexorable path towards perfectability.

As he wrote,

The real advantages that should result from this progress, of which we can entertain a hope that is almost a certainty, can have no other term than that of the absolute perfection of the human race; since, as the various kinds of equality come to work in its favor by producing ampler sources of supply, more extensive education, more complete liberty, so equality will be more real and will embrace everything which is really of importance for the happiness of human beings...

The Enlightenment era was truly a remarkable time and we're still coming to grips with its legacy. Consequently, it's important for many transhumanists to note that we are in fact standing on the shoulders of giants.

This Magazine: Technology, ethics, and the real meaning of the “Rapture of the Nerds”

Chris Kim

Keith Norbury of This Magazine has published a piece called Technology, ethics, and the real meaning of the “Rapture of the Nerds”. I was interviewed for this article and asked questions about the state of transhumanism and singularitarianism today in Toronto and Canada in general. We also discussed the the tendency of the press and the public to roll all transhumanists into the Singularity camp, which, as I pointed out, was a mistake:

Not all people who believe in technology’s power to transform humanity are Singularitarians. Transhumanists, as their name implies, also expect technology to alter the species. “These are two communities that seem to have a connection,” says George Dvorsky, president of the Toronto Transhumanist Association. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that one follows the other. I happen to know many transhumanists who don’t buy into the Singularity at all.”

While both groups believe that rapid technological progress will radically reshape our lives, the Singularitarians believe a unified, superhuman intelligence is a necessary part of that change. Transhumanists believe no such super-intelligent entity is necessary. Either way, both believe that our future will be completely unrecognizable. “We are talking about transforming what it means to be human,” Dvorsky says.

The article also goes on to describe how interest in the TTA and local transhumanist chapters has waned in the past several years. I'm rather frustrated by Norbury's angle on this, which is to suggest that the fringe is getting fringier, and that good work isn't being done in these areas through other channels. The fact of the matter is that these ideas, namely the notion of human enhancement and the unknown potential for a greater-than-human artificial intelligence, are being addressed by a diverse and distributed group of individuals—and just as importantly, these ideas are slowly (but surely) being normalized into our daily discourse.

Indeed, organizing local meet-ups are all fine and well, but that's not where the rubber hits the road. I've made a conscious effort over the past few years to devote most of my time and energy to my blog, Humanity+, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies where my outreach is considerably greater and more impactful than through a local chapter alone. Annoyingly, Norbury failed to make mention any of these and chose to focus on the TTA and chapter-level organizing which is no longer of any real interest to me.

Interviewed by The Mark

I was recently interviewed by The Mark for a show about the future of humans. You can listen to the broadcast here. Episode description:

The first axiom of the Transhumanist Declaration is that: “Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.” The declaration is a missive that attempts to lay the social, political, and philosophical groundwork for the inevitable incorporation of technology into human biology.

If you think this sounds far-fetched, just consider the exponential scientific advances we've seen in the last 50 years. Travelling to the moon? Neil Armstrong did that in 1969. Cloning? Dolly the Sheep made headlines for it in 1996. Mapping the human genome? No problem, we finished in 2003. Science fiction is now science fact. You can read about it on the smartphone in your pocket that taps into that collection of humanity's knowledge called the internet.

So what's next for humans in this brave new world? Is this the next leap in human evolution? Or will adding technology cause us to lose a piece of our humanity?

This week on the show, host Chris Mitchell talks with three experts who speculate on what's coming next, and what we can do to prepare for it.

First up, a conversation with transhumanist George Dvorsky on what developments we can expect to see in the coming decades.

Next, Ian Kerr explains how medical technology could eventually erase human limitations.

Finally, Christopher Dewdney on why Michael Jackson was a pioneer of transhumanism.

The Independent covers the Singularity Summit, transhumanism

New Independent article: Revenge of the nerds: Should we listen to futurists or are they leading us towards ‘nerdocalypse’?

The intro blurb is an eye-roller of epic proportions:

They're building robots, they're making us immortal, they're hanging out with Stevie Wonder and getting off on fruit-fly porn. These are the visionary thinkers who can make our future bright, and these are the ties that bind them. But are they leading us all towards 'nerdocalypse'?

Uh, yeah. Nerds. *sighs*

Okay, if you dare to read on,

Here, in a plush and spacious apartment not far from the Golden Gate Bridge, scientists, academics and futurists – bankrolled by the Silicon Valley dollar – are discussing what many among them believe to be an imminent and radical transformation of the human experience. This sea change, caused by monumental advances in technology, has a name: the singularity. It also has a dedicated and well-informed fanbase: the singularitarians.

The reception is in full swing. Next to the open bar, the professional rationalist is rubbing shoulders with the preeminent neurobiologist, and the scenario forecaster is exchanging ideas with the cutting-edge nanotechnologist, as notions once thought too outlandish to merit serious consideration – such as beyond-human intelligence, immortality and god-like omniscience – are reassessed in the cool light of possibility. Yesterday's tech-obsessed fantasist is today's credible expert. A new, dynamic, cross-discipline geek community is visibly taking shape, as the buzz of high-brow chatter fills the room like pipe tobacco in an early 20th-century Vienna coffee house.

Michael Vassar, summit host and president of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), reduces the future to two competing scenarios: "Either you and everyone you love are going to be killed by robots; or you are going to live forever." Some very clever people, he says with a hint of mischief and a disconcerting flash of clear-eyed sincerity, can make a strong case for each of those arguments, so it's in our best interests to pay attention.

Continue reading.

Phillippe Verdoux on the enhancement paradox

IEET contributor Phillippe Verdoux wonders if enhancing is necessary in order to decide whether or not enhancing is a good idea:

Many transhumanists are enthusiastic about the possibilities of cognitive enhancement. Such enthusiasts might say something like: “I want to use advanced technologies – from genetic engineering and psychoactive pharmaceuticals to neural implants and even mind-uploading – to increase my intelligence, to make me ‘smarter, wiser, or more creative’ [PDF], to produce a ‘smarter and more virtuous’ person, to mentally and emotionally augment myself.”

But...talk of enhancement presupposes some conception of the self. Specifically, it assumes that the self is capable of enduring such modifications, e.g., as a pattern, or as an immaterial soul, or whatever. The resulting enhanced being would thus still be me, it would just be a different and “better” (according to some set of criteria) version of me.
...
Now, an interesting paradox arises when one combines the above claims with a specific (and controversial) stance on what the self is...
...
More importantly, though, it must be pointed out that cognitive enhancement is only one route to the destination of greater-than-human-intelligence: the other is artificial intelligence (AI). Another option would thus be to create a superintelligent AI system that could help us deliberate about whether or not we should use cognitive enhancements. This would offer a way out of the paradox, since it doesn’t involve modifying ourselves.

The trouble is, however, that AI may turn out to be more difficult than enhancing the neurobiological core of Homo sapiens, which means that the paradox would remain intact: in this case, the most feasible way to engender a new species of ultra-smart posthumans would be through human enhancement and not AI.

Finally, one could generalize the basic idea to AI as well. That is, we might pose a general moral question about whether or not it would be good to create a species of posthumans through either method of enhancement or AI. Our ability to answer this question, though, is no doubt far more limited than the ability of a superintelligent biotechnological hybrid or completely synthetic posthuman to answer it.

More.

On Skeptically Speaking this Friday

I will be on Skeptically Speaking this coming Friday June 25 at 8:00PM EST. I will be having a conversation/debate about transhumanism with World of Weird Things blogger Greg Fish. More specifically, we will "explore the predictions and the problems in the quest to “enhance” human beings."

While the show will be broadcast live over the air on CJSR 88.5 in Edmonton, it will also be made available live over the internet (and eventually distributed to over 22 radio stations across North America). It's also a call-in show, so feel free to call me during the broadcast.

Kyle Munkittrick: From Gears to Genes: A Sea Change in Transhumanism

Kyle Munkittrick has penned a nice little retraction to Mark Gubrud's suggestion that transhumanism won’t work because mind uploading is impossible:

Only in the past decade have we started to realize that transhumanism won’t realize its dreams through mechanization and computerization. Though seminal authors on transhumanism, like Kurzweil, Moravec, Drexler, and More focus on nanotechnology and cybernetics, those technologies haven’t seen real progress since the 70’s.

But genetics and biotech has. Starting in the 1950’s with the Pill, vaccines, and antibiotics, our knowledge of medicine and biology radically improved throughout the second half of the twentieth century with assisted reproduction technologies like IVF, not to mention genomic sequencing, stem cell research, organ transplantation, and neural mapping, advances in biology and medicine are what are driving the transhumanist revolution. When someone like Mark Gubrud starts arguing transhumanism won’t work because we can’t upload our minds into robot bodies, one has to gawk for a moment in awe at the irrelevance of the argument. It’s like arguing we can’t ever cure cancer because cold fusion is impossible.

Transhumanism is the idea of guiding and improving human evolution with intention through the use of technologies and culture. If those technologies are not robotic and cybernetic but, instead, genetic and organic, then so be it. And that seems to be the way things are going.

Totally agree. I've also argued that uploading may not be possible, but that it's not a deal-breaker in our quest to live 'outside' our bodies.

James Hughes interviewed by Tricycle about transhumanism, Cyborg Buddha project

Buddhist magazine Tricycle recently interviewed the IEET's James Hughes about his unique take on transhumanism and Buddhism -- and how the two seemingly disparate philosophies should be intertwined.

Excerpt:

As a former Buddhist monk, Professor James Hughes is concerned with realization. And as a Transhumanist—someone who believes that we will eventually merge with technology and transcend our human limitations—he endorses radical technological enhancements to humanity to help achieve it. He describes himself as an “agnostic Buddhist” trying to unite the European Enlightenment with Buddhist enlightenment.

Sidestepping the word “happiness,” Hughes’ prefers to speak of “human flourishing,” avoiding the hedonism that “happiness” can imply.

“I’m a cautious forecaster,” says Hughes, a bioethicist and sociologist, “but I think the next couple of decades will probably be determined by our growing ability to control matter at the molecular level, by genetic engineering, and by advances in chemistry and tissue-engineering. Life expectancy will increase in almost all countries as we slow down the aging process and eliminate many diseases.” Not squeamish about the prospect of enhancing—or, plainly put, overhauling— the human being, Hughes thinks our lives may be changed most by neurotechnologies—stimulant drugs, “smart” drugs, and psychoactive substances that suppress mental illness.

More.

Richard Eskow, who did the interview, followed it up with a rebuttal of sorts: Cerebral Imperialism. In the article he writes,

Why “artificial intelligence,” after all, and not an “artificial identity” or “personality”? The name itself reveals a bias. Aren’t we confused computation with cognition and cognition with identity? Neuroscience suggests that metabolic processes drive our actions and our thoughts to a far greater degree than we’ve realized until now. Is there really a little being in our brains, or contiguous with our brains, driving the body?

To a large extent, isn’t it the other way around? Don’t our minds often build a framework around actions we’ve decided to take for other, more physical reasons? When I drink too much coffee I become more aggressive. I drive more aggressively, but am always thinking thoughts as I weave through traffic: “I’m late.” “He’s slow.” “She’s in the left lane.” “This is a more efficient way to drive.”

Why do we assume that there is an intelligence independent of the body that produces it? I’m well aware of the scientists who are challenging that assumption, so this is not a criticism of the entire artificial intelligence field. There’s a whole discipline called “friendly AI” which recognizes the threat posed by the Skynet/Terminator “computers come alive and eliminate humanity” scenario. A number of these researchers are looking for ways to make artificial “minds” more like artificial “personalities.”

Hopefully more to come on this intriguing debate.

Limits to the biolibertarian impulse

I've often said that transhumanism is supported and strengthened by three basic impulses, namely the upholding of our reproductive, morphological and cognitive liberties. Should any one of these be absent, the tripod cannot stand.

We transhumanists stand divided on any number of issues; put us in a room together and you're guaranteed to get an argument. But one aspect that unites virtually all of us is our steadfast commitment to biolibertarianism -- the suggestion that people, for the most part, deserve considerable autonomy over their minds, bodies and reproductive processes.

Granted, conceptions of what is meant by biolibertarianism varies considerably. I'm sure there are many transhumanists who feel that any state involvement in the development, regulation and implementation of transhumantech is completely unwarranted. But a number of transhumanists, including those of us who are affiliated with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), believe there's more to it than that.

Safety checks

Indeed, these technologies are far too powerful to be left to unchecked market forces and the whims of individuals. Most companies and people can be trusted with such things, but there's considerable potential for abuse and misuse...things like the availability of dangerous and unproven pharmaceuticals, irresponsible fertility clinics, or parents who want to give their children horns and a devil's tail. Not cool. This is why the state will have to get involved.

Without safety and efficacy the biolibertarian agenda is facile. I strongly agree that we should allow market forces to drive the development of transhumantech, but state involvement will be necessary to ensure that these technologies are safe, effective and accessible. And in addition, governments will also need to ensure that individuals aren't harming themselves or others with these technologies.

All this said, I'll restate an earlier point: transhumanists tend to hold the biolibertarian conviction that informed and responsible adults have the right to modify their minds and bodies as they see fit and to reproduce in a way that best meets their needs. The state has no business telling people what they should look like, how they should reproduce or how their minds should work. Governments should only intervene in extreme cases, particularly when the application of these biotechnologies lead to abuse and severely diminished lives.

The need for tolerance

But even this is tricky. What do we mean by a 'dimished' life or self-inflicted harm? Who are we to decide which choices are permissable and which are not?

The key, in my opinion, will be to remain informed and open-minded. It will be important to understand why individuals choose to modify themselves in certain ways -- and accept it. We may not always agree, but we'll often need to tolerate.

And in so doing we'll be in a better position to uphold the rights of individuals to shape their lives and experiences as they best see fit.

J. Hughes: Radical Life Extension, Transhumanism and Catholicism

IEET director James Hughes has written an epistle on transhumanism to Italian Catholics. Hughes offers four suggestions to the Italians as they assemble to discuss radical life extension and human enhancement:

1. Although transhumanism is part of the family of secular Enlightenment philosophies, many of its elements are compatible with Christianity.
2. Although some aspects of the transhumanist movement may resemble classical heresies, these are marginal similarities. Transhumanism is not trying to be a life philosophy or religion.
3. Transhumanists are not really interested in “immortality,” but only in reducing unnecessary death.
4. Human enhancement technologies, especially neurotechnologies, can support moral behavior and spiritual self-understanding.

Go here for expanded clarification.

These issues are explored more fully in Hughes's essay “The Compatibility of Religious and Transhumanist Views of Metaphysics, Suffering, Virtue and Transcendence in an Enhanced Future”

Also see Max More’s contribution to the Italian conference, “Why Catholics Should Support the Transhumanist Goal of Extended Life.”

Transhumanism and the 'Intelligence Principle'

"In sorting priorities, I adopt what I term the central principle of cultural evolution, which I refer to as the Intelligence Principle: the maintenance, improvement and perpetuation of knowledge and intelligence is the central driving force of cultural evolution, and that to the extent intelligence can be improved, it will be improved." -- Stephen J. Dick

Transhumanists are in the business of speculating about the degree to which we can and will refine the human species. A central assumption among us is that there's significant potential for the re-engineering of humanity; in modern practice we have scarcely begun to scratch the surface, but our visions of what may be possible in terms of modification and enhancement is startlingly vast.

Indeed, for most transhumanists, the notion that the human species is forever destined to remain a purely biological entity is both absurd and facile. Taking a step back, can we seriously argue that the apex of intelligent life is the state at which it was last crafted by the processes of natural selection? Given the current developmental state of biotechnology, cybernetics and information technologies, combined with the potential for molecular nanotechnology, can we reasonably refrain from suggesting that humanity is poised to under go a transformation that will be nothing short of radical and profound?

And this isn't some airy-fairy gee-whiz futurism talking, either. Rather, it's a fair assessment of where we are at as self-modifying species that has yet to meaningfully integrate technology with biology.

Take a step back and look at the big picture

For the dissenters and skeptics, what often gets lost in the discussion is the '40 foot perspective.' Discussions often regress to cultural/ethical/moral inhibitions, yuck factor ethics, and sheer incredulousness; it's hard for many of us to imagine anything other than our current state of being.

But this isn't good enough. We need to start thinking more philosophically and broadly about the potential for intelligent life and the impacts that will come through steady technological progress.

To assume, for example, that our current social, scientific, technological and biological condition is at or near an end-state is in its own way a violation of the Copernican Principle; it would be folly to assume that we observe ourselves at a particularly special point in history -- especially when it appears that our rate of progress is accelerating. Instead, we should apply a developmental view to our situation and acknowledge the fact that we still have a huge space of possibilities to work within.

The 'Intelligence Principle'

A similar sentiment was articulated by the distinguished historian of science Stephen J. Dick, in his 2003 paper "Cultural Evolution, the Postbiological Universe and SETI," where he argued that there is a disconnect between much of our current thinking and the prospects following exponential growth of technology as perceived in recent times. Dick's critique was primarily directed at SETI, but it's one that can applied to those who are complacent about our current existential mode.

In his paper, Dick makes the case that we may become (or spawn) a postbiological species, one that has "evolved beyond flesh and blood intelligence to artificial intelligence" and is a "product of cultural rather than biological evolution." He believes that this possibility hasn't been given the attention it's due, nor has it been carried to its logical conclusion. Consequently, Dick argues that we need to apply more long-term thinking when contemplating the problem of our future and that of intelligence in the universe.

To that end, Dick suggests that we apply the 'Intelligence Principle' (quoted above) to our long-term thinking about humanity's potential. His central contention is that we should readjust our thinking and consider a postbiological universe -- an argument powered by the likely age and lifetimes of technological civilizations and the overriding importance of cultural evolution as an element of cosmic evolution.

A will and a way

And it's important to note that the timelines don't matter (well, they do matter, but let's set that aside for the moment). A significant number of people dismiss transhumanists on account of our overly optimistic time frames. For the sake of argument let's assume that technological progress continues to plod along at a linear rate. Well, that's still progress: given enough time, incentive and access to resources, there's no reason to believe that humanity cannot come to realize many of the futuristic visions espoused by the transhumanists. As long as something is scientifically viable, and there's a perceived need for it, it will be developed.

This the crux of the intelligence principle: "...to the extent intelligence can be improved, it will be improved."

And overcoming the limitations of human biology would certain seem to be on the agenda. Among other things, the transhumanist 'to do list' typically includes the eradication of infirmity, aging, and suffering. We don't imply that solving these problems is going to be easy, but we do suggest that these problems are not intractable.

There is a will, and there will be a way.