Remembering Mac Tonnies

Our relationship got off to a rather fiery start.

Back in 2006 I discovered that a prominent UFOlogist had been linking to a number of articles on my blog. Even more startling was the realization that the blog in question, Posthuman Blues, was an effort to bridge transhumanist discourse with that of the UFOlogists.

Eager to break the memetic linkage between the two seemingly disparate schools of thought, I penned the article, "Unidentified Flying Idiots." It was typical of my rants, a vitriolic diatribe directed against a group of know-nothing X-Files zealots who were giving legitimate scientific studies a bad name.

And my angst was directed at the head perpetrator himself: Mac Tonnies. In the article I wrote:

Tonnies’s legitimate content is offset by his misguided focus on UFOlogy. As a result, the transhumanist movement may have a harder time gaining public acceptance and support with this kind of negative association.

I’m sorry, folks, but you can’t have your cake and eat it to. You can’t choose and pick the science that appeals to you and then attempt to tie it in with bogus and unfounded speculations. It's like Fox Mulder in the X-Files who has a poster on his wall which reads, "I want to believe." Well, I also want to belive in UFOs. I also want to belive in Jesus and the tooth fairly, but wanting to believe in those things ain't gonna make it so.

Needless to say it did not impress the UFOlogists who reacted by hammering me in the comments and through emails -- including Tonnies who remarked, "A very poor showing, George. I'm as leery of the lunatic fringe as anyone -- probably more so than many people unfamiliar with the UFO inquiry. But the whackos -- and they are legion -- don't define the very real questions posed by UFOs and related phenomena."

You'd think that would be the end of it, but it actually marked the beginning of a three year relationship, one that ended tragically this week with Mac's untimely death.

Rather than dismiss each other outright, we maintained a civil correspondence over the years. Neither of us wavered from our positions, but we bonded over our shared passion for the answer to one simple question: What is the true nature of extraterrestrial life? Moreover, we felt that the answer to this profound question resided somewhere within futurist studies. By trying to look deep into humanity's future we both thought that we could unveil some clues about the makeup of advanced extraterrestrial life.

But where I considered such things as Von Neuman probes and Dyson Spheres, Tonnies looked to flying saucers and little green men. To be fair, though, Mac's viewpoint was more sophisticated than that. "I'm uncomfortable with the concept of "belief" when dealing with unusual topics such as UFOs," he wrote, "Technically, no, I don't "believe" in UFOs (in the sense that UFOs require any sort of faith). But it isn't necessary to "believe" in UFOs in order to discuss them meaningfully; empirical evidence shows that UFOs (whatever they are) exist. There are plenty of professional "skeptics" who will refute this. But there remains a core phenomenon that begs disciplined study."

There's no question that his views were 'out there.' Mac argued that aliens once resided on Mars and that they currently dwell among us.

But despite these fringe views, Mac's futurism was closely aligned with that of the transhumanists (another group often accused of being 'fringe'). Tonnies contended that,

Consciousness is a potential technology; we are exquisite machines, nothing less than sentient patterns. As such, there's no convincing technical reason we can't eventually upload ourselves into matrices of our design and choosing. It's likely the phenomenon we casually call "intelligence" will cease to be strictly biological as we begin to merge with our machines more meaningfully and intimately. (Philip K. Dick once wrote that "living and nonliving things are exchanging properties." I suspect that in a few hundred years, barring disaster, separating the animate from the inanimate will probably be an exercise in futility.) Ultimately, we have two options: self-mutate by venturing off-planet in minds and bodies of our own design, or succumb to extinction.

Tonnies thought he was on the right side of science and history. "I spend an inordinately large portion of my time pursuing unpopular ideas and esoteric theories with what I sincerely hope is balanced skepticism," he wrote. The perpetual outcast, Tonnies envisioned himself as being the true skeptic.

Mac and I never really did see eye-to-eye when it came to our theories on the true nature of extraterrestrial intelligence, but our differing viewpoints didn't get in the way of our mutual respect. We became good friends via social media, with Twitter acting a great go-between. We frequently sent each other links and article ideas that didn't quite fit into our own communities and we regularly riffed off each other's sites. Deep down inside I think we both hoped that, through open and mature discourse, our ideas would eventually sway the other. But it was not to be.

I will sorely miss Mac's posts and unwavering commitment the problem that is the Great Silence.

And I'm devastated to know that he will never take part in the future he so often dreamed of.

Michael Anissimov guest blogging in June

I'm pleased to announce that Michael Anissimov will be guest blogging on Sentient Developments during the month of June. A science/technology writer and futurist, Michael produces the mind-bending Accelerating Future blog and plays a prominent role in a number of futurist and foresight related organizations.

I first met Michael in 2003 during a transhumanist conference at Yale and we've kept in touch ever since. Our visions of the future, both in terms of the risks and benefits, have always been very closely aligned -- whether it be in how we've come to define the perpetually amorphous Technological Singularity or what we envision as being the posthuman condition. We also share similar ethical sensibilities; both of us are outspoken advocates of animal welfare, vegetarianism and the abolitionist imperative.

A bit about Michael:

He is Media Director for the Singularity Institute and Fundraising Director, North America for the Lifeboat Foundation. He is the founder of the Immortality Institute, a grassroots life extension advocacy organization, and does fundraising work for the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, an organization devoted to research on safe artificial intelligence. He's also a prolific freelance science and technology writer; he has contributed over 1,600 short factual articles to WiseGeek.com, a website that promises “clear answers for common questions”. WiseGeek received over 62 million visitors last year.

Back in 2006, Michael expanded his capacity to hound others about the wonders of technology and its central significance to humanity’s future by starting his blog, Accelerating Future. Since its founding, the blog has received over 5 million visits and been featured on G4.TV’s Attack of the Show and SciFi.com. Posts of Michael’s have appeared on the front page of Digg and Reddit. Since appearing on the scene, Michael has received some light media coverage, being interviewed by Psychology Today in 2008. Since 2003, Michael has given talks on the risks and benefits of emerging technologies at conferences and seminars in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Palo Alto, and at Yale University.

The topics that Michael likes to focus on are artificial intelligence, molecular nanotechnology, transhumanism, intelligence enhancement and extinction risk. He believes that humanity could rise or fall in the 21st century depending on how we handle these technologies. His views on the dangers of advanced technology are very similar to those presented by Bill Joy in his WIRED article, “Why the future doesn’t need us”, except Michael believes that relinquishment is infeasible. Instead, he advocates selective development — the acceleration of beneficial technologies (especially intelligence enhancement and Friendly AI) so that their problem-solving capabilities can be brought to bear on the risks of other advanced technologies.

Michael is allied with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, to which he often contributes articles. The IEET’s mission is to become a center for voices arguing for a responsible, constructive approach to emerging human enhancement technologies. The organization believes that technological progress can be a catalyst for positive human development so long as we ensure that technologies are safe and equitably distributed. The basic idea is that human enhancement technology should be cautiously embraced rather than ignored or rejected.

Michael has been a consultant for a variety of future-oriented non-profit organizations and for-profit companies including the Methuselah Foundation, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, and Kurzweil Technologies. On behalf of the Lifeboat Foundation and the Singularity Institute, Michael has has consulted for organizations such as the US Navy and spoken informally with reporters at outlets such as The New York Times, New Scientist, Financial Times, The Guardian, and the offices of US senators and congressmen.

Look for Michael to blog throughout the month of June. Should make for a fascinating exchange of ideas.

Fifth anniversary of the death of John Maynard Smith

Evolutionary biologist, game theorist and proto-transhumanist, John Maynard Smith died on this day in 2004 at the age of 84. Born in London and known as "JMS" to his friends, Maynard Smith is most notably remembered for his work in biology, and most particularly for his work introducing game theory to evolutionary biology.

He is also remembered for openly advocating the reengineering of humans, particularly making alterations to the genome and for speculating about the future of intelligent life on Earth.

Seminal and influential work

Maynard Smith has the distinction of being the first biologist to introduce mathematical models from game theory into the study of behavior. He was greatly influenced by John von Neumann and John Nash, and in turn introduced the Nash Equilibrium to biology.

In his book Evolution and the Theory of Games, he showed that that the success of an organism's actions often depends on what other organisms do. In a field dominated by evolutionary biologists who tend to look exclusively for competitive relationships in Darwinian processes, his ideas were a breath of fresh air, inspiring such biologists and thinkers as Richard Dawkins and Robert Wright and offering methodologies that are still making their way into research labs around the world.

Maynard Smith was also concerned with the predominance of sexual reproduction. According to his models, he surmised that asexual reproduction should be more advantageous from a selectional perspective.

In his 1978 book The Evolution of Sex, Maynard Smith pointed out "the twofold cost of sex." Sexually reproducing organisms, he argued, must produce both female and male offspring, whereas asexual organisms only need to produce females. In most sexual populations, half of the offspring are male, but in asexual populations there are twice as many females.

This advantage, claimed Maynard Smith, should provide a huge evolutionary advantage to asexual reproduction. The problem, he asked, is why we see so much sex in the world. We still don't have a satisfactory answer.

Maynard Smith was also deeply committed to making evolutionary ideas accessible to a wide audience. His book, The Theory of Evolution, inspired many of today's leading researchers to become biologists.

Forward thinker

Maynard Smith was greatly influenced by another important scientist, JBS Haldane, the controversial transhumanist biologist and philosopher.

While a student at Eton College, Maynard Smith became alienated by what he felt was an anti-intellectual, snobbish and arrogant atmosphere. His professors hated Haldane, and frequently complained about his socialist, Marxist and atheist leanings.

Maynard Smith remembered thinking, "Anybody they hate so much can't be all bad. I must go and find out about him." He read Haldane's Possible Worlds and in turn sought him out. Haldane went on to become his primary mentor, claiming afterwards that he taught him everything he knew. "I wept when he died," said Maynard Smith.

Like Haldane, Maynard Smith had a progressive leftist political worldview and looked to technology and the medical sciences as a means for improving the human condition.

He was for a time a member of the communist party but disgustedly left in 1956.

He died of lung cancer sitting in a high-backed chair, surrounded by books at his home in Lewes, East Sussex on April 19, 2004, 122 years to the day after the death of Darwin.

Paul Hughes blogging again

Good news: Futurist Paul Hughes is blogging again. He will be blogging from a technogaian, technoprogressive, democratic transhumanist and Yogic/Buddhist perspective. I'm looking forward to seeing where he takes the new blog.