Enter the switch pitcher

I often wonder where human enhancement will take professional sports. Sure, we're in the denial-and-react phase of this transformation (as witnessed by the strict laws against chemical enhancement), but the time is coming when the genetically enhanced athlete will be the norm.

Pat Venditte is a good example of what the future might hold. He's not genetically or chemically enhanced; Venditte is a naturally born ambidextrous switch pitcher who plays for Creighton University in the NCAA. He can switch from being a right or left handed pitcher at a moment's notice. This is advantageous for the same reason that switch hitters alter their batting stances (a skill that does not require ambidexterity, also known as cross-dominance).

I can see cross-dominance being an accepted feature of the enhanced human. Maintaining physical asymmetry doesn't make a lot of sense -- handedness is a throwback to our evolutionary history and most likely has a genetic basis (although the exact reason for handedness is still an unsolved mystery in biology).

At the same time, the advantages of being ambidextrous are self-evident and numerous. Jimi Hendrix, for example, was ambidextrous and he had perfect pitch (talk about winning the genetic lottery!!). Some good examples of cross-dominance in sports can be found here.

Including the ability to throw a curve that lands low and inside against a tough left-handed hitter.

Austrian court to rule if chimp has human rights

It's a strange question: should a 26-year old chimp named Hiasl qualify for human rights? It's strange because it's the wrong question. The issue is not whether Hiasl is human-like enough to qualify for such privileges, but whether or not he's person enough to earn such rights and protections.

The mistake is in making human DNA the metric for personhood. This smacks of human arrogance and exceptionalism; we are not the only persons on the planet -- far from.

Instead, what's needed in a situation like this is a list of personhood criteria so that an agent's level of personhood can be assessed. This will eventually have to be done for a number of reasons, whether it be to broaden the sphere of rights to include nonhuman animals, or to recognize personhood characteristics in artificial entities and technologically enhanced humans.

I've written on this topic in the past:

Spanish socialists want to give apes human rights

The myth of our exalted human place

Buddha Break 2007.04.05

The World Health Organization defines health as, "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

"The suffering itself is not so bad, it's the resentment against suffering that is the real pain." -Alan Ginsberg

"Remembering a wrong is like carrying a burden on the mind." - Buddha; Guilt, shame and the Buddhist practice.

Gifted students who feel the pressure of their ability could be using Heavy Metal music to get rid of negative emotions.

"A Tibetan scholar once complained to me of Zen’s severe reductionism. The scholar was right. Zen is so reductive by nature that it actually self-destructs. The longer I practice Zen the less I have of anything, including Zen itself." -- Lin Jensen; More.

Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) can help you literally think yourself out of depression.

People who bought this book also bought: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves by Sharon Begley; The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind by B. Alan Wallace; The Dalai Lama at MIT by Anne Harrington; Genuine Happiness: Meditation as the Path to Fulfillment by B. Alan Wallace; The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge.

Scientific studies of meditation and other forms of contemplative experience have only recently become a subject of scientific interest.

Saletan on brain damage, evolution, and the future of morality.

The concept of Nirvana from a psychological point of view.

Paul Broks reviews Nicholas Humphrey's take on consciousness: "One day I'll be dead. It's an oddly exhilarating thought. Something unimaginable—nothingness—awaits us all. I have a hunch that getting an imaginative purchase on mental nothingness would help us also grasp the "somethingness" of sentience. What else was conscious in that summer's evening scene? The tree? No. The bugs? I doubt it. The cat? Who knows? I had an intuition that it felt like something to be the cat, that the animal had some awareness of the cacophony of the cicadas' mating calls, an awareness to which I would ascribe the sensory quality sound. As it stretched and rolled, I imagined it experienced a bodily sensation, which might be labelled pleasure. And I am pretty sure that if I had walked over and stamped on its tail, then it would have experienced pain. But it was just an intuition. An intuition, yes, but one I could surely back up with neurology."

"The biggest obstacle [today for contemplative practitioners] is that Western 21st century culture provides very little support for spiritual practice and in fact its major thrust (consumerism) runs counter to spiritual growth." More.

Being human: Nussbaum and capabilities.

The latest NEWSWEEK poll shows that 91 percent of American adults surveyed believe in God—and nearly half reject the theory of evolution. Maybe it's because humans hard-wired for faith.

Computer-based therapy for such things as depression should be available to all patients in England from April, says the government.

"The reason we experience disgust today is that the response protected our ancestors," said Dan Fessler, associate professor of anthropology and director of UCLA's Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture. "The emotion allowed our ancestors to survive long enough to produce offspring, who in turn passed the same sensitivities on to us."

Would you kill one person to save five others? Your intuition is probably wrong, says Peter Singer.

Slate on The Hostile New Age Takeover of Yoga. Read with a grain of salt.

Click to see larger version.

Facebook and the ongoing demise of anonymity

The recent upswell of interest in Facebook and other social networking sites has taken us one step closer to the all-knowing and all-seeing social panopticon.

Like everyone else (it seems), I'm on Facebook now and enjoying it tremendously. As Simon Smith recently noted, it has a killer UI and is far, far too much fun to use. Users can provide an endless barrage of information about themselves which in turn appears instantly on their friends' news feeds.

You are now tuned into the George News Network: All George, all the time:

George has joined a new group.

George has been tagged in a new photo.

George has edited his relationship status and religious affiliation.

George is brushing his teeth.

George should probably be using his time more productively....

Exciting stuff, to be sure. You're watching me and I'm watching you. It's a thrill a minute.

Personally, I'm getting to the point now where after I successfully add a new friend I can actually feel the release of dopamine in my brain. Mmmm, new friend.....that's the good stuff....

In addition to all the masturbatory self-affirmation that goes on in Facebook, however, there are some broader social issues to consider. I'm speaking specifically of the rapidly evaporating phenomenon of anonymity. You remember 'anonymity?' There was a time not too long ago when barely anyone knew who you were outside of your family and immediate group of friends.

Today, social networking sites allow users to post as much information about themselves as they want -- everything from who they're currently dating to their favorite book. This could eventually come back to haunt them on account of unscrupulous individuals or Big Brother.

Take, for example, the ability to tag photos; if your image is on the Web, chances are your visual anonymity has been lost forever. Facebook lets you upload images, drag a square cursor around your friend's face, and with a click of the mouse tie that person's image to his or her profile. Eventually, given one's visual prominence on the Web, these sites will use photo recognition software to automatically tag a photo with your name. In fact, Google is already using this technology on Picasa.

But when taking the Facebook phenomenon into consideration, and seeing how unabashed people are about sharing their personal information, this appears to be a non-issue. At least at this point in time anyway. Those who partake in social networking are a select group of individuals who, for the most part, don't care or don't realize that they're putting themselves 'out there.'

And I'm certainly a member of this group. I could avoid these sites and leak agonizingly little information about myself to the Web, or I can share the most trivial details of my life with others, form new friendships and connections, and have fun.

I'll gladly choose the latter.

Old bridge post

The rise of 'biocentrism'

There's a provocative article over at Astroroach: "A Biocentric and Holographic Universe." The general idea behind biocentrism is that our cosmology and metaphysics cannot ignore the important interplay between conscious observers and quantum effects. As Robert Lanza notes,

"The trees and snow evaporate when we’re sleeping. The kitchen disappears when we’re in the bathroom. When you turn from one room to the next, when your animal senses no longer perceive the sounds of the dishwasher, the ticking clock, the smell of a chicken roasting—the kitchen and all its seemingly discrete bits dissolve into nothingness—or into waves of probability. The universe bursts into existence from life, not the other way around as we have been taught. For each life there is a universe, its own universe. We generate spheres of reality, individual bubbles of existence."

This fits in very nicely with not just the revealing sciences, but with the foundations of consciousness-centric Buddhist metaphysics as well.

Doomsaying: It's a 'status' thing

According to Freeman Dyson, the prevalence of doom-and-gloom prognosticators at Cambridge University (a group that would include Sir Martin Rees) is a consequence of the English class system. He says,

Has rising status for commercial middle and upper classes made academics feel slighted and lower in status? Have some of them responded by generating more arguments about looming disasters as a way to boost their own importance and status in the eyes of government leaders and general public?

I find the argument plausible because the desire to raise one's status seems an obvious basic human instinct. The desire for higher status can be seen as a motivation for everything from the drive for wealth, political power, and fame, The desire for higher status may well be the biggest driver of large scale philanthropy by the famous and wealthy.

Gee, and here I thought all the doomsaying was on account of academic due diligence and responsible foresight. Oh, and all those nasty apocalyptic technologies we're about to unleash....

Cyborg birth sequences

Here are several visually stunning cyborg 'birth' sequences:

The intro to the Six Million Dollar Man: "Better than he was before.....better, stronger, faster."

The first-person rebirth sequence of Robocop.

The opening sequence to Ghost in the Shell.

The opening sequence to Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence.

Bjork's video, "All is Full of Love."

Signs of the coming apocalypse

Whole lotta bits 'n bytes

I recently bought a pair of 250GB hard drives for my computer. At first it seemed like a tremendous amount of storage capacity, but now I'm not so sure.

There's probably a computer law out there which states something about storage capacity and a user's unfailing ability to fill it up in short order. Thankfully, hardware manufacturers keep pushing the envelope when it comes to expanding the limits of data storage.

Here's a list of data storage units and their approximate storage capacity:

• 1 byte: A letter
• 10 bytes: A word or two
• 100 bytes: A sentence or two
• 1 kilobyte 10³: A very short story
• 10 kilobyte: An encyclopedia page (perhaps with a simple picture)
• 100 kilobyte: A medium-resolution photograph
• 1 megabyte = 10⁶: A novel
• 10 megabytes: Two copies of the complete works of Shakespeare
• 100 megabytes: 1 meter of shelved books
• 1 gigabyte = 10⁹: A pickup truck filled with pages of text
• 1 terrabyte = 10¹²: 50,000 trees of paper
• 10 terrabytes : The printed collection of the U.S. Library of Congress (which consists of 130 million items on about 530 miles of bookshelves, including 29 million book, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 58 million manuscripts).
• 1 petabyte = 10¹⁵: The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains almost 2 petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month; and as of October 15, 2005, all the files being shared on Kazaa totaled around 54 petabytes.
  
• 1 exabyte = 10^18: Berkeley studies estimated that by the end of 1999 the sum of human-produced knowledge (including all audio, video recordings and text/books) was about 12 exabytes of data. The study also estimated that "telephone calls worldwide on both landlines and mobile phones contained 17.3 exabytes of new information if stored in digital form", and "it would take 9.25 exabytes of storage to hold all U.S. [telephone] calls each year." International Data Corporation estimates that 161 exabytes of digital information were created, captured, and replicated worldwide in 2006.
• 1 zettabyte = 10^21: The IDC estimates that by 2010, there will be 988 exabytes, just under a zettabyte, in all computer storage world wide.
• 1 yottabyte = 10²⁴: IBM estimates that soon after 2010 the volume of online data accessible either on the Internet or on corporate networks is expected to approach a yottabyte, or 1 trillion terabytes.
  

That's a lotta data.

Managing your 50,000 daily thoughts

A number of years ago the NSF estimated that our brains produce as many as 12,000 to 50,000 thoughts per day depending on how 'deep' a thinker you are (other estimates run as high as 60,000/day).

For those of you who meditate this is unlikely to be a surprise. Meditators are familiar with the 'monkey mind' phenomenon in which the mind is observed as an out-of-control thought generator. As part of my meditation practice I try to remind myself to harness and slow down the 'meme machine' inside my head.

As for regular life, what's disturbing about these 50,000 thoughts per day is that the vast majority of them are pure nonsense. We often dwell in the past or the future, obsessing about mistakes we might have made, battling guilt, planning ahead or worrying. We are constantly drifting into fantasy, fiction and negativity.

Consequently, an absolute minuscule number of our thoughts are actually focused on what is truly important and real: the present moment. The moment is all that is, every was and will be. Everything else is elusive and illusory, particularly as our subjective awareness and feelings are concerned.

Some people have estimated that upwards of 70-80% of our daily thoughts are negative. That's very sad if true. The human mind, it would seem, is wired for neuroticism. A healthy first step to alleviate this problem, therefore, would be to increase one's awareness of these negative and bogus thoughts. This is what's referred to as mindfulness. It's a type of self-reflexivity and enhanced self-awareness that helps Buddhists root themselves in the moment. Once individuals have awareness of these thoughts they can sweep them away from their thoughts like fallen leaves.

You'd be surprised how much control you can have over your thought processes and your ability to control your emotional responses. Even if they number 50,000 a day.

PS3 Home by Sony: A rival to SL?

Buddha Break 2007.03.15

A new videogame teaches Buddhist principles.

New book: Horizons in Buddhist Psychology (2006), edited by Maurits G.T. Kwee, Kenneth J. Gergen and Fusako Koshikawa.

Description:This book is for those who are interested in Buddhist teachings and all who seek routes to growth in human well-being, particularly therapists, coaches, and scientists. It is a vanguard work that sets a cultural revolution in motion by bringing the fruits of the Buddhist heritage together with contemporary therapy, systematic research, and postmodern thought. The volume contains 28 chapters by 38 contributors from 12 countries, and introduces a range of useful practices, evidence of their efficacy, and integrative theoretical deliberations. Its contents move toward a climax called New Buddhist Psychology.

A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact.

Is there a moral obligation to be intelligent? Is faith a moral failing? Is dogmatism dangerous?

Through the ages, the killjoys of governing elites have been threatened by public expressions of collective joy; it's time to reclaim what makes us human.

A new study reports on the state of human happiness.

Buddhism lures tourists.

Nichiren Buddhism fits Western lifestyle.

Belinda Carlisle talks about becoming a Buddhist. Here's a concise list of celebrity Buddhists (how cool is it that Lisa Simpson is on the list?).

Deepak Chopra on consciousness.

Kurzweil, Shatner and de Grey to speak at TransVision 07

And I'll be speaking, too :-) Not sure about what, though -- maybe postgenderism or animal uplift. I'll also be speaking about the ethics of radical life extension at the pre-conference event, Securing the Longevity Dividend: Building the Campaign for Anti-Aging Science.

Bailey on Fukuyama's 'eugenics'

Looks like I'm not the only one who interprets over-the-top regulation of human biotech as a form of eugenics. Reason science correspondent Ronald Bailey has penned a piece in which he warns, "Francis Fukuyama wants to control your reproductive decisions."

In the article, titled "Medievalizing Biotech Regulation," Bailey describes Fukuyama's recent initiative to create a regulatory agency in the United States that would be modeled after the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HEFA). This new agency would regulate the safety and efficacy of new biotechnologies and rule on their ethical merits. Fukuyama argues that it's time for "social control."

More specifically,

Fukuyama explained that the new agency would regulate anything having to do with assisted reproduction techniques (ART). This would include IVF, ooplasm transfer, sex selection either by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) or sperm sorting. The agency would also regulate research involving human reproductive tissues including all embryonic stem cell research and anything dealing with human developmental biology....

Fukuyama would completely ban human reproductive cloning, the creation of human animal chimeras for the purpose of reproduction, germline genetic modifications, any procedure that would alter the genetic relationship of parents to children, and the patenting of human embryos.

I'm not opposed to regulatory agencies in principle; institutions such as these are both necessary and fairly inevitable. What concerns me, however, is when extreme bioconservatives like Fukuyama take the initiative. These regulatory precedents are dangerously constrictive. It is Fukuyama, after all, who has made it painfully clear that he is opposed to not just human enhancement, but life extending technologies as well.

As Bailey points out in his article, these regulatory bodies often function as bureaucratic obstructions to research and development. Moreover, when given too much political clout, and if guided by anachronistic notions of human reproduction and biology, these agencies may also act in a way that's reminiscent of 20th century eugenics.

Ultimately, Fukuyama's agency will work to enforce a preconceived, non-normative and state imposed vision of human reproduction and health in general.

New audiocast episode posted

My latest audiocast has been posted here. You can subscribe to this feed.

In this episode I discuss in-world terrorism in Second Life, our neugenic nation, and how China is moving from the third world to a brave new world.

A death in the family

My ex-wife's mother died two days ago. This is the woman who for years I referred to as 'mom.' And of course, this is the person who my children call Gramma.

Monday was imposed upon me earlier than usual; it's never good news when the phone rings so early in the morning. It was my ex-wife. Her father couldn't wake-up her mom. I hustled over to my ex's place to get the kids ready for school while she attended to her parents (we have split custody and it happened to be my off-week).

Later that day we learned that Gramma suffered a massive stroke while in her sleep. Her mind and body started to degrade at an alarming rate about four years ago. She already had a couple of strokes and was suffering from Alzheimer's; her short-term memory was all but gone. We all knew she wasn't long for this world.

After performing the CatScan the doctors said there was no hope for recovery. The stroke created a large lesion in the brain and she was bleeding internally. Her speech centers were wiped out and she was permanently unconscious. She had only a few days or mere hours to live.

There was nothing the doctors could do. Nothing. In this day and age. I felt as if we were living in the medieval era. It just seemed strange to me that no interventions or treatments were even possible.

At the end of the work day I took my kids to the hospital. I had the uncomfortable task of having to tell my 7-year old and 9-year old that their grandmother was going to die and that we were going to say our last goodbyes. The shocked look on their faces is something I won't soon forget.

Another jolt awaited us when we arrived at the hospital. Gramma lay on the bed connected to a morphine drip. Her breathing was steady but labored. Vital sign monitors beeped and clicked in the background. Her body twitched in uncontrollable spasms every few minutes. She looked as if she had aged 20 years overnight. The stroke had clearly inflicted considerable damage.

We all took turns holding her hand and consoling her, desperately hoping she could hear us. Her hand was so warm. The kids and I reluctantly offered our last goodbyes and went home while the rest of the family stood guard.

She died three hours later.

Gramma was 77-years old, which is still young in my opinion. I think it's wonderful that she lived a reasonably long and full life, but her death still seems like such a waste. A lot of rationalizing goes on during times like these; we are socialized to feel less saddened by the death of an elderly person than, say, the death of a child. This kind of thinking disguises the fact that every death is a terrible tragedy.

And then there's that whole aging process. Aging doesn't just kill us, it kills us horribly. Sitting next to my mother-in-law in the hospital I was outraged -- outraged at all those who feel we shouldn't interfere with the aging process; outraged at all those who obstruct research into life extending medical technologies; outraged at all those who are blind to horrors of aging.

I'm reminded of a quote from J.R.R. Tolkien,

"There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to Man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident. And even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation."

Fight Aging and be inspired by the medical possibilities.

New Air CD: Pocket Symphony

Air's new CD, Pocket Symphony, was released earlier this week. Check out the lyrics to the track, "One Hell of a Party" (which I can't help but feel has end-of-the-world conotations):

Please do not follow where I am leading
Someone must clear these things away
Here in the burnt out husk of the morning
Struck out with nothing left to say

Yeah this was one hell of a party
Nobody ever got to bed
But the morning after's killing me
And I have to rest my head

And just where were we trying to get to?
I can't recall one single word
And the faces that pushed themselves before you
Come into one, nothing transferred

This was one hell of a party
And it's still living in my head
But the morning after shines so cold
So follow where I live

This was one hell of a party
Nobody got to go to bed
Let's face it now, it's over
But this morning after's killing me
And I have to rest my head

These guys often have interesting lyrics. Check out "Biological" from their previous release, Talkie Walkie:

Thousands of hairs
Two eyes only
Its you

Some skin
Billions of genes
Again its you

XX XY
That's why it's you and me

Your blood is red
It's beautiful genetic love

Biological
I don't know why I feel that way with you
Biological
I need your DNA

Your fingerprints
The flesh, her arm, your bones
I'd like to know
Why all these things move me

Let's use ourselves to be as one tonight
Apart of me would like to travel in your veins

Biological
I don't know why I feel that way with you
Biological
I need your DNA

BTW, Arcade Fire and Amon Tobin also released new albums this week.

Buddha Break 2007.03.06

Top 10 ways to improve your mental fitness and make your brain age younger.

"If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder
drug."

Scientists have discovered why some individuals may be predisposed to drug addiction and believe it may lead to better treatments for this brain disorder.

Make sure you go to bed early because lack of sleep affects moral judgment.

Daniel Gilbert on the "The Vagaries of Religious Experience."

Contemplate this: AI vs. meditation (re: Minsky's The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind & Alan Wallace's Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge).

Insight from metapsychologist Isabel Gois into Benjamin Libet's "Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness."

Genes and fortune determine happiness.

Couples share patterns of life satisfaction.

Mindfulness in mood disorders.

Massaging young minds.

Human compassion surprisingly limited.

Christology and the Human Body.

'Tis the season to go to concerts

I've got four delicious rock concerts lined up over the next several weeks: The Shins (Kool Haus on March 17), Isis (Opera House on March 20), Placebo (the Guvernment on April 9), and Kaiser Chiefs (Kool Haus on April 18).

Life is good.