Would It Be Boring If We Could Live Forever?

Some futurists predict that we'll be able to halt the aging process by the end of this century — if not sooner. The prospect of creating an ageless society is certainly not without its critics, with concerns ranging from the environmental through to the spiritual. One of the most common objections to radical life extension, however, is the idea that it would be profoundly boring to live forever, and that by consequence, we should not even attempt it.

So are the critics right? Let's take a closer look at the issue and consider both sides.

To help us make sense of the problem, we spoke to two experts who have given this subject considerable thought: Bioethicist Nigel Cameron, the President of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, and philosopher Mark A. Walker, Assistant Professor and Richard L. Hedden Chair of Advanced Philosophical Studies at New Mexico State University.

It was through my conversations with them that I realized how difficult this question is to answer — mostly because no one has ever lived long enough to know. But given what's at stake, it's an issue certainly worth considering.

Now, before we get into the discussion, there are a couple of things to note.

First, this is not idle speculation. An increasing number of gerontologists, biologists, and futurists are predicting significant medical breakthroughs in the coming decades that could result in so-called ‘negligible senescence' — the indefinite prolongation of healthy human life.

And second, this discussion is limited to the question of boredom. Clearly, there are many other serious implications to radical life extension, but those are outside the scope of this article.

Boredom, Mortality, and the Meaningful Life

Most of us know what it feels like to be bored, and it's not pleasant. Thankfully, we're often able to change things up and move on to new experiences and settings. But what if things got so tedious and so repetitive that death actually seemed preferable? Given the potential for radically extended lives, could we risk being tired of literally everything — including life itself?

This is the concern of bioethicist Nigel Cameron who worries that extreme longevity will cause people to become listless and utterly dissatisfied with their existence owing to a complete lack of engagement, novelty — and purpose. It's the prospect of death, says Cameron, that spurs us to be motivated and to meaningfully engage in life. Living an exceedingly long life without the threat of death, he argues, will only impose meaninglessness to our lives.

Moreover, Cameron worries that extended lives will make an already bad situation even worse.

"If we assume an indefinite lifespan in a situation broadly similar to our present one," he told me, "the issue is not so much whether we would be bored as how most westerners, at least, would cope with the prospect when in our current situation they are already bored nearly to death — that's the baseline."

Cameron is concerned that we risk the extension of what are already exceedingly boring and diminished lives. "I am thinking of the blank expressions of reality TV viewers," he said, "and the bloated living corpses of Wall-E."

Chris Hackler, head of the Division of Medical Humanities at the University of Arkansas, agrees:

Let's face it, most peoples' jobs aren't all that fascinating. They put in a 9-to-5 and they're glad to have the weekend. So you wonder if having twice as much of this is a good thing, or if you'd get totally burned out.

Cameron makes the case that it's our mortality — and not necessarily the dearth of novelty — that contributes to a life worth living. "It is the prospect of our demise that gives richness and joy and anguish to each measure of our human experience, symbolized better than anywhere by the 'til death us do part' of the marriage ceremony," he told me. "To enjoy an indefinite human experience would require a willing commitment to constant reinvention, a kind of reincarnation, to which few current humans aspire."

Another concern is the suggestion that humans are not psychologically primed for living an indefinitely long life — that our psychologies didn't evolve to handle such long expanses of time and experiences. Cameron, like others, are worried that life would start to seem dull and without any kind of spontaneous spark. It would be dangerous and reckless, therefore, for us to go down that path.

It's All in Your Head

Boredom, along with the related condition of ennui (which is the general tiring of life), are at a fundamental level psychological conditions. While we can describe someone's life as being "boring", it's ultimately an emotional state that each of us feels.

It's because of this, says Dr. Mark Walker, that the question of boredom and extreme longevity must be framed as an empirical one. "There's only so much about psychology that you can figure out in your armchair," he told me. "We simply have no way of knowing if extreme boredom would kick-in after thousands or millions of years."

Walker notes that the elderly population don't tend to complain about being bored. He points to the example of Jean Calment who lived to be 122 years old, and was once quoted as saying, "I never get bored." And in fact, studies have shown that satisfaction with life increases with age. It's only when sickness and infirmary kicks in that most people lose their lust for life.

But satisfaction at 122 years of age is far removed from what a 1,222 year-old might feel like.

Walker is fairly convinced that some people will be bored in the future. "The larger question that needs to be asked," says Walker, "is if life could ever get so boring that death would be preferable?"

And indeed, Walker predicts that some people will get so profoundly tired of life that they will choose to opt out. "The unhappiest people may commit suicide," he says, "but the remaining people will be less likely to be dissatisfied with their lives." He contends that, as time goes by, a kind of self-selection effect will occur, resulting in a remaining population that's more impervious to boredom.

He also points to the realization that humans of the future will be something very unlike version 1.0. "By that stage," says Walker, "humans will have dramatically changed themselves."

And because boredom is an inherently psychological issue, he speculates that future humans will choose to deal with the condition from a neurological perspective. "I can imagine, for example, a way to compartmentalize memory, "he said, "by putting blocks around memories so that we can revisit experiences as if for the first time."

Essentially, Walker believes that we'll eventually develop the the technological means to overcome psychological boredom.

Walker advocates what he calls ‘experimental ethics.' His general sentiment is that we should give radical life extension a try and see what happens. We may very well discover that, after a certain period of time, people start to get weary of life and opt right out of it.

A Very Different Kind of Future

The bigger issue, however, is whether or not the threat of boredom is so severe that we should forgo the radical life extension project altogether.

Given that we all deal with boredom from time-to-time, and that most of us are able to move on in life, the concern may be dramatically overstated. Or perhaps Cameron is right, and that prolonged lives will be stripped of meaning and purpose.

That said, it's important to note that radical life extension does not imply immortality. No matter how advanced our medical technologies get, people will always be subject to traumatic deaths and other unforeseen accidents. We won't be able to bring everybody back. Life, therefore, will always have a certain degree of uncertainty to it.

Moreover, the future is likely to present an entirely new set of experiences and opportunities far more diverse than what we're accustomed to today. Extreme longevity will likely be accompanied by other forms of human augmentation (such as intelligence and heightened emotional states), along with a dazzling array of technological gadgetry to keep us all titillated. In fact, a strong case can be made that, even today, we are a society that's so wired in that we very rarely have an opportunity to be bored. The future could very well extend our levels of engagement to even new heights (for better or worse).

Lastly, it's worth noting that the human mind, even in its current configuration, is capable of conjuring up a tremendously large number of variable mental states. Writing in The Blank Slate, neuroscientist Steven Pinker has suggested that the human brain is capable of generating and experiencing an infinite number of thoughts:

With a few thousand nouns that can fill the subject slot and a few thousand verbs that can fill the predicate slot, one already has several million ways to open a sentence. The possible combinations quickly multiply out to unimaginably large numbers. Indeed, the repertoire of sentences is theoretically infinite, because the rules of language use a trick called recursion. A recursive rule allows a phrase to contain an example of itself, as in She thinks that he thinks that they think that he knows and so on, ad infinitum. And if the number of sentences is infinite, the number of possible thoughts and intentions is infinite too, because virtually every sentence expresses a different thought or intention.

All this said, the question of boredom as it pertains to radical life extension will have to remain unanswered for now. But regardless of where one stands on the issue, the future, it would seem, will be anything but dull.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Top image via Semmick Photo/Shutterstock.com. Inset images courtesy Nigel Cameron, Mark Walker, and Mondolithic Studios.

Shannon Larratt, 1973-2013

Shannon Larratt died this past Friday of a rare genetic myopathy. You've probably never heard of Shannon, but he was a big deal in the radical body modification community — a community that is absolutely reeling right now. He was their advocate, role model, and hero.

I first met Shannon at TransVision 2004, a futurist conference I organized in Toronto. Shannon showed up, along with an entourage of fellow body modders, to hear what we all had to say about transhumanism and the future of radical body modification. A fan of science and science fiction, he was curious to hear about the potential for cybernetics, genetics and other biotechnologies as they pertained to altering human function and form. It also didn't hurt that Australian performance artist Stelarc was also at the conference, another hero of the body modders on account of his cyborg sensibilities and suspension performances. You can watch Shannon's interview of Stelarc here. His write-up of the TransVision conference is here.

He was the founder and former editor and publisher of BMEzine (in 1994), the oldest and largest body modification website on the Internet. He also wrote the book, ModCon: The Secret World Of Extreme Body Modification. He was also an outspoken critic of censorship, and, in the late stages of his life, an advocate for right-to-die legislation.

Shannon, who was born in Victoria, British Columbia, will be remembered for his ceaseless advocacy of body modification and the right to alter our own bodies in any way we see fit -- even if it might seem extreme, dangerous, or offensive to some.

I interviewed Shannon for an io9 article several months ago called "What Does The Future Have In Store For Radical Body Modification." He was frustrated that I had to cut and trim the article (he wrote a very lengthy and detailed response). So, he decided to publish his entire response at his blog, and I suggest you check it out.

You can read Shannon's final words here. An excerpt:

Thank you to everyone who made my life wonderful. I love you all. I wish there had been more of it, and I wish I had more to give. I’m sorry there is so much unfinished, so much left to do, but I am glad to know many wonderful people who will complete it. Last minute reflections and bits of advice… seize every opportunity that’s in front of you and live life to the fullest. Even with everything I’ve done, there is so much more I wish I’d squeezed in. Don’t let a single day (well, maybe a single day) be idle. Have every adventure you can, and explore every street — although treat the one-way streets with caution. Don’t fritter you life away into television, random browsing, and pointless substance abuse (I have at times been guilty of all of these) — although remember there are valid uses for them, both for growth and entertainment. Have passion about the future, and in the present. Especially if you’re young, push your education and your skills to their limits on every level. Don’t just graduate highschool, get a degree, get a doctorate if you can. I know these things aren’t for everyone, they are for most, and they also open doors to some of the most special adventures. Even if you can’t afford proper schooling there are many, many ways to learn, free courses to volunteering, and so on. Value your health, and the health of our planet, and strive beyond its borders. We have such a glorious future, but never forget that your part in that future could end at any moment, so live a life that you can be proud of. And of course love and treat each other well.

As much as these last years have been the most difficult I can imagine, and there are still many deeds to be done, please know that I have had a wonderful adventure and enjoyed it immensely on the whole.

Live Long and Prosper!

Love always,

Shannon Larratt

This is a pic of me and Shannon back in 2004:

How to Measure the Power of Alien Civilizations Using the Kardashev Scale

We have yet to make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. If they're out there — and surely they must be — we haven't the foggiest idea what they might be like. Or do we?

Given what we know about the universe and our own civilization, we should be able to make some educated guesses. And in fact, several decades ago, a Russian astrophysicist came up with a classification system to describe hypothetical aliens. Here's how the Kardashev Scale works.

Top image by Steve Burg.

The scale was devised by Nikolai S. Kardashev, a Soviet-era cosmologist who is still active today. Though he's 81, Kardashev works as the deputy director of the Russian Space Research Institute at Moscow's Russian Academy of Sciences. During the 1950s, while both his parents were in Stalin's slave labor camps, he became an astronomy student at Moscow University's Mechanics and Mathematics department. His primary interest was in astrophysics and the theoretic potential for wormholes, but he also shared a fascination with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETIs).

It was around this time that Frank Drake launched Project Ozma — a pioneering attempt to locate ETI's by scanning the sky for radio emissions. Accordingly, Kardashev began to wonder if a good number of alien civilizations might be millions of years ahead of us, and if so, what their radio signatures might be like. Just how "loud," he surmised, could alien transmissions truly get?

This prompted Kardashev to write his seminal 1963 paper, "Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations." In it, he proposed a simple numbering system — from one to three — that could be used to classify hypothetical alien civilizations according to the amount of energy at their disposal. More specifically, he wanted to quantify the power available to them for their radio transmissions.

Today, Kardashev's scale has been expanded and re-interpreted to include more than just the capacity for communications technology. Astrobiologists and cosmologists now use the scale to simply describe the amount of energy available to an ETI for any kind of purpose. As a result, the scale is often used to speculate about the kinds of technologies and existential modalities that characterize advanced civilizations.

Here's how it works.

Kardashev Type I

In his paper, Kardashev wrote that a Type I civilization would be at a "technological level close to the level presently attained on the Earth, with energy consumption ~4 x 10¹⁹ erg/sec." That's about 4 x 10¹² Watts.

Kardashev's initial intention was to describe a civilization not too far removed from our own (again, for the purpose of rating its communicative capacities) — but one that has yet to exploit all of the solar system's resources (i.e. a pre-stellar ETI).

A Type I is typically associated with a hypothetical civilization that has harnessed all the power available to it on its home planet. As physicist Michio Kaku has said, it's a planetary scale civilization that can "control earthquakes, the weather — and even volcanoes." It will have taken advantage of every inch of space, and build "cities on the oceans."

For a civilization to attain Type I status, therefore, it needs to capture all of the solar energy that reaches the planet, and all the other forms of energy it produces as well, like thermal, hydro, wind, ocean, and so on.

More radically, Type I status would only truly be achieved once the entire planet is physically reconfigured to maximize its energy producing potential. For example, the entire mass of a planet could be reconstituted to take the form of a massive solar array to energize a civilization's power-hungry machinery.

Quite obviously, we are not a Type I civilization (at least not by this re-imagining of Kardashev's original description). Not even close. But Kaku predicts that we'll get there eventually, perhaps in a century or two.

But it could happen sooner if computational growth continues at its current breakneck pace (see Moravec, Kurzweil, and Bostrom). Hypothetically speaking, an artificial superintelligence (SAI) could get started in about three to four decades (either unilaterally, or by design).

Kardashev Type II

The next step is a big jump. And indeed, each increment of the Kardashev scale is an order of magnitude greater than the last.

Pre-dating Moore's Law and Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Kardashev noticed that the rate of humanity's energy consumption was increasing steadily. He wrote, "...the annual increase in this energy expenditure is placed at 3-4% over the next 60 years, on the basis of statistical findings." Consequently, he predicted that, in about 3,200 years, "the energy consumption will be equal to the output of the Sun per second...i.e. 4 x 10³³ erg/sec."

This led him to speculate about a Type II civilization. For an ETI to reach K2, it would need to capture the entire energy output of its parent star.

The best way to achieve this, of course, is to build a Dyson Sphere.

Conjured by Freeman Dyson in 1959, this hypothetical megastructure would envelope a star at a distance of 1 AU and cover an inconceivably large area of 2.72 x 10¹⁷ km2, which is around 600 million times the surface area of the Earth. The sun has an energy output of around 4 x 10²⁶ Watts, of which most would be available to do useful work.

It's difficult to predict when we ourselves could become a Type II, but physicist Stuart Armstrong says we could start the project in a few decades. And once underway, it would be subject to rapidly escalating construction speeds (fleets of robots would be powered by the newly-constructed portions of the Dyson shell).

With all this energy, an advanced civilization — probably one that's postbiological in nature — would use it to power its supercomputers and fuel its other endeavors (like interstellar colonization waves).

Kardashev Type III

Which leads to the next increment in the scale. Kardashev described a Type III like this: "A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at ~4 x 10⁴⁴ erg/sec." Needless to say, that's a tremendous amount of energy — somewhere between 10³⁶ Watts to 10³⁷ Watts (give or take one or two).

Every inch of a K3 galaxy would be colonized, with every scrap of matter — and all its billions of stars — exploited for energy. From the perspective of an outside observer, a galaxy occupied by a K3 civ would appear completely invisible, save for the heat leakage which would register in the far infrared (around 10 microns in wavelength).

It would take a civilization anywhere from 100,000 to a million years to transition itself from a Type II to a Type III. Even at modest speeds, it wouldn't take a civilization very long (from a cosmological perspective) to completely colonize a galaxy.

From our vantage point, this would look like a hole in a galaxy, or an inexplicably large swath of open space.

Take the Boötes Void, for example, a huge chunk of the universe that's almost completely devoid of stars and galaxies. Speculatively speaking, this could be a large portion of the universe that has been overtaken by K3 civilizations.

Interestingly, Fermilab's Richard Carrigan has argued that we should look for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations not in our own galaxy, but in neighboring galaxies. His idea is that we should look for civilizations that are transitioning from Type II to Type III. These colonization waves would look like a massive bubble that's spreading outwards from the originating star.

Discovery's Ray Villard elaborates:

It's imaginable that a super-civilization would begin a wave of colonization that spread out to neighboring solar type stars from its home base. Each offshoot would "astro-form" the colonized planetary system by constructing a Dyson sphere around the host star.

Carrigan envisions seeing "Dyson bubbles" in nearby galaxies. These would be clusters of Dyson spheres that enclosed a grouping of stars colonized by a Type II Kardashev civilization. The logic is that after you've built a backyard fence you can start to conceptualize building the Great Wall of China and still hope to gain perspective on the process, Carrigan writes.

These would be detected as anomalous dark voids in a galaxy's disk. When these voids were observed in infrared light they would glow brightly with the heat radiation from the surfaces of Dyson spheres. This would show that they are not that simply voids where solar-type stars are conspicuously missing.

A good candidate for such a search would be the Andromeda Galaxy, which is only 2.5 million light years away. At most, we'd be glancing back a couple of million years into the past, which is not significant from a cosmological perspective.

What would an advanced civ do with all this energy? Well, if many futurists are to be believed, flipping one's and zero's. A Type II and III civilization may be completely based in digital substrate.

Kardashev Type IV? V?

Though Kardashev never went past a Type III, others have taken his idea to the next level. A Type IV would be an ETI (or merging groups of ETIs) that has harnessed all the power of a galactic supercluster, and a type V would — you guessed it — have the entire power of the universe at its disposal.

Unfounded assumptions?

While the Kardashev scale offers considerable food for thought, it is not without its problems.

First and foremost, and stating the obvious, no empirical evidence exists indicating the presence of K2 or K3 civilizations in our galaxy and/or galactic neighborhood. In fact, the Fermi Paradox — what's been dubbed "The Great Silence" — would indicate that civilizations never become migratory, thus making a Type III very unlikely. If Kardashev civilizations exist, we should expect to see large swaths of neighboring galaxies "disappear" from the visual spectrum — yet we do not.

We haven't found any Dyson spheres, either. But that doesn't mean they don't exist. Dysonian SETI is largely underway — an attempt to find the "gaps" in the stars.

Another problem with the Kardashev Scale is the assumption that advanced civilizations have an insatiable appetite for energy. No doubt, a K3 civ seems a bit excessive. It's not a stretch to suggest that a Type II civilization might be as far as these things go. Even a Type I for that matter. Ultimately, it all comes down to the consumptive needs of an "end stage" civilization — one that has successfully adapted to postbiological, post-SAI (artificial super-intelligence) existence.

Alternately, civilizations may choose to avoid these trajectories, either to honor some kind of Prime Directive, or for self-preservational purposes.

Indeed, turning a galaxy into a massive supercomputer may be the last thing an advanced civilization wants to do. ETIs may have other desires and goals that preclude it from this kind of intergalactic imperialism.

But we don't know for sure. So in the meantime, let's be sure to keep listening and looking.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Who should pay when your robot breaks the law?

Robots are unquestioningly getting more sophisticated by the year, and as a result, are becoming an indelible part of our daily lives. But as we start to increase our interactions and dependance on robots, an important question needs to be asked: What would happen if a robot actually committed a crime, or even hurt someone — either deliberately or by mistake?

While our first inclination might be to blame the robot, the matter of apportioning blame is considerably more complicated and nuanced than that. Like any incident involving an alleged criminal act, we need to consider an entire host of factors. Let's take a deeper look and find out who should pay when your robot breaks the law.

To better understand this issue I spoke to robot ethics expert Patrick Lin, the Director of Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University. It was through my conversation with him that I learned just how pertinent this issue is becoming. As Lin told me, "Any number of parties could be held responsible for robot misbehaviour today."

Robot and machine ethics

Before we get too far along in the discussion, a distinction needs to be made between two different fields of study: robot ethics and machine ethics.

We are currently in the age of robot ethics, where the concern lies with how and why robots are designed, constructed, and used. This includes such things as domestic robots like Roomba, self-driving cars, and the potential for autonomous killing machines on the battlefield. These robots, while capable of "acting" without human oversight, are essentially mindless automatons. Robot ethics, therefore, is primarily concerned with the appropriateness of their use.

Machine ethics, on the other hand, is a bit more speculative in that it considers the future potential for robots (or more accurately, their embodied artificially intelligent programming) to have self-awareness and the capacity for moral thought. Consequently, machine ethics is concerned with the actual behavior and actions of advanced robots.

So, before any blame can get assigned to a robot for any nefarious action, we would need to decide which of these two categories apply. For now and the immediate future, robot ethics most certainly qualifies, in which case accountability should to be attributed to either the manufacturer, the owner, and in some cases even the victim.

But looking further into the future to a time when robots match our own level of moral sophistication, the day is coming when they will very likely to have to answer for their crimes.

Manufacturer liability

For now and the foreseeable future, culpability for a robot that has gone wrong will usually fall on the manufacturer. "When it comes to more basic autonomous machines and systems," said Lin, "a manufacturer needs to ensure that any software or hardware defect should have been foreseen."

He cited the hypothetical example of a Roomba that experiences a perfect storm of confusion — a set of variables that the manufacturer could not have anticipated. "One could imagine the Roomba falling off an edge and landing right on top of a cat," he said, "in which case it could be said that the manufacturer is responsible."

Indeed, because the robot is just operating according to the limits of its programming, it cannot be held accountable for its actions. There was absolutely no malice involved. And assuming that the robot was being used according to instructions and not modified in any way, the consumer shouldn't be held liable either.

Outside intended use

Which, as Lin pointed out, raises another issue.

"It's also possible that owners will misuse their robots and hack directly into them," he said. Lin pointed to the example of home defense robots that are being increasingly used in Asia — including robots that go on home patrol and can shoot pepper spray and paint-ball guns. "It's conceivable that someone might want to weaponize the Roomba," he told me, "in which case the owner would be on the hook and not the manufacturer." In such a scenario, the robot would act in a way completely outside of its intended use, thus absolving the manufacturer from liability.

But as Lin clarified for us, it's still not as cut-and-dry as that. "Just because the owner modified the robot to do things that the manufacturer never intended or could never foresee doesn't mean they're completely off the hook," he said. "Some might argue that the manufacturer should have foreseen the possibility of hacking, or other such modifications, and in turn build in safeguards to prevent this kind of manipulation."

Blame the victim

And there are still yet other scenarios in which even the victim could be held responsible. "Consider self-driving cars," said Lin, "and the possibility that a jay-walker could suddenly run across the street and get hit." In such a case it's the victim that's really to blame.

And indeed, one can imagine a entire host of scenarios in which people, through their inattention or recklessness, fall prey to the growing number of powerful and autonomous machinery around them.

Machines that are supposed to kill

Complicating all this yet even further is the potential for autonomous killing machines.

Currently, combat drones are guided remotely by human operators, who are in turn responsible for any violent action committed by the device. If an operator kills a civilian or fellow soldier by mistake, they will have to answer for their mistake and likely face a military tribunal depending on the circumstances.

But that said, there are already sentry bots on duty in Israel and S. Korea. What would happen if one of these robots were to kill somebody by mistake? Actually, as Lin informed us, it's already happened. Back in October 2007 a semi-autonomous robotic canon deployed by the South African army malfunctioned, killing nine "friendly" soldiers and wounding 14 others.

It would be all too convenient, and even instinctive, to blame the robot for an incident like this. But because these systems lack any kind of moral awareness, they cannot be held responsible.

Who, therefore, should account for such an egregious mistake? The person who deployed the machine? The procurement officer? The developer of the technology? Or as Lin asked, "Just how far up the chain of command should we go — and would we ever go so far as to implicate the President, who technically speaking is the Commander-in-Chief?"

Ultimately, suggested Lin, these incidents will have to be treated on a case-by-case basis. "It will all depend on the actual scenario," he said.

Quasi-persons

Looking ahead to the future, there's the potential for a kind of behavioral grey area to emerge between a fairly advanced AI and a fully robust moral machine. It's conceivable that a precursor moral AI will be developed that has a very limited sense of self-awareness and personal responsibility — but a sense of subjectivity and awareness nonetheless. There's also the potential for robots to have ethics programmed right into them.

Unlike more simple automatons, these machines would be capable of actual decision making — albeit at a very rudimentary level. In a sense, they'd be very much like children — who, depending on their age, aren't entirely held accountable for their actions.

"There's a kind of strange disconnect when it comes to robot ethics," noted Lin, "in that we're expecting near perfect behavior from robots when we don't really expect it from ourselves." He agrees that children are a kind of special case, and that they're essentially quasi-persons. Robots, he argues, may have to regarded in a similar way.

Consequently, owners of robots would have to serve as parents or guardians, ensuring that they learn and behave appropriately — and in some cases even take full responsibility for their actions. "It's the same with children," said Lin, "there will have to be a sliding scale of responsibility for robots depending on how sophisticated they are."

The rise of moral machines

And finally, there's the potential for bona fide moral machines — those robots capable of knowing right from wrong. But again, this is still going to prove a tricky area. An artificially intelligent robot will be endowed with a very different kind of mind than one possessed by a human. By its very nature it will think very different than we do. And by consequence, it will be very difficult to know its exact inner cogitations.

But as Lin noted, this is an area that, as humans, we're still struggling to deal with ourselves. He noted how the latest neuroscience suggests that we may not have as much free will as we think. Indeed, courts are beginning to have difficulty in assigning blame to those who may suffer from biological impairments.

All this said, could we ever prove, for example, that a robot can act out of free will? Or that it truly understands the consequences of its actions? And does it really feel empathy?

If the answers are yes, then a robot could truly be made to pay for its crimes.

But more conceptually, these questions are important because, as a society, we tend to confer rights and freedoms to those persons capable of such thoughts. Thus, if we could ever prove that a robot is capable of moral action and introspection, we would not only have to hold it accountable for its actions, we would also have to endow it with fundamental rights and protections.

It would appear, therefore, that we're not too far from the day when robots will start to demand their one phone call.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Is SETI at risk of downloading a malicious virus from outer space?

We take it for granted that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a safe endeavor. Seriously, what could possibly go wrong with passively searching for interstellar radio signals? Unfortunately, the answer is quite a lot –- especially if the incoming signal contains something malicious, like a computer virus or Trojan horse.

And according to the experts, this isn't just idle speculation – the threat is very real. So, just how concerned do we need to be?

To get a better sense of this possibility, I spoke to two experts on the matter: Andrew Siemion, a PhD candidate in astronomy at SETI-Berkeley, and Milan Cirkovic, Senior Research Associate at the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and a leading expert on SETI.

We'll get to their answers in just a second, but it's worth doing a quick review to understand where this idea came from –- and not surprisingly, it's science fiction inspired by science.

Visions of viral doom

Science fiction writers have been worried about this possibility ever since the advent of SETI, back in the early 1960's.

Soon after the launch of Frank Drake's Project Ozma in 1960, which was the pioneering attempt to listen for extraterrestrial radio signals, the BBC produced A for Andromeda, a television series that was written by the acclaimed cosmologist and science fiction writer Fred Hoyle. The story concerns a group of scientists who detect a radio signal from a distant galaxy that contains instructions for the design of an advanced computer. The scientists decide to go ahead and build the computer, which in turn produces a new set of instructions for the creation of a living organism, named Andromeda. It's at this point where one of the scientists raises an objection, amid fears that Andromeda's purpose is to subjugate humanity.

In 1968, Stanislaw Lem reprised this issue in his novel His Master's Voice. In the story, scientists work to decode what seems to be a message from outer space, specifically a neutrino signal from the Canis Minor constellation. As the scientists decode the data, they conclude that it is a mathematical description of an object, possibly a molecule or even an entire genome. They go on to construct two strange substances that exhibit odd properties, a glutinous liquid and a solid object that looks like a slab of red meat. They learn that the liquid can cause an atomic blast at a remote location –- which, if used as a weapon, would make deterrence impossible. As a result, many of the scientists become convinced that it's an extraterrestrial weapon of some sort.

And more recently, the idea of receiving instructions from aliens was explored by Carl Sagan in his 1985 novel Contact (which was made into a major motion picture in 1997). But unlike his worrywart sci-fi predecessors, Sagan portrayed aliens as being genuinely friendly.

In Sagan's story, extraterrestrial contact is made, with the aliens transmitting the blueprints to a massive engineering project — supposedly for us to build. After much consideration, the device is constructed, and it turns out to be a transportation device for a single human occupant.

Carl Sagan always held firmly to his belief in benign aliens. He was convinced that any advanced civilization had to be friendly by default — that overly aggressive or misguided aliens would have destroyed themselves prior to advancing to such a stage. His theory suggested that an interstellar selectional effect was happening, and the only advanced aliens left standing would be the good ones.

Be careful

Sagan's optimism notwithstanding, we should probably be more than a little bit wary of receiving a signal from a civilization that's radically more advanced than our own.

When we spoke to SETI-Berkeley's Andrew Siemion, he admitted that SETI is aware of this particular risk, and that they've given the issue some thought. He stressed that SETI's primary objective is just to detect a signal. "Detecting signals is far easier than decoding them," he told me. "Our searches don't attempt to decode or decipher any information content from signals that trigger our algorithms." In other words, the folks at SETI-Berkeley are only concerned with whether or not a signal is present, and whether it's real.

But that doesn't mean they're still not careful. When we asked Siemion about the possibility of inadvertently receiving or downloading a virus, he stressed that the possibility is extraordinarily low, but not impossible.

"Our instruments are connected to computers, and like any computers, they can be reprogrammed," he warned. "Our software receives input that ultimately comes from unknown sources, and again, while this input is never executed or decoded, we don't perform rigorous checks to validate this unknown input like a computer security conscious programmer might do with an internet application."

Siemion speculated that, if an extraterrestrial intelligence had very deep knowledge of the software systems we use for our experiments and the architecture of our computers, they might be able to send a sequence of signals that would cause a memory buffer to overflow and perhaps allow arbitrary code execution.

"However, if ET had this level of knowledge about terrestrial technology," he said, "it would make far more sense to use a similar technique with the thousands of satellite downlink stations dotting the globe, or the billions of cell phone radios constantly listening for a ping from a cellphone tower."

Siemion stressed that this doesn't apply to such projects as SETI@Home and Astropulse, which he said are "thoroughly vetted by very competent computer security professionals, and every effort is made to ensure [their] safety."

In regards to the threat of a Trojan horse, Siemion admitted the possibility, but doubted that humanity would ever blindly follow a set of blueprints or instructions that we received from another intelligent civilization.

"Just as human cultures establish trust over many decades and centuries moving in small steps, humanities' relationship with an extraterrestrial civilization would likely evolve slowly over perhaps many millennia," he told me. "Maybe after many thousands of years, when humanity has established some level of rapport with our cosmic neighbors, we might feel comfortable accepting and utilizing their technology."

Be afraid

Like Siemion, Milan Cirkovic also believes that the risk of acquiring something nasty from an ETI is very real. But he's a bit more worried. Alien invaders won't attack us with their spaceships, he argues — instead, they'll come in the form of pieces of information. And they may be capable of infiltrating and damaging or subverting our computing networks, in a manner that's similar to the computer viruses we're all too familiar with.

Cirkovic admits, however, that the possibility should be taken with a grain of salt. In order to work, an alien virus would have to somehow know or intuit our protocols and operating systems.

"The efficiency of a virus in achieving its malicious task is proportional to the degree of its specialization. More general viruses are, therefore, less efficient," he said. "To be able to infiltrate our networks, the alien virus should be general to a fantastic degree."

When we asked Cirkovic what the purpose of an ET virus might be, he responded, "If we discard anthropocentric malice, it seems that the most probable response is that they have evolved autonomously in a network of an advanced civilization -– which may or may not persist to this day." If this is the case, speculated Cirkovic, these extraterrestrial viruses would probably just replicate themselves and subvert our resources to further transmit themselves across the Galaxy. In other words, the virus may or may not be under the control of any extraterrestrial civilization –- it could be an advanced AI that's out of control and replicating itself by taking over the broadcast capabilities of each civilization it touches. A very frightening thought.

To prevent this, Cirkovic suggests that we should sever any connection between the SETI and METI (messages to ET) equipment, and the rest of the human info-sphere. He admits that this is easier said than done.

Cirkovic's fear is not without warrant — after all, people write viruses here on Earth all the time, for no particular reason. Perhaps signals such as these are the ultimate manifestation of computer viruses — a self-replicating information system that finds compatibility with others, thereby infecting it.

It's clear from our conversations with Siemion and Cirkovic that extraterrestrial life may be more bizarre and dangerous than we can imagine. Should humanity eventually receive a transmission from the depths of space, we would do well to treat it with great caution and consideration.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Top image via x264-bb. Inset images via TechnoFile, Discovery.

7 Best-Case Scenarios for the Future of Humanity

Most science fictional and futurist visions of the future tend towards the negative — and for good reason. Our environment is a mess, we have a nasty tendency to misuse technologies, and we're becoming increasingly capable of destroying ourselves. But civilizational demise is by no means guaranteed. Should we find a way to manage the risks and avoid dystopic outcomes, our far future looks astonishingly bright. Here are seven best-case scenarios for the future of humanity.

Above image courtesy Gary Tonge.

Before we get started it's worth noting that many of the scenarios listed here are not mutually exclusive. If things go really well, our civilization will continue to evolve and diversify, leading to many different types of futures.

1. Status quo

While this is hardly the most exciting outcome for humanity, it is still an outcome. Given the dire warnings of Sir Martin Rees, Nick Bostrom, Stephen Hawking, and many others, we may not be around to see the next century. Our ongoing survival — even if it's under our current state of technological development — could be considered a positive outcome. Many have suggested that we've already reached our pinnacle as a species.

Back in 1992, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History and the Last Man in which he argued that our current political, technological, and economic mode was the final stop on our journey. He was wrong, of course; Fukuyama's book will forever be remembered as a neoconservative's wet dream written in reaction to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the so-called New World Order. More realistically, however, the call for a kind of self-imposed status quo has been articulated by Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy. Writing in his seminal 2004 article, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," Joy warned of the catastrophic potential for 21st century technologies like robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech. Subsequently, he called for technological relinquishment — a kind of neo-Luddism intended to prevent dystopic outcomes and outright human extinction. The prudent thing to do now, argued Joy, is to make do with what we have in hopes of ensuring a long and prosperous future.

2. A bright green Earth

Visions of the far future tend to conjure images of a Cybertron-like Earth, covered from pole-to-pole in steel and oil. It's an environmentalist's worst nightmare — one in which nature has been completely swept aside by the onslaught of technology and the ravages of environmental exploitation. Yet it doesn't have to be this way; the future of our planet could be far more green and verdant than we ever imagined. Emerging branches of futurism, including technogaianism and bright green environmentalism, suggest that we can use technologies to clean up the Earth and create sustainable energy models, and even to transform the planet itself.

An early version of this sentiment was presented via Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design Movement, an aesthetic ideal that advocated for innovative and technological solutions to environmental problems. Looking to the far future, the ultimate expression of these ideas could result in a planet far more lush and ecologically diverse than at any other point in its geological history. In such a future, humans could be re-engineered to live in harmony with the environment. All our energy needs would be completely met (a true and sustainable Kardashev I civilization). Using advanced models as our guide, we could also redesign and overhaul the Earth's ecosystem (including the elimination of predation and animal suffering), There's also the possibility for weather control. And we might finally be able to implement defensive measures to counter the effects of natural disasters (like asteroid impacts, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions). Given an Earth like this, why would anyone want to leave?

Image: Thomas Cole's The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 1834.

3. Watched over by machines of loving grace

Regrettably, it's very possible that the technological Singularity will be an extinction event. The onset of radically advanced machine intelligence — perhaps as early as 30 years from now — will be so beyond our control and understanding that it will likely do us in, whether it happens deliberately, accidentally, or by our own mismanagement of the process. But the same awesome power that could destroy us could also result in the exact opposite. It's this possibility — that a machine intelligence could create a veritable utopia for humanity — that has given rise to the Singularitarian movement.

If future AI designers can guide and mould the direction of these advanced systems — and most importantly their goal orientation — it's conceivable that we could give rise to what's called ‘friendly AI' — a kind of Asimovian intelligence that's incapable of inflicting any harm. And in fact, it could also serve as a supremely powerful overseer and protector. It's a vision that was best expressed by Richard Brautigan in his poem, "Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace."

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

4. To boldly go where no one has gone before...

We need to get off this rock and start colonizing other solar systems — there's no question about it. Not only does our ongoing survival depend on it (the ‘all our eggs in one basket problem'), it's also in our nature as a species to move on. Indeed, by venturing beyond our borders and blowing past our biological limitations we have continually pushed our society forward — what has resulted in ongoing technological, social, political, and economic progress. Even today, our limited ventures into space have reaped countless benefits, including satellite technologies, an improved understanding of science — and even the sheer thrill of seeing a high-definition image streamed back from the surface of Mars.

Should our civilization ever be capable of embarking upon interstellar colonization — whether it be through generation ships, self-replicating Von Neumann probes, or an outwardly expanding bubble of digital intelligence, it would represent a remarkable milestone, possibly for all life in the Milky Way. As it stands, we appear to live in a Galaxy devoid of interstellar travelers — a troubling sign that has given rise to the Fermi Paradox. So assuming we can start planet hopping, it might just turn out that we are the first and only civilization to embark upon such a journey. It's something that we must try; the future of life in our Galaxy could depend on it. But more to the point, interstellar colonization would also allow our species to expand into the cosmos and flourish.

5. Inner space, not outer space

Alternatively (or in conjunction with space travel), we could attain an ideal existential mode by uploading ourselves into massive supercomputers.

It's an idea that makes a lot of sense; given the computational capacity of a megascale computer, like a Matrioshka Brain (in which the matter of entire planet is utilized for the purpose of computation) or Dyson Sphere (which can capture the energy output of the sun), there would be more to experience in a simulated universe than in the real one itself. According to Robert Bradbury, a single multi-layer Matrioshka Brain could perform about 10⁴² operations per second, while Seth Lloyd has theorized about a quantum system that could conceivably calculate 5x10⁵⁰ logical operations per second carried out on ~10³¹ bits. Given the kinds of simulated worlds, minds, and experiences this kind of power could generate, the analog world would likely appear agonizingly slow, primitive, and exceptionally boring.

6. Eternal bliss

Virtually every religion fantasizes about a utopian afterlife. This only makes sense given the imperfections and dangers of the real world; religion gives people the opportunity to express their wildest projections of an ideal state of existence. Given our modern materialist proclivities, many of us no longer believe in heaven or anything else awaiting us in some supposed afterlife. But that doesn't mean we can't create a virtual heaven on Earth using our technologies.

This is what the British philosopher David Pearce refers to as the Hedonistic Imperative — the elimination of all suffering and the onset of perpetual pleasure. This could be as simple as eliminating pain and negative emotional states, or something far more dramatic and profound, like maximizing the amount of psychological, emotional, and physical pleasure that a single consciousness can experience. Given that we live in a hostile universe with no meaning other than what we ascribe to it, who's to say that entering into a permanent state of bliss is somehow wrong or immoral? While it may be offensive to our Puritan sensibilities, it most certainly appeals to our spiritual and metaphysical longings. A strong case can be made that maximizing the human capacity for pleasure is as valid a purpose as any other.

7. Cosmological transcension

This is basically a placeholder for those far-off future states we can't possibly imagine — but are desirable nonetheless. While this line of speculation tends to venture into the realms of philosophy and metaphysics (not that many of the other items on this list haven't done the same), it's still interesting and worthwhile to consider some super-speculative possibilities. For example, futurist John Smart has suggested that human civilization is increasingly migrating into smaller and smaller increments of matter, energy, space, and time (MEST). Eventually, he argues, we'll take our collective intelligence into a cosmological realm with the same efficiency and density as a black hole — where we'll essentially escape the universe.

Alternatively, forward-looking thinkers like Robert Lanza and James Gardner have speculated about a universe that's meant to work in tandem with the intelligence it generates. This idea, called biocentrism, suggests that the universe is still in an immature phase, and that at some future point, all the advanced intelligent life within it will guide its ongoing development. This would result in a Universe dramatically different from what we live in today. And then there are other possibilities such as time travel and the exploitation of quantum effects. Indeed, given just how much we don't know about what we don't know, the future may be full of even more radical possibilities than we're currently capable of imagining.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Images: Top | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Interview: Journalism, Human Enhancement and the Singularity

I was recently interviewed by Adam Ford while attending the Humanity+ conference in San Francisco.

Why getting physically stronger will help you live longer

Fitness trends come and go, but weight training in particular never seems to come into style. Part of the problem is that most people associate it with bodybuilding culture, and women in particular are reluctant to join the guys at the back of the gym.

But as the latest studies show, strength is a key factor in longevity and an extended healthy life. And in fact, resistance training may be the single most important thing you can add to your fitness regimen. Here's how getting stronger will make you harder to kill.

Top image: Annie Thorisdottir, winner of the 2011 and 2012 CrossFit Games, and considered the world's fittest female.

Gradual muscle decline

Simply put, we get physically weaker as we get older. Most people tend to reach the apex of their physical strength during their 20s and 30s, and it gradually declines from there. Exceptions to this rule exist, however, including genetic outliers and people who begin their resistance training later in life.

But once our strength starts to go, so too do other things. For most people, extreme declines in strength tend to happen in their 80s and 90s. Frailty as a condition results in lower levels of physical activity, decreased muscle strength, increased fatigue, slower walking speed, and unwanted weight loss. It's also associated with adverse health outcomes, an increased dependency on others, decreased mobility, disability, institutionalization — and even mortality. Weaker elderly people also tend to fall more frequently and have greater difficulty standing from sitting or lying positions.

Gerontologists place the blame on our defective mitochondria — the powerhouses of our cells. As we age, our mitochondria start to degrade, resulting in weaker cells and muscle fibres. We experience this as decreased levels of endurance, strength, and function.

Another fundamental problem of aging is our decreased production of telomerase. This is a crucial enzyme that maintains and repairs the little caps on the ends of our chromosomes. When we can't produce enough telomerase, our genetic integrity is compromised, and so too is cellular division. Chromosomal degradation is to is the human body what rust is to a car.

Our testosterone production also decreases as we get older (what is a natural anabolic steroid), resulting in a decrease in muscle and bone mass.

Muscular strength and longevity

As a consequence of all this, muscular weakness is indelibly tied to not just our quality of life, but our life expectancy as well. And the science proves this.

Two recent studies published in the British Medical Journal (here and here) revealed that muscular strength is a remarkably strong predictor of mortality — even after adjusting for cardiorespiratory fitness and other health factors.

This conclusion was reached after an analysis of over 30 studies that recorded physical attributes like bench press strength, grip strength, walking speed, chair rising speed, and standing balance. What the researchers found was that poor performance on any of the tests was associated with higher all-cause mortality — anywhere from a 1.67 to a threefold increase in the likelihood of earlier mortality (the study primarily looked at people over the age of 70 — though five looked at people under 60; but across all ages, poor physical performance was associated with increased mortality).

Now, here's the good news: To a non-trivial degree, and despite the inexorable effects of aging, physical strength is an attribute we can control. As the science is increasingly showing, resistance training can literally add years to your life — and the earlier you get to it, the better.

Resistance training and rejuvenation

Weight training (and functional exercise in general) offers innumerable positive effects on our physical, cognitive, and emotional well being. Taken as a whole, exercise has been shown to add between six and seven years to a life span — if not more.

As noted earlier, mitochondrial degradation is a primary culprit in dwindling muscle mass. But recent evidence indicates that exercise can slow down this effect. According to Mark Tarnopolsky, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, resistance training activates a muscle stem cell called a satellite cell. In a physiological process known as ‘gene shifting,' these new cells cause the mitochondria to rejuvenate. Tarnopolsky claims that after six months of twice weekly strength exercise training, the biochemical, physiological and genetic signature of older muscles are "turned back" by a factor of 15 to 20 years. That's significant — to say the least.

Studies involving middle-aged athletes indicate that high intensity exercise protects people at the chromosomal level as well. It appears that exercise stimulates the production of telomerase, what allows for the ongoing maintenance of genetic information and cellular integrity. Exercise also triggers the production of antioxidants, which boosts the health of the body in general.

And indeed, other studies are successfully linking athleticism to longevity. A recent analysis published in Deutsches Ärzteblatt International of more than 900,000 athletes (ranging in age from 20 to 79) showed that no significant age-related decline in performance appeared before the age of 55. And revealingly, even beyond that age the decline was surprisingly slow; in the 65 to 69 group, a quarter of the athletes performed above average among the 20 to 54 year-old group.

Essentially, exercise helps the body regenerate itself. This likely explains why older athletes are less susceptible to age-related illnesses than their sedentary counterparts. Moreover, ongoing exercise has been shown to preserve lean tissue, even during rapid and substantial weight loss. It also helps to maintain strength and mobility, which can significantly reduce risk of injury and stave off health problems that would otherwise linger.

Even more remarkable is how resistance training can stave off cognitive decline — what is arguably just as important as physical well being. In a study led by Teresa Liu-Ambrose of the University of British Columbia, women between the ages of 70 and 80 who were experiencing mild cognitive impairment were put through 60-minute classes two times per week for 26 weeks. They used a pressurized air system (for resistance) and free weights, and were told to perform various sets of exercises with variable loads. The results were remarkable: Lifting weights improved memory and staved off the effects of dementia. It also improved the seniors' attention span and ability to resolve conflicts.

Hit the weights, everyone

Now, as these studies indicate, not all exercise is equal. Resistance training (like lifting weights), in conjunction with high intensity workouts (like aerobics and running), are key. And it's never too late to start — and yes, ladies, this means you, too ("bulking up" is a myth; moreover, it's arguably more important for women to lift weights on account of a higher propensity for osteoporosis). Most gyms offer a weightlifting area, but even workouts at home involving dumbbells, kettlebells, or even functional body weight movements will work just as effectively (things like squats, push-ups, burpees, and pull-ups).

Seniors also need to lift weights. Actually, they really need to lift weights.

Studies show that elderly people still experience the benefits of gene shifting — even if they've never lifted weights before. It also results in an increased production of growth hormone and testosterone, and lower levels of dangerous cholesterol. And as already noted, it can stave off the awful effects of neurodegenerative disorders and depression.

Unfortunately, however, many doctors and healthcare workers are hesitant to make elderly people do anything too strenuous. Today, doctors and trainers are content to advise their elderly clients to simply walk or make circles with their arms in a swimming pool. This is not enough.

Clearly, it's only common sense that seniors should exercise within their limits — but it's also fair to say that it's okay to have them engage in workouts that are more intense than what convention normally dictates.

For seniors, strength training can be something as simple as doing curls with a 2 lbs weight, or getting up and down from a chair multiple times. It's good to get the heart rate up, and it's good to be sore the next day — and in fact, those are strong indicators that the workouts are hitting the right marks.

All this said, it's important to note that any exercise of this type should be done in consultation with a doctor and under the supervision of trained professionals.

Other sources: NYT (1), NYT (2), Globe & Mail.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Inset images: Joe Belanger/Jim David/Dmitriy Shironosov/shutterstock.

Should we eliminate the human ability to feel pain?

Though pain has clearly served an important evolutionary purpose, not everyone is convinced that we still need it. A growing number of forward-looking thinkers are suggesting that we need to get rid of it — and that we'll soon have the technological know-how to do this. But should we choose to embark on such a radical experiment, we'll need to pay close attention to the risks and those aspects of humanity we might risk losing.

Above image: "Ascension" by Hank Akins.

To help us better understand the perspective of the so-called "pain abolitionists," I spoke to philosopher and ethicist David Pearce. Back in 1995 he authored The Hedonistic Imperative, an influential online manifesto that urged the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world.

After speaking with Pearce, it became clear that the technologies required to pull off such a feat will soon be within our grasp — and that there's a strong moral argument to back his case. But as Pearce admitted to us, a pain-free world doesn't necessarily imply a perfect world — just one that would be considerably more comfortable to live in.


David, before we get into the ethics of creating a pain-free humanity, it's important to consider the technological viability of such a project. Will it really be possible to remove physical pain from the human experience?




In a nutshell, yes.

Technically, physical pain could be banished in humans and nonhumans alike. Today, the lives of hundreds of millions of people are blighted by chronic pain. Mercifully, most of us are normally pain-free. But at some point in our lives, pain of nightmarish intensity can strike - and then we're shocked at how dreadful the experience can be.

From an engineering perspective, however, pain is unnecessary. Nonbiological robots don't suffer its nasty "raw feels" at all. Our silicon robots can be programmed to respond adaptively to noxious stimuli without the slightest discomfort. So we know that the function of nociception and the experience of phenomenal pain are distinct.

Indeed, rare humans born with congenital analgesia never experience phenomenal pain in the course of their entire lives. The problem with congenital analgesia is that phenomenal pain normally plays a signalling role in human and nonhuman animals. So people born with congenital analgesia are at risk from all sorts of health problems. They must lead sheltered, cosseted lives. They wouldn't survive on the African savannah. Therefore the challenge we face is to find ways of replicating the functional, information-signalling role of physical pain minus its nasty raw feels.



How soon before we'll be able to start doing this?


Well, we could start right now. Pain and pain-thresholds are modulated by a number of different genes. Let's focus on just one of them here: SCN9A.

The SCN9A gene codes for the Nav1.7 sodium ion channels present at endings of pain-sensing nociceptors. The SCN9A gene has numerous variant alleles. Nonsense mutations of the SCN9A gene abolish the capacity to feel pain. Other alleles confer an unusually high pain-sensitivity or an unusually low pain-sensitivity.



So prospective parents have a choice. We can continue playing genetic roulette as now, putting our faith in God or Mother Nature. Alternatively, if we're ethically serious about reducing the burden of suffering in the world, we could use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to choose benign "low pain" variants of the SCN9A gene for our future children. Prudence dictates that we shouldn't (yet) abolish the capacity for phenomenal pain altogether. But we can still ensure that pain has a negligible impact on our children's quality of life by selecting "low pain" alleles for their genomes.

Time out: This sounds a little bit like eugenics. Isn't all of this just genetic experimentation on our kids?

All children are genetic experiments. If we're going to create life, we should at least ensure we don't create suffering.



And you're right — critics of the reproductive revolution in process will raise the spectre of eugenics. Pessimists warn of "designer babies" and discrimination against the poor. Some of their worries may be well-founded. Potential pitfalls abound. But it's worth stressing that PGD doesn't entail creating designer babies. PGD just screens for what Nature has thrown up "naturally". True designer zygotes will certainly be an option to explore; but they aren't essential to pain-reduction.

Moreover, the biggest users of PGD aren't prospective parents in the developed western nations. Its biggest users are Indians and Chinese eager to prevent the misfortune of having a girl. Arguably our ethical priorities are skewed.



For now, adults seeking to banish pain from their lives are stuck with "analgesics" and narcotics. So-called analgesics are weak. Strong opioid painkillers have well-known problems of tolerance and dependence. Pain clinics exist "to help you manage your pain". Yet developments in gene-editing technologies will shortly allow mature humans to edit our own genetic source code. We'll be able to modulate our own pain thresholds, not just the pain-thresholds of our prospective children.

The advent of user-friendly genome-authoring and editing tools will potentially be hugely empowering. We won't all need to become molecular biologists to take control of our own genetic destiny. 

Realistically, autosomal gene-editing tools for the home user are decades away. But just as we need a Hundred Year Plan to tackle global warming, I think we need a Hundred Year Plan to tackle the scourge of physical pain.




Studies have shown that people without the capacity for pain have shorter life expectancies compared to normally functioning people. Clearly, pain has a life preserving purpose. So, without it, how will we know if we're hurt or harming ourselves? 


Just to be clear, a post-genomic world of minimal pain is not the same as a pain-free world. But if we want to phase out physical pain altogether, then its abolition needn't force us to embrace the cotton-wool existence of congenital analgesics. Instead, a regime of robust, healthy, pain-free life is technically feasible for us all.

Two long-term options for total pain-replacement deserve to be considered. One option is to replace the signalling role of pain as it exists today with information-signalling gradients of bodily well-being — with dips in bodily well-being signalling potentially noxious stimuli. Intuitively, mere dips in well-being wouldn't adequately motivate us to action. But empirically, this doesn't seem to be the case. Compare two people making love. Some aspects of lovemaking are more rewarding than others. Yet sensitive lovers can still respond and adapt to hedonic dips and peaks without ever finding their experience less than enjoyable. In principle, this lesson could be transposed to everyday life.


A more radical option for dealing with the problem of pain would be to replace the signalling role of the pleasure-pain axis in its entirety — for noxious stimuli, at any rate. This is because we could offload its current role in nociception onto smart prostheses. If equipped with smart sensors and smart prostheses, then you could painlessly and automatically withdraw your hand in the vicinity of a hot stove, say, before you inadvertently injure yourself. Or rather, your hand would withdraw automatically. Presumably, such technology would standardly be fitted with manual overrides to avoid any perceived loss of bodily autonomy.

Such enhancement technologies promise to make us "cyborgs". Not everyone finds the prospect of cyborgization appealing. Would your body software be licensed or owned? What if your body were hacked? Despite the potential snags in store, bioconservative critics might wish to reconsider their opposition to a world without pain next time they are writhing in agony. Either way, the point is that later this century the experience of phenomenal pain of any kind will become optional. Ethically speaking, we should be free to choose.



There's got to be some other trade-offs for losing the capacity for pain. Doesn't physical pain serve any other sort of purpose, such as building character or making us tougher, better — even more empathetic human beings?



Bioconservatives often quote a line from Nietzsche: "That which does not crush me makes me stronger." But alas pain often does crush people: physically, emotionally, morally. Chronic, uncontrolled pain tends to make the victim tired, depressed and weaker. True, some people are relatively resistant to physical distress. For example, high testosterone function may make someone "tougher", more "manly", more resilient, and more able to deal with physically painful stimuli. But such strength doesn't necessarily make the subject more empathetic or a better person. Indeed, if I may quote W. Somerset Maugham, "It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."

Of course, suffering doesn't always enfeeble and embitter. By analogy, someone who is emotionally depressed may feel that despair is the only appropriate response to the horrors of the world. But the solution to the horrors of the world is not for us all to become depressed. Rather it's to tackle the biology of depression. Likewise, the solution to the horrors of physical pain is not to flagellate ourselves in sympathy with the afflicted. Instead it's to tackle the biological roots of suffering.




There is another possibility in terms of unanticipated side-effects: Won't we be more inclined to physically hurt or coerce people if they don't experience pain?

The infliction of physical pain is used by abusive regimes — and also by abusive parents — the world over to coerce the vulnerable. So conferring immunity to pain is more likely to promote resistance to coercion, not increased vulnerability. But phasing out the biology of physical pain is not some utopian blueprint for a perfect world, any more than the development of pain-free surgery was a panacea for the ills of the body.

Rather, the creation of a world without involuntary pain is a precondition for a civilized society.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Inset images via 1: David Pearce | 2:nobeastsofierce/shutterstock | 3:Vladimir/shutterstock.