April 2003

2003.04.28
ANIMAL RIGHTS
Check out this must read article/review by Peter Singer: Animal Rights at 30.

2003.04.28
NEW SENT.DEV ARTICLE
Who's Afraid of Sex Selection?
Canada is poised to ban proven technologies for choosing children's sex. If this is how we treat sex selection on the eve of human genetic redesign, we have a really long way to go

2003.04.14
NEW SENT.DEV ARTICLE
Technophiles and Greens of the World, Unite!
Nobody wants to live in a polluted wasteland, but Luddism is no solution. It's time for environmentalists to embrace science and technology

2003.04.10
ACCELERATING CHANGE
Accelerating change is not new. It's not something that's only happening now. It has been technology's story from the very beginning. It's just that we have failed to identify the exponential process of technological advancement until now; it's starting to move so fast that we can feel it -- even within our puny lifespans.

Technological innovations cause a positive feedback loop. As we develop better tools, those tools in turn help us to build even better tools, and so on. For example, today there are some manufacturing processes (both at the design and construction phases) that are conducted by automated and robotic systems that lie outside of human capacity and awareness. This generation of tools will in turn produce the next generation of tools, and so on.

There is very little doubt that technological innovations have been advancing exponentially since humans first engineered stone tools. And because our technological artifacts have a profound and all-encompassing effect on the sociocultural sphere (including the medical, militaristic, economic, religious, and political realms), one can also monitor the history of cultural change as it desperately tries to keep up with new scientific awareness (i.e. Heliocentrism, Darwinism, etc.) and technological change (i.e. industrialism, communications, health, etc.). Because our technologies enhance our intrinsic capabilities, one could argue that Homo sapiens is currently in a phase of Gouldian punctuated equilibrium. We have been made cyborg by our external technologies for quite some time now. We are rapidly evolving into a stage where those technologies will become internal, where we become fully realized cyborgs.

It's hard to argue against the idea that science and technology -- and the dissemination thereof -- are the engines that fuel human history. Pre-history is the story of static societies that experienced no change to their metaphysical belief structures and no changes to their artifacts (thus pre-history = pre-change; history chronicles change). Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists can only measure change during pre-history by noting the physical and cognitive changes arising arising in an organism as a result of evolution.

Modern history, on the other hand, is the story of change, or more accurately, accelerating change. One need only look at the 20th century as a striking example of how quickly things are developing -- we went from horse and carriage to the atomic age, the moon, and mapping the human genome.

Today, we stand at the eve of several technological revolutions: nanotechnology, biotechnology, cognitive science, information technology, materials technology, and robotics. What's so striking is not how many revolutions are about to happen, but that they are potentially synergistic and convergent, offering incredible potentials for rethinking the human condition itself.

2003.04.09
AUDIO, VIDEO, BOOKS
Here's what I'm listening to these days:
- Voivod (new self-titled album)
- Meshuggah: Nothing & Chaosphere
- The Shins
- Super Furry Animals
- Nick Drake
- Kid Koala
- Flaming Lips
- The Coral
- Supergrass
- And a whole lotta Groove Salad from WinAmp's Here's what I've watched recently:
- Children of Dune
- The 13th Floor
- I Am Sam
- Lord of the Rings: Two Towers
- Toronto Maple Leaf playoff hockey (Go Leafs!)

Here's what I'm reading these days:
- Thomas Georges, Digital Soul (I'll be reviewing this for Betterhumans shortly)
- K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation (Yeah, I know, what took me so long)
- Tanahashi & Schneider, Essential Zen
- Kip Nygren's "Emerging Technologies and Exponential Change: Implications for Army Transformation"

2003.04.08
TOP 10 BIOTECHNOLOGIES FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD
The Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto put together a report highlighting the most vital biotechnologies for improving global health within the next 5 to 10 years:

1. Molecular technologies for affordable, simple diagnosis of infectious diseases
2. Recombinant technologies to develop vaccines against infectious diseases
3. Technologies for more efficient drug and vaccine delivery systems
4. Technologies for environmental improvement (sanitation, clean water, bioremediation)
5. Sequencing pathogen genomes to understand their biology and to identify new antimicrobials
6. Female-controlled protection against sexually transmitted diseases, both with and without contraceptive effect
7. Bioinformatics to identify drug targets and to examine pathogen-host interactions
8. Genetically modified crops with increased nutrients to counter specific deficiencies
9. Recombinant technology to make therapeutic products (e.g. insulin, interferons) more affordable
10. Combinatorial chemistry for drug discovery

2003.04.08
TECHNOLOGICAL VS. CULTURAL CHANGE
Technological innovation increases exponentially, while cultural norms lag behind, or in some cases, come to a grinding halt altogether in reaction. The divide between those communities (and their cultural memeplexes) that can keep up with technological change versus those who cannot (or refuse to) is steadily growing. This cultural latency causes stress, and in part explains many of the global problems we are experiencing today. The keys to success in this rapidly changing world include the dissemination of knowledge and resources, anticipating change, and adaptivity.

2003.04.06
TTA PRESS RELEASE RE: BILL C-13
Simon Smith & myself put this press release together:

Parental Choice, Research Impinged by Bill C-13
Members of parliament must amend Bill C-13 so that it doesn't unjustifiably remove valid reproductive options for Canadians or inhibit important medical research

Proposed Bill C-13 is slated for debate in the House of Commons this week, and many Canadians are concerned that it will be voted into law.

The bill, titled “An Act respecting assisted human reproductive technologies and related research,” calls for bans on therapeutic and reproductive cloning, germ-line modifications, gender selection of offspring, the creation of chimeras and animal-human hybrids for reproduction, commercial surrogate mothers and the sale of human reproductive materials or embryos.

Already the target of much criticism, the bill’s potential prohibitions have infuriated many individuals and groups, including infertile couples and those people, such as Parkinson’s victims, who stand a good chance of reaping the benefits of research into therapeutic cloning.

Under the act, Canadians would be forbidden to pay for sperm, eggs or surrogacy. Health Minister Anne McLellan maintains that these types of reproductive contributions should be limited to acts of altruism.

"How many friends do most of us have who would, out of the goodness of their heart, go through two weeks of injections, nine months of pregnancy and childbirth so that we could have a child?" asks Simon Smith, president of the Toronto Transhumanist Association. "In their reactionary attempt to prevent the commodification of human reproduction, the Liberals are ignoring the realities that Canadian couples face. People without extraordinarily altruistic friends will be doomed to a childless future."

Bill C-13 isn't just unfair to the one in six Canadians who suffer from infertility, says Smith, but also to people suffering from such health conditions as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and paralysis. "Therapeutic cloning has the potential to produce stem cells that could treat or even cure many currently incurable conditions," says Smith. "If Bill C-13 passes, research on therapeutic cloning won't stop, it will just move to more amenable countries. In essence, Canada will be waving goodbye to a significant part of its biotech future."

George Dvorsky, Vice President of the Toronto Transhumanist Association, is concerned that under Bill C-13 Canadians will be denied what he considers to be ethical and viable reproductive options. He is an advocate of commercial surrogacy and gender selection, and believes that consenting adults in a free society should be entitled to use these types of life-giving services. "People should be wary of any attempt by the Canadian government to control the reproductive processes of their bodies," he says. "Canadians couples should be allowed to select something as basic as the gender of their own offspring. People already try to select the gender of their children using all sorts of primitive and ineffective means. Why should new means be made illegal simply because they're more effective?"

Dvorsky also worries that by making commercial surrogacy illegal, couples will seek such services in the United States, or enter into shady and unmonitored underground activities.

“The proposed act claims to ‘respect’ assisted reproductive technologies and research, and instead fails to ‘respect’ those Canadians who could really use those technologies and services,” says Dvorsky. “This is another example of the government prying their way into the bedrooms of the nation and telling us which procreative options are appropriate for us and which are not.“

2003.04.05
THE 'TERRORISM' MEME
Modern advanced warfare and the rise of the hegemonic United States has forced those opposing nations, groups, and individuals to resort to asymmetric warfare because they cannot fight by conventional means. By using tactics such as guerilla warfare, terrorism, and other unconventional means of combat, an entirely new era of human warfare has begun.

But there has been no real acceptance of asymmetric warfare as such, not in the media or the public consciousness, and certainly not through any overt acknowledgement by threatened governments. Instead, such acts get labeled as 'terrorism,' which sounds sweepingly propagandist in intent, making it a memetically engineered term.

2003.04.05
THE NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY
Any responsible scientist avoids dogmatism. At best, they should accept axioms as working hypotheses to get to the next level of inquiry, while continuing to process and test incoming data from the field. What seems unintuitive or irrational today may eventually prove otherwise given new language and comprehension. As Hegel once said, "What is real is rational, and what is rational is real."

The goal of a scientist is not to be proven correct, but to be proven incorrect, thus eliminating potentially spurious lines of reasoning. This is what differentiates science from other methodologies. Unfortunately, a lot of scientists have forgotten this notion.

I also believe that a good scientist pursues multiple paths of inquiry that are necessarily incompatible. This will help them avoid dogmatism and insular reasoning.

2003.04.05
THE QUANTUM UNIVERSE AND NECESSARY OBSERVERS
The universe does not exist without the presence of observers. As John A. Wheeler has observed with the delayed-choice thought experiment, our observations in the present affect the universe's composition in the past.

"Wheeler conjectures we are part of a universe that is a work in progress; we are tiny patches of the universe looking at itself— and building itself. It's not only the future that is still undetermined but the past as well. And by peering back into time, even all the way back to the Big Bang, our present observations select one out of many possible quantum histories for the universe." [http://www.discover.com/june_02/featuniverse.html]

Taking this hypothesis in conjunction with the infinite universe assumption, not only is your existence necessary in a universe where all observations are made, but your necessary existence has forced the universe to take on its current character, all the way back to the big bang. Not only is the universe (unconsciously) finely tuned for the existence of conscious observers, but the universe is finely tuned for the existence of you at this exact moment slice!

2003.04.03
TURING TEST 2.0
I've never been satisfied with the Turing Test, the test that's supposed to help us decide when an artificial intellect matches the intellectual equivalency of a human. In Turing's test, a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine. If the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. It is assumed that both the humans and the machine try to appear human. In order not to disqualify a machine that does not look or cannot speak like a human, the conversation takes place over a text-only channel.

The trouble I have with this test, aside from its anthropocentric bias, is that a sophisticated software program could be designed to emulate a human mind. It is conceivable that a supercomputer using complex heuristics could satisfy a judge into thinking that he's dealing with a human mind. The problem, it seems, is that while the Turing Test can assess intelligence, it cannot test for consciousness.

It occurred to me recently that there may be a way around this shortcoming. Quantum physics tells us that particles remain in a state of superposition until forced into decoherence by an conscious observation or measurement. Quantum physicists dating all the way back to Max Planck have observed and documented the effects of superposition in the lab.

It seems to me that a consciousless machine would not be able to force quantum decoherence. Thus, I am wondering if a test can be established to measure whether or not a machine or mind has caused the decoherence of particles in superposition by means of conscious observation. If such a test could be established, then we have a much better way of assessing whether or not a machine is truly exhibiting human-equivalent consciousness.

2003.04.03
OUR UNIVERSE IS FINELY TUNED FOR CONSCIOUSNESS TO EXIST
It is said that the universe is 'finely tuned' for observers to exist, meaning that if the universe differed in any way from how we see it, the composition of the universe would not allow for life to exist (i.e. galaxies could not maintain their consistency, matter would fly apart too quickly, etc.). This type of anthropic observation is not just valuable in helping us understand the universe and why it appears so 'perfect,' it also helps us understand our own composition. Specifically, it tells us how we exist as lifeforms, and more importantly, how we exist as observers, or more accurately, conscious observers. As Gao Shan noted, "we must decide whether and how consciousness emerges from mere matter or whether consciousness is a fundamental property of matter."

Although I lean in the direction of mental state functionalism and notions of human-equivalent artificial intelligence, I am fascinated by the work of Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff. Hameroff in particular talks of quantum consciousness, and believes that consciousness is an emergent effect of quantum effects. His views are somewhat Platonic, and he is an advocate of natural panpsychism. Essentially, Hameroff believes that the mind is a highly sophisticated quantum computer.

I find panpsychism to be most fascinating, and there's a part of me that believes this is truly the nature of consciousness and existence. A university professor once told me, "It is not life that creates consciousness, but consciousness that creates life." There is an intractable link between existence and conscious observation; quantum physics screams at us that this is so. And importantly, if it turns out to be the case, we can therefore conclude that the universe appears finely tuned for consciousness to exist.
Somewhat related, critics of AI utilise Penrose's and Hameroff's arguments, including the Chinese Room argument, Godel's argument, the epistemological argument, and the computational argument. They argue that we'll never create a computer that will ever genuinely understand and have mental states purely in virtue of executing a suitable program.

Perhaps they're right, and perhaps consciousness isn't merely a fancy line of code. Maybe consciousness is an emergent effect of quantum phenomena after all. Does this mean that we should give up trying to create artificially intelligent machines?

I don't believe so. The human mind evolved from Darwinian processes of natural selection and it clearly exists as a functional object based on highly organized matter in this universe. Thus, we may eventually realize that software is not the route to consciousness, at least not all the way. I am certain that some of our capacities, like memory and emotive states, are purely the result of computational modules in our brain.

But I believe that we'll be on our way to engineering human-equivalent consciousness once we get a handle on quantum computing. We already have the first working 7-qubit NMR computer as demonstrated at IBM's Almaden Research Center. So, our quest for artificial superintelligence and consciousness will continue uninterrupted should panpsychism and quantum consciousness prove to be correct.

2003.04.01
VIPASSANA MEDITATION & HATHA YOGA
While I'm starting to achieve some breakthroughs with my Vipassana Meditation practice, I feel that I'm regressing with the yoga. I have a theory on why this is happening.

It's been less than a year since I started doing both. The meditation has been a slow and steady process of learning as I go and disciplining my mind; I'm truly getting better as I go. With the yoga, however, I'm starting to understand just how much of a quad I am, and I'm starting to get a sense of just how much work I still have ahead of me. My mind-body awareness is very weak, and until I develop better body awareness, I'm all over the place with my poses -- I don't think I've ever down Downward Dog the same way twice :-(

When I first started yoga, I was simply happy to get into the various poses. But now it's a matter of getting into the poses and holding them correctly. I'm starting to know what I must do, and it feels like I'm stepping back in terms of progress. I also have very little flexibility, and weak upper-body and stomach muscles. Yoga is in many ways about strength, so I have my work cut out for me.

Thus, I'm trying to set reasonable goals for myself. Right now I'll be happy if I ever make it to the intermediate level class. And I am seeing some progress. I've never had better psychological control over my body in my life, and I've only been doing yoga for 7 months.

Thankfully, I have an amazing yoga instructor who's patient with me and excellent with beginners. Now if I could only be patient with myself. But I have to say, it's amazing how the meditation and the yoga beautifully compliment each other; I rely significantly on both for each practice.

I can't speak enough about the Vipassana Meditation and how it has helped me with my daily living (as has the Buddhism). I can calm myself with a couple of breaths, I have ten times the patience I had before, and I can manage psychological and physical pain much better. And of course, I'm having a much easier time slowing the pace of my thoughts, the so-called monkey-mind.

2003.04.01
HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY
I prepared this April Fool's Day article for Betterhumans:

Computer Virus Spreads to Human
Justin Jest
Betterhumans Staff

[Tuesday, April 01, 2003] A software developer from Houston, Texas has become the first human to contract a computer virus, microbiologists have confirmed.

John Newman, an employee of vTouch Systems, came into contact with the virus through the use of a neural interface that his company is developing.

Avril DuChamps, a spokesperson for vTouch Systems, confirmed yesterday at a press conference that Newman had come down with the virus. All activities at vTouch have been suspended until further notice.

W32.0401.Worm
The virus, which has subsequently been identified as a variant of the W32.0401.Worm computer virus, appears to copy itself by exploiting a protocol vulnerability in the electroencephalogram neural link that vTouch Systems is developing to connect a human brain with external devices.

The virus is also unique in that it has the flexibility to toggle its reproductive code based on the medium in which it resides. Originally programmed in C++, it can shift to RNA-based replication once in an organic substrate.

While relatively harmless in the digital realm, W32.0401.Worm has caused some health problems for Newman, who is suffering from a mild fever and severe diarrhea.

Expected to happen
"We knew that something like this was eventually going to happen," says Charles Kane, a researcher with antivirus company SterileData. "We just didn't think it was going to happen so soon."

Kane, who tracks new computer viruses for SterileData, found himself in the unlikely situation of having to consult with microbiologists at the US Centres for Disease Control.

"They were just as shocked we were," he says. "But they quickly came to the same conclusions that we did, and they were of great assistance to us in quickly isolating and identifying the new pathogen."

It is unlikely that the virus can be transmitted from human to human, but researchers are not taking chances.

Newman is currently being held in quarantine at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston. Doctors monitoring his condition expect a full recovery.

"The biggest concern," says Kane, "is that people will take this Betterhumans April Fools' Day joke seriously and spam their friends with unnecessary virus warnings."

March 2003

2003.03.31
UPDATED QUOTES
Added quotes from Donna Haraway, David Hume, Stephen Hawking, Peter Singer, Ronald Bailey, James Hughes, Jeremy Bentham, Paul Davies, Albert Einstein, Lord Mansfield, and E. O. Wilson.

2003.03.31
RE: DESTINATION CYBORG
Catalin Sandu, editor of Net SF, recently translated my Destination Cyborg piece into Romanian, called Destinaţia: Ciborg.

2003.03.31
RE: FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO DIE
While editing my latest column for Betterhumans, Fight For Your Right To Die, I removed a section due to length. And it was only peripherally related. Here's the text:

The right to live
Disturbingly, Leon Kass’s Biodeathics council has been forging a new pseudo-ethics, and instead of arguing for life, they actively promote death. They are actually hoping to convince the public at large to reject the potential advances in life extension technologies and choose voluntary death instead.

Yes, this is the same Leon Kass who opposes physician assisted suicide, and is the author of such classics as “Neither for Love Nor Money: Why Doctors Must Not Kill” and “Suicide Made Easy.”

Confused? Well, I’m sure you’re not as confused as Kass seems to be.

What’s reckless about his position and those in Dubya’s Council, however, is that after careful scrutiny, their position is more akin to imposed death than voluntary death.

In something straight out of Logan’s Run, this surreal Council on Bioethics has actually declared that death is both good and desirable, and that there truly is such a thing as being ‘old enough.’ How they can hold this stance and subsequently oppose voluntary euthanasia is a profound mystery.

Taking their arguments further -- while considering the radical leaps that the medical sciences are poised to take in the next few decades -- one could infer that their futuristic Brave Old World would be one in which elderly people are denied treatment on the grounds that they are too old.

Sorry gramps, we’d like to cure your cancer and reverse the effects of aging, but….well…you know how it is…

Also, what I’m curious to know is, just how old is too old? Prior to the advent of civilization, primitive humans could expect to live to their mid-thirties -- if they were lucky. In 1900, life expectancy was 47. Today it is nearly 80. So, how do we settle on a non-arbitrary maximum lifespan? I think I’ll let Kass & Co. squirm their way out of this one.

NEW SENT.DEV ARTICLE
Fight For Your Right To Die :: March 30, 2003
We must repeal laws against euthanasia if we're to cope with such future realities as cryonics and extreme life extension

2003.03.23
RE: FREEING THE SLAVES OF SCIENCE FICTION
Robert A. Freitas Jr., author of Nanomedicine, passed on this article to me that he wrote back in 1985 about the legal rights of robots.

NEW SENT.DEV ARTICLE March 17, 2003
Star Wars and other stories are effective case studies on how not to treat intelligent machines

2003.03.08
NEW SECTION: MY MUSIC
In a former life, way back in the 1990s, I used to be an electronic music composer named Vor. I've posted some MP3s for your listening pleasure.

2003.03.02
REVERSE ENGINEERING THE HUMAN BRAIN
Yes, of course. Creating artificial intelligence en par with human intelligence and consciousness will be a daunting task. No one is contesting this. But what I do take exception to is the notion that we'll never be capable of doing this. I'm increasingly finding that hard to believe.

There are a number of factors working in our favour:
1) we have a fully functional model working inside our skulls
2) we have the blueprint; once we crack the brain-making code inscribed in our genome, we'll literally be able to read the instruction manual
3) we are increasingly coming to regard materialist mental-state functionalism as the valid conceptual approach to human cognition
4) accelerating computer power will a) help us figure out how to replicate the human mind (i.e. through the application of such things as neural nets, and through advancements in software design), and b) provide us with a platform to run the artificial mind

2003.03.02
NEW SENT.DEV ARTICLE
The Hazards of Transhumanist Living :: March 2, 2003
It's not easy being a Transhumanist, but somebody has to do it

February 2003

2003.02.17
TWO NEW SENT.DEV ARTICLES

Destination: Cyborg
Moving from flesh to silicon, humanity is transforming itself. Here's why you should welcome our cybernetic future

TransExodus: The Enduring Secular Reformation, Pluralist Transhumanism, and Posthuman Pilgrims
Humanity’s spiritual and existential journey is about to take a radical turn, one that will be reminiscent of the religious schisms of the Protestant Reformation and the New World missions of the pilgrims

2003.02.10
Updated Quotes
New quotes from Einstein, Herbert, Hobbes, Kurzweil, Lewontin, Marx, Medawar, Mencken, Meshuggah, Mirandola, Nietzsche, Pinker, Russell, & Teilhard de Chardin.

2003.02.04
TRANSVISION USA 2003
I've been invited to speak at Transvision USA 2003 this June at Yale University. My proposal was accepted by the WTA last week. I'll be speaking about reproductive rights, designer babies, and the consent of the unborn. Here are the details from my proposal:

ABSTRACT
State enforced limitations of human reproductive options in the 21st century will need to be considered neugenic and dysgenic. Assisted reproductive technologies and the advent of ‘designer babies’ are a legitimate reproductive option that will require monitoring and regulation. Parents have the consent of the unborn to commit their genome to these changes, and an ethical imperative to do so is forthcoming.

OBJECTIVE(S) OF THE PRESENTATION
· To illustrate that in consideration of pending genomic technologies, state enforced limitations of reproductive options in the 21st century should be classified as neugenic and possibly even dysgenic policies
· To show that the advent of ‘designer babies’ is a legitimate reproductive option, but like any powerful technology, one that will require regulation and monitoring
· To demonstrate that parents do in fact have the consent of the unborn to alter their genome, and that an ethical imperative to do so is forthcoming owing to the normative and evolutionary demands of human socialization and technocultural adaptations

DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTENT AND FORMAT

Reproductive Rights
Any discussion of human reproductive rights must critically explain how the state justifies the abrogation of specific procreative choices. Fewer things are more coercive and unnecessary than state intervention in the reproductive practices of its citizens, especially in consideration of the presumption that parents tend to have the best interests of their children in mind. State control of human reproduction is a central tenet in the conventional definition of eugenics; the purpose of the state’s intervention in this context is irrelevant. Thus, as the state exerts a greater interventionist role in limiting reproductive options, the greater its commitment to eugenics, or in the case of limiting or denying germinal choice technologies, a commitment to autocratic neugenics (i.e. human genome stasism), or even dysgenics if detrimental traits are allowed to disseminate in the human gene pool.

Designer Babies
The ‘designer baby’ is a legitimate reproductive option. It represents the next revolutionary step in human procreation, and characterizes another victory over the blind forces of nature. Prospective parents will no longer have to rely on the genetic roll of the dice when it comes to determining the makeup of their offspring. This issue speaks to the heart of reproductive rights as it is an empowering technology, allowing for greater individual control and autonomy over personal reproductive processes. but like any new technology, it will be subject to abuse. And like any other powerful technology, it will need to be regulated and monitored. Child abuse laws are already in effect, and they will need to be applied to those cases in which the guidelines for how parents can or cannot genetically alter their offspring are disregarded or abused.

Consent of the Unborn
Not only do parents have the consent of the unborn to optimize their physical and cognitive characteristics, it will eventually come to pass that not doing so will be considered negligent and a violation of the rights of the unborn. Once parents decide to have a child, obligatory considerations come into play where parents are in fact ethically bound to optimize the health of the prospective child.

2003.02.04
NEW SENT.DEV ARTICLE
Boom Time for Longevity
Facing their mortality, Baby Boomers are set to launch an assault on aging

2003.02.27
The Future of Cognitive Psychology
In many respects, what we know as psychology is actually an attempt to understand human behaviour without actually being able to read the 'software' that creates the behaviour (imagine trying to understand how a complex killer app works without a hint of how the s/w is coded). In essence, what psychologists are doing with their experiments, observations, and theories, is trying to figure out what the software scripts are actually saying without being able to read it.

Assuming this is the case, it would appear that psychology in the conventional (historic?) sense may not have a bright future, replaced instead by a cognitive science that is more scientifically/biologically rooted, and where cognitive scientists can read the code of the mind and look at the behavioural source code much like geneticists are starting to do in the domain of life.

That being the case, psychologists will still be required to understand the emergent and complex effects of this software as it is executed, and importantly to us, how changes may positively or detrimentally affect the individual. In other words, they'll be more like software programmers and analysts than psychologists.

January 2003

2003.01.22
WTA PRESS RELEASE ON GENETIC ENHANCEMENTS
Use Genetic Knowledge to Improve Ourselves, Group Says

[Tuesday, January 21, 2003] Almost 50 years after Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, the question is now what we'll do with our genetic knowledge. In a year when many will celebrate Watson and Crick's discovery, one group aims to promote this answer: Humans should use it to improve themselves.

"We are half-baked. Humanity in its current form is a promising beginning, but clearly not the final word. We get sick, we age, we have relatively feeble intellects and we don't always feel as well as we would wish," says Nick Bostrom, chair of the World Transhumanist Association. "Thanks to genetic engineering and other anticipated capabilities such as nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, we will be able to finish the job that evolution started, and attain unprecedented levels of human flourishing."

On February 28, 1953 Francis Crick walked into an English pub to announce that he and James Watson had discovered the secret of life.

Their discovery of DNA's structure allowed for the Human Genome Project, which mapped the human genetic code. Researchers are now working to determine each gene's responsibility, as well as to relate diseases with genetic mutations.

Watson has spoken on the need for more aggressive application of genetic technologies, and this is now becoming a possibility.

According to Gregory Stock, author of Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future, the work of the Human Genome Project will lead to techniques and technologies that within 10 to 15 years allow us to alter our biology. We can then begin to "write a new page in the history of life, allowing us to seize control of our evolutionary future," writes Stock.

But the promise of genetic technology can only be realized with wider public awareness of its potential to prevent the public backlash that commonly confronts new science, says the WTA.

"The sensational Raelian cloning claims and the recent suspension of gene therapy experiments after research subjects developed leukemia highlight the challenges that lay ahead," says James Hughes, secretary of the WTA. "There will be setbacks and the public's panic buttons will be pushed by Luddite opportunists. So the Transhumanist movement is essential to the future of genetic research. Only the Transhumanists explicitly defend humanity's right to take control of evolution through free individual choices among technologies that have been shown to be safe and effective."

2003.01.19
NEW SENT.DEV ARTICLE
Redesigning Human Bioethics
While making it possible, scientists have been shy about promoting human genetic reengineering. But times are changing

2003.01.06
NEW SENT.DEV ARTICLE
The Cult of Irresponsible Cloning
A wacky religious sect and misguided scientists are giving Transhumanists and other advocates of reproductive choice a bad name

2003.01.05
TTA PRESS RELEASE ON HUMAN CLONING
While Condemning Reckless Raelians, Canadian Transhumanists Affirm Cloning as a Valid Reproductive Choice
Toronto Transhumanist Association believes human cloning will one day become a beneficial and positive procedure, but wish to distance themselves from unethical groups and scientists

Toronto, Ontario, January 3, 2002 -- With the Raelians announcing the birth of a human clone, blanket condemnations are flooding in. Most of the criticisms, however, are misdirected, and fail to mention reproductive cloning's potential benefits and supporters.

Virtually every cloned animal to date has been born with some sort of defect or abnormality (assuming they make it in the first place, as the majority of prospective clones die before birth). Even when seemingly healthy clones are born they can develop problems with their kidneys, liver, heart, blood vessels, skin, musculature of the body wall and immune system. They are also likely to have limb and facial abnormalities. And it's been reported that some cloned mice have continued growing to gigantic proportions, and that some animals are born with their insides on the outside.

In their haste to produce the first human clone, the Raelians and their renegade Clonaid biologists exposed babies to these sorts of risks. Yes, critics should be directing their disgust at the Raelians and the maverick scientists who helped them clone a human before the procedure was safe. But they should be careful about saying that all scientists and ethicists are against reproductive cloning, or that the act itself is evil.

"The media is reporting that scientists and ethicists believe reproductive cloning is in principle bad," says Simon Smith, president of the Toronto Transhumanist Association. "This is not the case. Most scientists and ethicists are opposed to reproductive cloning at present, as the technology is imperfect and dangerous. Many, however, see no problem with cloning in principle. When it's perfected, it will be merely another option in the growing list of reproductive choices."

The Toronto Transhumanist Association is a supporter of reproductive cloning, but denounces all attempts to clone humans until the technology is perfected. Until then, it wishes to distance itself as much as possible from unethical people and groups who are putting human lives at risk.

“Human cloning will someday be a good thing,” says TTA vice-president George Dvorsky. “For infertile couples who cannot make babies with sperm and eggs, cloning is a medical breakthrough that will provide them children of their own. Similarly, it will help gay and lesbian couples produce genetically related offspring. And for those individuals with inheritable genetic diseases, reproductive cloning will give them an increased chance of having a healthy child."

“Transhumanists believe that humans deserve the right to clone themselves should they choose, so long as the process isn’t harmful to others," says Dvorsky. "It is hard to imagine parents of clones being any less loving and caring than parents of regular children. Clones are nothing more than delayed twins, and are just as human and as deserving of rights and respect as anyone.”

2003.01.02
OUR PERSONAL MEMETIC ENVIRONMENTS
As our bodies have been molded by the physical environment, the characteristics of our thoughts and beliefs have been shaped by the memetic environment within which we reside; we are utterly limited by the ideas we’ve been exposed to.

Intrinsically, we are rational creatures, and accordingly, we strive to make sense of the limited data we are exposed to. But our reasoning skills only take us so far; we are also effected by various biological vestiges (i.e. emotions, hormones, autonomic responses, etc.) and the social environment. Our belief systems are subsequently influenced by non-rational forces, leading to the large number of unfounded memes and memeplexes that exist in our societies.

2003.01.01
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

December 2002

2002.12.31
TRANSHUMANISM ON WIKIPEDIA
I added a significant amount of detail to Wikipedia's Transhumanism page, much of it derived from our Betterhumans Transhumanism resource.

2002.12.31
SCIENTIFIC LITERACY
Yes, freedom of religion is important, but I would argue that freedom from religion is even more important. Canada and the United States must continue to separate church from state. Moreover, while science can certainly take on religious-like characteristics, it is not a religion. It is a rational methodology that is subject to rejection, correction, normative processes, and critical peer-reviews; religions are dogmatic, unyielding, with little reliance on proven methodologies. Thus, schools must better promote the sciences, and absolutely disallow the teaching of such things as Creationism. I saw a billboard recently that said: "Literacy is a right." I'd go one step further: scientific literacy is a right.

2002.12.29
HUMAN CLONING
The World Transhumanist Association issued the following press release upon news that the Raelian religious cult had successfully cloned the first human:

Clones Are People Too, Group Says
WILLINGTON, Ct., December 27, 2002 -- Following claims by the Raelian sect to have successfully cloned a human baby, an organization dedicated to promoting appropriate uses of technology is urging the media and the public to remember that human clones are, first and foremost, human.

The World Transhumanist Association, a nonprofit organization that promotes discussion of improving human capacities using technology, believes that it was irresponsible to attempt human cloning before the procedure was perfected.

But the organization, which includes prominent scientists and philosophers, believes that in principle cloning is a legitimate means of procreation. If independent confirmation proves that the Raelians have indeed created a clone, the WTA calls for acceptance of the baby as human.

"It is important that we see a cloned child as what it is -- an individual person who is just as human as you and me. Just because it is cloned doesn’t mean that it has any less human dignity than people who were born in other ways,” says WTA chair Nick Bostrom. “This is an opportunity for us to overcome some of our prejudices. Scare-mongers have argued that a clone would somehow have a diminished degree of humanity. If the claim of human cloning is borne out, we will be faced with the concrete choice between rejecting this view, and denying the dignity of a living human baby.”

Transhumanists have long argued that appropriate uses of technology can allow us to overcome human limitations. Cloning could allow many parents to have children when they would otherwise be unable. As with any technology there is a risk of abuse, but as with many technologies outright bans and irrational actions only increase danger.

The WTA emphasizes, however, that it does not endorse the action of the Raelians in attempting cloning this early. “It would be legally and morally just to hold the parents responsible for any medical side effects that occur as the result of an over-hasty cloning attempt,” says Bostrom. “But the child itself is innocent, and in full possession of human rights and human dignity, whether or not it proves to be a clone.”

Society’s reaction to cloning is also important, the WTA says, as it will test our readiness for coming technological challenges and opportunities. Advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology and information technology hold incredible promise, but this promise is at risk from ill-advised prohibitions based on unfounded fears.

”Let us hope for a healthy, happy and long life for the first cloned baby,” says Bostrom, “as we would for any other child.”

2002.12.24
TRANSHUMANISM
Simon Smith and myself finally finished upgrading the Transhumanism resource for Betterhumans.

2002.12.23
THE HUMAN COMMUNICATIONS WIDE AREA NETWORK (HCWAN)
Human minds are essentially computers. Philosophers and scientists like Marvin Minsky, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, and Hans Moravec have demonstrated the computational characteristics of the human brain. Even though it’s composed of wetware components, the brain is essentially a massively parallel processor that runs (debatably) about 10x16 calculations per second.

And like the primitive PCs we use on a daily basis, our mind-computers interface with other mind-computers; we communicate with our fellow human beings (think of it as organic robot to organic robot interfacing).

Accordingly, instead of thinking about 6 billion people on this planet, conceptualize 6 billion discreet minds with interface nodes that can connect to other consciousnesses. Network connections are established anytime a form of communication takes place. In this Human Communications Wide Area Network (HCWAN), each individual that is capable of transmitting and receiving information can act as both a node and a router. And due to its theoretic universality, the HCWAN can be considered a fully connected network.

There are essentially three different types of communication exchanges in the HCWAN: 1) unidirectional data transfer (e.g. a speech), 2) multidirectional information queries and data exchange (e.g. a conversation), and 3) proxy medium data transfer (e.g. books). Communications technology are constantly improving and enhancing the efficacy of all three. And like the six degrees of separation argument states, there are paths (some short, some long) that interconnect every mind on the planet to each other.

Needless to say, this mind-network topology is massive, and limitations do currently exist. Not every mind can be interconnected directly with every other mind, nor are the connections permanent. And the number of simultaneous connects is limited by human limitations (we can only hold a conversation with a small number of people). And when there's no communication, the channel is closed.

The number and quality of nodal linkages are constrained by many factors, including physical and technological limitations/barriers that inhibit the interfacing between two or more minds, the quality of the mode of communication between agents (including the sophistication of the language, the ability to accurately convey and process thoughts, the integrity of the information that is being transferred (including the level of honesty on the part of the communicator), and of course, the willing establishment of communications between two minds.

Conscious agents can interface any number of ways, including verbal, expressive, and body language. There’s also written text in any number of mediums (analog and digital), and the use of signs, symbols, and metaphors.

And what to two or more interfacing minds communicate? Information, including raw data, intentions, motives, humour, persuasions, emotional states, desires, or simply for the purpose of enjoying the presence of an interfaced mind and delighting in a good conversation.

2002.12.18
TIPLER'S OMEGA POINT THEORY
Prepared by Simon Smith & George Dvorsky

The Omega Point Theory, also called the Quantum Omega Point Theory, is nothing less than an attempt to unify physics and theology in proclaiming the potential for Godlike powers and the possibility for heavenly existence at the end of the universe. Proposed by physicist Frank J. Tipler and expounded in his 1994 book The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead, this theory has spurred both praise and ridicule.

While Tipler's work sounds more like radical science fiction than science, he's no slouch in academia. He's a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Tulane University in New Orleans, writes papers for the International Journal of Theoretical Physics and is well known for his insights into the Cosmological Antrophic Principle. Nevertheless, he has been attacked by scientists, who argue that he has concocted a theory to prove beliefs (some have even tried to have him "fired" from Tulane, which you can't do to a tenured professor). In addition, he has been criticized by theologians, who take issue with Tipler's notion of God.

But despite this, both the theory and the book are hugely important. While not everyone agrees with his eschatological speculations, Tipler's physics are endorsed by such scientists as the influential quantum physicist David Deutsch. And many note that his work marks an emerging renaissance in which advancing science and technology, from quantum physics to genetic engineering, is spawning new cosmologies and philosophies, such as Transhumanism.

God as a universal computer
"Either theology is pure nonsense, a subject with no content, or else theology must ultimately become a branch of physics," Tipler writes in The Physics of Immortality. "The reason is simple. The universe is defined to be the totality of all that exists, the totality of a reality. Thus, by definition, if God exists, He/She is either the universe or part of it. The goal of physics is understanding the ultimate nature of reality. If God is real, physicists will eventually find Him/Her."

The Omega Point Theory is an attempt to do so. With pages of mathematical equations, Tipler constructs an intriguing postulate: If the universe is headed for an eventual collapse, he argues, intelligent life can do some engineering and use the collapse to power a computer with infinite power in which it, and all intelligent life that ever existed, can live forever. Moreover, Tipler believes that the known laws of physics require life to engage in this engineering project.

Is this possible? Tipler believes that intelligent life could colonize the universe using self-replicating probes. Sufficiently advanced intelligences could then alter a collapsing universe in such a way that different parts collapsed at different rates (a "Taub-like" collapse). Intelligent life could then derive energy from the collapse, and this energy would diverge toward infinity as the collapse proceeded toward a singularity. By converting the universe to a computer that fed off the energy, this would allow an infinite amount of information processing and storage.

As the giant universal computer keeps shrinking in size, its power increases to the point at which it can emulate all possible permutations of the universe's history while also allowing all contained entities a heavenly and subjectively eternal existence. And because intelligent life would have to work together to do build the universal computer, Tipler argues, future intelligences will be altruistic and will therefore wantt to resurrect previous beings and give them eternal life. "If any reader has lost a loved one, or is afraid of death, modern physics says: 'Be comforted, you and they shall live again,'" Tipler writes.

Scientific controversy
If Tipler has proven the existence of God and immortality, why hasn't everyone heard of the Omega Point Theory? The reason is that while Tipler's theory represents a stunning paradigm shift, it has also been the subject of much criticism.

For starters there are Tipler's scientific assumptions. He assumes that the universe will collapse into a singularity, but there are alternate theories. The universe could expand forever, meaning that a collapse-powered universal computer isn't possible. After publishing his book, Tipler has admitted the possibility that acceleration could occur in the expanding phase of the universe and invalidate his calculations predicting a collapse. "If the observed acceleration were to continue forever, the Omega Point Theory would be refuted," he has said.

But Tipler hasn't backed down. His recent thinking on the matter leads him to believe that the expansion of life to engulf the universe is exactly what is required to cancel the positive cosmological constant (a.k.a. Dark Energy) driving the expansion of the universe. "As life expands outward, life will require energy, and before the collapse of the universe provides gravitational collapse energy, the energy source will be the conversion of baryons and leptons into energy via electroweak quantum tunneling," he has said.

The prediction of the universe's collapse isn't the only scientific theory under attack, however. Tipler also assumes that future intelligent life will be altruistic and resurrect past life, for example, which he bases on game theory logic. This is a leap of faith. There is no guarantee that future intelligent life will be altruistic, or that it will have an interest in resurrection.

Theological controversy
Then there is Tipler's theology. While he believes that God must be part of the physical universe, many theologians would disagree. And while his future universal computer becomes God by emulating everything, many theologians would argue that this is not God in the traditional sense. The theological denial is connected with the gnostic (or Manichean) heresy. This holds that there is a "spirtual realm" that is superior to the "material realm," which is uninteresting, evil or both. The goal in the gnostic heresy is to escape from the world of matter into the spirit world. "Unfortunately," Tipler has said, "this heresy is widespread even among Christians (who should know better), and it prevents the Omega Point Theory -- or Transhumanism -- from being taken seriously."

Tipler recognizes that most if not all religious leaders reject the idea that humans are just special types of computers, and that such things as mind uploading and artificial intelligence are possible. Instead, he notes, they believe in an "immortal soul" that appears to be some sort of "stuff" not subject to the laws of physics.

But Tipler expects that theologians will come to accept science-inspired insights in the future, and he continues to meet with religious leaders around the world. In fact, the Lutherian Bishop of Hamburg has recently come to accept the Omega Point Theory, so it's possible that religious leaders will find ways to sympathize with Tipler's secular neo-theology.

If not, Tipler's propositions will still be extremely important and influential. He has attempted to construct a testable theory of God and immortality. While it may have scientific and theological flaws, it is arguably the first step toward a secular eschatology that merges religious ideas with current scientific understanding and technological progress. And as with other scientific theories, it will no doubt be refined over time, addressing criticisms along the way.

2002.12.18
UPDATE
Added some new quotes from Frank Tipler, Georg Hegel, JBS Haldane, George Lucas, David Brin, David Haig, & Anders Sandberg.

2002.12.16
NEW SENT::DEV ARTICLE
Ending Biblical Brainwash
For better mental and cultural health, it's time we classified religious fundamentalism as a psychological disorder

2002.12.16
TRANSHUMANIST NON-HOLIDAY (humor)
With tongue firmly in cheek, WTA board member Eliezer Yudkowsky recently proposed an alternative to the traditional holiday festivities: Newtonmas. He also proposed that Santa be replaced by the Fairy of Doubt, who would only bring gifts to those children who did not believe in him ;-)

In light of the introduction of the first Transhumanist non-holiday, it would appear that revisions to traditional carols would seem to be in order. Here are a few of my suggestions:
- Frosty the Cyborg
- All I Want for Newtonmas Is My Two Frontal Lobe Intelligence Augementation Implants
- Fairy of Doubt is Not Coming to Town
- I'm Dreaming of a Gray Goo Free Newtonmas
- Nano Bells
- We Three Posthumans
- Cloned Sheep May Safely Graze
- Deus Ex Machina Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
- Let It Singularity, Let It Singularity, Let It Singularity
- O Come All Ye Uploaded
- Deck the Virtual Reality With Boughs of Holly
- Rudolph the Red Nosed, Two Headed, Fork-Tongued Transgenic Reindeer
- Good King Singleton
- Joy to the World

2002.12.13
CRYONICS
Congratulations to everyone involved in the first cryonics case in Toronto, including Toronto Transhumanist Association member Brent Erskine. Read Ben Best's report.

2002.12.12
HUMAN RIGHT?
Many bioethicists complain that human genomics is an imposition upon the unborn, forcing them to live with the changes their parents enforced upon their physical and cognitive makeup. I'm not so sure I buy this argument. Parents, as the legal guardians of children, already control and regulate many things in their children's lives: their name, the clothes they wear, how they are socialized and educated, and other factors such as socioeconomic status. But more to the point, when parents choose to have children, it's an issue of personal reproductive rights and the right to choose how one will produce offspring from one's own body. In most cases, parents will choose wisely and responsibly when it comes to the health of their children.

How would you feel if you born with some sort of disability, knowing full-well that your parents could have opted to have your genetic makeup repaired at at the embryonic stage? Remember, I'm not talking about screening and aborting fetuses -- I'm talking about the genetic manipulation of blastocysts in petri-dishes. I don't know about you, but I'd be furious. One could argue that it is a human right to not be born with a disability if the condition could be repaired at the embryonic stage.

Of course, this leads to larger ethical issues, specifically when it comes to genetic augmentations. Will parents feel compelled by social conventions to genetically augment their children? Would it be unjust to a child to not enhance them, to not give them every advantage available by medical technologies? Again, I think parents will make the right decisions. Mothers already take care of themselves during pregnancies to ensure healthy children, including careful diets, folic acid, and exercise. Parents will continue to do what they think is necessary to guarantee the healthiest children.

2002.12.12
RE: TECHNOLOGICAL PATHOLOGIES
In a recent discussion with fellow Transhumanists on the wta-talk list, it was correctly brought to my attention that my December 4 statement on 'Technological Pathologies' was rather sweeping. They pointed out that some of these technologies could be utilised to desireable ends. For example, it would give people access to their own memories and personalities, giving people the capacity to mould themselves as they see fit. To this end, I will say that at the very least, these technologies will need to be closely monitored and regulated. But as for outright bans, perhaps not.

2002.12.04
TECHNOLOGICAL PATHOLOGIES
Some future technologies will need to be classified as pathologies, as they pose varying threats to individuals and society as a whole. Innovations that allow for the engineering and control of another sentient consciousness must be regarded as weapons of mass destruction and therefore prohibited. For example, technologies that would allow for the re-programming or brain washing of sentient beings, the planting of false memories and desires, and other speculative or unforeseen unethical persuasion techniques.

One could argue that modern neuromarketing is an example of this. Corporations are studying the human brain and how it responds to various stimuli. Advertisers use this information to craft extremely persuasive ad campaigns that tap into the viewers' intrinsic proclivities. I consider this to be quite unethical, as it removes a significant amount of freewill on the part of the consumer -- and it's becoming increasingly difficult to avoid advertising.

Perhaps we should worry less about the government gaining control of these technologies than corporations.

2002.12.04
THE UNTAPPED POWER OF THE MIND
The human brain is the most complex mechanism yet discovered in the universe. It is also one of the most underutilized. It's not only that there are 'parts' of the brain that we're not using; it's that we don't know how to use the brain to its full potential. We're not thinking properly. What exactly do I mean by underutilized? Perfect psychological control over all of our body's processes.

Meditative and psychological techniques have tried to help us in this realm, but with varying and limited results. Some yogic masters have remarkable control over their bodies: they can slow their heart rate down, survive extended durations while buried alive, and control pain. But this is only the beginning. In the future, intelligence amplification and other neural enhancements, including nanotechnology and advanced meditative techniques, are sure to introduce the added side-effect of broadened consciousness and bodily awareness. We may be able to control the finer workings of our brain and release or inhibit various neurochemicals. We'll also have better pain management resources. Essentially, we will be able to perform the tasks of many modern pharmaceuticals. Additionally, we will be able to release certain hormones into our system -- you may be able to release pheromones to the environment when you're...in the mood. ;-)

2002.12.04
COMMENT
Capitalism is a privilege, not a right.

2002.12.03
NEWS
The TTA press release re: Leon Kass has been posted on the LongevityMeme Website.

2002.12.03
NEWS
My Betterhumans Transitory Human column, Forward in the Face of Danger, is the featured article for December in the Extropy Institute's Journal for Transhumanist Solutions.

2002.12.03
COMMENT & OBSERVATION
Some observers like to compare the burgeoning Transhumanist movement with Nietzchian philosophies and 20th century style eugenics. I take a different approach: I like to compare the Transhumanist ethic with progressive biologically-based social reforms [see my Transhumanism: The Next Great Threat to Oppression and Inequality article for more], which would include the emancipation of Blacks in the United States in the 19th century.

Prior to the Civil War, most Southerners were unbelievably racist, and refused to entertain the idea of extending full U.S. citizenship rights to blacks. Some believed that blacks were too unintelligent to take care of themselves, and that the slave-race/master-race relationship was the only viable social option. In fact, Southerners believed that they were doing Blacks a favour. And of course, gentlemen Southerners were fearful of exposing their delicate Southern belles to free-roaming Blacks.

Various Luddites (especially agrarians) argued that the South had achieved an extremely desirable social system; many looked at Northern industrialism with disdain. Compounding this was a strong elitist sentiment brought on by the South's respect for the Victorian ethic and aesthetic.

Also, feeling pressure from the emancipation forces from the North, many Southerners looked to the Bible for justifications of slavery, and of course, they found what they were looking for in several Old Testament stories (esp. see Canaan and the descendants of Ham).

There were also arguments from science -- or rather, pseudo-science. Some scientists, including the influential Swiss/American Jean L. R. Agassiz, argued vehemently for slavery. In fact, Darwin sent Agassiz a copy of his book on the origin of species, which contradicted Agassiz's belief in the 'fixity of species'. Agassiz only went so far as to support 'plural origins of mankind,' which provided scientific authority to racial supremacists and pro-slavery forces. Over time he became quite dogmatic and was opposed to the concept of evolution in any form.

And finally, Southerners bandied together to create a sub-nationalist coalition that basically said, "Hey you Yankees, you can't tell us what to do!" And the next thing you had was civil war.

I wonder what lessons this episode in U.S. history holds for Transhumanists.

November 2002

2002.11.28
PRESS RELEASE
The Toronto Transhumanist Association released this press release on November 27, 2002:

Bush Bioethicist Thinks Canadians Should Die
Toronto Transhumanist Association opposes the life extension position of Leon Kass, chairman of the US President’s Council on Bioethics, who will be speaking at the University of Toronto on December 2

Toronto, Ontario, November 25, 2002 -- Most people love healthy life and want to extend it for as long as possible. If the chairman of the US President’s Council on Bioethics had his way, however, all human life would come with a death sentence.

Dr. Leon Kass is a well-known conservative bioethicist. He has spoken out against affirmative action and complained about young women putting off childbirth to build careers. He has criticized the movement towards feminism, gay rights, divorce, single parenthood and premarital sex. He is opposed to abortion, therapeutic cloning and stem-cell research that offers hope for treating many debilitating conditions.

And on December 2, 2002 he’s coming to Toronto to push a conservative position on extending healthy lifespan in a talk called “Why Not Immortality,” which will be the Ninth Annual Alloway lecture of the University of Toronto’s Joint Centre for Bioethics.

In a previous talk called “L'Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” Dr. Kass made his position on life extension quite clear: “Biological considerations aside, simply to covet a prolonged life span for ourselves is both a sign and a cause of our failure to open ourselves to procreation and to any higher purpose. It is probably no accident that it is a generation whose intelligentsia proclaim the death of God and the meaninglessness of life that embarks on life's indefinite prolongation and that seeks to cure the emptiness of life by extending it forever,” Kass said in that talk. “Confronted with the growing moral challenges posed by biomedical technology, let us resist the siren song of the conquest of aging and death.”

While Kass is entitled to his opinions, the Toronto Transhumanist Association is calling on journalists to take this opportunity to examine the issue of life extension and the dangers posed by Kass’s chairmanship of the US President’s Council on Bioethics. The TTA believes that life extension is a personal choice and that research into extending healthy lifespan should continue unencumbered by religiously influenced government policy.

“Nobody is denying that life extension poses challenges,” says TTA president Simon Smith. “But the goal should be to confront those challenges through an informed dialogue, not through the imposition of a conservative agenda. People listening to Kass’s talk should remember his position. He influences the direction of US government policy on aging- and health-related research, funding and legislation. The US in turn influences the world. If Kass thinks life extension is a bad idea, can we honestly expect that it won’t have major implications?”

What’s worse, while claiming to be a defender of human dignity, Kass has essentially declared that not all people are equal when it comes to the care they can come to expect. “Kass represents an affront to the rights of the eldery,” says TTA vice-president George Dvorsky. “The aging Baby Boomer population needs to take heed of this man and his stance against progressive health technologies, particularly as they apply to medical practices that can extend life and the treatment of suffering and aging itself. Kass is trying to convince all eldery people that they should complacently accept and deal with all aging-related diseases and simply shut up and die. As a result, he has not only revealed a discriminatory stance that targets the eldery and the kind of care they are legally entitled to, but he has also exposed his pro-death agenda.”

2002.11.25
RAND ARTICLE
This RAND report from last year is a must read for Transhumanists and other future-oriented thinkers:
The Global Technology Revolution: Bio/Nano/Materials Trends and Their Synergies with Information Technology by 2015 (PDF)

2002.11.25
NEW ARTICLE
Never before has the future been filled with such promise while fraught with such peril. But now isn’t the time to shy away from progress.

2002.11.20
Update
Added some new quotes: Ray Kurzweil, Peter Singer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Galileo Galilei & others.

2002.11.20
RICHARD DAWKINS
The Skeptics Society calls him Darwin's Dangerous Disciple. Wired magazine calls him the Bad Boy of Evolution. And The New York Times has described his books as "the sort of popular science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius." He is Richard Dawkins, zoologist, ethologist and evolutionary biologist extraordinaire.
Born in 1941 in East Africa, Dawkins is best known for his first book, The Selfish Gene (1976). In this book he advances the case for a selfish entity -- the gene -- that "works" to preserve and propagate itself. Dawkins argued that the Darwinian theory of evolution via natural selection operates at the level of the gene and not at that of groups, species or even individuals. It is for this reason that Dawkins has been referred to as a neo-Darwinist.
Dawkins describes natural selection as the "nonrandom survival of randomly varying genetic instructions." Thus, it is a two-stage process: the production of random mutations in the genes of every new generation and the nonrandom effect of the environment on each individual gene, causing some to die, and others to survive to pass on their mutations.
Consequently, Dawkins introduced the powerful concept of the "replicator" as the unit of evolution and described it as follows: "The selfish-gene idea is the idea that the animal is a survival machine for its genes. The animal is a robot that has a brain, eyes, hands, and so on, but it also carries around its own blueprint, its own instructions. This is important, because if the animal gets eaten, if it dies, then the blueprint dies as well. The only genes that get through the generations are the ones that have managed to make their robots avoid getting eaten and succeed in living long enough to reproduce."
Dawkins's interest in how genes behave over time is the very definition of an evolution based on the flow of information. "It rapidly became clear to me that the most imaginative way of looking at evolution, and the most inspiring way of teaching it, was to say that it's all about the genes," he has said. "It's the genes that, for their own good, are manipulating the bodies they ride about in. The individual organism is a survival machine for its genes."
Extending evolutionary theory
Dawkins also wrote The Extended Phenotype (1982), in which he outlined concepts of the "genotype" (i.e. an egg gene), "phenotype" (i.e. a chicken) and "extended phenotype" (i.e. a chicken and its nest). He argued that to study the evolution of a bird without studying the evolution of its nest would be absurd. Each is necessary for the survival of the other. For humans, this means that our technological developments are literal extensions of ourselves, now as necessary for our evolution as we are essential to their evolution.
Dawkins also introduced the theory of memes -- by analogy with genes -- to describe a selfish, self-replicating idea, one that survives and evolves through generations. He conceived memetics not as a theory of human culture but "to make the point that what matters in any theory of Darwinism is self-replicating information." The human brain provides a new foundation for replication, but rather than genes it's replicating ideas. "You have in effect, a new primeval soup. Once you have got that new primeval soup, a new replicator could be the basis of a new Darwinism," he has said. Human evolution, Dawkins postulates, is a function of a co-evolution between genes and memes.
It would not be an understatement to suggest that Dawkins has done more to redefine the definition of life than anyone since Charles Darwin.
Meeting of biology and technology
Long fascinated by computers, Dawkins is also a proficient programmer, and has been around computers since the age of paper tape and influenced by their presence. "You would go to a computer room and you'd be smothered by paper tape and machines chuntering everywhere. You'd feel that you were in a room surrounded by all sorts of digital machinery -- translators, copiers, and so on," he has said. "And that is what a cell is like. A cell is a digital data-processing room filled with the equivalents of tapes and cards and bits and bytes floating around everywhere. At a poetic, metaphoric level, exposure to computers helps you to understand the world of DNA."
In fact, Dawkins has written computer programs in an attempt to simulate aspects of evolution. His Blind Watchmaker program is a model of artificial selection with randomly generated variation and a limited kind of embryology that generates forms in two dimensions.
Dawkins also refers to the "Son of Moore's Law," the convergence of rapidly accelerating developments in information technology with the genetic sciences. "If asked to summarize molecular genetics in a word, I would choose 'digital,'" he has said. He believes that by 2050, through the use of supercomputers, scientists will be able to read the language of DNA. Humans will be able to have their own personal genome projects -- they will have the complete text of their genes -- and doctors will be able to provide prescriptions catered to individual genomes. "I conjecture that an embryologist of 2050 will feed the genome of an unknown animal into a computer, and the computer will simulate an embryology that will culminate in a full rendering of the adult animal...it will be a way of signifying the completeness of our understanding," he has said.
Dawkins also suggests that it may someday be possible to reanimate an extinct ancestor of Homo sapiens, possibly an australopithecine. And he believes this would be a good thing. "I can see positive ethical benefits emerging from the experiment," he has said. "At present we get away with our flagrant speciesism because the evolutionary intermediates between us and chimpanzees are all extinct. In my contribution to The Great Ape Project, initiated by the distinguished Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer, I pointed out that the accidental contingency of such extinction should be enough to destroy absolutist valuings of human life above all other life. 'Pro life,' for example, in debates on abortion or stem cell research, always means pro human life, for no sensibly articulated reason. The existence of a living, breathing Lucy in our midst would change, forever, our complacent human-centred view of morals and politics. Should Lucy pass for human? The absurdity of the question should be self-evident, as those South African courts trying to decide whether particular individuals should 'pass for white.' The reconstruction of a Lucy would be ethically vindicated by bringing such absurdity out into the open."
Anti-religious atheist
A devout atheist, Dawkins has done much to promote atheism and skepticism. In fact, his anti-religious sentiments sometimes overshadow his scientific contributions. He holds a passionate revulsion of what he calls fatuous religious prejudices, which he believes lead to evil. In particular, the Roman Catholic Church has attracted his ire. "It is one of the forces for evil in the world, mainly because of the powerful influence it has over the minds of children," he has said. "Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place."
Dawkins says that the universe is a difficult enough place to understand already without introducing additional mystical mysteriousness that's not actually there. "The kinds of views of the universe which religious people have traditionally embraced have been puny, pathetic, and measly in comparison to the way the universe actually is," he has said. "The universe presented by organized religions is a poky little medieval universe, and extremely limited." Rather, says Dawkins, the universe is genuinely mysterious, grand, beautiful and awe inspiring. Through his work, he has certainly made it seem so.
Dawkins is currently the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Understanding of Science at Oxford University as well as a Fellow of New College.

2002.11.20
PETER SINGER
The Wall Street Journal calls him the most prominent professor Australia has ever produced and the most influential ethicist alive today. Others have called him one of the most challenging philosophers in the world. Ethicist, animal-rights activist, philosopher, political scientist and Transhumanist, Peter Singer has garnered as much respect as he has condemnation. Yet, the controversy that surrounds him arises from his conviction in challenging long-established ways of thinking -- or ways of avoiding thinking.

He has put forth arguments on the permissibility of euthanizing certain disabled newborns, for example, and has proclaimed that significant advances in medical technology require us to think in new ways about how we should make critical medical decisions about life and death. Our increased medical powers mean that we can no longer run away from the question by pretending that we are 'allowing nature to take its course,'" he writes. "In a modern intensive care unit, it is doctors, not nature, who make the decisions."

Important works
Throughout his long career Singer has remained deeply committed to arguing for the reduction of suffering in the world, the ethical treatment of animals and the improvement of the environment for the benefit of all. The author of Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, Singer is widely credited with triggering the modern animal-rights movement. Through such works he has done much to promote personhood theory, the utilitarian-inspired belief that sentience matters, that all sentient beings should be treated humanely and that nonhuman animals should be protected by a charter of rights.

Singer has also published How Are We to Live?: Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest, in which he argues that people should give away all their wealth beyond what's required to live a simple life. He also reflects on what it means to live a good life, reviving the time-honoured idea that turning away from self-centredness and towards others' needs makes for a satisfying life. Singer is also known for Practical Ethics, one of the most widely used texts in applied ethics, and Rethinking Life and Death, which received the 1995 National Book Council's Banjo Award for nonfiction.

Transhumanist flavour
A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation, published in 2001, has a characteristically Transhumanist flavour. In this book, Singer argues that in today's world, many sociobiological constraints on human nature and politics have become irrelevant. He goes further by suggesting that ingrained human selfishness and hierarchy is what has prevented society from achieving proper egalitarian social reform. Singer envisions a Transhumanist future in which genetic and neurological sciences can be employed to identify and modify the aspects of human nature that cause conflict and competition. He also supports socially subsidized, but voluntary, genetic improvement, while rejecting coercive reproductive policies and eugenic pseudoscience.

2002.11.13
TRANSHUMANISM
James Hughes, secretary of the World Transhumanist Association, was recently asked to participate in the Future Humans workshop held in Seattle. The workshop was sponsored by the Foundation for the Future, an organization established by Walter Kistler, an inventor and aerospace entrepreneur. Hughes was asked to make a statement on the future of humanity for the next 1000 years:

"If we can keep from destroying ourselves, after one or two hundred years we will have conquered aging, disease and the worst forms of poverty. Work will be optional, we will be repairing Earth's shattered ecosystem, and will have begun settling Mars and Europa. We will control our brains and bodies. We will be able to edit our desires and memories, and change our gender painlessly. If renegade AIs take out your shuttle you'll be able to boot yourself off that morning's backup. So that will leave the next 800 years for the really interesting developments.

By the year 3000 the descendents of the human race will be colonizing a widening sphere of galactic space, inhabiting a wide variety of forms. The bulk of intelligence will have migrated from organic to nonorganic platforms, on molecular-scaled computing media. But there will also be an even wider variety of organic life, on Earth and in space, than exists today. One of the certain challenges for this galactic social ecology will be the same as today: how to build a cultural and political system where the powerful respect and help the weak, where all intelligent beings feel empathy for other beings no matter what differences exist in their bodies or minds. I imagine the biggest challenge to future empathy and equality will come from the difference between the inconceivably fast and vast capacities for thought and feeling of the non-organic personalities compared to the plodding and limited organic persons.

A more profound threat to our understanding of society will be the creation of collectivities beyond one body-one brain-one personality. Extremely rapid brain-to-brain communication and connection to the global web will make our current individuality seem horribly lonely. Some groups will choose to share memories, thoughts, feelings and even identity, while some powerful individuals will spread themselves out over multiple organic and robotic platforms. One person or hive mind may exist simultaneously in animal, human and robotic bodies. Will these Borgs get one vote or a million in the Solar Federation? And if we only give the Borg one vote will they insist on assimilating the rest of us?

Because of these conflicts and the need for collective action and defense, I think it is clear that we will still need government in the future. Ensuring that those governments preserve some degree of freedom, equality and solidarity will be one of the most important projects of the next millennium. In other words, death will be overcome by 3000, but not taxes." -- James Hughes

2002.11.10
UPDATE
Added some new quotes -- Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Henry Sumner Maine, and more.

2002.11.06
SELF AS ILLUSION
There are subsets to consciousness, such as our decision making skills that we base on our capacity to predict outcomes (another way of saying rational free will). However, I'm not convinced that there is such a thing as personal identity that is quantifiable in this context; it may be an emergent effect. The minute-by-minute sense we have that we are a coherent self that exists continuously over time may be a necessary illusion for survival and cognitive functionality.

For instance, if you had no memories and no capacity to project yourself into the future, you would most certainly have no sense of self; you'd just be a non self-reflexive agent processing your environment in real-time. Moreover, the notion of personal identity may be culturally instilled. Many of us, particularly those from religious backgrounds, were taught to accept vitalistic conceptions of self, that there is a 'soul' or some other component of self (spiritual or material) that exists over time (from birth to death).

2002.11.06
ETHICS
Would I be acting unethically if I were starving and my only recourse for survival was to kill an animal? If the answer is yes, one must answer the question: why is my life more valuable than the animal's? Is it because I'm more sentient (would you kill rats that infested your house; what about a gorilla infestation, would you kill them?) Is it because I'm capable of doing more good and beneficial acts than the animal (I can perform more acts of kindness and make more persons happier than the bear can)?

How are we to act?
For me, acting unethically is the act of causing unjustifiable harm. Just because something is in one's best interest doesn't give one entitlement to harm others, especially if one defines 'best interest' as the attainment of a personal maximum fitness peak.

We should be able to strive for the attainment of a personal maximum fitness peak without harming others (this can include an individual or a consenting group like a society); live and let live. Harm involves the prevention of others from attaining their own personal maximum fitness peaks (killing, coercion, etc.) if they were doing no harm to you.

Thus, there will be 'ethical' limits to what can and can't be done. For example, is a deer cull justifiable if the intent is to prevent human deaths caused by deers wandering onto roads? The issue here is not that human life is more valuable than a deer's; instead, the argument is that there is a human right to traverse along a certain stretch of highway without a certain amount of existential risk involved. That, at least to me, seems somewhat unreasonable, given that a number of significantly highly sentient creatures will have to die for an issue that's not threatening life (unless the act of traversing that stretch of highway is somehow enabling that person to live – like an ambulance racing off to a hospital).

You are not acting unethically if you harm someone who is acting unethically against you (i.e. someone is harming you without proper justification). And here we get into trouble because of the subjectivity involved. What I consider to be harmful may not seem harmful to you.

What are human rights?
I'd rather refer to this as "natural rights" because it's less limiting and speciest. Essentially, the conviction that there are strong and inalienable moral entitlements, defenses, and protections or "protective norm." It's the acknowledgement that highly sentient beings don't require a particular capacity to have these rights (or by virtue of some particular transaction or relationship), just the endowment of sentience.

Are human rights negotiable?
I don't like the word `negotiable' in this context. Perhaps I'm being idealistic, but the development of natural rights should be arrived through rational and moral discourse.

2002.11.06
SUPERINTELLIGENCE = SUPERMORAL? THE IMPORTANCE OF RECOGNIZING CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE AS IS APPLIES TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUPERINTELLIGENCE

As I become more knowledgeable and intelligent, and as I gain more rational comprehension and control over myself and my place in my environment, the more capable am I of becoming empathetic.

Homo sapiens have an advanced sense of self. What I mean by 'advanced' is that humans, as far as I know, are the only animals that are existential (i.e. we know we're going to die). Assuming this is the case, the only animals on this planet that my statement would apply to are humans (and pending posthumans). Thus, non-human animals like mice and eagles are excluded. They hunt out of sheer instinct and the need to survive. They have no way of altering the conditions such that they don't need to kill to survive. We do. Moreover, they haven't developed any advanced sense of altruism or compassion -- they don't really project themselves onto their prey, and they have no comprehension that they're harming other sentient creatures. I'm sure some primates have developed empathy skills, but certainly not to the degree that humans have. Moreover, our empathy skills are now being steadily enhanced by culture; as we learn more about how organisms work, the better we understand the harm we are doing to ourselves and other life-forms.

Our culture is intelligent. It has been under construction for the past 10,000+ years, and it is getting more and more refined.

For example, in the West we have very developed normative political, judicial, and social systems. These systems have been under constant reviews, revisions, and trial-and-error developments, and their current condition is the result of generations upon generations of work (somewhat Darwinian if you think about it). They are not random or chaotic systems, but rather, very specific systems designed quite well for specific purposes; and for better or worse, they are functional and intelligent systems that operate to maintain order and fairness. Thus, when we discuss human intelligence, it must be placed in context with the cultural intelligence that supplements it.

When a SI entity eventually comes into existence, be it posthuman or artificial, it will have access to (or be programmed to access) all human cultural intelligence, including our moral and ethical standards and expectations. The result could quite possibly be supermoral agents residing in a SI-cultural system.

The alternative is to suppose that the SI comes up with a malevolent 'solution' in a vacuum and consequently through pure logic.

So, I have a hard time believing that radically advanced superintelligence (SI) will stomp on us like we do ants. I don't buy the paranoid and apocalyptic arguments that are put forth by so many Transhumanists. If we, with our limited and unaugmented brains can develop an active axiological discipline and develop enforceable contractual-like arrangements between various agents -- regardless of their capacities -- then imagine what superintelligent-supermoral (SI-SM) entities will be capable of.

Where the danger resides in SI-AI, though, is the possibility of badly programmed AI, a runaway Singularity, or a transcending upload.

2002.11.06
TRANSHUMANISM
What kinds of changes can we expect the human species to undergo in the next 25 years? 100 years? Here are some ideas:
- Genetics - continual progress in the germ-line re-engineering/evolution of the human race including the elimination of all genetic diseases (probably around 2030); genetic augmentations (including intelligence, beauty, and physical attributes)
- Specieation of Homo sapiens, a la Darwin's finches
- Androgenization of some post humans
- Cyborgization of Homo sapiens - replacing failing components, adding prosthetics to enhance human performance, adding nanites and other technological innovations into our systems for monitoring and regulation and to supplement existing systems (e.g. white blood cell helpers), etc.
- Re-engineering Homo sapiens for adaptability to specific environments and environmental stressors, including harsh environments and space; miniaturization and de-noising of humans - making ourselves more efficient, more resilient, and less susceptible to unwanted biological/evolutionary vestiges; hyperminiaturization into nanite quantum computers.
- Abandonment of corporealness; uploading into supercomputers and living in unbound VR environments

October 2002

2002.10.30
NEWS
I was honoured when the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence asked me to make a statement. Here's what I had to say about the SIAI's efforts:

Human technological evolution stands at the threshold of revolution; by virtue of this, so too does all of humanity. At some point this century, perhaps in the next fifty years, our machines will start to exhibit accelerating greater-than-human intelligence. The broader ramifications of this ‘singularity’ are as sweeping as they are unfathomable. That we are on the verge of potential radical positive change is unquestionable; that we should not stand idle and wait like bystanders to see if it happens is equally unquestionable. As Alan Kay once said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence is engaged in the most significant foresight and planning activity that I am aware of. While the greater part of academia and the so-called intelligentsia sleepwalks through this critical time in history, SIAI is actively working to not only predict the implications of superintelligent AI, but to proactively manage and guide its development towards desirable directions. Years from now we will be grateful for their efforts, and I sleep easier at night knowing there is at least one group critically and responsibly examining these issues.

2002.10.28
NEW ARTICLE
Have Feminists Forsaken the Future?
Conservative bioethicists are using women's rights as a facade for removing reproductive freedoms. Few women's advocates seem to notice.

2002.10.11
NEW ARTICLE
Transhumanism: The Next Great Threat to Oppression and Inequality
Transhumanism doesn't threaten human dignity, as Wesley J. Smith argues in National Review Online, but is the logical next step for civil liberties.

2002.10.03
A NEW THEORY OF EVERYTHING?
The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) recently published a philosophical theory by Christopher Langan on the nature of reality. Called the Cognitive-Theoretical Model of the Universe (CTMU), Langan boldly posits an astounding 'theory of everything' that brings together complexity, information, design, computational, and observation theories. In his paper he writes: "Inasmuch as science is observational or perceptual in nature, the goal of providing a scientific model and mechanism for the evolution of complex systems requires a supporting theory of reality of which perception itself is the model (or theory-to-universe mapping)." Information, argues Langan, is the "abstract currency of perception" and a theory of everything must explain how "reflexive self-processing" achieves a self-contained description of reality. Langan writes: "Consider the universe as a completely evolved perceptual system, including all of the perceptions that will ultimately comprise it. We cannot know all of those perceptions specifically, but to the extent that they are interactively connected, we can refer to them en masse." In his paper's abstract, he describes his theory as a supertautological reality-theoretic extension of logic: "Uniting the theory of reality with an advanced form of computational language theory, the CTMU describes reality as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language or SCSPL, a reflexive intrinsic language characterized not only by self-reference and recursive self-definition, but full self-configuration and self-execution (reflexive read-write functionality).

Langan is also arguing an Intelligent Design theory, claiming that a scientific model supporting ID is long overdue. This paper has the potential to be quite an attention grabber. Once I have the chance to read the entire paper I'll have more to say...unless of course it makes my brain explode -- talk about your challenging read; Langan has an IQ of 195, which only occurs in one in a billion births!!