Just a little more to the right

The epic journey of the KATRIN main spectrometer.

[via Neatorama]

Links for 2008-05-12

• That Must Be Bob. I Hear His New Hip Squeaking. (New York Times)
  The first time John L. Johnson's artificial hip squeaked, he was bending down to pick up a pine cone in his yard in Thomasville, Ga. Mr. Johnson looked up, expecting to find an animal nearby.
• Our surveillance society goes online (The Guardian)
  The potential for computers to read and understand data places our privacy under threat.
• Five science fiction movies that get the science right (New Scientist)
  So, to give credit where it's due, we have picked out five more sci-fi films that go against the grain, and contain some accurate, plausible science. They may not be completely realistic, but they get it right when it matters most.
• The World's Spookiest Weapons (Popular Science)
  Cyborg animals, psychotropics and flying lasers are just some of the terrifying weapons government labs have cooked up over the years.
• Learning to Breathe Mars Air (Video) (Universe Today)
  Talk about dedication! Volunteers in Russia are testing the ability of humans to breathe argon-enriched air, as part of a research program that simulates a manned trip to Mars.
• Once shunned by academics, Wikipedia now a teaching tool (PhysOrg)
  Wikipedia, the upstart Internet encyclopedia that most universities forbid students to use, has suddenly become a teaching tool for professors.
• Put a Tyrant in Your Tank (Mother Jones)
  You thought ExxonMobil was bad? Meet the new kings of crude.
• Dr. Pinker Lays the Smackdown on Leon Kass (Accelerating Future)
  In The Stupidity of Dignity, published a couple weeks ago at The New Republic, Dr. Pinker sees right through Kass' hyper-theological, far-right, intolerant, paternalistic bioethics.

Syndication strangeness

I recently had 50% of my RSS subscribers suddenly disappear (I use FeedBurner). If for some reason you were knocked off my syndication list, please re-subscribe. And be sure to subscribe to the Sentient Developments podcast.

Links for 2008-05-11

• Is in vitro meat the future? (Times Online)
  Chicken, beef and pork that has never been a living animal could be better for people and the planet. But will it catch on?
• A Real Nuclear Option for the Nominees (Slate)
  Averting "inadvertent" war in two easy steps.
• VIDEO: Chimp Memory Beats Humans' (Nat'l Geographic)
  Watch young chimpanzees beat Japanese college students in a short-term-memory test by a wide margin—raising questions about primate intelligence and evolution.
• You say in Vitro meat, yuck. But eat deep fried meat slurry, corn and chemicals. Called chicken nuggets (Next Big Future)
  Many people have an initial reaction that invitro meat would be yucky and they do not want it. However, people already eat meat slurry in fairly large quantities.
• Boy seized by child welfare to make sure he gets chemotherapy (Globe & Mail)
  Child welfare officials have taken temporary custody of an 11-year-old Ontario boy to ensure he undergoes chemotherapy after his father decided to take him off treatment for his aggressive form of leukemia.
• Trajectories - The Rise of Rockets in the Post-Space-Age Age (NYT)
  TO JUDGE from the news out of NASA these days, you might think we are witnessing the last gasps of the space age.
• David Deutsch Speaks With Aubrey De Grey About Sens (Thoughtware.TV )
  Renowned Quantum Physicist, and father of the Quantum Computer, David Deutsch speaks with Aubrey de Grey about the scientific details, and feasibility of life extension technology SENS.

One year ago on SentDev: When hypergiants go hypernova

It was about a year ago around this time that scientists observed a star that went nova 238 million years ago. It turned out to be a hypernova that made a big badda boom.
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Scientists predicted that something like this could happen, and now they have actually observed it: a hypergiant star went nova.

About 238 million years ago a star in galaxy NGC 1260 ended its life. To say that it was a powerful explosion would be a gross understatement; the amount of explosive energy expelled by supernova SN 2006gy defies human comprehension.

Prior to its dramatic death, the hypergiant star, which was 150 times larger than our own, suffered a sudden and violent collapse. Extremely high levels of gamma radiation from the star's core caused its energy to transform to matter, and the drop in energy in turn caused the star to collapse. This resulted in a dramatic increase in the thermonuclear reactions that was burning within it. All this added energy overpowered the gravitational attraction causing the star to explode.

And explode it did.

Scientists claim that the supernova was over 150 times more powerful than any other observed to date. Physical models suggested that such a supernova was theoretically possible, but astronomers believed that such events were limited to the early Universe when stars tended to be hypergiant.

A hypernova like SN 2006gy can instantly expel about 10X46 joules. This is more energy than our sun produces over a period of 10 billion years.

According to the Astroprof blog,

At discovery, it was already as bright as a Type Ia supernova at its peak. But, instead of getting dimmer, SN 2006gy continued to get brighter for several weeks. The peak brightness seldom comes much more than a week after the explosion. Theoretical models suggest that SN 2006gy gets its light from both the expanding cloud of gas and a shock front as the cloud of gas expands into very dense gasses surrounding the progenitor star. But, the expanding gas cloud is so bright that it requires substantially more radioactive decay to heat it that would be present in almost any other supernova. The best way to get that much radioactive material, according to the model that the theorists have come up with, is for basically the whole core to be thrown out into the supernova, leaving little or nothing behind to form a neutron star or black hole. So much material is thrown out, that the supernova continues to be heated long after the explosion itself. In fact, even months later, SN 2006gy has faded in brightness only to as bright as the peak brightness of a Type Ia supernova!

In fact, astronomers were able to observe the hypernova's peak brightness for an astounding 70 days.

Supernovas can wreak tremendous havoc in its local area, effectively sterilizing the region. These explosions produce highly collimated beams of hard gamma rays that extend outward from the exploding star. Any unfortunate life-bearing planet that should come into contact with those beams would suffer a mass extinction (if not total extinction depending on its proximity to the supernova). Gamma rays would eat up the ozone layer and indirectly cause the onset of an ice age due to the prevalence of NO2 molecules.

Supernovas can shoot out directed beams of gamma rays to a distance of 100 light years, while hypernovas and gamma ray bursts can impact areas as far as 500 light years away.

Thankfully, hypergiant Eta Carinae, which is on the verge of going nova, is well over 7,500 light years away from Earth. We'll be safe when it goes off, but you'll be able to read by its light at night-time.

Is perfect memory a blessing or curse?

This book looks interesting: The Woman Who Can't Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science--A Memoir.

The book's author, Jill Price, has a condition called "hyperthymestic syndrome" -- the continuous, automatic and perfect recollection of the minutiae of every day life. Price claims to be able to remember virtually every detail of her life since the age of 14.

It's apparently the first known diagnosis of this condition (although I once read an account of a Russian woman with perfect memory who had trouble distinguishing present from past -- not sure if this story is true or not, but it brings up an interesting concern).

Transhumanists who are envious of such an ability (myself included) should be aware that there may be trade-offs. According to the book description:

As we learn of Jill's struggles first to realize how unusual her memory is and then to contend, as she grows up, with the unique challenges of not being able to forget -- remembering both the good times and the bad, the joyous and the devastating, in such vivid and insistent detail -- the way her memory works is contrasted to a wealth of discoveries about the workings of normal human memory and normal human forgetting. Intriguing light is shed on the vital role of what's called "motivated forgetting"; as well as theories about childhood amnesia, the loss of memory for the first two to three years of our lives; the emotional content of memories; and the way in which autobiographical memories are normally crafted into an ever-evolving and empowering life story.

Indeed, imagine reliving every argument you ever had with a partner, or all the super-embarrassing moments of your life. And imagine never being able to 'leave' your past life stages such as your teenage years. Would you be able to truly mature and move on? "It is hard to grow up," Price says, "when you are always walking beside yourself."

So, would we want to be able to relive all memories in exquisite detail?

Given the choice I would still say yes.

I find the limitations of human memory infuriating. Not having control over which memories are stored and how they are recalled is an upsetting cognitive limitation. It's as if our subconscious mind is writing our own personal history in spite of us.

Our memories often present a narrative of events that may not be objectively accurate; most of our memories are lost, and those that are retained tend to have the subjective taint of some kind of emotional association (mostly negative). In other words, we can't have complete confidence in how we interpret our memories.

As for the emotional baggage, my feeling is that this concern is overstated. We involuntarily choose to remember the negative over the positive anyway, so I'm not convinced that a whole lot would change. Personally, I'd love to be able to recall some of the more thrilling and meaningful moments of my life with greater clarity.

And the point about not being able to leave our 'past selves' behind, again I have a feeling this is exaggerated. For me, maturation and personal development comes with the accumulation of experiences, not from any sense of distance from our previous selves.

So count me in for when perfect memory finally becomes medically possible.

Links for 2008-05-10

• Where Is My Uterine Replicator (AKA Artificial Womb)? (io9)
  Given the risk - and many months of what can charitably be termed "inconvenience" - what are the alternatives to signing up for nine months of incubator duty? Let's find out.
• Gold Farmers (WorldChanging)
  Gold Farmers are young people who earn their living by playing MMORPG games.
• Iceberg dead ahead! (Globe & Mail)
  Canadian and U.S. spotters are being kept busy this year by hundreds of the frozen chunks in Atlantic shipping lanes.
• Hunger is the best spice (Practical Ethics)
  Ghrelin is a hormone produced in the stomach that appears to stimulate appetite. Chefs want to start using it as a food ingredient.
  
• The Naked Generation: Twitter, Facebook and cultural reaction to transparency (BlogSchmog)
  We write about everything. We capture it in photos and on video, and we share the links with online acquaintances known only by their login handle. It is too early in the social networking phenomenon to declare whether this practice is beneficial or not.

Upgrades to the Toronto Transhumanist website

I've made substantial changes to the Toronto Transhumanist Association website. Contact me if you'd like to learn more about the TTA.

Links for 2008-05-08

• Expelled Beats Sicko (Robin Hanson - Overcoming Bias)
  Metacritic (a review aggregator) gives Michael Moore's latest movie Sicko a 74 out of 100, while the new Expelled gets only a 20. Expelled, however, is a better movie.
• The New Paternalism (ChronicleReview)
  An economist and a legal scholar argue that policy makers should nudge people into making good decisions
• Who should MDs let die in a pandemic? Report offers answers (Boston.com)
  Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.
• Human memory: memory chip could mean we never forget (Telegraph)
  Human memory could work more like Google one day, says Gary Marcus.
• Gotcha? Anglers rejoice as GM trout prove easier to catch (Times Online)
  Now there'll be no excuse for the one that got away. Britain's rivers and lakes are to be restocked with trout carrying genetic modifications that make them easier to catch.

My other blog

I've resurrected my other blog, Moment Slice.

It's where I post anything that doesn't really belong on Sentient Developments -- things like my photos and videos (especially from concerts I've gone to), music and film reviews, and so on. Think of it as my personal scrapbook.

If you're interested, you can subscribe to the feed.

Results of the male pill poll

Here are the results to the question "Are you in favor of a male birth-control pill?" (based on 98 responses):

Yes, it will be a big step forward in male reproductive control: 46%

Yes, we are currently in need of an alternative: 42%

Yes, I can't wait to start using it: 28%

Yes, it will prove important for men's rights: 28%

No, I have no need for it: 5%

No, I am opposed to all forms of birth-control: 4%

No, only women should take birth-control pills: 2%

No, men have no accountability when it comes to reproduction: 1%

No surprises here; I like to think that my readers are an enlightened bunch.

Links for 2008-05-07

• Not Black and White (William Saletan - Slate Magazine)
  Rethinking race and genes.
• The Vision for Space Exploration and the retirement of the Baby Boomers (part 2) (The Space Review)
  Is this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?
• Open the Future: Pondering Fermi
  Cascio's third option.
• Who's your daddy? (globeandmail.com)
  When your son is so positive, so even-tempered, so handsome - so unlike you - there is only one thing to do, David Eddie writes: Grab a home paternity kit.
• Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn't Better (New York Times)
  "If it's so great to be smart," Dr. Kawecki asks, "why have most animals remained dumb?"

Two years ago on SentDev: "Review of Mamoru Oshii's Avalon"

Two years I go wrote a review of Mamoru Oshii's sci-fi flick, Avalon.
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[Warning: this review contains lots of spoilers, but please, don't let that stop you.]

Back in 2001, Japanese anime director Mamoru Oshii went to Poland to direct his first live action movie, Avalon. Oshii, who is primarily known for his work in anime, is the director of the acclaimed 90's science fiction classic, Ghost in the Shell (1995) and the sequel, Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence (2004).

Now, before I get too deep into this review, I just want to make it clear that from a production perspective Avalon is a borderline B movie. The film was created on a limited budget and lacks the polished look and crisp dialogue of most mainstream films, particularly those that come out of Hollywood. The look and feel of Avalon is similar to a made-for-TV movie, although many of the special effects are of a superior quality. Also, the movie was a Japanese-Polish collaboration, which, given its Orwellian setting, gives it a unique authenticity.

That being said, like Ghost in the Shell, Avalon offers considerable food for thought.

Avalon is set in the near future, a world in which fully immersive virtual reality gaming is all the rage. Many players are able to earn a living through gaming, particularly in an ultra-violent war game called 'Avalon'. The game, however, is highly addictive and dangerous, causing some less skilled players to suffer from severe and permanent brain damage. Those who meet this fate are referred to as the 'unreturned.' Because of the risks, the game is outlawed by the state and made illegal.

The main character, Ash, lives a boring, lonely and mundane life in the real world. Her life in the simulation, by contrast, is filled with action, danger, and fulfillment. Where her real life is repetitive, pointless and safe, her virtual life is dynamic, challenging and frightening. Avalon is a world in which people come to value their virtual lives over their real ones. The game-master himself is looked upon in near reverential terms and is unmistakably made to resemble a priest.

In the game itself, Ash is an elite player driven to complete level after level. Her motivation for doing so is not entirely clear, even to her, save for the hope that something greater awaits her in the 'next level.' Eventually, after the introduction of a rival player and the discovery of certain clues, Ash succeeds at finding an elusive hidden level.

As Ash transitions to the mysterious level, the sepia tones that dominated the film's appearance are washed away to reveal a full colour panorama. The sensation is much like in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door in her black and white world and enters a new world filled with dazzling colour. Where Dorothy enters a world of fantasy and whimsy, Ash finds herself undergoing an existential paradigm shift.

Ash's previous reality, one that was draped in drab monotone, is immediately understood to represent a partially realized existence. The overwhelming sepia and lack of colour come to symbolize limitations to human and social capacity – limits of perception, cognition and sensation. Alternately, the new world, with all its visual richness and dynamism, opens up an entirely new set of possibilities for Ash.

Oshii is making a number of interesting analogies here, including a comparison of the past with the future. But more aptly, he is comparing life as it was in communist Europe to modern life in capitalist democracies. It is no accident that Oshii made this movie in Poland using native actors and Polish dialogue.

Prior to her entry into the final level, Ash's world was filled with Orwellian imagery. Bleak and eerie tones dominated the screen along with retro-futurist gadgetry reminiscent of such films as 1984, Brazil and Gattaca. Computer terminals were limited to 3D text displays. Books containing no text whatsoever filled shelves. People gathered at communal soup kitchens to eat gruel. Public transportation was dominated by shaky old-fashioned streetcars. The new world, by contrast – Ash's mysterious new level - was filled with billboards, streets filled with bustling people, modern cars and a rich cultural life (including a vivid performance by an actual orchestra).

The new level, however, also presented its challenges. Ash was instructed to hunt down a 'computer bug' -- a former player who escaped to the advanced level. The 'bug' turns out to be a former teammate of Ash's, Murphy, and when she finally confronts him he declares, “Reality is what we tell ourselves it is!” As instructed, she shoots the defector and transcends to yet another level -- another mode of existence -- but this time to the mythical Avalon itself.

In Oshii's Avalon, the comparison of a totalitarian system with that of a modern democratic one can be understood as a transition of simulations in the postmodernist sense. It is reminiscent of Baudrillard's cultural simulation as constructed by the media and the state itself.

Similarly, according to modal reality theory, any system that appears rational to an observer will be construed as real; what we as observers don't know, however, is what possibilities might lie beyond our own modal reality. In the Avalon war game, by advancing to the final level, Ash is given an opportunity to transcend her original modal reality and enter into one with entirely new possibilities.

The relevancy to transhumanism is also pertinant. Given the potential human augmentation, and given the possibility of our own existential mode shift (i.e. the Singularity and virtual existences), humanity might find itself much like Dorothy and Ash, exiting a world of black and white and entering a world of undiscovered colour.

Ultimately, Avalon is a treatise on how we choose to perceive life and how perception is imposed on us by life itself. The movie raises questions about the authenticity of existence in any type of world and how environmental, social and biological restraint/constraint impacts on a person's sense of their subjective life.

And as always, Mamomru Oshii has tapped directly into the zeitgeist of our times.

New URL for this blog

As some of you may have noticed, the URL for this blog has recently changed:

http://www.sentientdevelopments.com

Please change your bookmarks and links accordingly.

Links for 2008-04-30 [del.icio.us]

• A Non-Half-Assed Response to "One Half a Manifesto" (Accelerating Future - Michael Anissimov )
  Well, it has been seven and a half years since Jaron Lanier's "One Half of a Manifesto", but I thought, why not respond to it right this very second?
• Looking at Tech Sideways (Grinding)
  Here's the thing — and stop me if you've heard this one before — there is no difference between people and the technologies they use.
• Ontario takes lead in global genetic war with cancer (globeandmail)
  Ten countries to join in research project to detect and defeat the mutations that drive 50 different malignancies.
• 'Technology Is at the Center' (Reason Online - Ronald Bailey)
  Entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Thiel on liberty and scientific progress.
• The Data Is In: Brain Implants Can Make You Happy (io9)
  Devices like this Soletra brain implant deliver electrical impulses to a targeted brain region, essentially creating artificial activity in an area that the brain won't activate on its own.

Latest podcast posted: 2008.04.29

The latest episode of the Sentient Developments Podcast is now available. Alternative audio formats are also available.

This episode:

An overview of my recent talk at the Center for Inquiry

Discussing Twitter and Google Apps

Part 3 of my Fermi Paradox talk: Possible solutions and next steps

Why the male birth-control pill is so important for men; sorry, ladies—this pill isn't about you

Sorry ladies, the male birth control pill is not about you

There's been considerable media attention surrounding a recent breakthrough in the development of a male birth-control pill (MBCP).

Fact of the matter is that it's still about 5 to 10 years away. It's taking forever for a men's pill to come to market.

What's taking so long?

Well, the issue is not as simple as it might first appear. Sure, there are still some technical hurdles to overcome, but the delay in developing a MBCP has definite political, economic and even discriminatory aspects to it.

Barriers to entry do in fact exist for the male pill—disempowering barriers that men should most certainly be aware of—including those set up by sexist women who belittle male reproductive accountability, unfair gender biases, self-serving feminists who refuse to relinquish reproductive power, and a risk averse Big Pharma.

And men themselves are also to blame. Far too many guys have gotten comfortable over the idea that birth-control pills are exclusive to women. Most men have not yet realized the implications of having access to a pill of their own.

Consequently (and quite disturbingly), conversations about the male pill have migrated outside the sphere of male interests. Women tend to frame the issue as it pertains to their concerns and their needs, while politicians and pharmaceutical companies neglect the issue, unsure as to what it means to them.

Ultimately, however, this is about men. It's about men gaining fair and equal access to a powerful contraceptive that will finally allow them to have the same control over their reproductive processes as women—an outcome that will greatly benefit male interests.

How the male pill works

An international consortium of physicians recently revealed a formula for "safe, effective and reversible" hormonal contraception for males.

The breakthrough involves progestin, which is found in women's birth-control pills and the male sex hormone testosterone. Progestin helps suppress ovulation when used in an oral contraceptive and it appears to function in the same way for men, suppressing the rate and extent of sperm production. The developers claim that this contraceptive will be as effective as a vasectomy.

Men will have to take the pill for about 2 to 3 months to deplete their sperm. It will take a similar amount of time to restore normal levels of fertility once off the pill.

Bring it

For the most part, both men and women appear to be in favor of the MBCP.

Trouble is, most men and women don't truly understand why it's so important. Particularly women.

Now, I don't mean to begrudge women their reasons for welcoming the male pill. It's all good.

I think it's great that couples will finally be able to share the burden of birth control.

And it will undoubtedly be a welcome alternative for those women who cannot take the pill or other contraceptives (of which there are many).

There's also the issue of accessibility. A 2004 report from the Reproductive Health Technologies Project calls contraceptive availability an "unfinished revolution." Indeed, we need more contraception and more options.

But this is fundamentally an issue of male reproductive control

This is a male issue about male reproduction.

And all that it entails.

The pill will resolve a number problems that men typically face.

It will be dramatically less invasive and severe than a vasectomy—a procedure that can be reversed, but one that's quite involved and not always possible.

The male pill will also prove to be much more reliable than condoms or withdrawal which can have worst-case failure rates of 15 and 27 percent respectively (!!!).

Also, the male pill will have a profound sociological impact similar to what happened after the advent of the female birth-control pill. This will prove to be a seminal event as far as the men's movement is concerned.

In fact, a strong case can be made that the delay in the male pill has been caused by an underdeveloped male social movement. The sense of urgency to develop a MBCP has been quelled by the dissenters and the disconnected. Men need to be aware of those forces that work to prevent the advent of not just the male pill, but a cohesive and powerful men's rights movement itself.

Negative male stereotyping

The possibility of a male pill has caused a number of women to pause and reflect on the implications.

Should a woman believe a guy who says, "Trust me, baby, I'm on the pill."?

Most women would likely say no. It's doubtful that women would put faith in men to stick to a strict schedule of birth-control pill popping. Men are supposed to be untrustworthy and irresponsible, right? After all, they're not the ones who would have to deal with a pregnancy.

Aside from what this says about negative male stereotyping, this complaint neglects three fundamental issues.

First, people must take control over their own reproductive processes and not rely on the other person. This goes for both men and women. The MBCP will finally help men know for certain that they have virtually no chance of impregnating a partner.

Which immediately brings to mind the problem of trust that many men are confronted with today. Should men trust women when they make the same claim? How many times has a man been duped into fatherhood by an opportunistic woman?

Well, according to a Cornell University study, over a million American births each year result from pregnancies which men did not intend. What does this say about female reproductive accountability?

The male pill, will at the very least, help men avoid this risk.

Second, the MBCP strictly deals with contraception. It will do nothing to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The advent of a male pill will not eliminate the need to wear a condom as far as STDs are concerned.

And third, most men do in fact deal with a pregnancy and the introduction of an unexpected child -- be it parental or fiscal responsibilities. There are more accountable single dads who have joint custody of their children than ever before in history.

An unwelcome power shift

As Glenn Sacks has said, "Power is the reward which comes with responsibility."

Indeed, because women have had to bear the burden of contraception, they have gained control over an integral component of human life, namely reproduction. The MBCP threatens to wrest that control from women to men.

Quite understandably, some feminists are concerned about this possibility.

And, I'm sorry to say, that's too bad.

Men are currently at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to the choice of reproduction -- but this is now set to change.

As an example, according to the 2004 National Scruples and Lies Survey (which polled 5,000 women in the United Kingdom), 42% of women claimed they would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, regardless of the wishes of their partners.

Wow.

Other evidence suggests that over 10% of children turn out not to be the offspring of the expected father when DNA tests are done, suggesting that many men obliviously help in the raising of children who are not actually theirs.

This is no laughing matter. Child support rates are increasing, with some fathers giving their ex's as much as 15 to 25% of their take home pay per child. And it's widely known that fathers are second class citizens in the courts. For example, in some U.S. states a father cannot present DNA evidence to disprove paternity.

For those men who truly don't want to have children—something that is completely within their rights—the MBCP will help them achieve that level of control.

And again, female claims that this will allow men to forever shirk their paternal responsibilities and live in perpetual adolescence are not just gross generalizations, but sexist statements of the highest order.

The Man is holding men down

Quite surprisingly, Big Pharma has dragged their feet in developing the MBCP. Despite over 20 years of research, they claim that there's little money to be made.

In fact, that's one of the main reasons that the pharmaceutical firms Bayer and Organon abandoned their male pill programs last year.

This is because men are not demanding it

Men are clearly not showing Big Pharma that they want a male pill.

Research shows that most males are not ready for personal birth control. A recent MSN-Zogby poll revealed that only 14% of Americans would definitely take it or insist that their partner take it. And tellingly, the study indicated that women are slightly more excited about the prospect than men.

While at the same time other studies show that men do in fact want alternative contraception options.

What's going on here, guys?

Perhaps confusion has something to do with it. There's a very underdeveloped sense of a male collective consciousness. It appears that men, for the most part, don't yet realize the importance of reproductive control—something women have, for obvious reasons, been very aware of for quite some time now.

Some men, for example, dismiss the male pill on account of their fear that it would transgress their masculinity.

This is exactly the mentality that has to be abandoned and replaced by some more forward thinking ideas that will work help equalize not just reproductive options, but other gender issues that set men at a disadvantage or limit biological potential.

Times they are a changin'

Perhaps I'm understating the fact that 14% of men are ready to use the pill. That's a significant number unto itself. Maybe it's a positive sign that attitudes are changing and that broader acceptance is on its way.

In all likelihood, demand will probably increase once the pill is finally made available. It will become real for men once it becomes a real option.

And hopefully it will wake men up to the possibilities. Issues of gender, sexuality and reproduction are not just women's issues. They're a vital element of the collective human condition.

Nick Bostrom: "Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing."

Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom desperately hopes that we never find signs of extraterrestrial life -- advanced or otherwise.

Why?

Because he understands the Fermi Paradox.

Or more accurately, he understands the implications of the Fermi Paradox and The Great Silence.

Because the Galaxy appears uncolonized and unperturbed by intelligent life, and because there has been ample time and motive for this to happen, we have to conclude that some kind of filter is in place that prevents life from arriving at this advanced phase.

In his recent article for Technology Review, Bostrom writes:

...the evolutionary path to life-forms capable of space colonization leads through a "Great Filter," which can be thought of as a probability barrier...The filter consists of one or more evolutionary transitions or steps that must be traversed at great odds in order for an Earth-like planet to produce a civilization capable of exploring distant solar systems. You start with billions and billions of potential germination points for life, and you end up with a sum total of zero extraterrestrial civilizations that we can observe. The Great Filter must therefore be sufficiently powerful--which is to say, passing the critical points must be sufficiently improbable--that even with many billions of rolls of the dice, one ends up with nothing: no aliens, no spacecraft, no signals. At least, none that we can detect in our neck of the woods.

Now, just where might this Great Filter be located? There are two possibilities: It might be behind us, somewhere in our distant past. Or it might be ahead of us, somewhere in the decades, centuries, or millennia to come.

We are hoping that the filter resides in our past, that we have already overcome highly improbable odds.

More disturbingly, however, it's likely that the Great Filter still awaits us in the future. There's some kind technologically instigated event that exists out there -- and no species can avoid it.

Again, Bostrom writes:

Throughout history, great civilizations on Earth have imploded--the Roman Empire, the Mayan civilization that once flourished in Central America, and many others. However, the kind of societal collapse that merely delays the eventual emergence of a space-colonizing civilization by a few hundred or a few thousand years would not explain why no such civilization has visited us from another planet. A thousand years may seem a long time to an individual, but in this context it's a sneeze. There are probably planets that are billions of years older than Earth. Any intelligent species on those planets would have had ample time to recover from repeated social or ecological collapses. Even if they failed a thousand times before they succeeded, they still could have arrived here hundreds of millions of years ago.

The Great Filter, then, would have to be something more dramatic than run-of-the mill societal collapse: it would have to be a terminal global cataclysm, an existential catastrophe. An existential risk is one that threatens to annihilate intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential for future development. In our own case, we can identify a number of potential existential risks: a nuclear war fought with arms stockpiles much larger than today's (perhaps resulting from future arms races); a genetically engineered superbug; environmental disaster; an asteroid impact; wars or terrorist acts committed with powerful future weapons; super­intelligent general artificial intelligence with destructive goals; or high-energy physics experiments. These are just some of the existential risks that have been discussed in the literature, and considering that many of these have been proposed only in recent decades, it is plausible to assume that there are further existential risks we have not yet thought of.

Bostrom, who is the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, concludes his article by making a case for increased foresight and vigorous inquiry into potential risks.

But even so, Bostrom asks, what makes us think we'd be immune to such a powerful filter?

Which is why, when he looks up at the stars, he is thankful that we have yet to see any signs of extraterrestrial life.

Read the entire article, "Where are They?"

Links for 2008-04-26 [del.icio.us]

• Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats (New York Times)
  When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.
• Nanotechnology: Silver tongues (Economist)
  Regulators are looking more closely at nanotechnology claims.
• The Prospects for Neuro-Exceptionalism: Transparent Lies, Naked Minds (bioethics.net )
  The conviction that neuroscience and neurotechnology pose new ethical challenges, particularly concerning privacy, appears to rest on the belief that they yield a new, more intimate or personal kind of information.
  
• Researchers Infiltrate and 'Pollute' Storm Botnet - Desktop Security News Analysis (Dark Reading)
  European botnet experts devise a method that disrupts stubborn peer-to-peer botnets like Storm...
• Till Malfunction Do Us Part (The New Atlantis)
  Predictions of Robotic Intimacy.
• The 25 potential threats to UK (Telegraph)
  These are the 25 technological advances and environmental changes that could pose a potential threat to Britain, according to scientists.

One year ago on SentDev: Is the world ready for cyborg athletes?

It was a year ago around this time that disabled sprinter Oscar Pistorius was fighting for his chance to compete at the 2008 Olympics. It was a battle that he officially lost on January 14, 2008 when the IAAF ruled him ineligible for competitions conducted under the IAAF rules.

Back in November 2007, German professor Gert-Peter Brueggemann determined that Pistorius's limbs used 25% less energy than able-bodied runners to run at the same speed, and that they led to less vertical motion combined with 30% less mechanical work for lifting the body.

Do the prosthetic legs give Pistorius an advantage over able-bodied runners?

According to this research, quite obviously yes.

Is the IAAF right to prevent him from competing against able-bodied runners?

That's a more difficult question to answer -- one I tackled in my article from a year ago, "Is the world ready for cyborg athletes?":
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Look out professional athletes, here come the cyborgs -- and they're aiming for the Olympics.

Double amputee Oscar Pistorius, a sprinter who uses a pair of carbon fiber prosthetic limbs, is hoping to run the 400 meter dash at the next Olympics. And he has the numbers to prove that he can compete; Pistorius has run the 400 meter dash in 46.56 seconds and the 100 meters in an impressive 10.91 seconds.

But speed is not his problem. As it turns out, his prosthetic limbs have become a matter of great contention. Consequently, Pistorius, or 'Blade Runner' as he's called, has more to contend with than just his disability.

Technical Aid?

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) recently concluded that Pistorius's artificial legs give him a decided advantage over athletes who run with naturally endowed legs. He is using what they have termed a "technical aid." Subsequently, Pistorius is not eligible to compete at the 2008 Olympics should he qualify.

Pistorius sees this as a form of discrimination. He argues that his sprinting talents are latent and the result of his hard work and dedication to the sport. "There's a fear of change," he says.

That said, the IAAF has a point. Pistorius's artificial legs have been dubbed 'cheetahs' -- and not by accident. They resemble blades more than feet, allowing Pistorius to take long strides as he springs from step to step. Some claim that his strides are as long as three to four meters. This is no attempt to mimic normal human running; it's a new form of locomotion altogether.

Pistorius and his team argue that this is nonsense, that the blades couldn't possibly offer such an advantage.

The end of normal human functioning in sports

This issue is a snap-shot into the future of sports. Governing bodies will have much more to contend with than just performance enhancing drugs. Technological endowments, particularly those that are cybernetic in nature, are poised to upset the apple cart that is professional sports.

The Pistorius issue is a case in point. The IAAF was compelled to created a new rule stating that "the use of any technical device that incorporates, springs, wheels, etc is forbidden." They argue that these endowments change the nature and spirit of sporting events to an unacceptable degree. This is undoubtedly a precursor to future rulings that may ban genetic modifications, cognitive enhancements, and cybernetic implants.

Looking at it from another perspective, established sports like the 100 meter dash assume a specific morphology, namely that of a normal functioning human. Athletes can use subtle methods to improve their performance, whether they be expertly designed running shoes or highly refined techniques.

But there is something inherently unsatisfactory about all of this. A certain arbitrariness exists when it comes to determining which technologies are acceptable and which are not. Moreover, given the strong likelihood that advanced prosthetics will greatly surpass what is natural, at what point do we concede defeat and allow 'cyborgs' to compete alongside 'naturals?' Are groups like the IAAF discriminatory by insisting that para-athletes conform to 'normal' human morphology?

And given the 'arms race' nature of competition, will these positional advantages cause athletes to do something as seemingly radical as having their healthy natural limbs replaced by artificial ones? Is it self-mutilation when you're getting a better limb?

New capacities, new sports

The advent and application of cybernetic technologies will redefine what has typically been regarded as normal human functioning. Future humans, as they adopt novel sensory and physical endowments, will establish new modes of living and being. This will in turn normalize within society and become the dynamic norm.

The long term impact of enhancement in sports, however, is still unclear. There may be schisms within specific sports causing the emergence of rival leagues. There may be leagues for enhanced athletes and those for 'naturals.' Over time, however, the naturals will increasingly appear anachronistic.

Imagine a hockey team that communicates techlepathically, or basketball players with improved peripheral vision. There could be ambidextrous switch pitchers and skeet shooters with enhanced visual fields.

And new capacities will mean new sports altogether.

As for Pistorius and his particular dilemma, I agree with the IAAF. He should not compete with normal humans. Instead, he should continue to race against other para-athletes and keep pushing the envelope of what is physically possible.

Eventually, performances by cyborgs will surpass those of unaugmented humans. It's the disabled, after all, who will inherit the earth.

Here's a video clip of Pistorius in action: