Should Transhumanists Talk in Detail About the Futures They Want? Monday, Sep 24 2007
transhumanism 10:00 am
For instance, it’s one thing to say that I want a radically extended lifespan, but another thing to say that I also want to never feel pain or sadness, or is it acceptable to say I want to become someone that can justifiably say the following to my present self?
“There is a beauty and joy here that you cannot fathom. It feels so good that if the sensation were translated into tears of gratitude, rivers would overflow.
I reach in vain for words to convey to you what it all amounts to… It’s like a rain of the most wonderful feeling, where every raindrop has its own unique and indescribable meaning – or rather it has a scent or essence that evokes a whole world… And each such evoked world is subtler, richer, deeper, more multidimensional than the sum total of what you have experienced in your entire life.”
Wow! Could there exist a being where each moment of its experience is richer in sensations, perceptions, and thoughts that an entire human life? I see no reason why not, but should I shut up and be quiet, so that certain elements of the mainstream don’t point at me and say “lunatic!” (Although I must admit this has never actually happened, at least not that I remember. But sometimes it’s what people don’t say that speaks volumes…)
My first, and traditional inclination is to say “No! I can imagine a universe filled with minds and beings of an octillion different varieties, each communicating great works of art and science more voluminous in their complexity and subtlety than a thousand human civilizations, and I will one day become such a being, if I live long enough!” But perhaps it sounds quite silly to those unfamiliar with the reasoning behind such a forthright statement.
The question I’m trying to ask is, how unrestrained should we be? What is the best way of wholeheartedly embracing inspiration of future possibilities, while avoiding intellectual alienation at the hands of our most ruthless critics?
Is it best to discuss…
1. the “Longevity Dividend”radical life extension”, or “technological immortality”?
2. “rapid prototyping machines”, “home fabbers”, or “Santa machines”?
3. cochlear implants, muscle implants, or brain implants?
4. curing poverty, curing disease, or curing ignorance and unhappiness?
I tend to gravitate towards the latter choices, because I believe technologies in their nascent stages today will enable these achievements when they are mature. But is this so wise?
September 24th, 2007 at 10:40 am
I tend to gravitate towards the latter choices, because I believe technologies in their nascent stages today will enable these achievements when they are mature. But is this so wise?
Probably not. I’d err towards the second of each of the three choices you present, i.e. radical life extension, home fabbers, muscle implants, and curing disease. To me, it seems as though the latter choices are inexact, cloaked in metaphor and rhetoric, and risk alienating - well - pretty much everyone, while cochlear implants and “rapid prototyping machines” are unlikely to attract much interest.
September 24th, 2007 at 10:45 am
I don’t think any of those options are optimal. I think it’s best to remember who your audience is and tailor the message — that is, “technology can and will improve your lives and your self” — to the awareness and receptiveness of the crowd.
There’s a reason that this is one of my more-popular pieces, despite the willfully present inaccuracies: “How Much Would It Cost To Become Transhuman?“
September 24th, 2007 at 10:56 am
I think the message needs to be tailored to the expected audience.
Kurzweil is good at this; he starts at the beginning, because before you can even start to think about all the cool possibilities, you need to know enough of the basics to parse the more far-fetched-sounding stuff and see how it’s just an extension of not so implausible progress.
September 24th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Precisely: off-the-shelf > plausible extrapolation > further extrapolation > the “far out” stuff. And this latter may be here within 25 yrs **or less** if only we’ll get with program(s)…said the impatient 49.5 yr-old!!
September 24th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Good question. Perhaps it’s best to talk about the far-out possibilities, but in a clinical and abstract way only, hoping to emphasize this isn’t just stuff people made up for emotional kicks. It’s less fun to read that way, though.
September 24th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Another vote for tailoring the message to the audience (and for having different individuals presenting different messages).
The Longevity Dividend is a simple message that can reach a wide audience, and that can move people who would simply be turned off by more extreme scenarios. In addition, it translates more readily into immediate policy questions.
On the other hand, technological immortality is a reasonable and achievable goal, and there’s value in spending time now thinking about how we get there.
You’re right that some of the more extreme scenarios provide powerful fodder to our critics. I think that part of the solution to that problem involves having different spokespeople for different issues. Whatever he may believe in public, it’s probably best that Aubrey de Grey not spend a lot of time speaking publicly about mind uploading or computronium or smart fog. His message is strongest and most compelling when it’s undiluted by association with other, more controversial ideas.
Your role, on the other hand…
September 24th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
This is a very useful kind of thing to be talking about. Good on you, Michael. Transhumanists need to spend more time thinking about how to effectively spread transhumanism. Memes only spread well when there’s a group of people racking their brains trying to work out how to spread them!
As to the specifics of this problem, I find myself torn. To start with, I think we should all realize that its not just about how many people take transhumanism seriously, but about who those people are. There is nothing that one can say that will play well with everyone, so one has to be picky about who one is aiming at.
If you keep things fairly technical and keep your predictions fairly short-term, 95% of the audience will switch off because technical stuff is boring and near term predictions are just slightly better versions of the gadgets that people already have. If you start talking about the fact that these “technical” advances can really change people’s lives, and start predicting what might happen in 50 years time, 95% of people will switch off because their “meme-spam” filters will put you in the same category as the lunatic fringe. You will also get a few smart-alecs who will try to ridicule you.
The key question in both of these scenarios is: can we predict who the remaining 5% will be?
What drew me to transhumanism? I liked the idea of working on science that will allow you to treat constants of human existence (like death, sadness and hatred) as problems to be solved, rather than miseries to escape from. So my guess would be that the optimum lies closer to the extreme end. What drew you to transhumanism?
September 24th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
What about for talking on my blog where the audience is extremely mixed and I don’t have much of a clue of its makeup? What then?
I think the dialogue among transhumanists is just as important as the dialogue between transhumanists and the public, although trying to have both at the same time here is difficult for me to reconcile internally.
I want my niche to be somewhat radical but not so much that it blows up in my face.
September 24th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Michael: If I may — given your readership is somewhat diverse, throwing a bone to the given “[blank]ians” from time to time and then emphasizing what your stances are… is a good approach.
Never mitigate yourself in hopes of attaining readership! Even if people like me object, honesty gets more pull than obsequiousness. Even if it isn’t as fun of a word.
September 24th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Well-said, IConrad!
September 25th, 2007 at 9:48 am
“Never mitigate yourself in hopes of attaining readership! Even if people like me object, honesty gets more pull than obsequiousness. Even if it isn’t as fun of a word.”
Heh. I actually agree with you on this.
“This is a very useful kind of thing to be talking about. Good on you, Michael. Transhumanists need to spend more time thinking about how to effectively spread transhumanism.”
If spreading transhumanism becomes the goal of transhumanism, the meme collapses into an infinite recursion. We’ve already spent quite a bit of effort on spreading transhumanism; the recent Singularity conference made the front page of the SF Chronicle.
“If you keep things fairly technical and keep your predictions fairly short-term, 95% of the audience will switch off because technical stuff is boring and near term predictions are just slightly better versions of the gadgets that people already have.”
There are a lot more SL1 poeple than SL3, and to them, near-term predictions about fancier gadgets *are* exciting. Wired has something like half a million paying subscribers.
September 25th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Here’s a low-risk “benign Trojan horse” tactic for spreading transhumanism:
Toss a link to the Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, without context or elucidation.
Unreceptive readers might get bored before realizing what the fable’s about, while those who read far enough might be powerfully affected by coming to that realization on their own. At least I was.
September 25th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
It seems that technological health-extension is a subject that most people would be interested in and could accept since this is an observable fact in historical science. That being said, most people would become disinterested if they knew that this progress may not occur in their own lifetime. I am disturbed that the general population cannot envision, or are concerned about humanity, beyond their own life.
September 25th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
You’d be surprised. People can get quite attached to their mortality.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:40 am
@# Nick Tarleton: “People can get quite attached to their mortality.” - indeed they can! I’m playing a little game with myself at the moment: I tell totally random people that scientists are working on a cure for death, and look at their reaction. Most people start by objecting - either on the “population explosion” problem, or with some kind of deathist-values statement. There is not one person whose first reaction was “that is incredible, I am so happy!”
@tom McCabe: “the meme collapses into an infinite recursion” - indeed, one has to be careful of this. Of course this raises the issue that memes whose only goal is to spread themselves (like religion) will always have an advantage over useful memes like science or Transhumanism. If the only goal of a meme is to spread, then spread it will, usually at the expense of memes which have goals other than spreading!
September 28th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
“What about for talking on my blog where the audience is extremely mixed and I don’t have much of a clue of its makeup? What then?”
In the case of your blog, it’s mostly your audience that finds you and not the other way around, so it’s up to you to decide who you want to appeal to. If you get extremely technical and/or talk about the most futuristic stuff, the people who stick around will probably be already-convinced transhumanists.
If you stick mostly to accessible stuff, more newbies will probably stick around.
My favorite approach is to mix everything together and hope for cross-pollination; that way, people who first were attracted to the basic stuff can discover the more ‘advanced’ stuff.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
I disagree with my previous post: allegory only works as a supplement to reason.