The Transhumanist Vision
Technology can be used to slice through certain social and humanitarian problems like a hot knife through butter. Read about oral rehydration salts. This cheap solution eliminates the life-threatening dehydrating effects of diarrhea when water alone isn't enough. You can talk about corruption in African governments all day long, but when humanitarian agencies actually deliver this physical substance to people suffering from diarrhea, it is life-saving.
Oral rehydration salts are being deployed now. What about the near future? Everyone in Africa needs a self-replication capable fabber based something like the RepRap project. This could be done in five years, if humanitarian organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put a tiny portion of their budget towards realizing it. But I'm not seeing it. Self-replicating factories are the path to dirt cheap products for everyone, not just the developing countries but the developed countries as well. Leaders are lacking the vision to push towards solutions that automagnify even when we stop writing the checks.
In the longer-term future, we need to think about reprogramming human motivations themselves. Imagine a drug or brain implant that, when administered, causes people to enjoy cooperation more and work harder to resolve conflict, without any negative side effects whatsoever. (Or imagine some other cognitive modification agent, if cooperation and resolving conflict bothers you.) MDMA is already part of the way there, albeit with unwanted side effects. These side effects don't fundamentally reflect any "hubris mechanism" on the part of the universe, but merely our insufficiently advanced science and technology. If politicians would realize that technology actually has the potential to improve human nature for the better, they would invest billions in psychopharmacology and cybernetics. This is not happening today, but it's only a matter of time. I want to see it happen sooner rather than later.
Our efforts to hypnotize ourselves into being better people can only go so far. Every time a new baby is born, he or she reflects our 100,000 year old genome. It's like starting from scratch all over again, with every generation. Why can't we take permanent steps forward, by tweaking the genetics of babies before they are even born? It's not eugenics, because it's not based on arranged marriage, and no one has to be oppressed to make it happen. It can be entirely voluntary. Even if germline genetic engineering is ruled unethical, gene therapy will allow deep modifications to adults who are legally able to make their own decisions. If gene therapy doesn't work, there will be implants... and I could keep going, listing numerous alternative paths.
That's the problem with naysayers to the transhumanist vision: if one particular path is too "radical" or culturally objectionable for the mainstream to accept, then it will be pursued in niche environments, and if the results are beneficial, the mainstream opinion will change quickly. We have no reason to assume that evolution placed humanity at a global optima. Experimentation and intervention will allow us to seek out morphological configurations that even the greatest skeptic will see as obviously beneficial. For every skeptic Y, there is a biological modification to the body or brain X that they would clamor for. This will help get the wheels greased and turning for large-scale self-directed modification of the human species as a whole.
This is just a matter of time. The question is "when", not "if". Some transhumanists would like to think that biological self-modification could be delayed indefinitely or outlawed globally, but I don't think this is very realistic. Maybe they are just looking for an excuse to acquire supporters.
October 31st, 2007 - 06:12
Let’s get this right. In your third paragraph you appear to be advocating that politicians should invest (presumably taxpayers’) money to develop technology that would make people (taxpayers?) more compliant. And if that’s not enough, you give Ecstasy as an example of what you’ve got in mind!
If such a drug or implant was developed, would using it be voluntary or compulsory? If the former, how likely is it that the people you’d like to take it actually would? If compulsory, just where would Transhumanism stop in its quest for a better tomorrow?
But those practical considerations aside, in your last posting you said, “I hope that we wise up in our interactions with the press and the public.” Try floating this idea with the public or press and see what reaction you get.
October 31st, 2007 - 06:57
At the risk of being the person that is always pointing out the negatives, I think that you don’t really understand how politicians think.
Additionally, evolution is all about passing on one’s genes – and nothing more. Evolution has nothing to do with being ‘better’ or happier or smarter or anything – you reproduce, you win, you don’t, then you fail. That’s it. Being an evolutionary success is not often a win for the individual (which is the primary focus of most transhumanist ideals, even if they are presented in lofty ‘this is good for us all’ language. It’s all ‘live longer, be smarter, etc’ individual benefits that I see getting pushed forward).
In a bigger picture viewpoint, I don’t believe that attempting to change ‘negative’ human motivations is the right approach to the problem. The problem is not the motivations, it’s the results that those motivations produce.
We all know that if someone could see that a buck was to be made from giving ‘Africans’ (or any other of the usual targets of white guilt) RepRaps, then there would be a literal stampede to corner the market. The real issue here is not changing ourselves, it’s figuring out how to introduce rapid fabrication without destroying a large chunk of the world’s economy in the process. If you think that the fight that the MPAA/RIAA is kicking up over unauthorised use is entertaining, just wait until everyone everywhere can make whatever they like for the price of the raw materials – that’s the kind of thing that starts wars. At the moment, the people who have the money and ability to make this happen are only seeing stick and no carrot – I don’t blame them for their lack of interest.
October 31st, 2007 - 07:22
Well, I agree on some points and need more explanations on others : who is the we ? Well I’d better like you speak for yourself and not for others because I’m not sure you know exactly what they have in mind. Moreover I disallow you to speak in my name using a “we” that could be understood as me being inside. There is more under these semantics than the eye can see.
Then I agree with you that each path should be explored including “augmented human”.
October 31st, 2007 - 10:27
Charles,
Better at cooperating and solving conflict, not “more compliant”. Ecstasy is part of the way there, yes. Philosophers Mark Walker and David Pearce have argued this as well.
Voluntary obviously.
For each person Y there is some set of cognitive modifications X they would see as desirable. The better-cooperation-pill was just one possible X.
It’s probably just the particular X I picked that bothers you. If I said “made people better at surfing the Internet”, maybe you’d be more excited.
Stuart,
I know what “evolution” means specifically. I’m using it here in a wider, non-technical sense to mean “improvements”.
Yes, the problem is the motivations. When people are motivated to kill or do each other wrong then the motivations are at fault.
Helping developing countries is not “white guilt”. I suggest you go back to Stormfront if you think so.
Swimmer,
The “we” is me, you, and everyone you know. :)
October 31st, 2007 - 16:33
Can I quote this far and wide?
Michael Anissimov said:
*In the longer-term future, we need to think about reprogramming human motivations themselves. Imagine a drug or brain implant that, when administered, causes people to enjoy cooperation more and work harder to resolve conflict, without any negative side effects whatsoever. (Or imagine some other cognitive modification agent, if cooperation and resolving conflict bothers you.) MDMA is already part of the way there, albeit with unwanted side effects. These side effects don’t fundamentally reflect any “hubris mechanism†on the part of the universe, but merely our insufficiently advanced science and technology. If politicians would realize that technology actually has the potential to improve human nature for the better, they would invest billions in psychopharmacology and cybernetics. This is not happening today, but it’s only a matter of time. I want to see it happen sooner rather than later.*
——-
I hate to say it, but this is just beautiful ammunition for anyone seeking to shut down Transhumanism as a whole. In fact I think you may have just put your finger on the hottest button for a “clash of civilizations” in the next part of this new century. Namely – who has the right to modify your mind? Will we be subject to an ever increasing coercion from employers and other leaders to continue dosing ourselves with the latest mind-altering drugs? That’s certainly what is building up now, and you actually seem to be in favor of it!
Suddenly I think Dale Carrico has the right of it here – we need vastly greater democratization, protection of human rights, and subscription to the principles of self-derterminism and self-actualization before we even *think* of unleashing more potential mind-altering and mind-controlling technologies into the world. Simply creating the tech is not going to be enough. Without freedom of thought, some well-meaning program of performance enhancement will end up destroying an entire generation of creative souls.
October 31st, 2007 - 17:22
Go ahead!
October 31st, 2007 - 19:10
My singularity is not about mind control.
November 1st, 2007 - 01:00
Ananda
You do realize that your behavior is modified all the time and has been for a while. It is called marketing, fashion and consumerism. Have you really needed all of things that you have bought ?
How much self-actualization do most people have ? How much do they really want ?
How much real power gets exercised by individuals via democracy ?
You don’t need drugs to do the mind altering.
there is addiction and modification in TV and the internet.
the right phrasing and the right matching of ads.
November 1st, 2007 - 02:53
The problem is in even thinking that you (i.e. Transhumanists) should modify anyone else’s mind or behavior.
That is a desire for control over others… That’s tyranny, not freedom. It is not a healthy desire.
Who defines “good” behavior or “good” mental health, anyway? The same people who keep moving the goalposts of AI? The same people who can’t define intelligence? …or is it the same people who think and believe that the rest of us have no goals or purpose in life?
Does a political liberal make that decision for all of the rest of us? Maybe Pat Robertson? Putin? Perhaps a Taoist? No matter who makes that decision, the rest of us become someone else’s happy little automatons. (The house elves in Harry Potter come to mind…)
People with medical conditions should be helped. The rest of us? For a variety of reasons, maybe our definition of “Good Behavior” is quite different than your own. Personally, under someone else’s definition, I’d really miss my occasional JD and Coke. But then,with the proper modification, I wouldn’t miss it at all, would I?
At that point, the point of deciding for others what defines “good” behavior and “good” mental health, you start deciding who mates and who doesn’t. You start deciding who travels where and when. You decide where they live and what they do for relaxation and
pleasure and as an avocation.
You folks are beginning to frighten me, here…and – wait for it – I’m really on your side.
…and the greater number of six billion people would have some problems accepting the least of that message. If the latter means that Transhumanism gets re-built and re-packaged from the ground up, or even completely marginalised because they don’t wake up and smell the coffee, that works, too.
Mind control cults should be marginalised.
The future of Transhumanism is up to you, folks. Marginalisationas a fringe cult, or leading the world into a bright and wonderful future…for all of us. I’ll give ya a hint. The latter narrative sells much better than the former.
November 1st, 2007 - 06:47
Actually ensuring that the use of cognitive modification is voluntary is somewhat harder than saying “voluntary, obviously”.
Brian, that could mean forcible drugging isn’t a problem, or it could mean marketing, fashion and consumerism are problems. Or, most likely, it could mean nothing because screwing with someone’s brain directly is substantially more intrusive than advertising to them.
Warren, well said.
November 1st, 2007 - 08:55
Right now transhumanists are not manipulating anyone’s mind. I am just stating my opinion and trying to under myself and the world with minimal bias and to predict with minimal bias so that I get accurate results. On the issue of control, I am not saying that there should be more of it or less of it. I am just saying how much I think there is already and the trend. I do not control those things. I am just observing them.
I am also stating that paranoia about drugs used to control minds would require minds that needed to be controlled.
If the populace is effectly (not everyone but enough of a percentage) pursuaded, bought into the system or is apathetic then there is no need to exert further control.
Observer: your child seems well behaved, although he occasionally asks for the keys to the car which you don’t give him
Unnecessary fear: I am ignoring the fact that the child has an ineffective impulse to get control of the car. I think you will use drugs to control that behavior
Observer: that seems unnecessary when the child is already listening and behaving and unable or unwilling to cause a lot of real trouble. I can just tell him not to (with marketing , advertising and regular communiation) and the child does it. The child is already under control.
Unnecessary fear: Are you promoting mind control, are you joining a cult.
Observer: If the behavior of the child is good for the child, the parent and society then what is the better situation that is being prevented from being realized ?
Marketing and advertising is not a problem: Pretty much everyone accepts it (and those that don’t can make the effort to reject most of it). There is a degree of opt-in. Most people end up being somewhat more satisfied making last minute purchases at the register, having organized store shelves so what they tend to want is at eye level. This is separate from transhumanism to an extent as it is a pre-existing condition, but it is an observation of current reality which seems to be misunderstood.
People may get drug implants, it is being used for some diabetes and heart treatments. But it is a choice. In most places there is no need to use it for dark purposes. But the world is a big place and there could some dictator somewhere who would try to use it at some point. It is an unsophisticated tyrant who would use such heavy handed methods. You could have a two party system where there is some illusion of real choices and control, but where 98% of incumbants get re-elected and campaign dollars, spin and other means are used for a skewed political system. There would also be a separate open financial system where anyone can become very successful but which also is not harmful to incumbants (those who are already rich). People still can decide there own behavior with wide latitude because it does not matter for the most part and everyone does not want anyone else to go outsides the bonnds of behavior anyway. A system of mutually aligned interests with a lot of mutual benefits. So if we are smart enough and lucky enough to arrive at a mostly win-win system, then why throw it out of whack with forced mind control ?
I say there is no motive for that crime. There could be the means and opportunity but there is no motive.
November 1st, 2007 - 09:23
a couple of errors from rapid typing.
Trying to understand myself (not under myself)
If the populace is effectively not effectly.
outside the bounds of behavior (not bonnds)
==
Further clarification: I disagree with Michael on the need for drug or other control beyond that which already exists. There is already the usage of drugs for mood behavior control. Those with mental illness, criminals etc… I believe if we look at root causes within the environment that this level of usage can be reduced.
There is an interesting analysis of the effect that leaded gasoline had on increased violent crime rates. I believe that deeper analysis will determine more about how those with deeply abbarent behavior develop. I believe it is in society’s interest to prevent the development of such defects. In business production, it is total quality management. Drugging up a defective person down the line is a more costly patching of the error.
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/10/leaded-gasoline-linked-to-increased.html
So if the abarrent behaviors do not develop because we prevent the brain damage, then there would be no need for drugs to control those people.
What is the opposite to what I am proposing. No no we must allow brain damage to continue, there must be free will and free development for psychopaths.
For the 96-98% of citizenry who are law abiding and productive and benefiting from a smoothly running society don’t we want that to carry on ? What is broken that needs to be fixed for them/us ?
November 1st, 2007 - 09:30
Brian:
As Nick pointed out, there is a massive difference between engaging in trickery or persuasion through communication, and directly modifying someone’s thoughts, motivations and emotions through physical or chemical means.
This is not paranoia, and it’s not a small question. There are tens of millions of people, including millions of schoolchildren, who are already taking performance enhancing drugs on a daily basis. Many of them (especially the children) have been maneuvered into doing so in ways that I would hardly call free, informed choice. How is this happening? Every few years another variety of human behavior or emotion gets re-labeled as a mental disorder.
So it *can* happen, *is* happening already, and coercion doesn’t necessarily require a single, visible dictator.
November 1st, 2007 - 09:34
And to respond to your latest:
Most of our current mind-altering drugs (where they get around to studying them anyway – these things are always a few years or decades behind)don’t prevent brain damage, or fix chemical imbalances or nutritional deficiencies.
They cause them.
November 1st, 2007 - 09:35
I am observing the choices that society has already made and which the majority of people agree with.
There is amnio and screening for downs syndrome.
http://www.womens-health.co.uk/downs.asp
There is justification for pre-screening
http://mdm.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/16/1/45
There is the practice of chemical castration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_castration
If we can detect and prevent schizophrenia why wouldn’t we. It is deemed necessary to treat it now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Treatment_and_services
If the root causes of excessive violence and agression can be found, then it seems that there would be signicant agreement for a lot of those cases. But I trust that the legal and medical health and ethics processes can easily sort out clear cases of need and lack of need. That will leave a small number of controversial cases, which are less impactful to overall society because of the small numbers. Since I think we need a societal system able to withstand imperfection (robust and spread out in space), then I do not care how those cases are decided.
http://www.drkathyseifert.com/about.html
November 1st, 2007 - 11:56
Ananda
I agree that the preferential solutions should not be more drugs to address clearly severely abarrent behavior and conditions. If the study I quoted is correct it is the removal of lead from gasoline that was one solution. If you can find and fix the problem then you do not need to take risks associated with making a patch.
In my view of progress if we have progress toward more precise medical and environmental analysis then we would not have imprecise blunt attempts at solutions.
Model each person completely. Know precisely the effects of an intervention (drugs, gene therapy, removal of exposure to lead, change of diet, exercise etc…) on that individual as opposed to a statistical sampling of a few million people with somewhat similar profiles. Plus monitor the effect of treatment precisely as it is applied and be able reverse the treatment if needed.
Over medication is an issue but not just one related to behavior modification and control. It is a massive sledgehammer that is used on a few million people. If we get precise diagnosis then we can get precise and targeted solutions.
Instead of:
my kid has a probl..
Doctor: Prozac next
I am concerned that might not be…
Doctor: Here Prozac for you too
Better technology and more informed choice is actually being able to identify what problems are exactly. What we have now is too crude. This goes to my point about getting better data which will enable better choices. Most people are trying to do what is best now but the diagnosis and solution options are not good enough.
November 1st, 2007 - 12:15
If radical cognitive modifications become available while the “Prozac, next” attitude is prevalent, there could be problems. Greater knowledge of individual differences and technology to take advantage of that knowledge are great, but worth little if doctors don’t see a need to use them, and/or patients don’t demand that their doctors use them. (This is one of Dale Carrico’s more intelligent points.)
I would be careful about “we…” statements. Society has very little coherent agency. I question whether the majority of people actively agree with the existence of rampant marketing rather than merely tolerating it, whether that implies society has made a choice, and whether that implies the choice is good.
November 1st, 2007 - 13:51
If people have concerns with marketing or religion or other existing means to control or effect behavior then it seems like a waste of time to target transhumanism.
It makes as much sense as going after the ray guns instead of the hand guns.
If there is a desire for doctors to become aware of personalized medicine or for people to become aware of the possibilities then that is what should be done directly. Analyze the real problem, look at the real data and look at the best ways and tools to effect the actual systems. On the issue of over-medication. It is a well publicized problem with a lot of dedicated activitists. Personalized medicine, a lot of money and effort going into making it happen.
I am aware of the lack of 100% informed agreement on marketing. There is a lot of ignorance and ambivalence to how Google and others find out how to best present ads and product.
however, I am a believer in case law and precedent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent
There is no massive movement to overturn how marketing and advertising is done and the laws only nip at the edges of what is done.
I have studied the methods closer than most. I have created a direct mailing (in the mid 90s) and I have been involved in the running of commercial websites. I think the methods work and are not harming the interests of consumers and society. There are things which are and should be illegal related to fraud and predatory practices.
As a futurist I look at the situation and ask. Will it change significantly and how will it change and will it be eliminated and what is the likely future trend – more of it or less of it ? More of it, more effective, more targeted, more data intensive, better and more accepted than drug control. Of all of the trends and problems now and in the future is this the most important one ? No and it ranks low on the list. What is the cost (time and effort) and likelihood of being able to reduce this trend ? High cost, very low likelihood.
When looking the present and future, I make an assessment of what is a rabbit and what is a bear. What is the size of the problem. Pn the scale of problems the “Prozac, next” attitude is still a rabbit. A distempered, obnoxious rabbit, but still a rabbit.
November 1st, 2007 - 19:40
Ananda, many mind drugs are beneficial. And you go too far by overreacting to any mention of cognitive modification drugs. You suggest we never develop a single useful cognitive enhancement drug in the next 100,000 years? How about instead, we do, and reap the benefits? No coercion need be involved. People will want these drugs because it will boost their performance, happiness, and self-control.
Welcome to Transhumanism 101…
November 5th, 2007 - 03:51
Ray Kurzweil is an obvious crackpot. He’s nothing but a much better-educated version of your typical ufologist.
The claims he makes about current technology are provably false, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the claims Kurzweil makes about future technology qualify as delusional.
There exist so many clear-cut examples of Kurzweil’s claims being obviously and flagrant false that it’s hard to choose just a few, but one good example is Kurzweil’s flagrantly false assertion that “We understand the human ear and we have reverse engineered it,” referring to cochlear implants. This is not just wrong, it’s widely known to be wrong.
Roughly 1/3 of cochlear implants work well enough for the recipients to understand speech in cases where there isn’t overlapping conversations or ambient noise. However, even in those best-case scenarios, the cochlear implant never works 100% of the time, and basically functions as an aid to lip-reading. So even in the most successful cases, people with high-functioning cochlear implants need to lip-read some of the time to understand human speech. In another 1/3 of the cases cochlear implants work at a low-functioning level and it’s possible to understand some speech, but music and other sounds don’t come through well. (in the best high-functioning cases, cochlear implants not only allow the recipient to hear music, but to enjoy it.) And in 1/3 of the cases cochear implants don’t work at all.
http://www.johnhorgan.org/work16.htm
It should be emphasized that scientists do not understand why cochlear implants work well in some recipients and don’t work at all in others. It’s not the technology since the implants are identical.
It should also be pointed out that whenever anyone gets a cochlear implant, they initially go through a long period of several months in which they perceive nothing but noise coming from the implant. The brain gradually adjusts to the signals and eventually deciphers them (in cases where the implant works) and over a long period of time, in the best cases, recipients can hear not only pitch but also timbral differences. However, cochlear implant recipients who lost their hearing as children or as adults report that even in the best case, cochlear implants produce input that sounds nothing like ordinary hearing.
So Kurweil’s claim that scientists have mapped the brain and understand how much of it functions are provably false. Scientists have not mapped the brain even partially. We still don’t know all the functions of (for example) the left temporal lobe. Scientists do NOT understand how even the simplest parts of the brain, like the auditory cortex, function — at least, not well enough to reverse-engineer them.
As for nanotechnology and hard AI, those fields have run into brick walls so complete that there’s no more point in discussing those delusions than in debating the claims of scientologists or alchemists.
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_artic les/v12n02_AI_gone_awry.html
Science is making progress and technology has produced many advances. But the kinds of advances Kurzweil is talking about are not just futuristic, they belong to the realm of hallucinogenic self-delusion like GM’s nuclear powered Nucleon concept car, a robot with human-level intelligence and manual dexterity in every home, a personal helicopter for everyone, personal jet packs, flying cars, and other seemingly drug-induced fantasies out of the TV kiddies’ cartoon The Jetsons.
Kurzweil’s claims about enhancing intelligence through genetic engineering in particular show his desperate ignorance of basic molecular biology and population statistics and cognitive psychology. No one knows what intelligence is or how to measure it — and the evidence for that failure is overwhelming:
For most of the 20th century, intelligence was viewed as an all-purpose, monolithic power, christened g by psychologist Charles Spearman. Creativity was believed to be a side effect of a high level of general intelligence – a mark of big g. The father of the standardised-testing industry, Lewis Terman, created the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale to quantify this power. He launched the longest scientific study in history, Genetic Studies of Genius, to track the accomplishments of highly gifted grade-school children through the course of their lives. His hope that an impressive IQ score would augur groundbreaking accomplishments in science and art, however, didn’t pan out. His young Termites, as he affectionately called them, did end up earning slots at better universities and getting hired for executive positions, often with help from Terman. They gave the world two memorable inventions: the K ration and I Love Lucy. (Both Ancel Keys, who perfected single-meal pouches for the US Army, and Jess Oppenheimer, the creator of the popular TV show, were Termites.)
For the most part, however, real genius slipped through Terman’s net. None of his prodigies won major scientific prizes or became important artists, while two students excluded from the study for having insufficient test scores, William Shockley and Luis Alvarez, went on to earn Nobels.
http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/education/a_rage _to_master.htm
A test that allegedly measures “intelligence” but sieves out two future Nobel prize winners in the sciences constitutes such an obviously grotesque failure that hardly anything else need be said on the subject of testing for intelligence.
Clearly, we can’t reliably test intelligence. We don’t have a ghost of a clue what intelligence is, and we have no idea how to about figuring out how to determine what intgelligence is.
What we do know about measured IQ is that it is not correlated with achievement or general problem-solving ability. Marilyn vos Savant, the person with the highest recorded IQ, used to author a puzzle column for a newspaper, and now works as an accountant for her husband’s business. Hardly a stellar record of achievement. You might expect the highest IQ segment of the population to correlate with the admissions to the top 50 colleges or the list of Nobel Prize winners — you’d be wrong. Dead wrong. Completely 100% wrong. Turns out a Bulgarian woman with one ofhte highest recorded IQs can’t even get a job, much less admission into a top-50 U.S. university.
Nobel Prize winners tend to come from small colleges, not out of the top 50 most prestigious colleges. Nobel Prize winners tend not to come from the top half percent of the IQ test scorers — Richard Feynman had measured IQ of 120, much much lower than Marilyn Vos Savant or most of hte pople in MENSA. The delusion that we know what intelligence is, and therefore we can build smarter computers, and that those computers will therefore be able to build even smtarter computers, is a chain of errors as foolish and as crazy as the chain of errors involved in claiming that lightning bugs are produced when lightning strikes a bug.
We don’t know what intelligence is. Even if we did know, there’s no evidence we can enhance it or replicate it. (We know perfectly well what imgaination is — can we enhance ir or replicate it?) Even if we could enhance or replicate intelligence in silicon, there’s no evidence at all that a smarter-than-human computer would be able to build a computer smarter than itself (and there’s a huge mountain of evidence showing that it couldn’t…just look how impossible it has been for the smartest humans to produce computers smarter than themselves). And even if superhumanly smart computers could produce computers smarter than themselves, what’s the evidence that they wouldn’t just sit around contemplaing beautiful paintings instead of interacting with humans? Do really smart human spend their time explaining themselves to ants? Why would superhumanly smart computers even bother to interact with us, assuming they were possible — whiich is unliikley to the point of practical impossibility?
Nobel prize winners, asked about what produced their breakthroughs, do not cite intelligence — instead, they refer to qualities like “imagination” and “persistence.” Neither Ray Kurzweil nor any molecular geneticist has suggested or shown any method of genetically eningeering reliable enhancements to human creativity or persistence. No one even has any idea how to measure these qualities quantitatively, much less genetically enhance them, or even if they can be genetically enhanced.
The usual kooks and cranks and flakes will of course erupt with red-faced flatulent fury to shriek “that article from Skeptic magazine you linked to doesn’t prove anything!”
That’s a lie.
Moreover, it’s simple and easy to prove that it’s a lie.
The article proves that none of the myriad claims made by AI researchers have ever panned out, it proves that every single one of the most prestigious current AI researchers with tenured positions as head of the best cutting-edge AI resarch labs in the finest universities in the world all believe “AI is brain-dead” and “AI has hit a brick wall.”
The article from the Skeptic magazine cited above proves that there are not just one, but many incredibly hard problems facing AI research — problems so unsolvable, so refractory, so shockingly intransigent, that no one has even been able to suggest even a hypothetical way to get around them, much less make progress in AI and genetic engineering of human intelligence or build Drexlerian nanotech assemblers, by solving them. These problems include the frame problem and the combinatorial explosion search problem for expert systems and the self-reference problem for AI, the problem of junk DNA and the RNA world paradigm and the really really tough problem of reverse-engineering emergent systems for genetic engineering, and the problem of molecular stiction and Brownian bombardment and the destruction by Brownian forces and Van Der Waals forces and molecular folding of the paper-tape-type ecnoded instructions required for a rod-logic atomic level computer to work and be programmable in a general Von Neuman sense.
Before the kooks and cranks and flakes who deny that Kurzweil is spouting gibberish continue with their rants, they need to do the following:
[1] Show us a working AI computer program which solves the frame problem. Not just a diagram, not just pseudo-code, not just a research paper on how to write such a program — a working AI program that solves the frame problem. Show us such an example, or shut up because you’re an ignorant liar.
[2] Show us a working automated translation program that reliably takes in natural language and reliably spits back out idiomatic English without grammatical or semantic errors. Not just a program that works on 50% of the words in sentences, not something that needs huge amounts of human intervention to work, not pseudo-code, not a white paper on how to write such a program, but an actual working AI program. Show us that, or shut up because you’re an ignorant liar.
[3] An AI program that reads a novel and summarizes the book in a book report that’s accurate and succinct. Not just pseudo-code, not just a research proposal, but an actual working program. Show us that, or shut up, because you’re an ignorant liar.
[4] A computer program that can listen to a piece of music and tell us whether it’s any good. In other words, a computer program that can realiably tell the difference between randomly-generated junk and a pop tune. Any human can tell the difference in 3 seconds, but no computer can. Once again, don’t just provide pseudo-ccde, not just a research proposal, but an actual working program. Show us that, or shut up because you’re an ignorant liar.
[5] An AI program which can negotiate a labor agreement. Not just pseudo-code, not a proposal, but an actual working program. Show us that, or shut up because you’re an ignorant liar.
Every single time the kooks and cranks and flakes who deny that Kurzweil is a crackpot get asked to show any of these actual working computer programs, they always give evasions and excuses. They backpedal and fum-fuh and spin long-winded elaborate incoherent stories to explain why they can’t give us any evidence.
In short, Kurzweil and his supporters — when asked for evidence — give the same kind of response you get from ufologists or Bigfoot enthusiasts or hollow earth proponents when you ask ‘em for hard evidence of their claims. They give you nothing — nothing but smoke and mirrors, lies and bullshit, incoherent excuses and vague assertions like “it may take many years to produce results” or “we’re just starting to reesarch these areas.” The exact same kinds of vague hand-waving you get when you confront ufologists and ask them for proof of their wild claims.
As for the kooks and cranks and flakes who will claim “it’s easy enough to debunk all these claims that AI and genetic engineering to enahnce human intelligence and nanotechnology don’t work and aren’t working and never will work, but I don’t have the time” — you’re lying and I can prove it.
If you can debunk the assertion that these technologies don’t work and haven’t worked and can’t work, great…do it. Do it now. Do it right now. Give us the hard evidence that hard AI works. Give us the hard evidence that nanotechnology works and produced operating Drexlerian assembler. Give us the hard evidence that genetic engineering can reliably enhance human intelligence. Give us that hard evidence that claims about people “uploading their minds into computers” are anything more than a foolishly ignorant delusion based on the fantasy that Descartes’ mind-body divide is actually real and that there exists some magical intangible Platonic essence called “the mind” that’s distinct from and separable from the human body (meaning the human brain).
Antonio Damasio, in his book Decartes’ Error, has deep-sixed most of the ignorant misconceptions on which hard AI is based. I.e., that there exists some magical fluid called “mind” separate from the brain; that human thought is primarily logical and rational rather than emotion-based and arising from bodily states; that humans use logic to solve problems, rather than intuition and experience; that thought involves sequences of computations, rather than emotions; that the brain is a mere piece of hardware for a pseudo-computer-program called “the mind.” Kurzweil and his followers seem to be aware of none of this. They never mention Damasio’s somatic-sensory hypothesis:
“Although I cannot tell for certain what sparked my interest in the neural underpinnings of reason, I do know when I became convinced that the traditional views on the nature of rationality could not be correct. I had been advised early in life that sounds decisions came from a cool head … I had grown up accustomed to thinking that the mechanisms of reason existed in a separate province of the mind, where emotion should not be allowed to intrude, and when I thought of the brain behind that mind, I envisioned separate neural systems for reason and emotion … But now I had before my eyes the coolest, least emotional, intelligent human being one might imagine, and yet his practical reason was so impaired that it produced, in the wanderings of daily life, a succession of mistakes, a perpetual violcation of what would be considered socially appropriate and personally advantageous.
I began writing this book to propose that reason may not be as pure as most of us think it is or wish it were, that emotion and feelings may not be intruders in the bastion of reason at all: they may be enmeshed in its networks, for worse and for better.
I wrote this book as my side of a conversation with a curious, intelligent, and wise imaginary friend, who knew little about neuroscience but much about life … My friend was to learn about the brain and about those mysterious things mental, and I was to gain insights as I struggled to explain my idea of what body, brain, and mind are about.”
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/damasio/descartes. html
Kurzweil and his followers never discuss the frame problem in AI when they blithely rhadsodize about superhumanly smart silicon intelligences:
http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Frame_Problem
Kurzweil and his sycophants never discuss the death of a patient in a recent and relatively mild gene therapy attempt when they talk blithely about genetically engineering much larger wholesale transformations of human beings into superhumans:
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2000/500_gene.html
Ray Kurzweil and his toadies just ignore whole bodies of knowledge in order to further their crackpot claims.
Show us the hard evidence for Kurzweil’s extroarindary claims or shut up.
Point us to a list of peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals providing hard experimental evidence that these technologies do work.
Everything else is bullshit.
Put up or shut up. Provide hard evidence that the hypothetical technologies touted by Kurzweil actually could do what he claims they could, or stand revealed as an ignorant crackpot and compulsive liar.
“Proof” means a peer-reviewed journal article by a reputable scientists reporting verified and repeated experimental results. Everything else is not proof.
I’m not interested in anecdotes, or just-so stories, or logical arguments, or elaborate what-if scenarios — those are the realms in which scientologists and ufologists and other crackpots prefer to operate.
Out here in the real world, we require proof before we believe a claim…and the more extraordinary the claim, the more exotraordinary the amount and quality of the evidence required for us to believe it.
Ray Kurzweil has made not just one, but many, extraordinary claims. He claims not just that hard AI will produce human-level intelligence, but that it’ll happen soon, and go on from there to produce superhuman levels of intelligence. Ray Kurweil claims not just that we’ll be able to simulate the human mind in silicon, but that we’ll be able to upload our minds into computers, and that it’ll happen soon. Ray Kurzweil claims not just that we’ll be able to reliably genetically engineer traits like human intelligence which all the evidence shows, if they’re heritable at all, must be polygenic and emergent, but that we’ll be able to do it soon, and to reliably produce enhanced human capabilities that go far beyond the human, and that this genetic engineering will not have dire side effects like, oh, say, terminal leukemia, or autism, etc.
Ray Kurzweil claims not just that we’ll be able to overcome molecular stiction and Brownian motion and the bombardment of phonons at the atomic-level to produce working rod-logic molecular computers, but that we’ll be able to produce molecular assemblers capable of being reliably programmed and that can tear apart any type of matter and rebuild it into anything we like, and that this will happen soon.
This is tantamount not just to claiming that an evil Alien Xenu is responsible for invivible thetans that cause all mental illness…but that Xenu is real and the earth is flat and there’s a an alchemical secret to turning lead into gold that anyone can use (and that doesn’t involve a cyclotron) and and the earth is hollow and full of Nazis waiting to re-emerge and start WW III and that lizard men from Zeta Reticuli use secret underground entrances to get into the White House, where they plot to convert us all to Rosicrucianism.
Sane people demand hard evidence.
And when you get the truly wild claims of the kind of Ray Kurzweil has made, we demand not just hard evidnece, but a veritable mountain of bulletproof evidence before we’ll believe claims this outlandish.
Yet what has Ray Kurzweil and his transhumanist extropian Singularitarian followers given us?
Nothing. No hard evidence at all. Just a bunch of PR. Eric Drexler has produced zero scientific research to support his claims, he’s just given a bunch of speeches and written some books. Hans Moravec has produced no scientific research showing that his “bush robots” are possible — he’s just written some books and given some interviews. Folks, people who only write books and give interviews about fabulous future developments aren’t scientists, they’re called “science fiction authors.” Science fiction is not reality. Don’t confuse the two.
Have transhumanist extropians like Kurzweil and Moravec and Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow given us even the level of hard evidence in support of their claims that we would demand to convict a single person of murder in court?
Nope. They haven’t even given us that. Not even that much evidence.
To convict someone of murder in court, we demand forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony, not just tall tales and might-be stories and wild guesses. How much hard forensic evidence have we seen that hard AI will fulfill its many promises?
Zero.
How much eyewitness testimony have we heard for working Drexlerian assemblers and mind uploading and genetic engineering that produces superhumanly smart people?
None.
So we haven’t even gotten a minimal level of hard evidence, comparable to what you’d demand to convict someone in court of murder, out of Ray Kurzweil and his Singularitarians, in support of their outlandish end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it Singularity predictions.
Yet any sensible person would demand far more and far better evidence than you’d demand just to convinct someone of murder, in order to get us to believe their extraordinary transhumanist claims and uploading minds and creating supermen from DNA tweaks.
After all, people commit murder every day. Murder is commonplace — compared to mind uploading. Murder is quotidian – compared to creating a superhumanly smart computer. We see murders all the time, we read about them daily, we hear about them on the news. No one has ever seen a superhumanly smart computer. No one has ever shown a person uploading his mind into a computer. No one has ever genetically engineered a superhumanly smart human being. And yet Ray Kurzweil and his transhumanist Singularitarians expect us to believe their much more fantastic claims with much LESS evidence than a sensible rational person would demand to convict a defendant in court of the far more ordinary and vastly more credible crime of murder.
Does any of this ring a bell? Does anyone smell a rat? Doesn’t anyone see the scam that’s going on here?
I want hard evidence for transhumanism and the alleged Singularity — not baseless assertions.
I want to see working computer programs…not just-so stories.
I want to see actual functioning robots that don’t bang into walls and that can recognize the difference between a dog and a volleyball…not just wild claims.
I want to see a functioning AI program that does real-language translation without appallingly stupid and shockingly obvious errors, like turning the motto “Out of sight, out of mind,” into “Blind and insane,” or mistranslating “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” into “The liquor is good but the meat is rotten.”
I want to see a working genetic engineering vector that reliably makes a rat 200% smarter — not just the sequencing of the rat genome.
I want to see a working Drexlerian assembler that can rip apart a spoon and turn it into a miniature Sterling engine. Show it to me. Let me see it working.
There are no such AI programs or robots or genetic engineering vectors or nanotech assemblers..
There is no such hard evidence for Kurzweil’s wild claims.
After 50-plus years of sustained effort by the smartest people on earth, there has been ZERO progress in these areas. In the article “There’s Plenty Of Room at the Bottom,” in 1959, physicist Richard Feynman largely anticipated K. Eric Drexler’s ideas from his 1987 Engines Of Creation. In the 50 years since Feynman gave his lecture, we’ve seen zero progress in creating anything like what Feynman talked about. No molecular machines capable of tearing apart molecules and rebuilding ‘em to spec. No Drexlerian assemblers. No programmable virus-sized machines. No atomic-scale rod-logic computers. None. Zilch. Zip. Diddly. Bupkiss. Nada. Zippo. Nothing.
Claim I’m stupid or lying?
Great. Show us the proof.
Let us see the hard evidence. Put up or shut up.
Pay attention, folks. Notice the scam here. Every single objection to skeptical requests for evidence of transhumanist Singularitarian predictions gets met with the exact same type of reasoning used by ufologists and scientologists and Bigfoot fancier.
Ufologists claim not enough research has been done on UFOS and that’s why there’s no evidence for alien abductions — Ray Kurzweil claims not enough research has been done on AI and nanotech and genetic engineering, and that’s why there’s no hard evidence for superhumanly smart computers and genetically-engineered supermen and mind uploading and Drexlerian nanomachines that can rip apart matter at the atomic level and rebuild it atom by atom. Exact same type of reasoning as ufologists.
Bigfoot enthusiasts claim it hasn’t been long enough to give us evidence of Bigfoot’s existence, but that we’ll see lots of evidence real soon now. Ray Kurzweil makes the exact same claim — “it’s early days yet in AI research, we haven’t been at it long enough to give us proof of the inevitable triumph of superhuman hard AI”…the exact same argument as the Bigfoot crackpots.
Scientologists claim people who don’t see dramatic cures for their mental problems need to spend more money — Ray Kurzweil and the AI and nanotch crackpots also say that we haven’t seen dramatic new results like superhumanly smart computers and mind uploading because we need to spend more money. And, just like the Scientologists, no matter how much money we spend on AI and nanotech, it’s never enough. We always need to spend more money. More and more and more money, and never any results. And what’s the answer to any skeptic who objects? “You need to spend more money.” Just like Scientology.
Psychic “researchers” can never provide us with a definitive point at which a sensible person can conclude “ESP is bullshit.” No, they tell us we just have to keep spending money on their fruitless experiments that never produce results, we just have to keep supporting their failed psychic research forever and ever, amen. Same thing with Ray Kurzweil and his crew — they can never provide us with a single experiment, which, if it fails, means hard AI is dead. They can never give us a single condition under which we could conclude that Drexlerian nanotech is a degenerating research program and must be abandoned. No, just like the psychic crackpots, Ray Kurweil and his crew continually demand more and more money for their failed AI efforts, more and dead-end research with no results, forever and ever, and no matter how unbroken the string of failures, they can never accept any evidence as being sufficient to disprove their claims ofr superhumanly smart computers and genetically engineered supermen and mind uploading.
After 50 years of concentrated effort by the greatest geniuses on earth, the best AI programs today still get fed a sentence like “The astronomer married a really hot star” and STILL can’t answer “What does the word `hot’ mean in that sentence?”
The finest AI programs today get fed a sentence like “Mary saw a puppy in the window and wanted it,” and they still can’t answer the simple question: “Which one did Mary want — the puppy, or the window?”
If you believe Kurzweil’s bullshit and you’ve swallowed the Singularitarian Kool-Aid, great — show us computer programs that can correctly answer the above questions.
Otherwise, shut up, because you’re spouting ignorant tripe.
November 5th, 2007 - 12:53
Dear Kurzweil is wrong- afraid to use his name.
I do not have defend everything that Kurzweil says because I do not agree with everything he says. However, a lot of what you say is completely wrong.
There are expert systems (regular AI) that exceed human performance. (better diagnosis than most doctors)
http://courses.csail.mit.edu/HST947/
Here is an index of Artificial Intelligence Journals (About 100 journals filled with AI peer reviewed papers. Enjoy)
http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~honavar/aijournals.html
Banks use artificial intelligence systems to organize operations, invest in stocks, and manage properties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
AI is used commercially and it replaces people for some jobs. After 50 years, AI is a multi-billion dollar industry that effects a lot of your world quietly behind the scenes. The fact that certain problems have been harder to crack or commercialize is irrelevant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#AI_behind_the_scenes
Here are some peer reviewed papers on work towards molecular manufacturing and mechanosynthesis
http://www.molecularassembler.com/Nanofactory/Publications.htm
the frame problem is irrelevant if you are not using predicate logic.
If someone makes AI’s to solve the problems that you list, how would they be making money ? why would someone produce something without value ? Why would they answer the internet troll with tourettes ?
Gene Therapy death
Gene therapy is not a perfect procedure. However, the problems have been with reactions to the delivery vectors primarily. However, it is largely irrelevant. There have been deaths attributed to steroids and there still millions who use steroids. There are over one thousand clinical trials with gene therapy.
Some Gene therapy journals
http://www.nature.com/gt/index.html
http://www.gtmb.org/index_gtmb.html
http://www.liebertpub.com/publication.aspx?pub_id=19
November 5th, 2007 - 13:13
An anonymous ad hom attack.
How…perfectly…quaint. Boorish, is the word, actually.
I finally stopped reading at the “ignorant liar” part.
You can legitimately accuse Transhumanists of many things, but as regards cutting-edge technology as wellas future trends based upon current trends and technologies, “ignorant” and “lair” are not among them.
Actually, from my own research, many of them are actually rather conservative in their – ahem – predictions.
So sorry, anon. Your polemic falls apart on those two points alone, without spending any time on the rest.
…and please, Anon. As much as you may know, or even think that you know, you are as subject to Godel’s Law and the Human Condition as any of the rest of us. Which was also proven by your own – ahem – argument. Well…there is that whole “Anon” thing, too. :O) (If Michael really wants to know who and where you are, it’ll only take a few minute’s time to find out, you see. IP addies and Lat. and Long., oh my…)
In the future, address others in a civilized fashion and I am certain that you will garner a civilized and informative response.
Your post here fits the very definition of trolling. I do hope that your purpose was nothing so mundane.
November 5th, 2007 - 14:49
Thank you for your comment, Mr. Anonymous. I definitely don’t agree with everything you say but do think you make some good points. I think you would get a better response from the readers here if you toned down the rhetoric a bit. I understand you aren’t trolling or anything, though. (Trolls can get people going with a couple sentences, I don’t think they’d bother to leave a 10-page comment.)
November 5th, 2007 - 16:08
I think one of the key things that keeps getting parsed from the cause of transhumanism is simply that a bulk of the progress or movement in the direction of the transhumanist vision is the collective effect of individuals choosing to modify themselves (and how they interact with the universe.)
I can’t think of a time I’ve seen someone advocate that these elements be forced upon others. Though I can imagine a world where they might be, it is extremely unlikely to me that it would be a “transhumanist” who would be advocating it. Individualism and liberal democratic behavior has been the economic-political theme I’ve interpreted. That said the world has a broad bell-shaped curve of personalities, people and beliefs so there is nothing explicit that would prevent the emergence of a totalitarian transhumanist… even if that reads like an oxymoron to me.
Marketing or working the public relations elements to make that H+ vision more palatable to the general population doesn’t seem like force to me.
November 5th, 2007 - 20:06
To the poster known as “Kurzweil is Wrong”,
I respect your point of view, and think the more diverse the point of view the better. I invite you to “canonize” this point of view in the Canonizer at http://canonizer.com. You could create a topic on this, and state what you believe in a POV statement. I would love to see how many people you could get to “join” your camp indicating that they agree with you.
I am not in your camp, and believe what Raymond is saying and would love to have my POV stand in contrast to yours. I would bet more people would join the hopeful future camp Kurzweil espouses. Not that majority makes right, but it would be fun to know quantitatively who believes what right?
Brent Allsop
November 6th, 2007 - 05:49
Kurzweil is Wrong is MysticMonkeyGuru, a well-known troll from the kurzweilai.net forums.
His game is to copy and paste other’s critiques and then inject his own ad hom attacks. He won’t respond; he never does, because he won’t and can’t make or defend any arguments.
November 6th, 2007 - 06:54
Thanks, Rip! I appreciate the head’s up.
Transhumanists have a lot to offer to the world. The questions they are asking, however speculative,
are just as important as their research.
November 6th, 2007 - 21:34
“Kurzweil is wrong” has reproduced a post made elsewhere, months ago:
http://www.google.com/search?q=“zorgon+the+malevolent”+site:blogspot.com
November 11th, 2007 - 11:41
Transhuminism will amount to nothing more than entertainment during human extinction.
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February 6th, 2012 - 17:22
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