Transhumanism

Ray Kurzweil predicted in his book, The Singularity is Near, that we will be mostly non-organic beings by the 2030s. In the 2030s, I will be getting ready to retire and take care of my grandkids.  My children will be starting their families.  In other words, not in the distant future, but in this lifetime. So now is the time to take notice of emerging technologies because they will be upon us before we know it.

One of the ways that transhumanists envision that man will live forever is by interfacing the human brain with computers, uploading our consciousness into the digital realm. A new movie "Transcendence", starring Johnny Depp, will tackle this very scenario. The plot:

Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the foremost researcher in the field of Artificial Intelligence, working to create a sentient machine that combines the collective intelligence of everything ever known with the full range of human emotions. His highly controversial experiments have made him famous, but they have also made him the prime target of anti-technology extremists who will do whatever it takes to stop him. However, in their attempt to destroy Will, they inadvertently become the catalyst for him to succeed—to be a participant in his own transcendence. For his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) and best friend Max Waters (Paul Bettany), both fellow researchers, the question is not if they can…but if they should. Their worst fears are realized as Will’s thirst for knowledge evolves into a seemingly omnipresent quest for power, to what end is unknown. The only thing that is becoming terrifyingly clear is there may be no way to stop him.

My husband watches the new TV show "Intelligence" starring Josh Holloway (previously Sawyer from Lost) as Gabriel, a man with a rare genetic mutation (or some such) that allowed the U.S. government to put a chip in his brain. This chip gives Gabriel unlimited access to the Internet directly into his consciousness. As an agent for a super secret intelligence agency, that comes in super handy. Gabriel, the best of all guys, uses his enhancement only for good. He saves people and catches bad guys and he looks good doing it. Gabriel is the quintessential enhanced American hero reminiscent of Captain America, just without the tights and shield.

In a recent episode, Gabriel has to enter a middle eastern country to rescue two American journalists sentenced to death for being spies. A former U.S. president tags along to distract the middle eastern government with diplomacy while Gabriel breaks the journalists out of prison using his enhancement to hijack security cameras and pinpoint his targets' exact location.

After many twists and turns, the objective of their mission complete, the former U.S. president asks Gabriel why he would let the government put that chip in his head.

Gabriel answers, "Because I love my country."

And there it is. A good American would do anything for his country, including volunteering to be an experiment and allowing the government to violate his or her bodily integrity with a microchip in the brain.

And why not, when we ask those who serve our country to place their lives at risk? Why not ask them to alter their bodies, with possible permanent side effects, to make the job easier? Why not if it means an American victory?

Many Catholics do not see the harm in such enhancements for our soldiers and intelligence agents. In a discussion at a Catholic blog about genetically enhancing soldier's eyes to have night vision like a cat, one commenter saw no moral issue with such an intervention. Why would we not give our soldier's such an advantage?

But is that treating the soldier as a person or a means to an end? What about the possible side effects? The human brain is not wired to "see" in the dark permanently.

Why not instead equip our soldiers with the best in night vision goggles that they can take off at the end of the day and at the end of a career?

Do we really need to ask those that serve American interests to radically alter their bodies?

But I am afraid that with shows like "Intelligence", the seed had already been planted. I doubt any parent turned to their child after Gabriel announced that he loved his country and said, "This is a fun show and that was a nice sentiment, but in reality it would be immoral for a government to do that to one of its citizens."

Not everyone is buying what shows like Intelligence are selling. Here are some comments from viewers on IMDB:

my next question however is: "when will they find the unusually large mass in his brain next to that constantly radiating chip?"

in the shadow of NSA scandals and the fear of the absolute transparent citizen, this series tries to numb your concerns by showing you how well meant and helpful the absolute access to every information in the world, to one guy can be even, in the hands of an unpredictable, mischievous sawyer guy, as long as he is American.

To make the show 'better', every plot serves as a bit of pro-NSA propaganda that doesn't even bother trying to justify itself: they have the right to spy on everyone on a hunch, borders and international relations don't matter at all - as a super secret government spy agency they can do as they please all over the world. It goes without saying that being good guys, they don't need to bother with details or justification.

Most of society is under the impression that human augmentation is something that our grandchildren will have to deal with. Stuff for T.V. and big screens. I have been screaming from the rooftops that this is something we need to discuss now because it is happening now.

Case in point, this crowd-funded project that is looking into augmenting human vision so that we can see in the near infrared range. Infrared light is light that has a longer wavelength than red light and so is not in the range that we call "visible light." Their goal is to use dietary restrictions and supplements to increase porphyropsin in the human eye. It is porphyropsin that would allow the eye to see wavelengths longer than the visual range. The website asks "Can we biologically extend the range of human vision into the near infrared?" and explains how they plan to proceed:

We have developed a protocol to augment human sight to see into the near infrared range through human formation of porphyropsin, the protein complex which grants infrared vision to freshwater fish.

Retinal, or Vitamin A (A1), which is found bound to opsin proteins is a keystone of the visual pathway. The cone cells are granted sharp color vision by the complex photopsin. The rod cells which provide us with night vision and recognition of movement do so utilizing rhodopsin. Both of the complexes consist of a type of protein bound to retinal. Porphyropsin differs from this in that it doesn't use retinal, but rather a derivation called 3,4-dehydroretinol, or Vitamin A2 (A2).

The human body is fully capable of metabolizing and using A2; unfortunately the proteins which allow for transport through cell membranes have nearly 4 times the affinity for A1 compared to A2. We theorize that this can be overcome through a stringent Vitamin A1 restricted diet, supplemented with Vitamin A2.

We are also hoping to use this study as a proof of concept to continue working on a more long term modification to human vision that doesn't rely on dietary restrictions / supplementation.

It seems that integration of technology into our otherwise healthy bodies may be on the horizon. Motorola has applied for a patent for a throat tattoo that can act as a microphone for many devices. PC Mag has the story:

Motorola has applied for a patent for an electronic skin tattoo that acts as a mobile communication device.

This isn't your usual parlor inking, though. The tattoo, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office application, can include an embedded microphone, a near field communication (NFC) transceiver, and a power supply.

As the wearer speaks, the throat-printed tattoo streams the audio to a controller, which then transfers it to the accompanying mobile communication device — a.k.a. your smartphone, gaming device, tablet, or, say, Google Glass.

The patent states that this temporary tattoo could “include a galvanic skin response detector.” If the user is “speaking falsehoods,” the tattoo can detect skin response caused by nervousness.

Last month Google announced a new medical company called Calico, whose explicit aim is to take on aging itself. But what will Google's approach be? And what other research into prolonging life already exists?...

Calico -- or the California Life Company -- has been set up to research subjects related to aging and its associated diseases. Announcing Calico at a media briefing, Google said that the new and independent company will largely focus on age-attendant conditions such as Alzheimer's, cancer and heart disease.

Larry Page, Google's ever youthful CEO said: "Illness and aging affect all our families. With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives."

But the question is, what will Calico actually do?

The morality of the 21st century will depend on how we respond to this simple but profound question: Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human?  Answer yes, and we have a chance of achieving universal human rights.  Answer no, and it means that we are merely another animal in the forest.

You'd literally have to change the human genome to stop wealth discrepancy.... The only way things will change is if we're smart enough to develop technology that can think us out of this, meaning augmenting ourselves genetically to be smart enough to change sh**.

WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD. (That is if you want to read Inferno of your own free will.)

So I recently had the displeasure of reading Dan Brown's new novel, Inferno, because I heard it had transhumanist themes. Essentially, it was the same book as Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code except this time the backdrop was Florence, Venice and Istanbul instead of Rome. In characteristic Dan Brown style, the research was shoddy, the Catholic Church was the bad guy, and complex issues and philosophies were given the shallowest of treatments leaving the average reader believing in fiction set up as fact. As a result, I found this book beyond painful to read. Considering that I love to read just about anything, that is saying quite a bit.

Where do I begin? First, Brown sets up a fictional problem, human overpopulation, and awkwardly places it in the middle of secret codes and Renaissance art, fiction and architecture. Of course, Robert Langdon is back to race all over European cities trying to stop something sinister. The sinister event is the release of a deadly virus engineered by transhumanist and brilliant biologist, Bertrand Zobrist. Zobrist sees himself as a martyr willing to do what others won't.  Zobrist insists that if the human population does not dramatically reduce NOW, our world will become just like Dante's fictional depiction of Hell in the infinitely better work The Divine Comedy. (Hence the title of the book, Inferno.) Both the "villain" Zobrist and the "heroine" Sienna Brooks, a young, genius doctor who befriends Robert Langdon in his mad dash all over Florence trying to stop Zobrist's plague, are insistent that because we keep having children (and the "evil" Catholic Church discourages the use of contraception) the demise of the human race is inevitable. Sienna actually tells Langdon:

"I can tell you without a doubt that without some kind of drastic change, the end of our species is coming. And it’s coming fast. It won’t be fire, brimstone, apocalypse, or nuclear war . . . it will be total collapse due to the number of people on the planet. The mathematics is indisputable.”

Despite the fact that he has his hero Langdon reply “Sounds ominous.” when he first learns about tranhsumanism, his transhumanist side kick and misunderstod [sic] heroine FS 2080 has the first name “Sienna”, a type of brown.  This was a conscious choice of the author and not an accident obviously.

After I finished the book I started to suspect Dan Brown is a secret transhumanist and was hanging out on some transhumanist forums around 2010-2011 under a pseudonym.

What do a small town girl flirting with a satellite, a robot giving a lecture about transhumanism, and a man uploading his consciousness into the digital ether all have in common? Love. Love Machine is created to reflect the current trend of the way humans have come to rely on technology. Below, BroadwayWorld has a first look at the piece, debuting at Incubator Arts Project on May 10!

Continuing a long collaboration between theater and technology, the Love Machine team uses interactive, commercially available technologies, combined with improvisation and character-based writing techniques, to create a live experience blasting forward into the future and asking the questions of tomorrow.

In Part 1, the team explores the 1974 launch and abandonment of the space station Skylab through the loving eyes of Cindy, a lonely girl with no date to prom. Enter Skylab: a man-made satellite, strangely reminiscent of Fred Astaire. Together they embark on a musical journey through outer space.

Part 2 takes us to the year 2050 for a guest lecture on Transhumanism, a movement focused on furthering the human condition by means of science and technology. The talk is led by the robotically preserved consciousness of a transgender scientist and is followed by an audience Q & A.

Part 3 is a high tech interactive dance piece that asks the simple question: how does a disembodied consciousness find love?

Personhood Beyond the Human

December 6-8, 2013

Yale University

Sponsors:  Nonhuman Rights Project, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale Animal Ethics Group, Yale Technology and Ethics Working Group

A growing body of research shows that many nonhuman animals, especially great apes, dolphins and whales, and elephants, have self-awareness, intentionality, creativity, symbolic communication, and the other characteristics of “personhood.”  If at least some animals are psychological persons isn’t it time to extend the legal protection of ‘human rights’ from our species to all beings with those characteristics? Given pending advances in genetic engineering and computing having a clear agenda for what criteria are necessary for personhood, and what we owe persons, may soon become even more complicated.

The Personhood Beyond the Human conference will tackle these questions and take a hard look at our evolving notions of personhood by analyzing them through the frameworks of neuroscience, behavioral science, philosophy, ethics, and law. Special consideration will be given to discussions of nonhuman animal personhood, both in terms of understanding the science and philosophy behind personhood, and ways to protect animal interests through the establishment of legal precedents and by increasing public awareness.

The conference will be co-sponsored by the Nonhuman Rights Project and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) in collaboration with the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, the Yale Animal Ethics Group, and the Yale Technology and Ethics Working Group.  The first day of the conference will focus on the philosophical and public policy issues around nonhuman personhood. The second day will focus on the legal cases the Nonhuman Rights Project will be filing in 2013 on behalf of animals, and the legal arguments they will be using.

By the close of the conference, attendees will have gained an enhanced understanding of the neurological, cognitive, and behavioral underpinnings of personhood and those traits required for such consideration; personhood theory; the history of personhood consideration and status (both in terms of philosophical and legal conceptions); and the legal hurdles and requirements for granting personhood status outside of the human species.

SPEAKERS INCLUDE (in formation)

- Peter Singer, Princeton University
- Steve Wise, President of the Nonhuman Rights Project
- Joel Marks Ph.D., Philosophy, U of New Haven
- George Dvorsky, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)
- James Hughes Ph.D., Executive Director IEET & Public Policy, Trinity College
- Dr. Lori Marino, Psychology Dept and Center for Ethics, Emory University
- Steven Tauber, Dept of Government & International Affairs, U. of S. Florida

Singularity advocates argue that consciousness is just another problem to solve or that it will just happen when a system is sufficiently advanced. But I was not too sure.  The promise of this new future began to lose its luster.  I started to see holes in some of the arguments and I began questioning the philosophical and moral implications.  If smarter than human computers were created, how would they treat their human creators?  Would everyone have the means to augment their intelligence or just the rich?  What would happen if something went wrong with these super powerful technologies and destroyed everything on the planet?  Or if these powerful technologies got in the wrong hands and were maliciously used?  Maybe the singularity wasn’t such a good idea.

The_Singularity_trailer from doug wolens on Vimeo.

I have always felt that Iron Man was the anti-transhumanist super-hero. His chest-plate is there to prevent shrapnel from entering his heart, not as an augmentation of an already healthy body. And instead of building a better soldier, Tony Stark builds a better suit. A suit that can be taken off at the end of the day and at the end of a career. Apparently, Iron Man 3, which opens in May 2013, delves into a tranhumanist plot line where Tony is compelled to enhance his body as well. Subculture for the Cultured has the story:

Extremis focuses on a battle between Tony Stark and a reactionary named Mallen, who has taken a dose of a genetic enhancer called Extremis.  In their first encounter, Mallen handily defeats Stark leaving him beaten and close to death.  Tony realizes he has no chance of defeating Mallen as long as he lacks Mallen’s speed and genetic enhancements.

Tony genetically enhances himself using the Extremis, effectively making the Iron Man suit a part of himself, then defeats Mallen outside of DC.

So Iron Man defeats the bad guy.  But did Tony go too far?  After all, we’re ok with heroes gaining superpowers by accident.  But when they purposefully modify themselves to make themselves more powerful, well, that’s what villains do.  Isn’t it?...

Modifying oneself to gain power over another is generally viewed as evil, while modifying oneself to overcome a challenge is ethically acceptable.

The writers of Extremis seemed aware of this moral distinction, and made sure to note that without Extremis, Tony would die.

So the other day on my blogging break my family made me sit down and watch the new Spider-Man movie, "The Amazing Spider-Man". I don't know why they had to make yet another Spider-Man flick, but for the sake of family unity I cuddled up on the coach and watched.

Recently, I hit a bunch of unsuspecting Catholic women at an innocuous book club over the head with the reality that transhumanist ideas are everywhere and that our children are soaking them up like a sponge. "The Amazing Spider-Man" was full of them.

I appreciated that the depiction of transhumanism, called "cross-species genetics" in the movie was a negative one. Dr. Connors, in a desperate attempt to keep his job and regrow his lost arm, injects himself with what I assume is a concoction of reptile DNA. In a total suspension of disbelief, Dr. Connors gets his arm back and then some when he turns into something horrific, the vile character of the Lizard that is whole, strong and, in the Lizard's opinion, superior to all humanity.

But Dr. Connors doesn't stop there. He wants the whole human race to share in his new found genetic superiority. He now understands that humans are weak and pathetic and it isn't good enough to fix us. He needs to change us and it is for our own good. In a monologue in the the depths of the sewer, Dr. Connors muses, "This is no longer about curing ills. This is about finding perfection." (At which point my 10 year-old son whispers to me, "Don't say a word, Mom. Don't say a word.")  Dr. Connors, of course, attempts to bring all of New York City into his genetic nirvana.

I was heartened that Dr. Connors was such a tragic figure as super-heroes and villains with super powers have traditionally been. So why does the depiction of a lizard-man in a silly remake of a silly comic matter? Because I hear Dr. Connor's monologue everywhere coming from normal everyday people. People like this commenter at the transhumanist site Singularity Hub who tells us how he or she really feels about being human:

"Who doesn’t want to be smarter, prettier, healthier? Who doesn’t want to have wings to fly through the air, or gills to breathe under water? Are we stuck just being land dwellers? We spend most of our lives OBTAINING and MAINTAINING health, beauty, intelligence, etc., when we could be spending all this time and money obtaining and maintaining loving relationships with other people (transhumanists!) and going on adventures out to space exploring the universe, rather than stuck at home watching crap movies from Hollywood, going to school half our lives and drowning in debt because of it, and then just paying bills and taxes till you die. That’s no life, that’s SLAVERY.

Transhumanism is the answer to the racism, sickness, death, ugliness and stupidity. Transhumanism is the ultimate solution to be able to live up to our fullest godlike potential. The creative potential is limitless! I can’t wait to experience more, not being trapped inside these biologically frail, disease-prone bodies!

Why do you think it is important to have a transhumanist politician?
Politics is the motor of society, so to bring the battle forward it is important to have a political dimension. I have opposed Italy's "Law 40" that places limits on assisted procreation and have been pushing for more nanotechnology in energy and environmental technology.

Is transhumanism more allied with left- or right-wing politics?
In the UK and the US recently, it has been closer to the left, probably because left-wing themes such as bioethics are important to transhumanists at the moment. But economically, the movement probably leans slightly more to the right. Freedom is very important in transhumanism, leading to a focus on individuals and free enterprise.

Is there a conflict with religion?
In my opinion, no. Transhumanism does tend to avoid recourse to an external deity and, in fact, most adherents are materialists. But there are also quite a few Hindu and Buddhist transhumanists, and even some Mormons.

...if germline manipulation actually does begin, it seems likely to set off a kind of biological arms race....  Of course, the problem with arms races is that you never really get anywhere. If everyone's adding 30 IQ points, then having an IQ of 150 won't get you any closer to Stanford than you were at the outset. The very first athlete engineered to use twice as much oxygen as the next guy will be unbeatable in the Tour de France - but in no time he'll merely be the new standard. You'll have to do what he did to be in the race, but your upgrades won't put you ahead, merely back on a level playing field.

...So let's say baby Sophie has a state-of-the-art gene job; her parents paid for the proteins discovered by say, 2005 that, on average, yielded 10 extra IQ points. By the time Sophie is five, though, scientists will doubtless have discovered ten more genes linked to intelligence. Now anyone with a platinum card can get 20 IQ points, not to mention a memory boost and a permanent wrinkle-free brow. So by the time Sophie is twenty-five and in the job market, she's already more or less obsolete - the kids coming out of college just plain have better hardware.

...The vision of one's child as a nearly useless copy of Windows 95 should make parents fight like hell to make sure we never get started down this path. But the vision gets lost easily in the gushing excitement about "improving" the opportunities for our kids.

If germline genetic engineering ever starts, it will accelerate endlessly and unstoppable into the future, as individuals make the calculation that they have no choice but to equip their kids for the world that's being made. Once the game is under way, in other words, there will be no moral decisions, only strategic ones. If the technology is going to be stopped, it will have to happen now, before it's quite begun.

So I finally did it.  I sat down and read

"The Singularity will allow us to transcend these limitations of our biological bodies and brains.  We will gain power over our fates.  Our mortality will be in our own hands.  We will be able to live as long as we want (a subtly different statement from saying we will live forever.)"

"The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but transcends our biological roots."

"There will be no distinction post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality."

"Let's consider where we are, circa early 2030s.  We've eliminated the heart, lungs, red and white blood cells, platelets, pancreas, thyroid and all the hormone-producing organs, kidneys, bladder, liver, lower esophagus, stomach, small intestines, large intestines and bowel.  What we have left at this point is the skeleton, skin, sex organs, sensory organs, mouth and upper esophagus and brain."

"And to the extent that there will be debate about the desirability of such augmentation, it's easy to predict who will win, since those with enhanced intelligence will be far better debaters."

Sometimes I wonder if Germany is the last bastion of common sense in our world.  In Germany, they do not allow any research on human embryos. Germany just recently caved to pressure and allowed preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) on human embryos, but only for cases whether the parents carry genetic disease.  (In the U.S., we have no restrictions on PGD, not even for sex selection.) And it was  Greenpeace of Germany that successfully challenged the patenting of human embryos in Europe.  With the crazy ideas coming out of England and Australia these days, I found this story refreshingly sane. 

Dr Roland Kipke, of the University of Tübingen International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities, and his colleagues have written a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics arguing that cognitive enhancing drugs for otherwise healthy people are too dangerous to be ethical.  From Michael Cook's commentary at BioEdge:

They contend that the neuroenhancers are wrong on two counts.

First, the assumption that a non-addictive drug will appear is probably false. The latest research suggests that “the neuronal correlates of key cognitive concepts, such as learning and memory, are so deeply connected with mechanisms implicated in the development and maintenance of addictive behaviour so that modification of these systems may inevitably run the risk of addiction to the enhancing drugs”.

Coffee is often cited as a neuroenhancer which is harmless and has no ethical drawbacks. However, coffee does not work in the same way as these drugs: “there is a neurobiologically definable difference that is highly relevant to addiction medicine between coffee consumption and the use of drugs such as modafinil, which indicates the addictive potential of the latter. Coffee and neuroenhancers are not the same.”

Second, its supporters believe that neuroenhancement poses no moral challenges, especially if, as they assume, the drugs are unlikely to be addictive. However, the danger of addiction is so great and so proximate and the potential benefits are so remote and hypothetical that on balance, it would be immoral even to conduct clinical trials.

For instance, although drugs might raise IQ, and therefore productivity and social success. But IQ in developed countries is rising anyway. Why risk addiction? On another level, there would almost certainly be great social pressure to use neuroenhancers. Refuseniks would be forced into lowly-paid jobs or would be forced to compromise their principles.

With all these dangers in mind, the German ethicists argue that the research into the benefits of neuroenhancers is simply too dangerous to waste precious research funds on it.