[ExI] Human extinction

[Lee Corbin]

Stefano writes

> Lee wrote:
> 
>> The reason I advance for favoring Homo Sapiens in a contest
>> for my affections over some lizard race from Sirius is two-fold.
>> For one, similarity of structure (including all the aforementioned
>> traits such as emotion and so on). For two, we naturally have
>> a certain solidarity with our cell-mates, our fellow city residents,
>> our national comrades, and even (up to a point) our gender or
>> racial brethren.
> 
> Actually, I am rather inclined to accept such order of ideas as
> "natural" myself, even though it might end up having both of us
> labelled as specieists, racists, ethnocentrists, nationalists, male
> chauvinists, or just chauvinists. :-)

Oh, that could happen all right---but I've been called far worse :-)
For me, the 11th commandment might read "Thou shalt not
defect against thy brethren", whether that means for me
(strongest case) fellow life-boat survivors from the Titanic,
or (weakest case) fellow men.

> (In fact, I tend instead to consider that diversity can only be based
> on everybody's love for their own identity).

What does that mean? I can't parse it at all. Diversity (or diverseness)
is to me an objective *condition* that may or may not hold to some
degree about one group of entities compared to another (more
homogeneous) group of entities.

> But all this is *synchronic*. Diacronically, and as far as offspring
> are concerned, what one really would like is not to have one's children
> (or, for that matter, one's clones) *exactly* identical to what one
> is. He or she usually wants them to be as much better, more
> accomplished, stronger, healthier and more successful as possible.

Yes, but there are many possible versions of *me* that are stronger,
healthier, smarter, etc. I surely would prefer them to some extremely
risky genetic lottery with a..., with a *woman*.

> This is after all what sexual selection, education, preventive
> medicine and the drive towards genetic engineering is about.

Yes, that's what those things are about all right. Each of
them you mention is indeed aimed at improving human
stock (one way or another). But *my* preferences don't
always coincide with that, as I've said. Better us, say I,
than entirely non-human entities a billion times our superiors
in every way, if it's an either-or choice.

> One would expect replicators whose bearers tend to favour
> similar vehicles over more different ones to get a reproductive
> edge, wouldn't one?

Well, actually, not *too* similar. I think that the rather 
striking way that so many brothers fail to closely resemble
each other and the way that so many sisters fail to closely
resemble each other is that evolution has found it a good
idea to cover its bets. E.g., let's make a fat one and a thin
one because the climate, physical hardiness, and sexual
opportunities are not so predictable.

> What I am say here is that for sure to restrict the usage of H+
> technology to the (hardly natural) preservation of humanity as close
> as possible to its current average traits for as long as possible
> would not really be a good bet for the survival of the human clade in
> vastly different context.

I guess you're right.

> The clades - the , if you prefer, the
> lineages or the monophyletic groups - last as much as they are able to
> change, branch, diversify and adapt... The others are much more
> vulnerable to extinction, namely in the sense not of just not being
> around any more in their past forms, but more radically of leaving
> just fossils behind.

True enough.

> This is why those who believe that "survival" - in some other sense
> than individual, physical survival - should be considered as a primal
> value, should hardly fear a posthuman change in terms of an
> "existential risk".

Well, at the risk of repeating myself, I cannot agree. By
the "similarity of structure" criterion, there is everything
to fear.

>>> and would lead us to conclude that it would have been a
>>> good idea for our simian ancestors, at least from their
>>> point of view, to put in place an eugenic programme
>>> aimed at avoiding the kind of evolutionary change that
>>> ultimately led to ourselves.
>>
>> Heh, well of course it would have been a good idea---for *them*!
> 
> Mmhhh. They may well not have survived anyway, at least they have
> descendants they could be to some extent be proud of... :-)

To me, such "pride" is misplaced. In fact, now that I think of
it (thanks!), how much pride I *may* experience lies along
almost exactly the same continuum as the solidarity continuum
I was speaking of earlier. I can feel almost zero pride at being
white, or being an American, because I didn't do anything to
achieve that, nor did my family, nor did my office-mates at
work. I'm just a bit more proud that we Californians seem
to have (or to have had) a level of egalitarianism and lack of
corruption that is in advance of a number of other states I
could mention. 

But suppose the big S occurs, the solar system sports only
entities who are to us as we are to amoebas, and they come
into stellar conflict with a still-DNA molecularly reproducing
people (with tails, four legs, six eyes, and a fondness for
tyrannical government) who nonetheless appreciate art and
music in ways not altogether different from us, and who have
the same kind of loyalty/solidarity continuum that I've just
described.  I would be on *their* side, not on the side of
my inhuman descendants.

This last point is similar to the points made in certain popular
movies such as "The Bad Seed" and "The Good Son" in
which a parent tries to kill or show extreme disfavor to 
an evil offspring, and instead favors another child who 
is not related but who has a much superior purity of soul.

Lee

> And, in any event, "animal eugenism [eugenicism]" regularly tends to
> eliminate less-than-average Darwinian bets, not better-than-average...