[ExI] Transhumanism and Politics

Samantha Atkins sjatkins at mac.com
Sun Jan 27 09:29:33 UTC 2008


On Jan 22, 2008, at 3:13 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> On Jan 21, 2008 7:26 PM, Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>> 2) It is not reasonable to expect that it be generally accepted  
>> that the
>> amount of currency units an individual or an entity is credited  
>> with in the
>> databases of financial institutions is a universal and "divine" sign
>> implying an exclusivity (or priority) right in the access to  
>> technologies,
>> so that those not profiting from such advantage should peacefully  
>> surrender
>> to their lot.
>>
>> If we assume that at least some technologies are at least in their  
>> beginning
>> relatively scarce and expensive then what means other than money do  
>> you
>> propose to use to determine who can gain access to these  
>> technologies?
>
> My statement simply concerns the fact that somebody who is faced with
> an existential risk is usually willing to do absolutely anything   in
> his power to survive. This concern individuals as well as countries or
> other communities.

I am not sure where you are going here.  Ah, I see.  You are  
effectively claiming that "need" trumps everything.  Right?  So if I  
"need" or at least believe I "need" X then the fact that it belongs to  
A, is in limited supply and I have nothing A wants enough to supply it  
to me means that I can and should just take it or have some body of  
people do so?

> We already know for instance what African countries
> think of the choice between breaching time-honoured intellectual
> property principles such as international protection of phamaceutical
> patents and doing what they can to alleviate HIV-related medical
> emergencies.

Sorry but I think we need to address the general principles and  
questions a little more cleanly before we have a basis to apply them  
to a particular and rather emotionally loaded situation.   I will say  
that I think the ease of production and distribution of some good  
argues strongly against it being rare and difficult to obtain and thus  
justifying natural accessibility problems.   It was more the goods/ 
technologies that will naturally be initially limited that I wanted to  
discuss.   If that isn't what you wanted to discuss or were talking  
about then perhaps we should move on to other things.

> It is anybody's guess what would happen if somebody came
> up with a radical longevist technology, and tried to maintain
> exclusivity on it.

It strongly depends on its ease/cost  of replication and distribution.

> In another sense, and speaking of weapons of mass
> destruction, I expect any country that feels rightly or wrongly
> threatened by them to be inclined to build effective defences or at
> least deterrence as much as it can, irrespective of any "regulation"
> to the contrary.

Well of course.

> And I think we should not expect local transhumanists (or, for that
> matter, transhumanists belonging to excluded classes and groups in
> rich countries) to resist any of that in the name of some legal
> formalism or other. I think realism, in a marxist sense, is in order
> about all that.

I have no idea what you are talking about there.  There are no  
"excluded classes" per se.  Marx was wrong.

>
>
>>> 3) Fundamental research and its technological and educational
>>> infrastructure are essential for our future. More importantly, to  
>>> the kind
>>> of future we would like to live in, and to the values we promote.  
>>> Now, the
>>> investments required by fundamental research cannot be adequately  
>>> sustained
>>> by the mere funds possibly devoted to it by business  
>>> organisations. In fact,
>>> it is disputable that the market can sustain breakthrough-oriented,
>>> high-risk, long-term research at all, let alone research the  
>>> returns of
>>> which appear to be radically unpredictable.
>>
>> Besides business organization and governments using tax revenues  
>> for such
>> purposes there are also various voluntary associations of  
>> individual and
>> organizations pooling funds and resources toward particular desired  
>> goals.
>
> Absolutely. And this is why I chose to formulate this point in a
> negative sense, rather than merely affirming the need for governmental
> intervention or public demand.

If we could somehow get the message across and have it be believed by  
the masses that indefinitely long healthy life spans or even ones  
twice as long as today's norm are quite possible, then I think funding  
for that research would be easy to collect from the public on a  
voluntary basis.    The right packaging of vision and hope has not yet  
been created to fund the efforts we dream of in some cases.   In other  
cases a lot of fundamental research needs to be done that cannot be  
done any faster simply by having lots of money poured on it.    I  
sometimes wonder if US government interest in nanotechnology, for  
instance, did much more harm than good for the work needed to get to  
MNT.


> Whenever an Open Source-like approach
> can demonstrably work, I am just the happier with that. Actually,
> besides transhumanism, Open Source advocacy is my other main
> "political" engagement. Let me however vent my skepticism on the
> chance that things such as the Apollo Project, the Manhattan Project,
> the Human Genome Project, ITER or the Large Hadron Collider could ever
> be implemented under such model.
>

Only a tiny portion of the money governments take from people goes for  
such projects.  If governments took a lot less then all the people who  
care about said projects specifically or the general category of such  
projects could pool funds.   I would suspect that the bottom line sums  
would not be that different.  After all the Genome Project was a neck  
and neck race between government and privately funded efforts.     It  
might not be an altogether bad thing ig some empires produced less  
monuments to their own "greatness" and instead let the people much  
more directly choose what should be done with the product of their own  
labor.



>
>>> 5) Technological developments cannot, and above all should not, be  
>>> taken
>>> for granted. Specific technological achievements can never be  
>>> presumed to
>>> self-produce irrespective of the legal framework, societal  
>>> investments, and
>>> dominant cultural values, and are rather to be considered as the  
>>> goal of a
>>> deliberate, political will able to establish the pre-requisites  
>>> for their
>>> flourishing.
>>
>> Advances are usually anticipated by the relative few.  So is this  
>> political
>> will somehow directed by the few in these matters or is it expected  
>> to
>> somehow spontaneously arise and be well founded in the majority?
>
> What I am merely saying here is that technologies do not get developed
> by themselves. They require well-educated, highly-motivated, well-paid
> (both in monetary and social-status terms), free-to-act, inventors,
> researchers, scholars, visionaries, entrepreneurs who do their
> damnedest to deliver in this respect, and see that as a priority. Such
> conditions in the first place should not be taken for granted. On the
> contrary, many in Western Europe seem to believe nowadays that a
> society can live and flourish that includes only managers, bankers,
> share brokers, plus perhaps their fashion and hair stylists.
>

The trick imho is how to set up conditions that encourage and nurture  
the inventors, researcher, and other very desirable and needed  
individuals.    What would you suggest?


>>> Discussions on what to do best with future technologies and and  
>>> how to
>>> "regulate" them are fine, but often sound too much like the  
>>> proverbial
>>> cavemen fighting over the spoils of a mammuth they have not taken  
>>> down yet
>>> in the first place. A continuing acceleration in the pace of
>>> techno-scientific progress, or any flavour of Singularity, are  
>>> certainly a
>>> legitimate hope and a distinct possibility, but in no way a  
>>> guaranteed
>>> outcome, especially with regard to the issues which are the most  
>>> relevant
>>> for actual people, namely the "when?" and the "where?".
>> Well sure.  But again how do these "cavemen" develop the proper  
>> "political
>> will" to guide and nurture desirable technology?
>
> What I am saying is simply that unless technological progress is
> promoted and sustained, discussions on guidance of what it could
> deliver... if it ever existed are more or less of the same relevance
> of that on the number of angels sitting on a pin... The second
> discussion should never go without the first, IMHO.

Ah yes.  I very much agree that many of the discussions one hears on  
these things are pointless and put the cart before the horse.   I am  
pretty much of the opinion that the best way to promote and sustain  
technological progress is largely (if you are government) to get out  
of its way and encourage the funding of what seems most desirable.    
Given the results since government got into the education business  
versus when it was largely in private hands I am not enamored of the  
idea of greater government efforts in that area.   I am not too  
impressed by the Apollo program since it went for the big status  
symbol win without building a space infrastructure that would have  
laid the foundation for space enterprise and development of all  
kinds.  We are ready to do it all over again with the push for human  
landing on Mars.    So I lean toward the view that we better find ways  
to do what we want through private enterprise, foundations and such if  
we want to see much progress.

- samantha




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list