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A rather nice demonstration how xrisk concern dovetails with a big
posthuman, cosmist perspective.<br>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">Subject:
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<td>[x-risk] Martin Rees and Huw Price on the Posthuman
World</td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">Date: </th>
<td>Thu, 24 Sep 2015 10:51:57 -0400</td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">From: </th>
<td>J Hughes <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:jjhughes2@earthlink.net"><jjhughes2@earthlink.net></a></td>
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<th align="RIGHT" nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE">To: </th>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ieet-news@ieet.org">ieet-news@ieet.org</a>, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:existential@ieet.org">existential@ieet.org</a></td>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-rees/post-human-world_b_8148732.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-rees/post-human-world_b_8148732.html</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<h1
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:27.0pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline"><span
style="font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#111111">A
Post-Human World: Should We Rage, Rage Against the Dying of
the Mites?<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="line-height:12.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline"><span
class="posted"><span
style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#999999;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in">Posted:</span></span><span
class="apple-converted-space"><span
style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#999999;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"> </span></span><span
class="posted"><span
style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#999999;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in">09/23/2015 8:57 am EDT</span></span><span
class="apple-converted-space"><span
style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#999999;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"> </span></span><span
class="updated"><span
style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#999999;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in">Updated:</span></span><span
class="apple-converted-space"><span
style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#999999;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in"> </span></span><span
class="updated"><span
style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#999999;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in">09/23/2015 6:59 pm EDT</span></span><span
style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#999999"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="text-align:center;mso-line-height-alt:6.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline"
align="center"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#222222"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">Astronomers
and philosophers both like big pictures, but they often have
different measures in mind. Astronomers "go big" in space
and time -- philosophers do so in levels of abstraction from
the mundane matters of everyday life. But when it comes to
the question of the future of humanity, these dimensions
coincide to a considerable extent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">We
humans tend to think of ourselves as special, the
culmination of the evolutionary tree. But that hardly seems
credible to an astronomer, aware that although our Sun
formed 4.5 billion years ago, it is barely in middle age.
Any creatures witnessing the Sun's demise six billion years
hence won't be human -- they'll be as different from us as
we are from insects. Post-human evolution -- here on Earth
and far beyond -- could be as prolonged as the Darwinian
evolution that's led to us, and even more wonderful. And of
course, this evolution is even faster now - it's happening
on a technological timescale, driven by advances in genetics
and in artificial intelligence, and thus far faster than
natural selection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">In
particular, few who seriously consider the issue would doubt
that machines will eventually surpass more and more of our
distinctively human capabilities -- or enhance them via
cyborg technology. Disagreements are basically about the
timescale -- the rate of travel, not the direction of
travel. The cautious among us envisage timescales of
centuries rather than decades for these transformations. Be
that as it may, the timescales for technological advance are
tiny compared to the timescales of the Darwinian selection
that led to humanity's emergence -- and they are less than a
millionth of the vast expanses of time lying ahead. So the
outcomes of future technological evolution may surpass
humans, intellectually speaking, by as much as we surpass a
bug.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="mso-line-height-alt:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline"><span
class="quote"><b><span
style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:black;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in">Post-human evolution --
here on Earth and far beyond -- could be as prolonged as
the Darwinian evolution that's led to us, and even more
wonderful.</span></b></span><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">Is
this a cause for pessimism? Should we regret our eventual
obsolescence or try to prevent it -- to rage, rage against
the dying of the mites, as it were? The optimistic view is
we humans shouldn't feel too sad or too humbled. We are
surely not the terminal branch of an evolutionary tree but
we could be of special cosmic significance for jump-starting
the transition to silicon-based (and potentially immortal)
entities, spreading their influence far beyond the Earth and
far transcending our limitations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">If
all goes well, the far future will bear traces of humanity,
just as our own age retains influences of ancient
civilizations (and our bodies and minds retain traces of the
struggles of our pre-human ancestors). Humans and human
thoughts might be a transient precursor to the deeper
cogitations of another culture -- one dominated by machines,
extending deep into the future and spreading far beyond
Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">If
there's a shadow over this optimistic vision, it is the
possibility that we might instead be heading for a dead-end,
long before this future opens up. Astronomers are well aware
of the possibility of sudden cosmic catastrophes, such as
asteroid impacts, that are blind to the wellbeing of a
planetary biosphere. More alarmingly still, there's the
possibility that the biosphere might engineer its own
destruction by producing creatures -- us -- who are too
smart for our own good. Some unforeseen consequence of one
of our powerful new technologies -- synthetic biology, some
single-minded form of artificial intelligence or something
else -- might manage to wipe us out, long before any
laudable silicon descendant takes intelligence to the stars.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">We
can't do much, yet, about cosmic catastrophes, but we may be
able to steer ourselves away from some of our homegrown
existential risks. It certainly makes sense to try. As
philosophers such as Derek Parfit have</span><span
class="apple-converted-space"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333"> </span></span><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333"><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://commonweb.unifr.ch/artsdean/pub/gestens/f/as/files/4610/17613_101712.pdf"
target="_hplink"><span style="color:#03497E;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in">pointed out</span></a>,
absolute extinction is much worse even than a calamity that
wipes out, say, 95 percent of humanity, because it prevents
the existence of all the future generations, as well as
destroying the present generation. A growing group of
organizations -- e.g., the Future of Humanity Institute in
Oxford, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk in
Cambridge and the Future of Life Institute at MIT -- is
trying to tackle some of these challenges.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">At
this point, the pessimist raises an objection. If we are
going to "mutate" so radically in the long term, then we
humans won't survive anyway. How is that different from
quicker and messier paths to extinction? Either way, to
misquote Keynes a little: in the long run, we humans are all
gone. So why all the fuss?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">The
optimist has two answers to this. The rosier view is that
there are paths to a post-human future in which each
generation is able to feel, yes, these are our children, our
descendants, our legacy. Children grow up, and make their
own decisions, some of which might shock even their parents
-- let alone their more distant ancestors. That's life, and
it is better in most ways than the alternatives. A fight
against extinction needn't be a fight for stasis.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="mso-line-height-alt:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline"><span
class="quote"><b><span
style="font-size:16.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:black;border:none
windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0in">We humans tend to think of
ourselves as special, the culmination of the
evolutionary tree. But that hardly seems credible to an
astronomer, aware that although our Sun formed 4.5
billion years ago, it is barely in middle age.</span></b></span><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">The
less rosy view is that even this may be too much to hope
for. All the same, the not-quite-an-optimist says, there's a
vast gulf between a future rich with strange, alien and
morphing descendants and a future in which the distinctive
strand of intelligence that arose in our corner of the
galaxy has fallen silent. Our sense of what we value now
tells us that that silent future is the one we should work
to avoid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">There
may be billions of Earth-like planets in our galaxy alone,
and hundreds of billions of other galaxies, similarly rich
with the kind of environments we know to be favorable for
our sort of life. Unless we're a lot more special than at
present we have any reason to think -- it seems likely that
other technological civilizations have reached this point
and perhaps had these kind of thoughts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
style="mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:11.25pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:15.75pt;background:white;vertical-align:baseline;box-sizing:
border-box;text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;font-stretch:
normal"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif;color:#333333">If
these civilizations differ in what happens next, it may be
because they differ in what they do with the realization
that -- far more than ever before and thanks to the
extraordinary power of their new technologies -- their
future is in their own hands (or appendages of some other
kind, perhaps). It remains to be seen what we humans will
manage to do with this rather daunting responsibility. Watch
this space, as an astronomer might say!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p
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