[Paleopsych] Reason: The Transhumans Are Coming!
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Reason: The Transhumans Are Coming! And they're promoting mito flushes,
sousveillance, cyberglogging, and genetic virtue
http://www.reason.com/rb/rb081104.shtml
4.8.11 by Ronald Bailey
And they're promoting mito flushes, sousveillance, cyberglogging, and
genetic virtue
The [11]World Transhumanist Association's annual
conference--TransVision 2004--attracted some 125 philosophers,
scientific researchers, and techno-visionaries to Toronto last weekend
to think about, discuss, and promote the ways in which technology will
transform human lives. WTA members come from around the world; they
want to nurture an intellectual and policy environment in which
advanced biotechnology, nanotechnology, and informatics help people
live longer, healthier lives, become more intelligent, and gain
control over their emotions. On display at TransVision 2004 were some
notable advances in their efforts.
Probably the most immediate goal of these transhumanists is promoting
research that will radically increase healthy human lifespans. This
topic was addressed at a plenary presentation on "The Feasibility and
Desirability of Indefinite Youth" by Cambridge University theoretical
biogerontologist (and new editor of the scientific journal
[12]Rejuvenation Research), [13]Aubrey de Grey. De Grey identifies the
"[14]seven deadly things" that cause aging and argues researchers have
now reached the point where an engineering approach to preventing the
damage they cause is tractable.
For example, one of the chief causes of aging is mutations in
mitochondrial genes. The mutations are a byproduct of the
energy-producing activities of these cellular organelles that damages
their own small genomes consisting of only 13 genes. Most genes are
encoded by DNA in a cell's nucleus. "Mitochondrial DNA is massively
less well protected than nuclear DNA," said De Grey. Consequently, De
Grey argues that mitochondrial genes would be safer and less subject
to mutation if they were engineered into the nuclear genes. And this
is not an impossible goal, since a number of researchers have already
managed to do just that for a variety of organisms. His hypothesis is
that better protected mitochondrial genes would slow down one of the
seven deadly things that cause aging. De Grey suggested that the other
six causes of aging are also amenable to such "[15]strategies for
engineering negligible senescence." At the end of his talk, he
predicted that there is "50/50 chance of effectively reversing aging
in 25 years."
For those of us whose mitochondrial genes look to be battered about as
they are left hanging outside the nucleus for the rest of our all too
short lives, University of Virginia researcher [16]Rafal Smigrodski
offered some hope. In his presentation, "How to buy new mitochondria
for your old body" Smigrodski described work he and his colleague Shah
Khan at Gencia Corporation are doing that is aimed at completely
replacing defective mitochondria with fresh new ones. Look for whole
body "mito flushes" in a few years.
But the transhumanists in Toronto were not only concerned about long
healthy happy lives; they were also concerned with truth. George Mason
University economics professor [17]Robin Hanson argued that
super-rational posthumans in the future won't be able to "agree to
disagree," chiefly because they'll agree on everything. Hanson
[18]argues that disagreements among less than super-rational people
today exist largely because we deceive ourselves about what we really
know to be true. There are good "reasons" for us to think that, for
example, "the more you believe in yourself, the more you can get other
people to believe in you," and thus get them to do what you want. But
super-rational posthumans won't be able to deceive themselves or
others, suggests Hanson. Does this mean the end of politicians?
In another session, McMaster University philosopher and editor of the
[19]Journal of Evolution and Technology, Mark Walker gave a talk on
"[20]Genetic Virtue", the ethics of bioengineering children to be
virtuous. Walker began by pointing out that parents and communities
already spend a lot of time and effort trying to instill virtues in
the young. Assuming that genes that predispose people toward being
honest and caring for others can be found, what would be wrong with
allowing parents to use biotechnology, say, [21]pre-implantation
genetic diagnosis, to increase the chances that their children are
born with those virtues? Walker concluded that if we accept that the
goal of ethics is to make our lives and our world better, then we
ought to explore the plausibility and possibility of genetically
instilled virtue. One audience member suggested that this would remove
a child's free will, but I pointed out that a child doesn't get any
extra measure of free will just because they have randomly conferred
genes.
Opening the conference was the rather creepy [22]Steve Mann, who has
been trying to turn himself into a [23]cyborg for years. Mann
apparently insists on seeing the world through a set of goggles that
laser-write video onto his retinas. Using a video hookup, he could
share with the audience exactly what he was seeing; his view was
available on a giant screen onstage. Mann's subject was the future of
wearable computers (people encased in computer gear were referred to
as "gargoyles" in some science fiction novel I read a while back). In
the future we will see what he calls cyberglogging, which will be
essentially sound and video [24]lifeblogs compiled by omnipresent
wearable video and audio hookups. Mann has a response to people who
worry that we are becoming too dependent upon technology. "Don't shoes
and clothing damage our ability to survive wild in the woods?,"
retorts Mann. "Calculators make our brains rot; clothes make our
bodies rot; shoes make our feet rot, don't they?"
In addition, Mann, in the spirit of David Brin's [25]The Transparent
Society, also pointed out that we live in world in which surveillance
(that is, "watching from above") cameras are becoming ubiquitous. His
response is "[26]sousveillance", or "watching from below"; in other
words, the watched turn their cameras onto the watchers. To
demonstrate his aphorism that "surveillance and [27]sousveillance get
along about as well as matter and anti-matter," Mann showed the
audience video of him talking with clerks and security guards in a
department store. Invariably they refused to answer his questions
about surveillance and asked him to turn his cameras off. Mann asks
them why they are uncomfortable when he's videoing them, when after
all they are videoing him without his permission.
Setting aside the fact that Mann is voluntarily on private property,
that he is a prestigious professor picking on clerks who are not the
ones who run the store much less its surveillance policies, and that
being aggressively videoed by some random guy is naturally
intimidating, he does have a point. As he says, "sousveillance should
never be prohibited in area that is undergoing surveillance." And I
bet that when we all can wear completely unobtrusive video and audio
recording devices, no one will much care--we'll just assume that we're
on camera all the time.
But TransVision 2004 was not all techno-science and philosophy.
Saturday evening featured a presentation by the Australian performance
artist [28]Stelarc. Now, generally my attitude toward performance art
isn't very welcoming, but Stelarc is the real deal. Stelarc insists
that humans are--and have always been--Zombies and Cyborgs. Our bodies
are not inhabited by Cartesian "minds," and as cyborgs we've always
used technology to extend the reach of our bodies into the world. To
demonstrate his points, Stelarc offered the assembled transhumanists a
fascinating (and fun) multi-media program encompassing his career from
his days hanging from [29]giant hooks thrust through his skin to
creating and running [30]insectoid cyborg machines to a [31]prosthetic
head using the [32]Alice AI program to answer viewers' questions.
Well-meaning though transhumanists may be, their efforts are
apparently giving some people the willies. "Transhumanists intend to
take us on a long march to post humanity," [33]warns [34]Center for
Bioethics and Culture special consultant, Wesley J. Smith. "If that is
not to happen, we will have to resist." Resist longer and happier
lives, better health, stronger bodies, and smarter brains? The
prospect sounds incredibly dangerous to me! It must be stopped!
However, listening to the panels and presentations at TransVision
2004, Smith does get it essentially right when he notes, "They assert
that humans should not merely be allowed to metamorphose themselves
through plastic surgery, cyber-technology, and the like, but should
have the right to control the destiny of their genes via progeny
design and fabrication." Yes, indeed they do. And so what? Well, watch
this space as I occasionally chronicle the opening of the
transhumanist front in our ongoing culture wars.
-------------------------------------
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His new book,
Liberation Biology: A Moral and Scientific Defense of the Biotech
Revolution will be published in early 2005.
References
11. http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/
12. http://www.liebertpub.com/REJ/default1.asp
13. http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/AdGbio.htm
14. http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/just7.htm
15. http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/index.html
16. http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/people/dop/dopDetail.cfm?drid=1151
17. http://hanson.gmu.edu/home.html
18. http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:K_kRsdxo4jwJ:hanson.gmu.edu/deceive.pdf+hanson+disagreements+honest&hl=en
19. http://www.jetpress.org/contents.htm
20. http://www.permanentend.org/gvp.htm
21. http://www.reason.com/rb/rb030602.shtml
22. http://wearcam.org/
23. http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2004-05-13/goods_next.php
24. http://www.livingroom.org.au/blog/archives/nokia_lifeblog.php
25. http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Econ_Articles/Reviews/Transparent.html
26. http://www.reason.com/hod/nh123002.shtml
27. http://www.reason.com/0303/ci.bd.poking.shtml
28. http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/index2.html
29. http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/suspens/suspens.html
30. http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/exoskeleton/index.html
31. http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/prosthetichead/index.html
32. http://www.alicebot.org/
33. http://www.thecbc.org/redesigned/research_display.php?id=129
34. http://www.thecbc.org/
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