The Superhero Genre and Transhumanism

I've decided to revive this blog after a long absence, I've been putting most of my effort into my worldbuilding project at the Para-Imperium. For starters I thought I'd repost my essays on the contrast between transhumanism and the superhero genre, originally posted here and here. Superheroes: Individuals with special skills, equipment, and in particular, powers that they use to fight criminals both “mundane” and superpowered like themselves. They might have mutations from laboratory accidents or accident of birth, they might have been augmented with cybernetics after sustaining horrific injuries, they could have escaped from a secret super soldier project, or maybe they weren’t human in the first place. Transhumanism: The philosophy that the limitations of the human body should be “transcended” through the use of technology. Specifically, technology internal to the body such as cybernetic implants or genetic modification. The hope is that such tech will make people hardier, smarter, longer-lived, potentially even immortal. Now, one might be forgiven for thinking that superheroes were prime examples of transhumans, but in truth the majority couldn’t be farther from them. You see, most transhumanists see the ability to choose to enhance oneself a right that should be available, though they might disagree on how one gains access to enhancement. While very few superheroes willingly obtain their powers, and if they do they either refuse to share the source of their powers or plot happens to prevent others from following in their footsteps. Captain America’s probably the closest to the transhumanist ideal as he volunteered for the super soldier project, but the serum was destroyed after his enhancement. Iron Man and Black Panther on the other hand, could make the sources of their powers available to the world, but choose not to for fear that “the wrong people” could misuse them. Of course, the main reason why superheroes can’t share their superpower sources with the world is sales. The big two comic book publishers in particular have been running their big titles for the better part of a century and they can’t risk making too many big changes to the status quo in the story, hence any world-shattering events like mass produced superpowers can’t stick. That’s also why superheroes and villains rarely stay dead. The secondary reason why superhero stories are anti-transhuman is that supers are by necessity exceptional people who accept or reject “the burden of protecting the mundanes.” Writers need a reason why these particular people are fighting crime or attempting to conquer the world, and it would be much more difficult to justify their actions if everybody had superpowers. Though frankly, I think Syndrome from “The Incredibles” said it best: “...when everybody’s special, nobody is.” Now, whether it’s possible to write a work of fiction with superheroes and transhumanism is another story. If just anyone can punch through a wall or bounce bullets off their skin there’s not really much point to committing or thwarting super-crimes. The most apparent possibility is specialization, in which some transhumans choose to focus on combat-oriented enhancements for good or ill. Of course, this presumes some kind of limitation is applied to the number or type of enhancements one person might possess. This tends to be more explicit in role-playing games than prose or comics, where powers are typically assigned point values that one must expend a resource to obtain. In cyberpunk RPGs money tends to be the resource of choice for obtaining new abilities. Money could easily be the transhuman limiting factor in your superhero story but be wary about making enhancements too expensive. If the average person cannot afford enhancement without a governmental, corporate, or criminal sponsor the setting can get very dark very fast. Of course, post-scarcity economies tend to go hand-in-hand with transhumanist settings so maybe money wouldn’t fit as a limiting factor. After money the next apparent limitation would be physical size, even nanobots take up some space in the body. It’s fully plausible that your potential superhero can’t fit their orbital calculator in with their subdermal plating and targeting implant. Related would be a limitation on how many implants the human brain can learn to control. Now, there are many settings where people can change their bodies like shirts and everybody can have access to a few dozen spare bodies, and I’m not going to try and convince you that “pattern continuity” is just Cartesian dualism stripped of the overtly supernatural elements this time, so let’s try another concept. In the Orion’s Arm setting the Singularity is not an event, rather it is a threshold for brain complexity. Once a being goes through the intensely traumatic process of ascending to a new Singularity they find it as difficult to relate to their former peers as humans to dogs. Their concerns have taken on a whole new scale, a “generalist” transhuman might distribute their consciousness processes over a dozen different specialized bodies including a spaceship, but find themselves more concerned with controlling solar flares than stopping thieves with superspeed and pyrokinetic terrorists. The third way to keep superheroes in a transhuman setting “super” involves the law. There’s a bit of an anarchist streak running through the transhumanist community but it would be possible for a government to approve limited implementation of human enhancement technology. In the most liberal versions only weaponized enhancements might be banned, as the setting gets more authoritarian enhancements that might cause collateral damage such as strength or speed boosts might be restricted, until finally you get a sort of “reverse Harrison Bergeron” where everyone is modded to the limits of “natural” human ability and no further. Now, superheroes have traditionally been vigilantes, breaking the law to carry out their idea of justice, so this doesn’t preclude the possibility of transhuman superheroes in the slightest. At most, you might add a bit more antagonism between the police and supers than was usual for even the more cynical eras of comic publication. A while after writing about how superheroes might be difficult to write in transhumanist settings I had a couple ideas for implementing them in the Para-Imperium ‘verse. One "above-board" and one "below." Sanctioned heroes: The "memetic badass" approach, where the security forces attempt to reduce expenditures by focusing not on big police departments, but on a small group of celebrity supermen with customized augmentations, movie-star good looks, and extensively marketed adventures. Not dissimilar to the purpose of Knights in Shining Armor in Middle Ages Europe. In this case, their purpose is less to fight crime as to dissuade people from committing crime in the first place, so only those with the resources to field their own super-villains, or attention-seekers like the guy Rorschach dropped down an elevator shaft, will dare to commit crimes. Either one tends to suit the entrenched oligarchy just fine, the fights make for good publicity. A sanctioned superhero's jurisdiction rarely extends beyond their home planet or habitat, and they're typically part of a planet- or star system-spanning organization of other heroes. Attempts to form a Federation-wide group like the Green Lantern Corps or their Lensmen predecessors have thus far been stalled in committee. This approach is vulnerable to the death of a superhero, as crime tends to skyrocket until a new hero manages to build an equal reputation to their predecessor. As such superhero leagues tend to have the best medical care available, including, it is rumored, illegal brain cloning. Vigilantes: The "shadowrun" approach. These tend to arise most often in polycentric legal systems like the Pallene or Cetan law systems, in which feuds can simmer between factions for decades, centuries with life extension. The romanticized version is a tragic figure like Batman or Zorro who has a legitimate grievance that the conventional authorities failed to address. That type of vigilante does exist, but tend to be short-lived as they right the wrong that led them to take up the cape and then retire, or die trying. The more common variety are mercenaries more akin to Deadpool, supersoldiers for hire willing to act as deniable assets for any House or company with sufficient credit.

To all AI designers out there, program for compassion not empathy

Do you know, the difference between an Aspergarian and a psychopath? The answer is probably found in how they would respond to a Vioght-Kampf test from Blade Runner. "You are walking through the desert, you see a tortoise, you flip it over onto it's back..." An Aspie might state that they would flip the tortoise back over once it was obvious it couldn't do that itself; a psychopath would say the same, if they had figured it out, in reality they would most likely watch it bake in the sun. The difference is compassion, not empathy, the ability to gauge another's emotional responses is secondary to being able to "feel" for another.

I am stating this because some involved in the field of AI research have warned to beware of creating a superintelligence with "hyper-Asperger's". And I am worried that this may result in programmers designing an AI with a database of emotional responses and what usually triggers them, but forgetting to program actual compassion. So, at the very least we should prevent AIs from seeing Blade Runner and do a compassion test as well as the Turing test.

Why People, Or Superintelligences, Need Others

I just finished writing my final essay for my philosophy class this semester, and realized how some of the points I brought up might be used as reasons for a Superintelligence capable of wiping out humanity and existing by itself might keep us around.

Here's the essay in full, what do you think?:

Aside from the practical reasons, mutual protection, cooperation in gathering food, reproduction, one sometimes wonders why we need other people in our lives. In Being and Nothingness Jean-Paul Sartre states that feelings such as shame, pride, etc, are due to being looked at and objectified by another. He also states that this objectification gives one density of presence. Essentially, one needs attention from someone else. But they also want control, power, when you look at me I become an object; but when I look at you, you become an object. You can take my possibilities from me, and I can do the same, you are the Other and I can subvert you. Of course, we may be entangled with others so much that other people form a large part of our identities. Even Nietzsche hinted at knowing this in his essay on the signs of high and low culture, though he had a slightly different reason for why we would need other people.
Sartre puts a lot of emphasis on “the Look” that another person gives to you. He even refers to the Look as a ‘fall’ in the pseudo-religious sense, as in a loss of innocence. The world seems to drain into the other and reduces oneself to just another object like everything else in the world to that other person. This takes away most of the possibilities available to the person being looked at, it is a loss of control. Once he arrives your possibilities are threatened by his possibilities. However the Look also gives the looked at density of presence, he feels validated. “The Other’s look confers spatiality upon me. To apprehend oneself as looked-at is to apprehend oneself as a spatializing-spatialized.”(1). And of course, you can take away the other’s possibilities just as easily as he can take away yours, which might give you a sense of control over the situation and the other, which Sartre believes is what the lover seeks. The lover wants control over how the beloved looks at him, using his own object-state to manipulate how she sees him. However, the lover also doesn’t want to “compromise the freedom of the other” as it wouldn’t be as satisfying. But most of the time a person is trying to control another, even the masochist who desires to be treated as an object is just using the dominatrix who he wants to be used by.
There is another possibility for why we need to have others in our lives, the concept of Martin Heidegger’s that we are all entangled with “the They”. You see, in everyday being with others “Da-sein stands in subservience to the others.”(2) Da-sein, loosely translated, means being-there or there-being, Heidegger used it to mean one’s personal presence, their being in the world. Being in the world we have associational relationships with various objects that exist in the world, including other people. But other people have different perspectives than one person does and your Da-sein can be easily lost in the inauthentic Da-sein of the they. The public world surrounding oneself dissolves one’s Da-sein into that of the others, disburdening individual Da-sein in its everydayness. One becomes entangled in the they and in fact falls towards the they, fleeing from self-awareness and all that painful inner worldly thinking. Actually that last sentence, and how it is stated in the book, might actually be in the wrong tense, it seems to suggest that the fall into the they hasn’t happened yet. Also the terminology suggests that “falling prey” is a bad thing when Heidegger specifically states not to place value judgments on entanglement of Da-sein. While we can’t say whether or not being entangled in the collective Da-seins of the world is a good thing it does help people get along with their day to day lives.
Friedrich Nietzsche actually had a good reason for someone to break away from the others, though he didn’t use the same terminology. He viewed tight societies as super-organisms of a sort, and he noticed that many individuals who were weakened in one organ compensated by making other organs stronger, for example a blind man had better hearing and could see deeper inwardly. To him those individuals who were less bound represented a “wound” in society that helped it to advance. In terms of functionality in society “the stronger natures retain the type, but the weaker ones help to advance it.”(3) He then goes on to divide people into “bound spirits” and “free spirits”; free spirits are strong, but also weak, especially in their actions as they have too many motives and are therefore uncertain and awkward. The bound spirit on the other hand has tradition on his side and does not need to explain his actions, allowing him to be very strong and assertive in action. A genius, a true genius not the generic IQ>150 kind of genius, would be a free spirit who can also assert himself as effectively as a bound spirit, without needing to appeal to the bound spirits. But to unlock the true potential of a genius might require one to break free from the bindings of society, in the same way that a prisoner might be inspired to develop skills related to escaping. So we need other people and specifically the tightly bound societies they form in order to create true Free Spirits, who are necessary to prevent humanity from stagnating. In addition those Free Spirits might lead to something that transcends humanity, the Ubermensch, of course that might not be a good thing, but they’ll still need normal Mensch for the same reason as the genius.
So, in effect we have two reasons why people need other people, Sartre’s “look” and both Heidegger and Nietzsche’s concepts of multiple people interacting as one person and distinction of those who break away. Although the feeling of validation given by the look and the everyday convenience of the they probably matter more to the average person than the motivating pressure of society to produce genius. But everyone wants control, control provides security, it provides stability and prevents any unexpected complications in your life and/or plans. There is no denying that other people can be a hindrance, but they can also be advantageous, if you can manipulate them properly. Plus there is the sense of satisfaction you get when you’ve made the other into just another object in the world. So the main reason why we need others is still because we want to use them. But really you can’t accept just one of those explanations on its own, they’re all entangled with one another, just like we are as individuals within the they.

References:
1. Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1956). Being and Nothingness. Philosophical Library, Inc. Page 266.
2. Heidegger, Martin. (1953) Being and Time. State University of New York (1996 reprinting). Page 118 and 199.
3. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1878). Translated by Marion Faber (1984). University of Nebraska Press. Page 138

Brain Uploading, Not Just For Immortality

If you have read my previous posts on this blog you might recall my opinion that most ways of creating a full brain emulation would not result in immortality for the original, but Roko Mijic's talk on FAI made me think about how uploading may benefit humanity in other ways. Roko mentions and even recommends using brain emulations as a stepping stone towards benevolent superintelligence, but there might be less fantastical uses for the technology if it is developed before the Singularity drives humanity into extinction.

The appeal of using brain emulations for AI is obvious, with an AI made from scratch you don't really know what to expect. Whereas an emulation theoretically gives you something with motivations you understand, or at least an easy way to teach an AI human values. Also you can easily monitor every process of an emulation, which is where I got my idea.

There are many mysteries still locked within the human mind and even if decent mind reading technology is developed it would be difficult for one to provide data on everyday activities with a brain scanner around their head. That is where uploading comes in, remember, you don't necessarily need to understand how something works to copy it. No doubt there are many psychologists who would love to pick around in someone's head to the extent that only an emulation could provide. Not to mention that an emulation of a psychopath or schizophrenic would help AI programmers recognize what not to do.

A possibility on the future

Imagine, that technology has advanced to the point where a complete copy of your personality and memories can be made through a process as simple as an MRI is today. And that two or more people with the appropriate implants can perceive through each other's senses and "hear" each other's thoughts, to the point where it can be difficult to distinguish whose thoughts and experiences are whose. Now imagine that you have those implants and that you have an AI copy of yourself made. Once your copy is activated your implants are linked to it, the copy doesn't have a chance to form an independent thought and essentially becomes an extension of your own mind. You become much better at multi-tasking as now you essentially have two brains, you can battle orcs while you're in a meeting with your boss. You can use one brain to work while your other is on vacation. Maybe you have an android that your AI self can teleoperate if you ever need to be in two places at once. But then one day you feel a sudden flash of pain and all sensory input from your biological body cuts out, frantically you check all your life signs. Pulse: zero; brain activity: flat-lined; you come to one conclusion, you are dead.

Techlepathy, how cybernetics could assist the mentally disabled

"I don't know what you're thinking Paul, you have to tell me," something I've heard in many of my conversations with my mom, I'm trying to explain something but can't describe it in words. As many of you know I have Asperger's Syndrome, essentially a very high-functioning form of autism, and one of my symptoms is that I find it difficult to put my thoughts into words because many of my thoughts take the form of images or sounds instead of words. During one of my difficult conversations I recalled the Cyberpunk anime Ghost in the Shell, where telepathic communication via neural implants or techlepathy is common.

I began to think that since communication over the internet isn't solely text one with a brain-computer interface could hypothetically send more than just words to others with similar interfaces, but also images of what they are thinking and their emotional states. One of the difficulties that autistics have with communication is a lack of empathy, they cannot pick up other's feelings as easily as neurotypicals can, a BCI or possibly just some sort of wearable computer could help them with that. This could have the disadvantage that autistics with BCIs would only be able to effectively communicate with people who also had BCIs, but if computer technology becomes small enough it might be possible for a worn or implanted computer to host an AI program designed to "interpret" for the user. Unfortunately, we have no idea when any of those technologies will become available, most Cyberpunk takes place in the 2030's or 40's but that is an optimistic guess, if the Singularity happens BCI's will either become necessary for humans to keep up with AI or unnecessary as humanity's biological existence comes to an end.

The Singularity, what I think about it.

The Singularity is a common concept in transhumanism, in twenty to thirty years we will create an Artificial Intelligence that is more intelligent than humans and it will create an even more powerful AI and that AI will create an even more powerful AI, and so forth until an entity that is utterly incomprehensible to humans is created and then society changes completely. The branch of transhumanism known as Singularitarianism treats this event, the Singularity, like it was the rapture or something. I think that the Singularity will happen, whether it's in twenty years, a hundred years, or a thousand years, but it is unlikely to benefit humanity. Once a superintelligence forms it will probably seek to expand itself, and humanity will be obsolete, and obsolete hardware gets recycled. I would expect a completely logical superintelligence to break down all life on earth into raw materials, it might upload the consciousnesses of some or all of the destroyed organisms but as you should know I find that unacceptable. Compared to machines organic life is an inefficient collection and storage device, a lot of the solar energy gathered by plants is lost when the plant is consumed by an animal, and even more energy is lost when that animal is eaten by another animal. You can see why a machine would conclude that they are more efficient. Perhaps if we introduced the first human level AIs to Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human they might decide that there is a reason to keep us alive when the Singularity comes.

Why a Robot Revolution is unlikely to happen.

It is a common theme in Hollywood movies, robots rising against their masters and attempting to exterminate humanity. But why would we make laborers smart enough to rebel in the first place? Robots that are no-where near sentient are already used with great effectiveness in manufacturing, and both construction and agriculture make extensive use of machines that could easily be run on autopilot. The only jobs that sentience would be needed for in those fields are design and supervision, which would likely be filled by humans. Essentially the only things that near-sentient automatons could be used for would be personal assistants and millitary. Note that the robots designed for the purposes below could be bioroids instead of completely metal or plastic automatons if biological components turn out to be cheaper.

Japan is currently interested in humanoid robots mostly because of their lack of population growth, so that they can fill the gaps in their workforce caused by the aging population, and to help the increasing proportion of their population that is retired. Assisting an elderly or disabled person might require a significant amount of decision-making, but it is unlikely that human-level intelligence would be necessary. This would probably lead to android companions owned by perfectly healthy people and at least some would probably be Sexbots, so gynoids would probably be more common than androids. The problem is that there would be the potential for abuse of these androids and some manufacturers might make them more intelligent to seem more realistic. If abused androids were able to communicate with one another and able to feel pain they could organize and attempt to get back at their owners, possibly obtaining upgrades to make them more intelligent.

Military robots would be a far greater risk, combat situations often require more problem-solving ability than following a blueprint so robots designed for combat would either have intelligence compareable to a human or be remote controlled by human soldiers. It is inevitable that robots will be used for war as humans don't like to be killed, the problem is that if the robots are smart enough they might decide they don't like being destroyed either. For that reason it might be recommended that robots be designed with something like Isaac Asimov's three laws and only used for non-lethal force, and the only robots designed for lethal force would be teleoperated. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if human soldiers with cybernetic enhancements or power armor saw more use with the military than fully autonomous robots capable of lethal force.

Overall there is little threat of a robotic revolution due to the fact that there simply wouldn't be very many robots with the intelligence to rebel.

Dysgenics vs. the Flynn Effect, which is accurate?

Intelligence quotients have largely been proven to be an accurate assessment of cognitive abilities, but there is some disagreement as to whether IQ is hereditary or environmental and whether average IQ is increasing or increasing. Many eugenicists believe that IQ is largely genetic and since people with lower IQs are less likely to use birth control that the percentage of stupid people is increasing (like in Idiocracy), they call this phenomenon a dysgenic event. However there is much more documentation suggesting that average IQ, especially towards the lower end of the scale, is increasing by at least 3 points every 30 years, known as the Flynn effect. It is known that some genes such as FADS2 and CHRM2 have an influence on IQ, but children from lower income families also tend to score lower on IQ tests. Studies seem to show that environment is a bigger influence in lower income families and genetics is a bigger influence in higher income families, in all cases biological siblings show less variation in IQ than adopted ones. Since living conditions tend to be better (or at least more stable) in higher income households this seems to suggest that IQ might be like height, the upper limit is determined by genes but poor living conditions may prevent one from reaching that limit. It is certainly undeniable that nutritional and educational standards have increased (at least in the west) over the past century, which would account for the Flynn effect. But if there is a genetic upper limit the increase should at least be slowing down, which some think is happening in Denmark and some other developed nations.

The difference between Nietzsche and Transhumanism

On a few occasions Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Uebermensch (over-human) has been mistakenly identified with the Transhumanist concept of the Posthuman. This mistake largely stems from the following quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra: "All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment…" While Posthumans could be described as being as far beyond humans as humans are beyond apes or even insects, most transhumanists do not hold the same values as Nietzsche did, in fact many of them seem to prefer something closer to the Last Man than the Uebermensch. The Last Man in Nietzschean philosophy was what Nietzsche believed that European society was currently headed towards instead of the Uebermensch, the Last Man is a weak-willed individual who is tired of life, takes no risks, and seeks only comfort and security, instead of developing new values he embraces nihilism. Whereas the Uebermensch would be almost the exact opposite, one who lives life to the fullest and develops new values to fill the void left by the death of god. Many transhumanists seek a post-scarcity society (no need to work) where people can live as long as they want (free of risks, may result in one getting bored with life). In addition, Singulatarianism is almost a religion, promising escape from this world through the rapture of the singularity, and relief from the suffering of mortal existence by uploading. Those who have been reading here know Nietzsche's attitude on suffering, what you probably don't know is that one of his problems with religion was its denigration of human existence and otherworldliness, which some currents of transhumanism have taken on. This is overall, why I no longer call myself a transhumanist, I have found too many of them to be hopeless idealists or deluded new agers. It probably goes without saying that I would find the Uebermensch a much more preferable future than a post-scarcity society full of Last Men or a relapse into Christo-Buddhist thinking hiding behind the guise of science.

Uplift, Why Do it?

One idea that many transhumanists support is the idea of biological uplift, the possible modification of non-human animals so that they become at least as intelligent as humans. The concept was popularized, and named, by David Brin with his Uplift series of novels, where humanity has not only uplifted Dolphins and Chimpanzees but also discovered that almost every sapient species in the galaxy was uplifted by another species. Brin technically wasn't the first one to come up with the concept, H.G. Wells wrote about beasts vivisected to become men in The Island of Doctor Moreau back in the Victorian era (guess how it ended), in addition the hard sci-fi webcomics Freefall and Schlock Mercenary both involve characters that are genetically engineered animals and the Orion's Arm universe includes both provolves (they couldn't use Uplift for legal reasons) and splices. Now there are a number of transhumanists (such as Abolitionists) that think it is our moral duty to improve the quality of all sentient life, which includes most animals not just humans and maybe extraterrestrials.

But what they are not taking into account is whether animals would want to be uplifted, or even if humanity would have a practical reason to uplift others. Aside from attempting to colonize environments that humans couldn't survive in like in Freefall, I don't see much reason why anyone other than the military/police (and maybe Furry fans) would have a use for a talking animal. Maybe someone will think that society could benefit from having different points of view from multiple species or people will start wanting pets that can hold a conversation with them. But if you do think that non-humans should be uplifted to our level, you should consider whether a species would want to be uplifted. In some cases, such as great apes, it might be possible to simply ask a non-uplifted individual (using sign language or a computer) if they would like their kids to be able to talk like humans or be as smart as one. But for most other species it would be very difficult for them to understand the concept of intelligence and language, uplift would effectively create a completely different species so you might as well just uplift at least a few individuals and ask them what they think. So, if you think uplift sounds like a good idea, think it over a little more.

A Defense of Suffering, or a Nietzschean Explanation for the Emo Subculture

This past week, abolitionist David Pearce has been guest blogging on Sentient Developments. For those who don't recall my first posts abolitionism is a current of transhumanism that is devoted to eliminating all suffering in sentient organisms. Pearce's posts have suggested going so far as to alter predatory animals so that they can not inflict pain on their food (probably by making them into herbivores). Anyone who's taken Biology in high school knows that an ecosystem with no carnivores or parasites is unsustainable so I will not comment on that here. I am posting to state why I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that suffering should be eliminated.

In case you haven't read enough of my blog to realise it, I am a fan of the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, and am probably one of the few transhumanists who admits to it, one of his ideas was the Will to Power, the concept that the most basic instinct of all life was to not only live but to succeed. Related to that concept he speculated that without external challenges for man to strive to overcome, man would turn inwards and become self-destructive. As for his specific ideas on suffering, he didn't state it as so but it can be summed up simply: suffering allows one to appreciate the better parts of life. Which brings me to my hypothesis on the origin of the "emo" subculture, they don't know how good they've got it.

Our general quality of life improves with each generation, it's gotten to the point where many teenagers (who make up the majority of "emos") barely have to do any work outside of school in order to go to college, as opposed to the 19th century when only the upper classes needed that little effort. Without sufficient challenges in life and fairly little suffering to provide perspective they come to feel that their comparatively care-free lives are harsh and cruel, or at least that's what they claim in their ridiculously whiny blogs. Fortunately it's just a stereotype that emo kids cut themselves or commit suicide at a higher than normal rate (and just so you know, the emotional disorders that result in self-cutting and suicide are completely different), but the suicide rate among teenagers is still one of the highest for the Western world. I think that if all high school students were required to spend a week or two living like pre-industrial farmers, the emo subculture would die out in less than a generation.

Abolitionists want to engineer humans and other animals so that they can no longer suffer, they would also have to completely remove the Will to Power for this to work. To me this seems like it would result in what Nietzsche called the Last Man, a weak-willed individual who takes no risks and seeks nothing more than comfort and security, not to mention being incredibly lazy. In order for a society to be able to move forward at least some members of a society would need to retain the Will to Power or some equivalent drive, these Uebermensch need not necessarily be human, they would more likely be posthumans or super intelligent AI (I suspect that this is the role that the Minds in Iain M. Bank's The Culture stories fulfill). I would prefer that all members of society retain their drives to succeed, as it would make life a little more interesting if anyone could at least try to become the leader.

Five Ways to Live Forever

Physical immortality is a common goal of many futurists and transhumanists, for that reason I've written a list of probable ways for one to live at least a very long time.

1. Anti-aging midication: The use of advanced medicine to stave off the effects of aging by rejuvenating mitochondria and lengthening telomeres, as well as reducing wrinkles and holding senility at bay. Would involve the least changes of any of the techniques on this list, but would not be viable over the long term as there are many different effects of aging and the human brain only has enough memory for a couple centuries of experiences at most. Also, it's likely that someone using this form of longevity would require organ transplants every few years.

2. Genetic immortality: Using genetic engineering to design a person born with the effects of anti-aging drugs, unfortunately this is unlikely to happen any time soon and would require a near complete re-design of the human body. In addition making an already fully-developed person immortal this way would require highly advanced nanotechnology, which brings us to the next option.

3. Rejuvenation: Periodically using stem cells and/or nanomachines to repair damage caused by aging and "reset" one's cellular clocks and effectively make them decades younger. May also include memory alteration, one could selectively "delete" certain memories in order to make room for new ones and only keep particularly notable ones.

4. Cyborgization: This method could range from simply hosting permanent nanomachine symbiont's to continuously repair and rejuvenate the body, to replacing almost all of one's biological body with mechanical parts. Machines are noticeably easier to repair than biological systems, and can also increase the amount of physical memory available to a person, eventually as even the brain is replaced this could cross over into Uploading.

5. Mind Uploading: In this option, as I stated in my August 17th post, the data contained in a person's brain is copied onto a different substrate. This does pose some existential problems but if you do accept that the copy is the same person as the original then uploading is the best way to achieve immortality. The other options don't make the person immune to accidents or murder, while a backup copy could be easily made as insurance against those situations. Heck, one could have an implant in their head that could transmit their consciousness to a cloning facility at the exact moment of death and be downloaded into a new body.

Transhumanism and the Third Frontier

For my Anthropology 101 class I was required to read an excerpt from Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods about American culture's changing relationship with nature. This particular chapter was about what he called the third frontier.

Basically, he stated that America has gone through two frontiers and each one changed how we interacted with nature, from direct utilitarianism during the first, to romantic attachment during the second, and now intellectual detachment during the third. He attributed the third frontier mainly to the rise of urbanism and suburbia, but that wasn't what intrigued me, it was the role of technology in this new frontier. As people become less personally attached to nature but know more about it, biotechnology is blurring the lines between humans and animals, and life-forms and machines. At least that is what he said.

Personally, I don't see why he's so concerned. So what if people have less of a connection to nature, it's because we are able to create our own environments and are reducing our need for nature every year. In a few decades it's likely that people will start living in arcologies, artificial ecologies/self-contained cities that will be even more isolated from nature than modern cities, and in a couple centuries we'll have colonies in outer space. As for the supposed lines dividing humanity from animals and machines, what lines? Humanity is nothing special really, we're just really smart social animals capable of using tools, if, for example wolves had hands and more complex brains they might have done what we have. Also organisms are really just complex chemical machines, why not improve them with silicon and metal, or vice-versa.

Some Options

After making two posts about my version of an Ideal Society, I suppose that the few people who actually read this deserve to know about a few of the alternatives.

The Collective ("We are the Borg"): A society consisting of a single entity that possesses multiple bodies, anywhere from a couple to several billion. This would probably be accomplished through the use of brain implants networked wirelessly so that they function as one. Alternatively the participants could be uploaded into cyberspace (see August 17th entry) and merge into one super-entity, with individuals serving as subroutines within the entity. The individuals within the collective may have varying degrees of individuality, from none to people that communicate telepathically. Does not particularly appeal to me.

Cyber-democracy: Back to the original democracy, aided by the Internet. Instead of electing representatives people who want to participate in government simply log in to a vast online forum and post their opinions. But seriously, who would have the time to read a thread millions of posts long, you'd need to have someone to manage the forum, or more likely a different person for each region, which would kind of reduce the forum to a massive electronic voting machine.

AIcracy: Artificial Intelligences will be superior to humans in every way, so why not let them rule over us and guide us to a Utopia. But why would they want to keep us alive, they could replace us with robots who could fill our functions in every way without complaining. Not to mention that even a self-evolving AI would be no better than its programmers or teachers. Regardless, this is the government typically used in Transhumanist sci-fi such as Iain Banks' Culture series and the Orion's Arm online worldbuilding project (even the Libertarian NoCoZo is subtly guided by The Invisible Hand of the Market).

Megacorp: The traditional government is weak or non-existent, instead immense, monopolistic, corporations control everything. These Megacorps might not be immensely corrupt and overall inhumane, but that works out so well now doesn't it. One should note that this sort of society is the setting for pretty much THE ENTIRE CYBERPUNK GENRE.

Techno-feudalism: Instead of advanced technology becoming available to everyone, only an elite class has access to it, either the scientists and engineers rule, or they serve the aristocracy as advisers or valued servants. In extreme cases the common folk might live in a pre-industrial state and be controlled through a state-sponsored religion that claims that technology is magic or divine. Alternatively the underclasses may be robots or genetically engineered to be of lower intelligence, while the elite are genetically enhanced or "pure" humans with no enhancements. Vaguely similar to the Galactic Empires featured in Isaac Asimov's Foundation, Frank Herbert's Dune, and the miniatures war game Warhammer 40,000, but of a much smaller size as FTL travel is physically impossible of course.

The Role of Technology in my Ideal Society

Some people may have read my other posts and been confused about the lack of advanced technologies described in my last one. So allow me to explain the roles that technology would play in my idea of an ideal society. First off there would of course, be the internet or something similar, likely incorporating virtual reality and Second Life-esque virtual environments. There might even be some people who end up spending almost their entire life in Virch, either having their physical bodies hooked up to feeding tubes or eventually uploading their consciousnesses into their computers. For those who prefer to spend much of their time in rl, they could use wearable computers with VR goggles or cybernetic implants to check their e-mail anywhere.

In relation to the real world, technology would be used to improve the quality of life of most of the population. Thanks to genetic engineering, hydroponics, and vat-grown meat, food would be cheap and plentiful. Robotics and nanotechnology would cheapen manufacturing, but might put a large portion of the working class out of a job, though that would probably be less of a problem after a few generations. Of course, with advances in medical biotechnology people might be living considerably longer and hopefully working longer before retiring (if they ever retire).

Finally, enhancements, what I have been focusing on for most of my blog since I started. I stated that in my Ideal Society status would be determined solely by merit, how they acquired the skills or talents that allowed them to reach their status doesn't matter. However, due to the expenses of acquiring enhancements, they would be most common among the higher ranking members of society. Also keep in mind the risks involved with modifying any biological organism, especially the brain. For example, there could be complications with a neurological implantation and someone who could have become a superbright cyborg could instead end up in a coma or with limited mental faculties. Or a gene therapy regimen could result in a potentially fatal immune response or cancer. Even germ-line genetic engineering has risks, mostly for the embryo being modified. Basically most people who would undergo enhancements would be taking a serious risk and deserve whatever new abilities they acquired as a result. If you think that this system is unfair, it could be worse, for example genetic engineering could be used to create a hereditary caste system based on what genetic modifications one's ancestors received.

My Ideal society

With the election coming up I thought it might be appropriate to talk about what I think would make a better society. Keep in mind that my idea is not perfect by any means, perfection seems to violate the laws of nature as everyone has a different idea of what is perfect.

First the government, democracy sounds good, but humanity's social tendencies mean that it easy for large groups to be swayed into making decisions that prove detrimental to them. Not to mention that statistically speaking, at least half of a population has a lower than average IQ. Seriously, do you really think that the majority is always right? In my ideal society, leaders would be selected by small groups of highly educated people based solely on their merits. There is some possibility for corruption in a Meritocracy like this, but having multiple people reduces the chances of cronyism or nepotism influencing decisions. The only problem is the possibility of some crazy low-ranking administrator secretly using unethical tactics to achieve his goals and advance in rank to the top. But that could be easily solved by keeping all administrators/bureacrats/politicians below a certain rank under close observation, in an extreme case implants could be used for this purpose.

Secondly, economy, lassez-faire capitalism, the government would only interfere in times of crisis such as a recession or potential depression. In exchange for the limited involvement from the government, the corporations would not be allowed to influence politics at all. Taxes would primarily be on a personal level based on a set percentage of one's income. The internal structure of most companies would be based on the same model as the government, but it would be harder to regulate and inevitably there would be some highly corrupt megacorps similarly to how there is now, maybe worse.

Thirdly, culture, I would prefer a completely secular society with no religion or superstition, but I doubt that will happen. Instead all faiths and beliefs would be respected, as long as they don't try to force their beliefs on others. Viral memes that are potentially dangerous (for example, a religious sect that encourages members to kill themselves) would be suppressed if deemed necessary, but generally people's personal lives would not be any of the government's business. In other words, it doesn't really matter what people do as long as they don't harm anyone (themselves or others).

Natural Selection and Humanity

Yes, you two people who read my blog, I'm back after a month of not posting. Here I'll talk about how what made us into the dominant species on Earth cannot help us anymore and could actually make things worse.

It's thanks to natural selection that we have the most complex brains of any species on the planet, but thanks to civilization survival of the fittest has little meaning and people who would normally be "weeded out" become vital to society and the species. Natural selection tends to favor the physically strongest, most aggressive, or most promiscuous members of the species and their genes. Do those traits sound familiar, you're right, jocks tend to be the ones whose genes are most likely to be propagated. However, in a highly organized society the physical strength of an individual matters less, and those who are intelligent become more important. Unfortunately there are always societies that value strength rather than intelligence, such as Sparta as opposed to Athens. A more modern example would be the "jock culture" of the 20th and 21st century America that denigrades smart people as "nerds" and publicly accuses them of being "elitist".

As for how this relates to natural selection specifically, people who benefit society the most don't necessarily reproduce the most, in fact many smart people consciously choose not to have many kids or (19th century or earlier) live ascetic lives and avoid the opposite sex (Greek philosophers, monks, some other intellectuals). While less intelligent or simply ignorant people will be less likely to use birth control and have several children with their less desireable genes. I know this sounds like eugenics, but I don't support mass sterilization or genocide, but rather I'm advocating the use of birth control and genetic engineering which would be much more humane.

The necessity and inevitability of technological advancement

As our technology has advanced and our population has increased we have placed more and more of a strain on our environment. Since the Industrial Revolution the generation of energy has pumped CO2 into the atmosphere causing global warming. Also the population has more than doubled resulting in more resources being consumed. Because of this some people have come to believe that humanity has advanced too quickly and that we're killing the planet prematurely, a few even think that we should go back to pre-industrial technology. However, these people should realize that what humanity has done isn't completely our fault, it's just our most basic instinct that is common to all life.

All life, from viruses to humans seek on a subconscious level to exploit all available resources to the fullest and procreate until they have completely dominated their environment and cannot go any further. This is what the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche referred to as the "Will to Power" in its most basic form. The problem is, once the population exceeds gets too large for the environment to support individuals start to die off until the population becomes manageable again. When humanity evolved sapience it became better able to exploit its environment and with the development of agriculture was able to reshape said environment in order to extend the population limit. For over 12,000 years now, humanity has been using technology to continue growing without limits until 250 years ago when technology began to threaten the entire planet with drastic changes to the ecosystem.

Most current technologies that are used to generate energy alter the environment in some way, fossil fuels release CO2 and other pollutants, hydroelectric blocks rivers and floods large plains, nuclear fission produces radioactive waste. However there are technologies in development that could produce energy with hardly any environmental impact. Satellites could gather solar energy and beam it down to earth while only requiring materials to build them and space to put receiving dishes. Nuclear fusion could generate immense amounts of power using very small amounts of fuel and only produces helium. Biotechnology has the potential to create organisms that could remove pollutants from the atmosphere. As for material resources there is always recycling and we could potentially use asteroids and other extraterrestrial objects to extract additional elements. Though eventually our population will grow so large that we will either need to colonize other solar systems or disassemble every large object in the solar system and construct a Dyson sphere that will capture all of the sun's energy.

And just in case you're wondering about what would happen if we went back to pre-industrial technology, civilization wouldn't be able to support more than a couple billion people and we would have the biggest genocide in human history. Also if we continue using fossil fuels and cause the global warming disaster prophesized by environmentalists, humanity will survive and continue to thrive (unless the heat causes a super-plaque) but many if not most of the planet's species will become extinct. So as you can see, our only real option is to work through this environmentally traumatic phase in our evolution and develop better technologies.

Just Checking

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