At the core of our society, there is a profound desire for stability. No matter what the past was or what the future beholds, we want to be informed ahead of time and we want total control. To demonstrate, look at the way the assembly line epitomizes precision in mass production or how George Ritzer’s “McDonaldization” describes the very fabric of Corporate America with it’s efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. But has it always been this way? Let’s revisit history. In ancient Athenian/Greek society, Socrates was put on trial and condemned to death for suspicion of teaching oligarchs how to be ruthless tyrants and defying democracy when in reality, he was merely interpreting definitions of Good and Justice with his Socratic method (deducing any concept to a series of questions). In 1517, Martin Luther posted the 95 theses on the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany to oppose indulgences, the Bible not being in the vernacular, and the excessive veneration of saints but instead the Roman Catholic Church deemed him a heretic and forced him to flee to Germany. Even recently, after the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers, President George W. Bush declared a war on terrorism directed at the “axes of evil” and infiltrated Iraq, bringing violent scapegoating back into the cycle of history, this time in the 21st century. Whether the answer is death or excommunication, we’ve always found a way to rule out instability. This fear characterizes the mentality a few people have towards post-humanism and transhumanism. The disembodiment of human characteristics, integration of robotics or technology directly in the body, and the potential to be superseded by a new race of mixed or pure robots all leads to a loss of control, literally. Despite the fact that some proponents for transhumanism have solid (although lofty) predictions of our future supported by statistical patterns or mathematical theories, such authors like Ronald Bailey and Ray Kurzweil are depicted as power-hungry, destructive knowledge-crazy lunatics because their theories pose a difficult concept for us to digest: instability.
That bothers me. Every history lesson and every cliche book I’ve ever read teaches me to dream the impossible, reach for the stars, or stand in the face of adversity, even if you are standing alone. All these cheesy quotes that I’ve been fed by countless of teachers suddenly doesn’t apply to the unpredictable future. Why is transhumanism a different development than romanticism during the time of neoclassicism? The enlightenment during the time of ruthless monarchies? I see transhumanism as yet another philosophy. Don’t get me wrong, of course the religious tone of a few scientists make transhumanism laughable, the daunting possibility of mass destruction makes it terrifying, and the overwhelming potential for Godly powers makes it a little arrogant BUT, why not? It’s an ambitious approach to endless knowledge, a daringly creative take on 21st century epistemology. Transhumanism stems from, in my opinion, a desire to break from this long period of stagnancy and bring about real change that has profound impacts on daily human life as we know it. Science fiction may be a little difficult to envision in reality today, but the possibility of it in the future is very real. In hindsight, every critical invention made could be considered “science fiction” from that moment in the past. For example, who’d have thought that robots could simulate body functions and replace animal testing well enough that consumers feel secure enough to purchase potentially toxic products? In fact, the Humane Society International is currently campaigning for advancing safety science and health research with innovative non-animal tools. There’s data to supplement arguments for transhumanism and a lot of capability. Isn’t there hypocrisy in restricting a science fiction reality based upon science fiction fears? Neither could happen, or both could happen. If you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, it’s worth a shot.
A revaluation of human nature rises for the opponents to transhumanism. Author Fukuyama believes that “the first victim of transhumanism might be equality... Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence... that individuals therefore have inherent value.” With transhumanism, technological advancement means a new super species that modifies this inherent value and creates an imbalance in the long developed definition of equality and according to Darwin’s theory of evolution, the better species wins in the survival of the fittest and outlives the less-advantageous previous species by reproduction. In regards to post-humanism, author N. Katherine Hayles redefines intelligence as “a property of the formal manipulation of symbols rather than enaction in the human lifeworld.” Disembodied, intelligence now begs the connection between an enacted body and a represented body. Although more specific to the Turing Test and Alan Turing’s life with an interpretation from Andrew Hodges, the aspect of “identity production” is a scary reality where we could lose what is the essence human nature (gender, nationality, personality) entirely.
Pulling criticism from the vast abyss of horrendous possible conclusions is easy compared to formulating foundations for theories to be plausible. Author Ronald Bailey directly refutes Fukuyama’s claim of transhumanism as a means of merely liberating the human race from its biological constraints by sarcastically asking, “isn’t human history (and prehistory) all about liberating more and more people from their biological constraints?” Instead, he notes biologist Richard Dawkins who calls transhumanism an “extended phenotype” where altering the body with nanotechnology is nothing different than exercising to build muscle and replicating emotions is synonymous to using mood altering drugs. On the equality issue, Bailey seems to think that the new innovations will be a top-down benefit, that the more technological help is created, the more lives will gain an advantage whereas Fukuyama seems to think of these inventions as a top-getting-higher benefit, where only a select, exclusive few will have access. For instance, children born without deficiencies aren’t going to use these inventions to get better or prettier, it’ll be the parents of the children born with disorders that will choose to make their kids “equal” (as Fukuyama would claim) in society. Most importantly, Bailey notes that “the principle of tolerance [is] putting up with people who look differently, talk differently, worship different, and live differently than we do. In the future, our descendants may not all be natural homo sapiens, but they will still be moral beings who can be held accountable for their actions... In any case, political equality has never rested on the facts of human biology.” This raises an interesting point: human nature, contradicting the theory that robots and perfectly engineered beings will create inequality, is actually their own source of imbalance in society.
To take this a step further, some suggested benefits of transhumanism can be a social utopia. That, with enhanced cyborg or robotic beings, racial, societal, and prejudice issues may disappear. This utopia might most likely be achieved with inventor/author Ray Kurzweil’s essay, “The Six Epochs.” His rhetoric focuses in on reduction of all data, historical and statistical, into information the audience can interpret with a sub-focus in conjunction with this reduction: the law of accelerating returns. The reason his epochs have developed is because life advances based on a set of recognizable patterns that become spontaneously discovered, perfected, and then enhanced to allow for the next epoch to come to life. Unfortunately, we’ve always been advancing and evolving based on biological constraints. The next step for our society is to reach epoch 5, which “will result from the merger of the vast knowledge in our own brains with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our technology.” Since his law of accelerating returns states that “the rate of evolution and technological advancements increase exponentially,” it makes sense that the merge between human capability and machine capability will be able to surpass all human limitations and discover/invent at a rapid pace into unknown places. Does it sound like utopia yet? The goal for Singularity is similar to the Matrix Grid, in my opinion. It’s a source of vast knowledge that’s continuously trying to perfect life (beings, environment, and products), expand, and share all it’s data. If people were part machine-part human, then racism disappears. If everyone knew everything at the same time with access to whatever they needed, whenever they needed it, there would be no injustice (or government), economic imbalance (or capitalism), and no warfare (or nationalities). Here’s the kick: Kurzweil wants to spread out from Earth and universalize the Universe. Now, he approaches crockpot status, but before, his calculations aren’t that wrong.
He deduced all his graphs to y=1/x, the inverse of the logarithm that displayed historical records (although biased in his selections). By continually striving for more knowledge, man is able to predict that his limits are boundless, that as the limit (of man, lets say) as x approaches 0 is infinity. However, if we were to relinquish biological constraints, integrate machines into our lives (literally), and merge the two components of intellect, then we may actually discover infinity and set boundaries to it. The merge, therefore, would have to be a point of discontinuity in an integral that has a positive slope since we are accumulating information continuously and exponentially. That means, there must be a upward cusp, making the acceleration (y” or the second derivative) discontinuous at this point. Mathematically speaking, Kurzweil figured it out and despite the fact that some very human characteristics have been deduced to a point on a grid (for example, he’s implying that emotions or thoughts can potentially be a binary numerical system), the theory all makes amazing sense.
He deduced all his graphs to y=1/x, the inverse of the logarithm that displayed historical records (although biased in his selections). By continually striving for more knowledge, man is able to predict that his limits are boundless, that as the limit (of man, lets say) as x approaches 0 is infinity. However, if we were to relinquish biological constraints, integrate machines into our lives (literally), and merge the two components of intellect, then we may actually discover infinity and set boundaries to it. The merge, therefore, would have to be a point of discontinuity in an integral that has a positive slope since we are accumulating information continuously and exponentially. That means, there must be a upward cusp, making the acceleration (y” or the second derivative) discontinuous at this point. Mathematically speaking, Kurzweil figured it out and despite the fact that some very human characteristics have been deduced to a point on a grid (for example, he’s implying that emotions or thoughts can potentially be a binary numerical system), the theory all makes amazing sense.
In 2006, I could only dream of a sleek, tablet-like phone that can hold both music, videos, pictures. I could only dream of apps and 64 GB of memory. I could only dream of touch screens, face-to-face video calling, and 4G network internationally. Yet, by 2010, I had mastered the iPhone 4 and synced it to... well, my life. Now, most people can’t even handle personal scheduling conflicts or navigating to different locations without a smart phone. These authors aren’t unreasonable. Although I understand why Fukuyama might be terrified and why Hayles’ new interpretation may redefine the essence of individuality, I go giddy with pleasure with the excitement of the future. To know that suicide may be averted truly consolidates me. It gives me hope that maybe someone else in the future can save a friend while I couldn’t. Even better, maybe if my cousin was born in the future, he could be cured of autism. Selfishly, I wouldn’t mind being the first human body in outer space, either. Realistically, Kurzweil even has a disclaimer: “But the Singularity will also amplify the ability to act on our destructive inclinations, so its full story has not yet been written.” There are only a few things author Bill Joy said that resonated within me. First, it’s his addressing Murphy’s Law-- “Anything that can go wrong, will.” The human potential to be ridiculously violent and destructive is not a far possibility either and stands in the foreground of my worries. Second, when his friend Danny answered, “changes would come gradually, and that we would get used to them,” I looked around and realized how complacent I am with my life integrated into technology, my Macbook Pro, iPhone, and iPad synced up by iCloud when just three years ago, I still had a bulky PC. The change was painless. And third, Joy presents an alternative of “relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.” An emergency brake system might do us some good so that we can reap the benefits while avoiding the lingering dooms of atomic mushroom clouds or a nano-bot takeovers. However, we return to my main argument of instability. Bill Joy leaves his readers with one last thought: “Part of the answer certainly lies in our attitude toward the new- in our bias toward instant familiarity and unquestioning acceptance.” It’s the daunting idea of losing control of our body, mind, then society, and even radically, our universe that turns a few audience members off. I refuse to believe my past twelve years of basic education has been built on a foundation of lies. I’d love to “shoot for the moon so that even if I fail, I land among the stars.” While transhumanism is a crockpot theory to you, it’s a philosophy to me full of life, creativity, and human cooperation that will never be undermined. Let’s not excommunicate or sentence to death a 21st century school of thought that could finally revolutionize everything that we know... with us as the innovators.
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