I doubt I'm the first person to observe that the public discourse has become markedly more discordant, shrill, and even malicious in the past year. This is a bad trend, and it has destructive consequences for everyone.
One particular style of argument marks this discursive shift toward viciousness. In the proper sense of the word it is not really an 'argument' at all, but a kind of rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Unfortunately, this rhetorical trick has been shrewdly put to use by a number of influential and extremely unscrupulous individuals in order to foment discord in the general public, and to ultimately create a very harmful and wholly unnecessary cultural schism in American life. I won't speculate on the motives of these individuals, but I will say a few words to deflate the shock and awe that makes their dangerous verbal stage-act so effective.
"The President likes to set things on fire. He's a known arsonist. He's planning to burn down your house while you sleep."
Is this assertion ridiculous? Is it paranoid? Well, let's look at the facts. ABC news reports that Barack Obama, the sitting President of the United States, is a known smoker. It's a known fact that in order to smoke a cigarette, you must cause it to combust. An arsonist is someone who purposefully sets fire to things. Smoking is a habit so difficult to quit that it might be termed compulsive. The President is a compulsive arsonist. It's only a matter of time until he burns down your house, or the house of someone in your community.
Have I convinced you that it's only a matter of time before our cities are in flames at the hand of a pyromaniac national executive? In the current climate of the political discourse, a few people might actually say "yes", or others might at least assent to my assertion but not necessarily my argument, being content to ride the rhetorical effect of suggesting that the President will burn down America's cities. Be that as it may, go back and read the preceding paragraph and really try to convince yourself that it is sound, factually scrupulous, and makes sense. Take your time, think about each step in my deduction, and really try to prove to yourself that it leads to a valid conclusion. Can you honestly do it?
(If you remain convinced that the President is going to burn down your house, or if you see no problem with the argument as such, go back through and replace "Barack Obama" with "your car", and "smoking habit" with "internal combustion engine", and then ask yourself if you also believe that your personal automobile is going to burn down your dwelling because it is powered by an involuntary mechanical process of burning petroleum.)
All politics aside, I hope we can agree that the argument I've made above is patently silly. It's supposed to be. At the same time, don't underestimate its persuasive power. The argument "works" on a certain level if you read over it quickly, and if you're willing to place a little more trust that average in my expertise as the author. Maybe I know something that you don't, and maybe it just happens to be that my refined intellect and masterful command of the facts allows me to glibly and easily spring past an argument that might otherwise be difficult and tedious. (This has a parallel in advanced mathematics texts, wherein many authors have the bad habit of writing "proofs" to the effect of "it's just obvious", to the great vexation of students struggling to learn the material.) In fact, if you're willing to trust me as the speaker or author, simply seeing that I've presented you with an argument may be more than enough for you to accept my claim at face-value. This is normal in many kinds of casual discourse; if I see you come in from outside and I ask, "Has it started raining?", I don't then press you for a rigorous justification of your reply. What's more, the argument I've presented concludes with a statement that demands your immediate attention. After all, it would seem that a prominent figure with all the collected power of the government wants to destroy your home and possibly burn you to death in the process. Something has to be done!
My contrived argument is deliberately absurd, but don't presume that you're somehow "too smart" to be taken in by it. There has been much backlash against certain media figures guilty of the kind of fallacy I outline here, and much of it has wrongly attacked the intelligence of the offenders' collective audience. Besides being high-handed and contributing to the unhealthy atmosphere of hostility on both sides, such objections ignore the fact that some of their own favorite causes have been and still often are advanced using similar discursive tactics. There are no enemies; this is a problem of bad thought and bad speech. This is important. Remember it.
If you rejected my contrived assertion ("The President is going to burn down your house!") out of hand, it is quite likely that you correctly read my intent to construct an invalid argument with a false conclusion, and this reading influenced your interpretation of my statements. Remember, context plays a very important role in the meaning of words. It may also be that you took my statement to be plainly outrageous and thus rejected it as too bizarre to possibly be true. Remember also, though, that the apparent strangeness of a claim may weigh against its truth but is not sufficient to invalidate it. If you don't believe that these cautions are warranted, imagine your favorite and most trusted commentator accusing your least favorite and least trusted public figure of material involvement in what you consider to be the most serious (and real) problem in the world today. Go on, try it. You may not even have to imagine: just visit your favorite blog or switch on the television. (Do you believe what is being said? On what basis?) Finally, consider what the consequences would be if my claim that the President is out to get you turned out actually to be true, and you ignored my warning. Of course it sounds highly implausible, but in the event that my outlandish claim turned out true you would be the target of a very powerful man with a small army of trained killers at his side and the resources of a whole nation at his disposal. That sounds like a dire situation if there ever was one, and my advance warning might be your only edge in finding a way out. Remember that we all have to make timely decisions based on incomplete information, with some of the most difficult being those in which there is little information but much at stake.
We now have the tools we need to analyze my strange argument that the President is going to burn down your house, and to reach some useful conclusions about how and why arguments like it often succeed. (Remember, "Everyone else is stupid," is not an explanation and says nothing useful about the problem or its solution.) Here's a breakdown of how the argument proceeds: (1) The argument starts with a reasonable-sounding and (probably, mostly) factual statement. This sets the stage for something seemingly serious to be said, and gives the initial appearance that what is to come is a sequence of equally factual statements. ("Sure, the President's a smoker. Everybody who reads the news knows that.") (2) The argument proceeds quickly through a number of very large deductive leaps. These also tend to be (probably, mostly, but with some variation) factual statements or reasonable-sounding claims. However, they are for the most part only loosely related to one another and in general do not represent a chain a sound logical inferences. Oftentimes, they don't represent any sort of inference at all, so much as a sort of pre-conceptual complex of disjoint thoughts on loosely related subjects. (" It's a known fact that in order to smoke a cigarette, you must cause it to combust. An arsonist is someone who purposefully sets fire to things.") (3) The sequence of deductions abruptly entrains some claims or statements that are less plausible or perhaps even bizarre. This is where particular techniques of speaking are put to extremely good use by certain television and radio personalities. Many popular commentators rapidly fire off a succession of strange and outrageous statements with such apparent fervor and emotional affect that their seeming conviction effectively drowns out any murmurs of doubt that might otherwise surround the meanings and consequences of what they are actually saying. ("Smoking is a habit so difficult to quit that it might be termed compulsive. The President is a compulsive arsonist." Say this very quickly to yourself, and with fervent conviction that it's true. What does it sound like?) (4) The argument reaches a very sudden and very evocative (often provocative) conclusion. In general, this conclusion does not follow from the argument at all, and sometimes may not even be related. However, because the conclusion entails strong and emotionally charged associations, the mind of the rapt listener naturally switches stance from listening to formulating a course of action in response to a disturbing idea. This effectively short-circuits any reflection on the argument or its premises, which allows the spurious chain of reasoning to slip by unnoticed. ("It's only a matter of time before the President burns your house down! Something must be done!") Essentially, this sort of argument is nothing but a trick with words. An explosively rapid exposition hides numerous logical and factual errors, and an abrupt, shocking conclusion effectively redirects attentions that might otherwise uncover these.
We might call the genre of argument under discussion strongly connotative. Such arguments utterly ignore the meanings of their own statements. Instead, the assertion holds itself together with a hastily formed network of strongly emotional cues and associations, and often gains much of its strength from the charisma, expertise or authority attributed to the speaker. Surprising or not, this strategy is incredibly effective: statements that would otherwise seem ridiculous suddenly "just make sense" when buoyed up on a tide of powerful feeling and apparent urgency. Connotation is an essential part of human communication; intonation, volume of speech, choice of words and all sorts of non-verbal cues influence the meaning of statements as much as their basic meaning. (Imagine a nervous air traveler asking a stewardess, "Is there a problem?" on hearing an unsettling noise from deep in the mechanical bowels of the airplane. Now imagine Chuck Norris or Robocop uttering the same words to a gang of thugs caught in the act of robbing a quaint little mom-and-pop store. Notice the difference?) What makes this style of argument especially dangerous is the plasticity of association, which allows connections to be arbitrarily drawn between ideas and then strongly reinforced through persistent repetition. As a result, spurious connections made in the course of very short but often-reproduced "arguments" seem progressively more "obvious" each time they are repeated. This connotative manner of arguing allows bad ideas to slip past better judgements and to enter that mysterious place occupied by "common knowledge", where they can propagate unchecked.
A number of commentators have used this strategy to produce some extremely virulent and extremely divisive cultural associations in the past twelve months. I don't wish to catalog or even mention any of them here; they are not topics of serious debate but merely outlets of frustration that offer no hope for a resolution on either side. In essence, this is just what they are designed to be: a mechanism for stirring up deep-rooted cultural resentments and at the same time effectively stopping all discussion of the underlying problems. This is a very powerful tactic, but it has a very serious weakness: such arguments utterly collapse when you "try them at home." The analogy to a magic trick is a particularly strong one here. When you see a magician seem to make the Statue of Liberty disappear, or apparently allow himself to be buried alive in a straight-jacket only to escape, you are forced to conclude either that (1) there's something he's not showing or telling you, and that something allows him to produce a convincing illusion or (2) he has super-powers. Without weighing the relative merits of (1) and (2), consider that the matter would be largely settled if you discovered some ordinary and decidedly un-magical way to produce an illusion similar to that produced by the magician. (One could try to argue that, even though your buried-alive spectacle uses boring old non-paranormal tricks and gizmos, it could still be that Criss Angel is wielding some unearthly powers to achieve his own dazzling, albeit identical, feats. If that were the case, one would be inclined to ask, "What's the point of supernormal powers with strictly normal effects?" or "Why wouldn't you want to use your powers for something that can't be done with a matchbook, a box of baking soda, and an ordinary household toothbrush?") Seeing a way to reproduce the illusion, you could safely assure yourself that it was possible to comprehend what you saw. Similarly, really sound and truthful argument should not depend solely upon your willingness to accept that a verbal spectacle is exactly what it appears to be. Many of today's commentators are skilled showmen and manipulators of appearance. That's not to say that every word they speak is categorically wrong, only that the listener should take special care to watch their hands and to remain undistracted by sparklers and smoke-bombs. Remember, some people make their living by fabricating dramatic and captivating illusions.
When you're presented with an argument, don't just sit there and be passively convinced. Collect all of the information that the speaker gives you, and make an honest effort to reproduce his argument as a series of reasonable conclusions. Take your time. If a step doesn't seem utterly transparent, then take special pains to convince yourself that it makes sense. It is amazingly difficult to discover something new about the world. Don't just assume that what you hear is "news" just because you haven't heard it before.
Most importantly, don't be discouraged if the world seems like a huge and deeply confusing place. This is a very human fear. Instead of driving us apart into bitter factions, it can bring us together in a collective search for the truth.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Ignorance Considered Un-Blissful
I don't like the old aphorism, "Ignorance is bliss." It's often repeated, in one sense or another, but I don't think it's ever true in any literal sense. Please allow me to elaborate.
Does knowing less make you happier? Some people would say 'yes', and some people would say 'no', and I think that intelligent individuals on both sides could probably give some kind of reasonable argument to defend their position. In particular, I think it is quite reasonable to say that knowing more does indeed provide more opportunities for complication in one's life. Knowledge brings responsibility and worry, both of which can become burdensome to even the most responsible or courageous among us. In fact, it seems likely that the saying that "ignorance is bliss" originated in the observation that knowing more gives more to worry about.
The motivating observation that knowledge brings worry seems reasonable, so let's explore it. Let's presume that a worry-free state is a blissful state, and let us also suppose that you know nothing -- nothing at all! If you know nothing, it seems to follow that you would have nothing to worry about, and having nothing to worry about, it seems to reasonably follow that you would be situated in a blissful state. (If you know nothing at all and you still haven't attained bliss, then ignorance-as-bliss would appear to be thoroughly invalidated right off the bat.) The chain of deductions seems sound enough, but what exactly could it mean to "know nothing"? Personally, I think it seems absurd to postulate a well-defined mental state where you somehow "know nothing" (without, of course, getting into a tortured semantics of what constitutes "knowledge"). All the same, let's suppose there is such a state, and let's suppose that, somehow or another, you were able to attain it. Then what? Does it seem plausible you could stay there?
There's a respected tradition in modern science of analogizing the dynamics of energy (heat in particular) to the flows of information, dating back to the work of pioneers such as Shannon (and the equally essential contributors to this tradition, such as Lebesgue and Boltzman and many others who are much less often credited in popular science literature). It is a gross understatement that a perfect thermal insulator (i.e. a surface that conducts no heat whatsoever) would be very difficult to construct. Try it at home if you don't believe me! (Or, see the nice summary of some relevant proofs in Enrico Fermi's "Thermodynamics", (1956).) In an analogous sense, it would be extremely difficult to construct a perfect informational insulator. Try this one at home too! One way to phrase our "perfect ignorance" or "know-nothing" problem, then, is in terms of constructing a perfect insulator. Whole sub-disciplines of engineering are devoted to developing better thermal insulators, and whole areas of research in mathematics are focused upon understanding the differential equations describing the conduction of heat. Keeping things that are hot from heating up things that are not so hot turns out to be amazingly useful, and much harder than it may seem at first. If the analogy between knowledge and heat seems strange, consider this: extremely active areas of theoretical computer security are just as occupied with the problem of keeping information from crossing boundaries it isn't supposed to cross. A classic formulation of this challenge is known as the "Confinement Problem" and, stated succinctly, it is the problem of ensuring that a particular computer system never "leaks" information that it needs to keep secret. (See Lampson, "A note on the confinement problem" in Communications of the ACM, October 1973.) In essence, both the thermal insulator problem and the Confinement Problem are occupied with making sure that what's in one place -- whether heat or information -- doesn't somehow find its way into another place where it isn't wanted. More succinctly, you cannot keep information confined to just one particular place. As a consequence, it would seem that you cannot keep all information out of your mind forever, even if you wanted to.
Now a problem arises. If you can't keep information out of your mind, you're going to start knowing things, whether you want to or not. There are various ways you might try to resist the informational torrent of your own experience but, apart from self-immolation, it would require a concerted effort through every moment of the day to sustain your attempts to block all sensory input, not to mention to instantly snuff out any stray thoughts from inside your own mind. Something important has happened here: without realizing it, you've developed a worry. Moreover, it is a worry that is inextricably rooted in your own desire to be free from worry. Paradoxically, knowing that ignorance is bliss gives you just enough knowledge to form a worry and work yourself into a decidedly un-blissful state. Total ignorance is fundamentally unstable and impermanent. This is no more strange than a hot cup of coffee eventually getting cold.
(Compare the "worry about worry" in the preceding paragraph to divergent oscillatory behavior in feedback systems with too high a latency. Norbert Wiener gives some poetic descriptions of these in "Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" (1948). Compare also to a classic parable from the literature of Zen Buddhism, namely the story of the girl who believed her head had somehow been removed without her knowledge; a retelling can be found in "The Three Pillars of Zen", Kapleau (1989).)
There is some extremely wild territory we could wander into at this point, but let's remain focused on the matter at hand. What I've essentially argued is that, even if ignorance is blissful, it's hardly something you can count on. A consequence of this is either that you're going to have your blissful ignorance suddenly and very unpleasantly interrupted at some point unforeseeable by you ("the rude awakening") or you're going to worry yourself sick in anticipation ("it's the waiting that's the worst"). Ignorance is not bliss at all; quite the contrary. Ignorance is danger. Ignorance is fear.
What is especially interesting about this line of argument is that it is perfectly scalable. We need not assume any sort of idealized and extremely implausible know-nothing state; what we have said above we can say about ignorance of anything arbitrarily specific or arbitrarily general. But if ignorance isn't bliss, then what is? And if ignorance is dangerous and frightening, then how do we explain all the worry and difficulty that comes with knowledge? More importantly, how do we resolve all that worry and difficulty? I think an obvious answer would be, "Do something!"
But what exactly should we do?
That's a very important question.
Does knowing less make you happier? Some people would say 'yes', and some people would say 'no', and I think that intelligent individuals on both sides could probably give some kind of reasonable argument to defend their position. In particular, I think it is quite reasonable to say that knowing more does indeed provide more opportunities for complication in one's life. Knowledge brings responsibility and worry, both of which can become burdensome to even the most responsible or courageous among us. In fact, it seems likely that the saying that "ignorance is bliss" originated in the observation that knowing more gives more to worry about.
The motivating observation that knowledge brings worry seems reasonable, so let's explore it. Let's presume that a worry-free state is a blissful state, and let us also suppose that you know nothing -- nothing at all! If you know nothing, it seems to follow that you would have nothing to worry about, and having nothing to worry about, it seems to reasonably follow that you would be situated in a blissful state. (If you know nothing at all and you still haven't attained bliss, then ignorance-as-bliss would appear to be thoroughly invalidated right off the bat.) The chain of deductions seems sound enough, but what exactly could it mean to "know nothing"? Personally, I think it seems absurd to postulate a well-defined mental state where you somehow "know nothing" (without, of course, getting into a tortured semantics of what constitutes "knowledge"). All the same, let's suppose there is such a state, and let's suppose that, somehow or another, you were able to attain it. Then what? Does it seem plausible you could stay there?
There's a respected tradition in modern science of analogizing the dynamics of energy (heat in particular) to the flows of information, dating back to the work of pioneers such as Shannon (and the equally essential contributors to this tradition, such as Lebesgue and Boltzman and many others who are much less often credited in popular science literature). It is a gross understatement that a perfect thermal insulator (i.e. a surface that conducts no heat whatsoever) would be very difficult to construct. Try it at home if you don't believe me! (Or, see the nice summary of some relevant proofs in Enrico Fermi's "Thermodynamics", (1956).) In an analogous sense, it would be extremely difficult to construct a perfect informational insulator. Try this one at home too! One way to phrase our "perfect ignorance" or "know-nothing" problem, then, is in terms of constructing a perfect insulator. Whole sub-disciplines of engineering are devoted to developing better thermal insulators, and whole areas of research in mathematics are focused upon understanding the differential equations describing the conduction of heat. Keeping things that are hot from heating up things that are not so hot turns out to be amazingly useful, and much harder than it may seem at first. If the analogy between knowledge and heat seems strange, consider this: extremely active areas of theoretical computer security are just as occupied with the problem of keeping information from crossing boundaries it isn't supposed to cross. A classic formulation of this challenge is known as the "Confinement Problem" and, stated succinctly, it is the problem of ensuring that a particular computer system never "leaks" information that it needs to keep secret. (See Lampson, "A note on the confinement problem" in Communications of the ACM, October 1973.) In essence, both the thermal insulator problem and the Confinement Problem are occupied with making sure that what's in one place -- whether heat or information -- doesn't somehow find its way into another place where it isn't wanted. More succinctly, you cannot keep information confined to just one particular place. As a consequence, it would seem that you cannot keep all information out of your mind forever, even if you wanted to.
Now a problem arises. If you can't keep information out of your mind, you're going to start knowing things, whether you want to or not. There are various ways you might try to resist the informational torrent of your own experience but, apart from self-immolation, it would require a concerted effort through every moment of the day to sustain your attempts to block all sensory input, not to mention to instantly snuff out any stray thoughts from inside your own mind. Something important has happened here: without realizing it, you've developed a worry. Moreover, it is a worry that is inextricably rooted in your own desire to be free from worry. Paradoxically, knowing that ignorance is bliss gives you just enough knowledge to form a worry and work yourself into a decidedly un-blissful state. Total ignorance is fundamentally unstable and impermanent. This is no more strange than a hot cup of coffee eventually getting cold.
(Compare the "worry about worry" in the preceding paragraph to divergent oscillatory behavior in feedback systems with too high a latency. Norbert Wiener gives some poetic descriptions of these in "Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" (1948). Compare also to a classic parable from the literature of Zen Buddhism, namely the story of the girl who believed her head had somehow been removed without her knowledge; a retelling can be found in "The Three Pillars of Zen", Kapleau (1989).)
There is some extremely wild territory we could wander into at this point, but let's remain focused on the matter at hand. What I've essentially argued is that, even if ignorance is blissful, it's hardly something you can count on. A consequence of this is either that you're going to have your blissful ignorance suddenly and very unpleasantly interrupted at some point unforeseeable by you ("the rude awakening") or you're going to worry yourself sick in anticipation ("it's the waiting that's the worst"). Ignorance is not bliss at all; quite the contrary. Ignorance is danger. Ignorance is fear.
What is especially interesting about this line of argument is that it is perfectly scalable. We need not assume any sort of idealized and extremely implausible know-nothing state; what we have said above we can say about ignorance of anything arbitrarily specific or arbitrarily general. But if ignorance isn't bliss, then what is? And if ignorance is dangerous and frightening, then how do we explain all the worry and difficulty that comes with knowledge? More importantly, how do we resolve all that worry and difficulty? I think an obvious answer would be, "Do something!"
But what exactly should we do?
That's a very important question.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
A Bridge to a Bridge to Nowhere: A Short Critique of Transhumanism
One thing that I must credit to the Transhumanist movement is its advancement of ideas that are extremely bold and extremely forward-looking. Not everyone may see this boldness as a credit, but certainly any sensible observer has to acknowledge it. One of the central and most radical ideas of the movement might be termed the "Objection to Death" or "Suffering as an Engineering Problem." (Though I mean for these terms to be neutrally descriptive, they are not, to the best of my knowledge, used within Transhumanist circles.) Concisely, the Transhumanist view is that many, or perhaps all kinds of human suffering can be ameliorated or even eradicated through the proper application of technology. It should be pointed out that, as uncomfortable as the aims of Transhumanism seem to make a lot of people feel, the express Transhumanist bias toward technological applications whose motives are unambiguously benevolent is at least admirable. This view is especially noteworthy when contrasted with more conventional attitudes toward technology, which purpose it simply as a means to power or profit, whether for good or for ill. Even more noteworthy, however, is the potential of the Transhumanist program to upset centuries of social and cultural organization motivated around certain basic constants of biological human existence.
The Transhumanist initiative is quite earnest and already under way. By his own account, accomplished scientist and entrepreneur, and prominent Transhumanist Ray Kurzweil takes several hundred pills a day ("The Singularity Is Near", Kurzweil, 2005) in a bid to extend his natural life long enough to benefit from even more radical life-extension technologies whose development he anticipates in the near future. Mr. Kurzweil terms this the "Bridge to a Bridge" strategy (ibid), an allusion to expectations that the hastening pace of scientific paradigm shift and engineering know-how will allow human lives to be extended through a succession of different technologies. Immortality of any degree has long been a human fixation, and so one can hardly doubt Mr. Kurzweil's sincerity. What is remarkable is the coherence and proactive organization of the initiative: Mr. Kurzweil's program of radical technological life extension, organized in collaboration with medical doctor Terry Grossman, is apparently so well developed that it is being marketed to the general public. Although I would argue that Transhumanism is a distinctly apocalyptic cultural movement, I cannot help but give Mr. Kurzweil credit for taking immortality into his own hands. However, rather than debate the relative virtues or vices of technological life extension, I would like to examine the Transhumanist response to death when death cannot be avoided.
I agree with the thesis that radical life extension may become possible in the near future. I also agree with the thesis that technological advancement has the potential to greatly enhance the quality and the extent of human life, perhaps even to the degree that the human lifespan does become indefinitely long. However, I fail to see how either of these theses in any way exclude catastrophe. Suppose I am in excellent health, benefitting from all of the latest advancements in health-, youth-, and vitality-technology, but while crossing the street on my way to an appointment with my life-extension consultant, I am hit by a speeding bus and instantly killed. You may object and say that, if I had been really serious in my desire to stay alive indefinitely, I would have been more scrupulous in looking both ways before I cross the street, or perhaps avoided busy streets altogether. Suppose I do just that, and live to an age contemporary with the development of full-body prostheses. But suppose then that, in my hurry to adopt the latest advancements, I come to inhabit a robotic body with a serious design flaw, as a result of which my life-sustaining functions suddenly and unexpectedly fail and I expire before repairs can be made. You may object that such dangerous technology would never be rushed to market, and that we should expect a thoroughly developed infrastructure for the care and maintenance of such bodies, to ensure that such episodes do not happen. That's not unthinkable. So suppose then that I live into a ripe old advanced technological age, and all information constituting my identity is uploaded into a global computer network where it can reproduce arbitrarily, instantiating itself in as many and as widely varied forms as it sees fit, whether corporeal or otherwise. This is certainly consistent with visions that Mr. Kurzweil himself has put forward. But suppose that in spite of all this, war breaks out and an electromagnetic pulse weapon fries all computer hardware on which my various infomorph copies live, or suppose that a runaway hoarde of pathologically replicating nanobots devours our civilization, clones and cyborgs and machine-ghosts and all, or suppose that no source of energy sufficiently cost- or labor-efficient to power our advanced technological civilization ever materializes, and all our gadgets, including our high-tech selves, simply expire? It's easy to see that this list could go on indefinitely. I think it is equally reasonable to say that each unlikely, but possible, doomsday scenario could easily be met with some no-less-likely, and no less possible, solution. Sure, something could go terribly wrong, but on the other hand, we could find a way to set it right. Sure, things might greatly improve, but that doesn't mean nothing bad will ever happen again.
This problem-solution dialectic highlights an essentially reactive feature of technological solutions: new technologies always arise in response to real or perceived problems. We may develop technology in anticipation of a problem, for example, techniques for diverting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It may also happen that unexpected benefits accrue in addition to those expected with the development of something new -- perhaps you could use a computer printer to build living organs (see Boland, Damon, and Cui, "Applications of Inkjet Printing to Tissue Engineering", Biotechnology Journal, 2006). Nonetheless, it seems unreasonable to expect that we can anticipate all problems before they arise, or that unforeseen secondary applications of existing technologies could account for all contingencies. The Transhumanist position is very proactive, in that is emphasizes a sort of "eternal hope" in the form of ever more ingenious solutions to ever deeper and ever more insidious problems. Personally, I find this attitude commendable. An underlying assumption of the Transhumanist position seems to be that the problem-solution dialectic could go on as long as humankind sees fit. I see no reason for challenging this assumption. At the same time, an inexhaustible supply of technological solutions in no way implies an exhaustible supply of human problems, technological or otherwise.
I would tend to side with Mr. Kurzweil that claiming certain problems as unsolvable, without empirical proof or rigorous deduction to back up the claim, is staking out a regressive position. I'd like to take special care here to distinguish unqualified impossibility from the more precise notion of relative impossibility. For example, it can be rigorously shown that no machine functionally equivalent to Turing's famous abstraction is capable of determining whether any given Diophantine equation has an integer solution. However, this is quite different from claiming that there no possible way to determine whether the very same equation has the sought-after solution. (For a less airy example of what I mean, consider that you can't get blood from a turnip, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to get blood from anywhere.) To argue that A is impossible by method B is a sensible argument that can proven or disproven, and is at least exact enough to debate in a reasonable way. To claim that A is unconditionally impossible is to advance an incomplete argument, and oftentimes implicitly presumes but doesn't state a certain method or collection of methods for accomplishing A. As such, any argument to the effect that indefinite human life extension is simply impossible would need to show that no conceivable technology could ever accomplish this end, and thus entails the daunting task of attempting to characterize 'all conceivable technologies'. At this point, many Transhumanist critics resort to the argument that there is something fundamentally misguided or evil about human augmentations or artificial life extension, but it is beyond my present scope to discuss this class or moralistic objections. Instead, let's presume that radical technological life extension is entirely possible, and examine the consequences. What would be the consequences to Mr. Kurzweil and his fellows living for as many centuries as they pleased, aided by a succession of dazzling scientific and technological advancements?
I contend that there are no meaningful consequences to humans "transcending biology" (Kurzweil, 2005). This may seem a very strange and surprising twist of the argument, so please let me explain. In the preceding paragraph, we constructed an argument that effectively voids any objections that the Transhumanist program is impossible in principle. (Note, however, that impossibility in practice is an important matter in its own right.) Essentially, this argument says, "You can't foresee technological solutions that haven't been invented yet, so you can't claim that they won't be able to solve problems that we're already aware of." However, this argument has a natural and equally valid dual, obtained by simply swapping the roles of 'human problem' and 'technological solution'. Essentially, the same line of argument that allows for a continuous train of successive technological solutions also has that you cannot foresee the full extent of solutions that haven't been implemented yet. In some sense, our material problems are invented artifacts, in exactly the same way that our technological solutions are invented artifacts. It's true that you can't dismiss the effectiveness of a solution that hasn't been conceived and implemented yet, but it's equally true that you can't dismiss the reality or seriousness of a problem that hasn't yet arisen and confonted you either. There are always problems. That's just life. Radical life extension and cyborgs and strong AI or not, human civilization is going to just keep doing what it's been doing.
This is a basic underpinning of Mr. Kurzweil's argument in Singularity, as his argument for the coming technological revolution is at least partially historical and inductive. This distinction I make between my own views and those of the Transhumanist community is that there seem to be deeply personal motivations behind much of the enthusiasm for radical life extension. This is not surprising; zest for life and fear of death are both very natural, and it is not strange that people should dearly want to keep on living and to keep from dying. What I would be interested to hear addressed in greater detail is what these zealous exponents of the future have to say about the specters of disaster that have always hovered at the periphery of human life. It is a fine thing to wish to live for centuries and do it by means of advanced technology. But how will you cope with the unavoidable possibility that this might not happen, or that your aspirations might be unexpectedly cut short? I feel that the arguments I have laid out here make the convincing point that, even if humans as a civilization do conquer aging and death the way we have conquered illness and scarcity, substantial problems will always remain for us. Take note that, in spite of dramatic improvements in overall quality of life for humanity in aggregate, people still get sick and people still go hungry, and a great many still get sick enough or go hungry enough to die from it. Transhumanism as a coherent movement is cultural, but not spiritual. This distinction may be deliberate on the part of Transhumanists, but it is very important to make note of. There are strong undercurrents of a sort of spirituality in much of the Transhumanist literature out there, and it would be very interesting to see them come forward and made explicit in the writings of some prominent exponent of the moment. What bearing do these more esoteric, less empirical views have on the inescapable shadows of catastrophe and failure?
If there is any danger in the Transhumanist movement, it is not that its success will somehow rip away everything that we hold dear in our culture, but that it will change the face of our whole way of life at great expense, leaving us with something essentially the same as what we had before. It would be interesting to apply similar arguments to technological revolutions of the past. What about the Industrial Revolution? What about the Agricultural Revolution? Certainly, it would bring more of the relevant issues into sharp focus. I am not arguing here that we should fear or resist change. Rather, I am arguing for a measured and perhaps more reasoned attitude toward change, one that makes a clear distinction between enthusiasm for personal motives and arguments about the future developments of the vast, social, cultural, and technological edifice that is our civilization. Romantic critics should not worry themselves too much. Transhumanists are not going to solve all our problems. We can always invent more.
In the end, this reduces to the fundamental philosophical question of technology: What exactly is it that we're trying to accomplish?
The Transhumanist initiative is quite earnest and already under way. By his own account, accomplished scientist and entrepreneur, and prominent Transhumanist Ray Kurzweil takes several hundred pills a day ("The Singularity Is Near", Kurzweil, 2005) in a bid to extend his natural life long enough to benefit from even more radical life-extension technologies whose development he anticipates in the near future. Mr. Kurzweil terms this the "Bridge to a Bridge" strategy (ibid), an allusion to expectations that the hastening pace of scientific paradigm shift and engineering know-how will allow human lives to be extended through a succession of different technologies. Immortality of any degree has long been a human fixation, and so one can hardly doubt Mr. Kurzweil's sincerity. What is remarkable is the coherence and proactive organization of the initiative: Mr. Kurzweil's program of radical technological life extension, organized in collaboration with medical doctor Terry Grossman, is apparently so well developed that it is being marketed to the general public. Although I would argue that Transhumanism is a distinctly apocalyptic cultural movement, I cannot help but give Mr. Kurzweil credit for taking immortality into his own hands. However, rather than debate the relative virtues or vices of technological life extension, I would like to examine the Transhumanist response to death when death cannot be avoided.
I agree with the thesis that radical life extension may become possible in the near future. I also agree with the thesis that technological advancement has the potential to greatly enhance the quality and the extent of human life, perhaps even to the degree that the human lifespan does become indefinitely long. However, I fail to see how either of these theses in any way exclude catastrophe. Suppose I am in excellent health, benefitting from all of the latest advancements in health-, youth-, and vitality-technology, but while crossing the street on my way to an appointment with my life-extension consultant, I am hit by a speeding bus and instantly killed. You may object and say that, if I had been really serious in my desire to stay alive indefinitely, I would have been more scrupulous in looking both ways before I cross the street, or perhaps avoided busy streets altogether. Suppose I do just that, and live to an age contemporary with the development of full-body prostheses. But suppose then that, in my hurry to adopt the latest advancements, I come to inhabit a robotic body with a serious design flaw, as a result of which my life-sustaining functions suddenly and unexpectedly fail and I expire before repairs can be made. You may object that such dangerous technology would never be rushed to market, and that we should expect a thoroughly developed infrastructure for the care and maintenance of such bodies, to ensure that such episodes do not happen. That's not unthinkable. So suppose then that I live into a ripe old advanced technological age, and all information constituting my identity is uploaded into a global computer network where it can reproduce arbitrarily, instantiating itself in as many and as widely varied forms as it sees fit, whether corporeal or otherwise. This is certainly consistent with visions that Mr. Kurzweil himself has put forward. But suppose that in spite of all this, war breaks out and an electromagnetic pulse weapon fries all computer hardware on which my various infomorph copies live, or suppose that a runaway hoarde of pathologically replicating nanobots devours our civilization, clones and cyborgs and machine-ghosts and all, or suppose that no source of energy sufficiently cost- or labor-efficient to power our advanced technological civilization ever materializes, and all our gadgets, including our high-tech selves, simply expire? It's easy to see that this list could go on indefinitely. I think it is equally reasonable to say that each unlikely, but possible, doomsday scenario could easily be met with some no-less-likely, and no less possible, solution. Sure, something could go terribly wrong, but on the other hand, we could find a way to set it right. Sure, things might greatly improve, but that doesn't mean nothing bad will ever happen again.
This problem-solution dialectic highlights an essentially reactive feature of technological solutions: new technologies always arise in response to real or perceived problems. We may develop technology in anticipation of a problem, for example, techniques for diverting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It may also happen that unexpected benefits accrue in addition to those expected with the development of something new -- perhaps you could use a computer printer to build living organs (see Boland, Damon, and Cui, "Applications of Inkjet Printing to Tissue Engineering", Biotechnology Journal, 2006). Nonetheless, it seems unreasonable to expect that we can anticipate all problems before they arise, or that unforeseen secondary applications of existing technologies could account for all contingencies. The Transhumanist position is very proactive, in that is emphasizes a sort of "eternal hope" in the form of ever more ingenious solutions to ever deeper and ever more insidious problems. Personally, I find this attitude commendable. An underlying assumption of the Transhumanist position seems to be that the problem-solution dialectic could go on as long as humankind sees fit. I see no reason for challenging this assumption. At the same time, an inexhaustible supply of technological solutions in no way implies an exhaustible supply of human problems, technological or otherwise.
I would tend to side with Mr. Kurzweil that claiming certain problems as unsolvable, without empirical proof or rigorous deduction to back up the claim, is staking out a regressive position. I'd like to take special care here to distinguish unqualified impossibility from the more precise notion of relative impossibility. For example, it can be rigorously shown that no machine functionally equivalent to Turing's famous abstraction is capable of determining whether any given Diophantine equation has an integer solution. However, this is quite different from claiming that there no possible way to determine whether the very same equation has the sought-after solution. (For a less airy example of what I mean, consider that you can't get blood from a turnip, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to get blood from anywhere.) To argue that A is impossible by method B is a sensible argument that can proven or disproven, and is at least exact enough to debate in a reasonable way. To claim that A is unconditionally impossible is to advance an incomplete argument, and oftentimes implicitly presumes but doesn't state a certain method or collection of methods for accomplishing A. As such, any argument to the effect that indefinite human life extension is simply impossible would need to show that no conceivable technology could ever accomplish this end, and thus entails the daunting task of attempting to characterize 'all conceivable technologies'. At this point, many Transhumanist critics resort to the argument that there is something fundamentally misguided or evil about human augmentations or artificial life extension, but it is beyond my present scope to discuss this class or moralistic objections. Instead, let's presume that radical technological life extension is entirely possible, and examine the consequences. What would be the consequences to Mr. Kurzweil and his fellows living for as many centuries as they pleased, aided by a succession of dazzling scientific and technological advancements?
I contend that there are no meaningful consequences to humans "transcending biology" (Kurzweil, 2005). This may seem a very strange and surprising twist of the argument, so please let me explain. In the preceding paragraph, we constructed an argument that effectively voids any objections that the Transhumanist program is impossible in principle. (Note, however, that impossibility in practice is an important matter in its own right.) Essentially, this argument says, "You can't foresee technological solutions that haven't been invented yet, so you can't claim that they won't be able to solve problems that we're already aware of." However, this argument has a natural and equally valid dual, obtained by simply swapping the roles of 'human problem' and 'technological solution'. Essentially, the same line of argument that allows for a continuous train of successive technological solutions also has that you cannot foresee the full extent of solutions that haven't been implemented yet. In some sense, our material problems are invented artifacts, in exactly the same way that our technological solutions are invented artifacts. It's true that you can't dismiss the effectiveness of a solution that hasn't been conceived and implemented yet, but it's equally true that you can't dismiss the reality or seriousness of a problem that hasn't yet arisen and confonted you either. There are always problems. That's just life. Radical life extension and cyborgs and strong AI or not, human civilization is going to just keep doing what it's been doing.
This is a basic underpinning of Mr. Kurzweil's argument in Singularity, as his argument for the coming technological revolution is at least partially historical and inductive. This distinction I make between my own views and those of the Transhumanist community is that there seem to be deeply personal motivations behind much of the enthusiasm for radical life extension. This is not surprising; zest for life and fear of death are both very natural, and it is not strange that people should dearly want to keep on living and to keep from dying. What I would be interested to hear addressed in greater detail is what these zealous exponents of the future have to say about the specters of disaster that have always hovered at the periphery of human life. It is a fine thing to wish to live for centuries and do it by means of advanced technology. But how will you cope with the unavoidable possibility that this might not happen, or that your aspirations might be unexpectedly cut short? I feel that the arguments I have laid out here make the convincing point that, even if humans as a civilization do conquer aging and death the way we have conquered illness and scarcity, substantial problems will always remain for us. Take note that, in spite of dramatic improvements in overall quality of life for humanity in aggregate, people still get sick and people still go hungry, and a great many still get sick enough or go hungry enough to die from it. Transhumanism as a coherent movement is cultural, but not spiritual. This distinction may be deliberate on the part of Transhumanists, but it is very important to make note of. There are strong undercurrents of a sort of spirituality in much of the Transhumanist literature out there, and it would be very interesting to see them come forward and made explicit in the writings of some prominent exponent of the moment. What bearing do these more esoteric, less empirical views have on the inescapable shadows of catastrophe and failure?
If there is any danger in the Transhumanist movement, it is not that its success will somehow rip away everything that we hold dear in our culture, but that it will change the face of our whole way of life at great expense, leaving us with something essentially the same as what we had before. It would be interesting to apply similar arguments to technological revolutions of the past. What about the Industrial Revolution? What about the Agricultural Revolution? Certainly, it would bring more of the relevant issues into sharp focus. I am not arguing here that we should fear or resist change. Rather, I am arguing for a measured and perhaps more reasoned attitude toward change, one that makes a clear distinction between enthusiasm for personal motives and arguments about the future developments of the vast, social, cultural, and technological edifice that is our civilization. Romantic critics should not worry themselves too much. Transhumanists are not going to solve all our problems. We can always invent more.
In the end, this reduces to the fundamental philosophical question of technology: What exactly is it that we're trying to accomplish?
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Goodbye Johnny, Hope All Your Days in Hell Are Sunny
(Abe Schulz; August 23, 1986 to December 11, 2004)
Why should death be like an abrupt awakening when there are so many other moments in life? Each moment is the moment of truth, and each one tells us the same thing.
I never had the opportunity to personally see the mural displayed above. I heard rumors about it, but by the time that I visited the place, it had been white-washed over.
Looking back on it, I think to myself now, "Ah, it makes so much sense. A wide-open space for the next image to unfold. The agents of destruction have left behind a perfect beginning."
Freedom leaves no trace behind. There's nothing to grieve over, and lots to do.
How To Talk and Listen
- Always seek a better understanding of the truth. You should make your views accord with what is true, not the other way around. There is no one who knows everything. There never has been, and there never will be.
- Treat all other participants as comrades in a collaborate effort of understanding. This includes showing due respect for all involved. There are differences, but there should never be enemies
- If you notice you have made a mistake, readily acknowledge it. Do this regardless of whether you yourself notice, or whether the mistake is pointed out. Mistakes are inevitable; there should be nothing extraordinary or shameful about them.
- Do not resort to coercion of any kind. Do not insult. Do not present ideas in a way that is gratuitously offensive or disturbing. Emotions are powerful; see to it that you use this power tactfully, rather than allowing yourself or others to be used by it
- Listen, and earnestly try to understand the viewpoints of all involved. Try to understand people and arguments on their own terms. There are always reasons that people say and believe the things that they do, and even if their chain of reasoning is muddled or unsound, they may have access to information or experience that you do not.
We are all friends here. We are all in this together. Don't forget.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
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