Future X
by rsbakker
Definition of the Day I – Human: A biological system connecting the dinner plate to the shitter.
Definition of the Day II – Writer: A biological system convinced that it does more than simply connect the dinner plate to the shitter. See, Flatulance.
Quite the dialogue we’ve had going the past several days. For my part, I’ve pared back my commitment to Argument (1) from the previous post. I really don’t think anyone has seriously challenged Argument (2) regarding identity, which, I think anyway, is the core of the dilemma facing us.
Since all our rationales turn on our neurophysiology as it exists, I just don’t see how anyone can argue that it would be ‘better’ to leave our neurophysiology behind. If what we call ‘morality’ is a product of our neurophysiology, then abandoning that neurophysiology entails abandoning that morality. How can it be ‘better’ to leave BETTER behind?
This just underscores the real problem faced by the technological enthusiast: they really don’t know what they’re arguing for… Why should anyone embrace some Future X, especially when all we know for certain is that we will cease to exist? Because there’s a good chance the incomprehensible aliens that follow us will be ‘more intelligent’ (whatever that means, post UNNF (universal natural neurophysiological frame))?
Why should anyone give a damn about them?
Anyway, here are the links to a couple of more or less apropo pieces I wrote for Tor.com a couple years back. (Thanks Bhaal!)
Three Pound Brain 
I’ve argued for years that modern medicine has stalled evolution in the traditional sense. A higher percentage of humans than ever before is living long enough to reproduce, which, in the end, is all the genes care about.
That’s an oversimplification, of course. We’re selecting for traits all the time. Here in the U.S., at least, couples at the lower end of the socio-economic and educational scales are far more likely to have a lot of children than highly-paid, highly-educated career-minded couples. That generalization certainly doesn’t apply to everyone, but it works well enough.
I’ve always attributed a lot of this to the notion that kids are so expensive to raise and send to college both in terms of money and time, that a lot of modern people decide that, hell, they’d rather have the money and careers.
Now you’ve given me an entirely new line of thought into the notion of “modern” evolution. I used to laugh at the plausibility of humans spontaneously evolving into a series of totally disparate (and always useful) super-powered mutants a la the X-men. But with the concept of designer brain tinkering as neuroscience becomes more advanced, the X-men seem to be a pretty apt metaphor for the “Future X Humans.”
The comic book geeks were right all along.
I haven’t noticed (or maybe I just haven’t read carefully enough) you bring in any economic filters to this. But it stands to reason that, at least at first, only the very wealthy will be able to afford brain tinkering. If we assume that the early cases aren’t horribly botched en masse, that leaves us with a further stratification of rich and poor to consider as well, where the class wars become species wars. Care to recklessly speculate?
Your pessimistic perspective has a lot in common with the themes and philosophy of HP Lovecraft. I’m not talking about squid monsters or anything, but about the similarities in your views on science. While Lovecraft worried that science would eventually reveal all sorts of hidden truths about the universe that would drive us mad, you’ve taken it one step further and said that we’ll simply use science to drive ourselves mad (or erase our identities, which is nearly indistinguishable from madness from the perspective of our current neurophysiology).
At any rate I agree on one point: since we are our brains, we should be careful what we change them into. Perhaps the safest way is to embrace an additive philosophy: always add to the capacity of the brain and never subtract.
[neuropath spoilers below]
I also keep coming back to the idea of costs… consider Neil Cassidy. What is Mr. Cassidy’s net biological fitness in Neuropath? Very low. He essentially kills his offspring and gets himself murdered by one of his creations. If these are the kinds of outputs we can expect from heavily neuro-modified people, it’s a self-correcting problem. Maybe society will eventually reach the point where most of the population is teetering on the brink, but humanity as a whole will never cross because of purifying selection. Thinking analogously about it: people who abuse birth control completely and simply relegate their sexuality to recreation can never outcompete those who eventually stop its use in order to reproduce.
Very cool point about Lovecraft. I actually think you can interpret today’s affirmation/aspiration culture as a kind of ‘madness’ (in the sense of ‘fixed false beliefs) facilitated by technology, which is to say, caused by science. You have to wonder what he would think about today’s culture (if you could ever get him to stop surfing porn).
Whether we add or subtract the result is the same, isn’t it? Our UNNF fractures into ever more myriad and ever more exotic IANFs (idiosyncratic artificial neurophysiological frames).
(Neuropath Spoiler)
As for Neil, remember that he literally considers himself the world’s first ‘Neuronaut.’ He would actually agree that his viability has been compromised, but only because he’s the first.
Exactly – What Jorge said! My exact thoughts on reading neuropath (barring any unclearly revealed Cassidy/Bible self model swap) – Oh.. confirmation bias much..
sorry 😦
So the “Cassidys” who fixate on something other than reproductive potential may be left behind rapidly – the problem is predicting what ultimately determines reproductive potential in an extremely unstable environment – maybe a choice for obvious reproductive potential in the short term (say favouring many well adjusted offspring) is not actually a good choice long term, as the environment actually (or subsequently)favours poorly adjusted creative mavericks – also will increased intelligence always be favoured – is it now?
I appreciate “Cassidy” is without meaning to exist, barring a whim which may contingently stabilise his lines reproduction – in a generation his genes wont.
If he had manipulated his brain to unconditionally consider life meaningful – his genes probably would.
So does intelligence alone really let us make predictive decisions of potential future evolutionary scenarios that increase the probability of survival realative to the level of intelligence? – it seems a no-brainer but I am not so sure..
I also suspect diversity is likely to be a favourable state for insuring survival of whatever comes after humanity (which IS going, if it is defined as the current status quo, like it or not – there are no absolutes especially not physiological ones) – but if one option seems the best one how is anyone going to be convinced not to take it? leading to loss of diversity en-masse.
Uh, Bible didn’t exactly leave the same man he went in. Nor did his children. Or wife.
Reproduction can have a lovecraftian twist to it. Why make babies when you can hijack someone elses babies? Isn’t that actually more efficient?
“How can it be ‘better’ to leave BETTER behind?”
Conversely: how can it be ‘worse’ to leave WORSE behind?
I think that’s closer to the argument people are making. It’s because they (techno-enthusiasts) are defending not only technology but the path it is currently taking they naturally fall into ‘well, life is better now so it will be better in the future as well’.
But the further back we step it seems as if the two (past and present) aren’t comparable on a majority of levels. Things aren’t better or worse, but qualitatively different. Humanity, taken as a whole (which is rarely done and for good reason) is not necessarily better off in terms of threats to it’s own extinction. We have been liberated from our pasts, but don’t know what for.
“Why should anyone embrace some Future X, especially when all we know for certain is that we will cease to exist? Because there’s a good chance the incomprehensible aliens that follow us will be ‘more intelligent’ (whatever that means, post UNNF (universal natural neurophysiological frame))?”
This question for me is the same, but minus the X. Why embrace the future at all, especially an imagined future (which we imagine to be unimaginable) that ‘we’ won’t be a part of? Chances are that I and the other readers of this blog will lose our identities to death, not to technological innovation gone astray from ‘human’ purpose.
It may be that we need to have children in order to even begin to worry.
James, it depends if you saw someone elses child unconcious across some train tracks and a train in the distance. Why bother walking over, grabbing the child by the scruff of the neck and dropping them by the side of the tracks?
Now what’s the difference between it being someone elses child right now and someone elses child X years after your death?
It’s a future event we don’t care about because of our psychology to invest less in future events (particularly those beyond our calculated life span). Sadly Scott’s whole arguements about preserving our identity as humans hinge on breaking part of that identity and instead lending weight to the future.
Conversely: how can it be ‘worse’ to leave WORSE behind?
I’d disagree – I think they project their own moral structure forward, as if it were part of the universes physical structure and as much, will always exist.
Though I’ll agree that it is very difficult to think of what you mentioned – to actually judge the end of judgement. Thus it’s very difficult for anyone to arrive at an alternative to percieving their moral structure always going forward.
“Now what’s the difference between it being someone elses child right now and someone elses child X years after your death?”
The difference is that I can do something about the child ‘right now’. In your example I can save his life. What can I do about a child x years after my death? Scott suggested shitting myself. What do you suggest?
There’s also the implied: raising the alarms and raising awareness of the impending doom. I think the reason that our investment in our future shrinks in proportion to the distance of that future is because the further we plan ahead the more uncertain our projections. We prefer to invest ourselves (especially in terms of action) in things nearer to certainty, like the death of a child on train tracks right in front of us.
Because while we can talk all night about this, the question keeps coming back to me: what can I do ‘right now’?
In terms of the Semantic Apocalypse, it may be that the question has no answer. It certainly doesn’t mean that I’ll stop asking the question.
Sorry, posted before I saw the reply to Jorge appear RSB – Cheers
Hey, Mr. Bakker, no problem! It didn’t take me more than a minute to find the article through google.
On the whole topic, I have to say this for now – Ghost in the Shell, anyone?
Definition of the Day I – Human: A biological system connecting the dinner plate to the shitter.
Definition of the Day II – Writer: A biological system convinced that it does more than simply connect the dinner plate to the shitter. See, Flatulance.
Scott, I kind of think your actually a radical optimist. Like you keep throwing acid everywhere, because your sure there’s some hidden diamond of human truth that will remain once the acid has melted all the ‘dross’ away. You keep splashin’ that acid around…“Whereisitwhereisit?”.
I get the same impression. I do not think that future evolution necessarily implies the end of humanity, it might, but there might be other alternatives. Is really difficult to have a working definition of what “human” really is. If we agree that human is an entity capable of certain cognitive and emotional states, then we can have some degrees of freedom on how much tweaking we can do and still be human. It might turn out that our long term survival could require certain cognitive features to remain constant. Imagine a world where we altered out minds to better fit in a free market consumer society; we would end up with nothing but extraverted type A personalities everywhere, a kind of Ayn Rand Utopia (dystopia to me), a world full of Jon Galts. Yes, they might work hard, be competitive, excellent consumers and producers, but totally unable to create anything new. To quote the market goddess herself, when describing what she thought was a moral person, she wrote: “is born with the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people…Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should.” This is frightening, especially because we can, at least in theory, remake our brains to have no organ for understanding. Our cultural/economic forces will surely encourage this type of person to emerge by the rewiring of our brains. But there is a problem. Almost all great geniuses, artist or scientist, suffered from certain emotional turbulence and are almost always introverted. Introverts are a minority of the population, but a majority of the talented. Einstein, Beethoven, Feinman, Bakker, are not Jon Galts, no extraverts. The typical market personality is shallow, and cannot write a symphony, book, or theory, simply because the removal of that cognitive social organ would prevent the cognitive state require for creativity. I believe that this emotional state is required for new ideas to emerge. If we permit modern social/market forces to dictate our future evolution then our long term survival is sure questionable.
“Our cultural/economic forces will surely encourage this type of person to emerge by the rewiring of our brains.”
Maybe. Seen Blade Runner? Maybe a group of people opposed to the technology would devise a test to ferret out the Neuropaths and take them out.
“The typical market personality is shallow, and cannot write a symphony, book, or theory, simply because the removal of that cognitive social organ would prevent the cognitive state require for creativity.”
I dispute this. I mean what the hell does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Why would creativity require a functioning social organ? Some of the most creative scientists of all time have been reclusive assholes. Probably a few have been sociopaths if the numbers are anything to go by.
How do you mean creative scientists? Scientists are the very opposite of creating – they strive to discover and only discover?
After reading what I wrote I got the same impression you got. I am afraid I worded my ideas incorrectly. Don’t ever multitask when writing about cognitive future evolution. What I called a free market personality has nothing to do with the market itself, but with the personality types that seem to thrive in it. Robert Nozick was a free market advocate, but he could not have survived a day on the Wall Street floor. He thrived because of the same system he argued against. I am referring to the Jon Galt types. Yes, the free market may benefit from some few nerds concocting new computer programs, but they are not the ones driving the economy. The captains of industry, the ones that the market works to benefit, cannot afford to be reclusive, although most are assholes. Sociopaths cannot be loners; after all it is their desire to selfishly manipulate others that make them sociopaths. So reclusiveness might be a trait found in many a genius, along with some other antisocial behavior, but once again, sociopaths are social animals. So, if I were to remake my brain in order to be more market efficient I would be an Ayn Rand hero, not a nerd. I would be very gregarious (although all my social life would be on a benefit bases only), aggressive, assertive, without doubt, superficially charming, incapable of guilt. I would also amputate all the emotional baggage that gets in the way such as any emotional attachment, grief, sadness. All the reclusive nerds would work for me. Of course, they might want to change themselves and became more like me, those who do not would be the bottom of the pecking order, but changing their personality traits might inadvertently amputate their mental talent. A world full of superficial charmers, but of absolutely no substance. Of course, I could be wrong, this is just an idea, I have doubts about it myself, if I could only do something about that doubt…
I wonder, though, if the personality type you’re describing isn’t simply the post-paternalistic one, just as apt to flourish in mass bureaucratic environments as entrepreneurial ones – any social situation where relations of material and emotional dependency have been thoroughly detached. Sociopaths certainly seemed to do well in Stalin’s Russia.
Market slamming is easy in the abstract, but tends to get trickier and trickier the more hard questions you ask. Nozick is a great example of someone I thoroughly disagree with, but genuinely knows how to argue (in distinction to Rand, who reeks of apologia and vengence at every turn).
I think one thing is weve never had to ask these questions before. What we are was decided by something else.
Just by asking the question, one is breaking the previous mould where one did not decide such a thing. I think it’s possible to ‘spin off’ from this break, becoming dislocated from the source motivation that initially launched the investigation with no pathways for navigating back for having spun off from the pathways of that source. In other words it’s probably worth setting up an anchor before really considering these things. Or maybe that’s silly to say, I dunno.
I have to ask only one thing.
Who are these technological enthusiasts and where can I find what they are saying?
there are many, but here is a helpfull link to get started on. The link mostly deals with life extencion, but is part of of the technological optimism of modern times, at least its origins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extropianism
Sorry for the delay Bhaal – I completely missed this post. The place to start in terms of credibility is Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near.
The technological enthusiasts are the ones really looking forward to the new ‘look before you leap’ machine, designed (very carefully) by corporation X. 😉
I am one of the technological enthusiasts. While I do think Bakker’s warnings about the misuse of neuroscience are warranted and real, the same can be said for virtually any technology.
I do not advocate ‘scientism’ though… the idea that science can and will solve every problem. Indeed, science tends to create issues or amplify them- humans aren’t good at holding back on comsumption and expansion.
I am somewhat skeptical about how bad the ‘Semantic Apocalypse’ will be as it pertains to our biology, but his arguments seem sound: science has consistently eroded notions of meaning and purpose. For the time being, I have made pursuit of knowledge MY purpose and as such I consider myself part of the mechanism bringing about Bakker’s fears, even though I am not a neuroscientist.
Thinking on it, from inside the whole thing it’s an issue of identity. But from outside that frame, were talking about each individual is the (current) end result of having gone through millions of years of field testing. Indeed, even from the very first spark of repeating pattern/life.
While an altered individual isn’t the end result of those millions of years of field testing. They are the act of some other being, who isn’t present even if you stand in front of their work, as it acts.
Actually I’ve had that same thought about the Kellhus – I never got to know him, he was the artifact of someones decisions 2k years prior. That person is the one I’d need to know. But all I can see is the end product, not the process behind it’s invention. Possibly why I always love an origin story.
Scott talks about extinction, but I think about the entry here where some religious guy went to the same cafe as Scott and was talking about a better station for women…and then afterward two women come in with a really bad cunalingus joke. How compatable are those womens minds with that guys? Aren’t they already almost an entirely different species from each other, even if they could bonk and make babies still? Aren’t I for talking this way? Except we are still derived from a very long period of field testing and that is the point we branch out from.
But to overwrite that long process of evaluation? What is that? Is it to perhaps stop a grander scale of thinking?
Okay, Scott’s got extincition and I’ve got a vague question…he wins…
http://www.blackgate.com/2011/07/03/the-cruel-world-of-r-scott-bakker/
Looks like that libertarian scott got into a debate with finally got around to reading his books. Will be curious to see what his review looks like.
I was wondering if he would get around to the books. I’m curious to see what he thinks…