Okay, as promised: part two of my series on transhumanism. If you need to find part 1, you can read it here: http://dougmeredith.blogspot.com/2017/05/transhuman-part-1.html
(WARNING: I am a smart person who keeps abreast of these topics due to personal interest. I am NOT a scientist working in these specialized fields, which is why I am sticking to very broad strokes.)
Let's go alphabetically in our discussion and start with the concept of a *biological* singularity - there's a broad range of scientific advances in the hopper that could lead us to a rapid evolution beyond "standard" human. I can't say at what pace they will reach fruition, or even in what order, but the basic tools are already in place - the speculation is not about whether they will all work, but what they can achieve within the boundaries of cost, effectiveness, and safety.
Probably most well-known would be the development of stem cell technology. In case you missed it, here's the two-second snapshot as I understand it: as a fetus, all our different types of cells start out as one broad type (the stem cell) and then differentiate into other types based on a whole host of factors. We also have some of them as adults, acting as a limited repair system for cellular damage.
Why is that important? Because the right stem cells can become nearly anything - need a replacement heart? One could theoretically be grown artificially for you. Suffering from brain damage? Cultivate some neurons. What's even better is that we can now cause already differentiated cells to revert back to limited stem cells, which means that we could grow that heart from your own cells, negating any risk of rejection.
Now let's add in genetic modification and the growing field of epigenetics. With the discovery and refinement of CRISPR (which has nothing to do with keeping your veggies fresh), we're getting waaaay better at directly modifying DNA in precise, significant, *and inheritable* ways. Beyond the potential to permanently excise a wide range of genetic disorders, we could tweak "working" DNA to upgrade our biological systems' effectiveness or simply to make something work differently.
Epigenetics is the often-overlooked sibling of genetic modification - as our understanding of DNA increases, we're also coming to understand that many traits are not solely derived from our genes. Essentially, various other factors can modify, turn on, or turn off portions of our genetic code. Even more importantly, these modifications can ALSO be inherited like genes.
There are dozens of other medical breakthroughs currently being researched, but I think the above three are illustrative of how powerfully we are starting to grasp at the very roots of our biology. There's still a LOT of work to do in terms of translating and truly understanding everything, but let me reiterate: it's a matter of "when" instead of "if".
How does this lead us into a singularity? First, these various techniques could either legitimately cure or provide permanent, renewable levels of treatment for every disease - not a single cure-all, but an ever-expanding toolbox able to quickly tackle various situations. Second, therapies could halt or reverse the process of biological aging on a cellular level. What that boils down to is not, despite the hype, immortality - it removes the factors of death due to illness or old age, but you can still die due to severe enough sudden injury. Still, the specter of death would go from being a definite thing after a span of no more than roughly 100 years to an end that could take thousands of years to arrive.
What would a human become after a millennium of existence? What happens when death fades into the background? How do we deal with population growth when the death rate drops so drastically?
There's another singularity lurking alongside that one: artificial, controlled genetic modification. How far can you drift in terms of gene tailoring before you simply stop being homo sapiens anymore? That's an especially pressing point when one considers that these changes *can be inherited by your children*. How long before we fragment into various species who are no closer relations than we are to the chimpanzee?
As with all the developments I will be discussing, the answer is not to turn back or run away - the potential good is simply far too significant. Indeed, perhaps we will come out on the other side of the singularity better than we went in. Perhaps an increased lifespan, for example, will encourage longer-term thinking. *We cannot truly know*, which is what makes a singularity worthy of the name. What we *can* do is try to arrange things on this side of the event horizon to get ready for it and, where possible, do our utmost to maximize the chance of attaining the best outcomes.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Transhuman - Part 1
I wanna talk about transhumanism for a minute.
Wait. What? Not politics? Not health care?
No. Those are urgent and important, but I want to take a minute and look over the horizon - to stare at the oncoming singularity.
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, transhumanism is the study of the various avenues humans might seek (blindly or knowingly) that would change us so greatly as to no longer be homo sapiens sapiens anymore; rapid, self-driven evolution, if you will.
Mark my words: assuming our present world does not literally come completely crashing down upon our ears in the next century, the question of transhuman evolution is not a matter of "if" but "when" and "how". We had best be deliberating on the answers we want to find at the other end.
Here's the trouble, though: the singularity. It's a concept used in technology to describe a point at which innovation skyrockets exponentially, making it impossible for us to forecast what life would be like beyond that moment. It actually derives from a black hole - there's the event horizon, the last point at which light is able to escape the massive pull of gravity, and then there's the singularity. You cannot see into the singularity because not even a single photon gets out to illuminate what is beyond.
Scary, no? Good. It should be scary - awesome events should inspire awe, terrific events should involve some amount of terror.
Here's the REALLY scary thing: there's not one singularity approaching, but dozens of them. That's why I say this is inevitable on our current course; one of the options will come to fruition sooner or later. Probably several will merge into one another to create an uber-event greater than the sum of its parts. Yet this also won't be a sudden shift; it will be a growing storm that builds into a larger maelstrom. There will probably not be a literal moment entitled "THE SINGULARITY", although we will no doubt look back from beyond it and label one arbitrary point as such. We like to do that with our history, after all, even when it's rarely so easy.
There are three main avenues of singularity that I want to explore: computing, cybernetic, and biological. Then I want to explore how these three threads are most likely to fold together and morph each other over time. Needless to say, that's way too much for one Facebook post so I'll be breaking it up into several over the next couple of weeks.
One way or another I hope you will *not* be bored.
Wait. What? Not politics? Not health care?
No. Those are urgent and important, but I want to take a minute and look over the horizon - to stare at the oncoming singularity.
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, transhumanism is the study of the various avenues humans might seek (blindly or knowingly) that would change us so greatly as to no longer be homo sapiens sapiens anymore; rapid, self-driven evolution, if you will.
Mark my words: assuming our present world does not literally come completely crashing down upon our ears in the next century, the question of transhuman evolution is not a matter of "if" but "when" and "how". We had best be deliberating on the answers we want to find at the other end.
Here's the trouble, though: the singularity. It's a concept used in technology to describe a point at which innovation skyrockets exponentially, making it impossible for us to forecast what life would be like beyond that moment. It actually derives from a black hole - there's the event horizon, the last point at which light is able to escape the massive pull of gravity, and then there's the singularity. You cannot see into the singularity because not even a single photon gets out to illuminate what is beyond.
Scary, no? Good. It should be scary - awesome events should inspire awe, terrific events should involve some amount of terror.
Here's the REALLY scary thing: there's not one singularity approaching, but dozens of them. That's why I say this is inevitable on our current course; one of the options will come to fruition sooner or later. Probably several will merge into one another to create an uber-event greater than the sum of its parts. Yet this also won't be a sudden shift; it will be a growing storm that builds into a larger maelstrom. There will probably not be a literal moment entitled "THE SINGULARITY", although we will no doubt look back from beyond it and label one arbitrary point as such. We like to do that with our history, after all, even when it's rarely so easy.
There are three main avenues of singularity that I want to explore: computing, cybernetic, and biological. Then I want to explore how these three threads are most likely to fold together and morph each other over time. Needless to say, that's way too much for one Facebook post so I'll be breaking it up into several over the next couple of weeks.
One way or another I hope you will *not* be bored.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
The Muslim Ban
I've heard multiple people invoke a certain idea in defense of a Muslim ban (thank you, Melissa McCarthy for making me shout "your words not mine!" as I typed that) and I want to push back on them a little. They invoke the concept of a "clash of civilizations" between the "noble" values of the West and the "barbaric" values of the Islamic world, often using apocalyptic language. Here's what I want to say: there probably would not BE a modern Western civilization if not for the Islamic world.
Without the Golden Age of Islam there would have been no Rennaissance or Enlightenment - or they would have been much longer in arriving. While Europe saw its centers of learning shrink and struggle after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Middle East's educational system flourished under the patronage of multiple rulers. Books of philosophy and science that had long been lost to Western Europe were preserved - our knowledge of the great Greek philosophers would be much more limited if not for the Islamic world.
But let's not stop there - this wasn't a culture simply poaching the ideas of others. Muslim scientists advanced the cutting edge of all the major fields, from astronomy to optics to medicine to physics to engineering... the list is immense. From Cordoba to Baghdad, scholars, poets, and theologians from around the world gathered together in places of relative tolerance and peace to share learning. If you were in the Middle Ages and you wanted to find a place where a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, and a Buddhist walked into a bar... let's just say you wouldn't look in Paris.
Where did it all go wrong? It really didn't, not overall, but an anti-scientific thread of Islamic thought really took root as the Ottoman Empire shrank and fragmented under pressure from a resurgent Europe. Let me simplify a very complicated period: feeling threatened, some people embraced modernization and attempted to re-close the gap while others fought to preserve the "traditional" ways that had made Islam great. They fostered a false dichotomy between a modern world and "true" Islam, insisting that polluting influences should be purged from within and fought from without. This thread does not make up the majority of Islamic thought, but its offshoots are what gave rise to both the hardline, hypocritical theocracy ruling Saudi Arabia and various terrorists organizations that now too often represent the face of Islam to the rest of the world.
Like I said - this is a vast oversimplification about topics that individually have required entire volumes to truly dissect. What's more, it's an outsider's view looking in - so I expect I myself missed a lot of nuance. However, with that proviso understood, here's what I want to emphasize as both a lesson and a warning: Islamic faith is not incompatible with an appreciation for modernity, science, tolerance, democracy or human rights. Indeed, many concepts within those arenas would not have been developed without the influence of both Middle-Eastern thinkers and some of the very core values found in Islam itself. That's the lesson, but what follows is the warning.
A group of people, feeling threatened and left behind by the rest of the world, embrace a hardline interpretation of cultural norms and religious values in an effort to re-attain a mythologized "golden time". In order to achieve those goals, they feel they must force others into compliance with these rules and mandate their obedience via violence and government intervention. To maintain purity, they excise parts of the population viewed as tainted or inferior and push away "foreign influences". They purge scientific thought that cannot be brought into accordance with dogma rather than work to adapt dogma to new learning. This tendency is not at all unique to the Middle-East or Islam, as you can find it echoed across all of history in every major culture. Indeed, today I do not need to look very far to hear the same tempting whispers.
It is cliche, but not untrue: be careful you do not become that which you fight. And the more impossible you believe that to be? The more likely it is to happen.
Without the Golden Age of Islam there would have been no Rennaissance or Enlightenment - or they would have been much longer in arriving. While Europe saw its centers of learning shrink and struggle after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Middle East's educational system flourished under the patronage of multiple rulers. Books of philosophy and science that had long been lost to Western Europe were preserved - our knowledge of the great Greek philosophers would be much more limited if not for the Islamic world.
But let's not stop there - this wasn't a culture simply poaching the ideas of others. Muslim scientists advanced the cutting edge of all the major fields, from astronomy to optics to medicine to physics to engineering... the list is immense. From Cordoba to Baghdad, scholars, poets, and theologians from around the world gathered together in places of relative tolerance and peace to share learning. If you were in the Middle Ages and you wanted to find a place where a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, and a Buddhist walked into a bar... let's just say you wouldn't look in Paris.
Where did it all go wrong? It really didn't, not overall, but an anti-scientific thread of Islamic thought really took root as the Ottoman Empire shrank and fragmented under pressure from a resurgent Europe. Let me simplify a very complicated period: feeling threatened, some people embraced modernization and attempted to re-close the gap while others fought to preserve the "traditional" ways that had made Islam great. They fostered a false dichotomy between a modern world and "true" Islam, insisting that polluting influences should be purged from within and fought from without. This thread does not make up the majority of Islamic thought, but its offshoots are what gave rise to both the hardline, hypocritical theocracy ruling Saudi Arabia and various terrorists organizations that now too often represent the face of Islam to the rest of the world.
Like I said - this is a vast oversimplification about topics that individually have required entire volumes to truly dissect. What's more, it's an outsider's view looking in - so I expect I myself missed a lot of nuance. However, with that proviso understood, here's what I want to emphasize as both a lesson and a warning: Islamic faith is not incompatible with an appreciation for modernity, science, tolerance, democracy or human rights. Indeed, many concepts within those arenas would not have been developed without the influence of both Middle-Eastern thinkers and some of the very core values found in Islam itself. That's the lesson, but what follows is the warning.
A group of people, feeling threatened and left behind by the rest of the world, embrace a hardline interpretation of cultural norms and religious values in an effort to re-attain a mythologized "golden time". In order to achieve those goals, they feel they must force others into compliance with these rules and mandate their obedience via violence and government intervention. To maintain purity, they excise parts of the population viewed as tainted or inferior and push away "foreign influences". They purge scientific thought that cannot be brought into accordance with dogma rather than work to adapt dogma to new learning. This tendency is not at all unique to the Middle-East or Islam, as you can find it echoed across all of history in every major culture. Indeed, today I do not need to look very far to hear the same tempting whispers.
It is cliche, but not untrue: be careful you do not become that which you fight. And the more impossible you believe that to be? The more likely it is to happen.
Trump, Israel, and the Media - The Clusterfucking
Okay, it's headlines like this that make people believe in the whole "fake news"/biased media bullshit. "Trump, Meeting With Netanyahu, Backs Away From Palestinian State" is inaccurate and inflammatory. His full and complete quote (as put into the article itself) was "“I’m looking at two states and one state. I like the one that both parties like. I can live with either one.”
It was his usual vapid non-speak, but it changes little RE: actual US policy. Did you think we would refuse to go to the negotiation table to discuss a one-state solution if the Palestinians had come and said "S'alright with us!"? That's basically all Trump is saying here: whatever works for both parties. Now the question is whether he actually *means* “both parties” or is lying through his teeth, but that would've been true even if he had come out to the podium praising the vital necessity of a Palestinian state at the top of his lungs. There's ALWAYS the strong probability that Mr. Trump is blatantly lying about things, so let's focus on that rather than misconstruing his actual words.
Here's a minor aside/confession: I don't disagree with his stated position when it is considered in a vacuum. A treaty with terms and land swaps that would allow BOTH a completely independent, sovereign, and viable Palestine AND a completely independent, sovereign, and viable Israel would be exceedingly difficult to achieve even if one set aside the massive cluster that is the mutual demand for Jerusalem. Unfortunately for a one-state solution, there are also all sorts of devils in the details of creating an *ethical* and *stable* merger.
As the article points out, Israel is founded on the core principles of being a democratic state AND a true Jewish homeland - it's not always been great at achieving or balancing those two goals, but the USA hasn't exactly provided the ability for every citizen to secure "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", so let's set those issues aside for now. On a fundamental level, the integration of so many non-Jewish Palestinians as citizens would completely upend that balance - either the new citizens are accorded the same right to vote as everyone else, which would quickly diminish Israel's character as a fundamentally Jewish state (using the term as it applies to both culture and religion, since plenty of culturally Jewish Israelis are non-religious) OR the newly-minted Palestinian Israelis would be denied some portion of voting rights, which would be an incredible blow against the concept of universal democratic suffrage. From the Palestinian side, there would also need to be a reckoning with their demand to have property their families fled returned to inheritors or suitable individual reparations paid.
On top of that, any merger would look very similar to West/East Germany in the early 90s in terms of infrastructure and economic investment – Israel would be on the hook for (re)building a shattered land that’s dealing with decades of damage at every level imaginable. A not-insignificant chunk of that damage has been DUE to Israel, but another big chunk has been due to corruption and incompetence by the Palestinian Authority. I’m not going down the rabbit hole of assigning blame for the past here, but rather focusing on roadblocks to moving forward.
Looking at these obstacles, my opposition to a one-state solution boils down to the fact that any stability in such a unified state would involve the suppression of basic freedoms or the forced relocation of huge numbers of people to achieve a more “sustainable” demographic mix. I don’t have the stomach for endorsing either option, so some version of a two state solution is all that’s really left. My ideal end? Two geographically coherent states bound together in an economic free trade agreement, with the various outside parties who keep trying to negotiate a peace forced to put their money where their mouth is by sinking resources and capital into rebuilding a viable Palestine that can stand alongside Israel rather than fester and be abused by the various countries around it (its so-called Arab “allies” being very much included).
Even this, though, has massive roadblocks in front of it. An economic union cannot stand without loosening border restrictions, which could only happen if Israel had guarantees that Palestine could keep a lid on terrorist threats. Israel, in turn, would have to respect the territorial integrity of Palestine and come down hard on settlements across the border. Both sides would have to hold onto enough trust and mutual goodwill to tolerate an armed neighbor so closely intertwined with them. Also, third parties would actually have to put financial skin in the game to help prop things up, while trusting that their aid wouldn’t get funneled to some politician’s private bank account. I just don’t see any of that coming soon.
Okay, so that wasn’t a minor aside ;) but hey, at least it was cheery and upbeat!
#yourpersonalraincloud
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