TopTenz.net selected IEET as #1 non-profit in the category, “Straight Outta Science Fiction.” The website touts IEET as the best organization to fund if you want to “fight Terminators by making yourself into an immortal cyborg…” NPOs trailing IEET include the Mormon Transhumanist Association (#5), Humanity+ (#6), and the Singularity Institute (#8).
Are humans becoming obsolete in the workforce? Many experts believe the answer is yes. The amazing win for IBM’s Watson computer over humans on the quiz show Jeopardy, proved that automated systems are getting closer to reaching human intelligence levels.
What did IEET visitors read, watch, and comment on last month? Space, drugs, sex, death, religion and urban design provided high traffic. Statistics with links are provided.
Traditional-Religious Transhumanists like “Pastor” Alex McGilvery and Lincoln Cannon have articulated their views extensively at IEET in recent months, in essays followed by contentious debates. McGilvery and Cannon believe there’s easy compatibility between their creeds and H+. I welcome them, happily, because I want H+ to be a “Big Tent” with acceptance for everybody. That said, I fervently disagree with their theistic opinions. Wildly, totally, absolutely, passionately, face-squinched-up-in-an-angry-scowl Disagree.
After two days of serious neuroscience (Day One, Day Two morning, Day Two afternoon) I confess that my note-taking and summary abilities flagged a bit on the third day.
Day Two of the Moral Brain conference at New York University, co-sponsored by the IEET, is largely devoted to a review of the last ten years of research on the neuroscience of moral sentiments and decision-making, with talks by Jonathan Haidt among others.
James Hughes, the executive director of IEET, was recently interviewed about democratic transhumanism, personhood theory, and AI. He was kind enough to share his responses with me:
We asked “Do you believe in a universal Basic Income Guarantee? What amount would be satisfactory?” More than half of respondents approved of a universal stipend of something between the poverty level and the median income, and another 9% approved of a universal stipend of something less than the poverty level.
One of the most vexing questions for technoprogressives and transhumanists is how to maintain the hard-won gains toward political equality among citizens as we become more diverse in our bodies and abilities. Francis Fukuyama pointed to the challenge in Our Posthuman Future, and Nicholas Agar addressed the issue in Humanity’s End. Technoprogressives believe that an expanded transhuman solidarity is possible if enhancement is made widely and equitably available, and if we we fight for a society committed to the rights of all persons. But it won’t be easy. In this story David Brin reflects on political and even theological challenges of the advent of a society with radical enhancement.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Joel Rudinow who teaches Philosophy and Humanities at Santa Rosa Junior College. He is also author of Invitation to Critical Thinking. The topic of the interview is about the Posthuman mind and how critical thinking applies to such a concept. We discuss important issues from whether or not the Posthuman will be friendly to the evolution of critical thinking.
Although I have used a version of utilitarianism to argue for both transhumanism and social democracy, and for the technoprogressive hybrid of the two, research in hedonic psychology and emerging neurotechnologies make utilitarianism an unattractive moral logic. Instead, I now argue that a version of Sen and Nussbaum’s capabilities approach better supports the technoprogressive endeavor. The capabilities approach argues for both social and technological enablement of human abilities. When the capabilities approach is combined with the idea that virtues are social capabilities, one conclusion is that “moral enhancement,” the use of neurotechnologies to enhance moral sentiment, cognition and behavior, is a social obligation. A schema of virtues to be enhanced, and relevant therapeutic morally enhancing neurochemicals, are discussed.
Global fertility is declining so fast that, at current linear trends, global population would stabilize in this century at 9 or 10 billion. Progress in agriculture, energy and manufacturing technologies will hopefully make it possible to support these numbers in an increasingly ecologically sustainable way. But accelerating progress in the treatment of disease and slowing of aging will also be pressing down mortality rates, keeping unsustainable population growth a threat. Some have suggested that draconian controls on fertility would be an acceptable trade-off for the benefits of longer lives. This short story by Daniel Hero suggests another possible adaptation to the longevity-population dilemma. - J.
The combination of longer lives, lower fertility, relatively low economic mobility, and high correlation between economic and political power, has left the United States in the novel situation of being (at least partially) a sort of partially gerontocratic democracy in which the 1940’s and 1950’s excert a degree of political influence over 2012 which the 1910’s and 1920’s did not have over the 1980’s.
Last month we asked “Is it ethical for an advanced military to use drones or robots to attack enemy soldiers?” A third of you want military drones and robots banned, and a quarter believed they were unproblematic. But the center of opinion was that they should be under human control or used by both sides.
I first encountered the meticulous, gorgeous nanotechnology and molecular computer art of Murray Robertson in 2009, while perusing jpegs at the Foresight Institute’s online Nanomedicine Gallery. My favorite image was vibrant and visionary; it depicted a glorious techno-future where minuscule robots navigate our bloodstreams, to silently combat viruses, toxins, free radicals, fungi and other malevolencies.
Robots with even limited sensitivity to ethical considerations and the ability to factor those considerations into their choices and actions will open up new markets. However, if robots fail to adequately accommodate human laws and values in their behaviour, there will be demands for regulations that limit their use. Over the next twenty years, advances in robotics will converge with neurotechnologies and other emerging technologies. We will be confronted with not just monitoring and managing individual technologies that are each developing rapidly, but also with the cultural transformations arising from the convergence of many technologies. Technological development can overheat or may even stagnate. The central role for ethics, law, and public policy in the development of robots and neurotechnologies will be in modulating their rate of development and deployment. Compromising safety, appropriate use, and responsibility is a ready formulation for inviting crises in which technology is complicit.
Despite its many failures, “austerity economics” keeps remaking—and unmaking—the global economy. The only disagreement at this weekend’s Republican debate was over which candidate would push austerity more aggressively. And austerity dominated the political agenda last year—“Deficit Commission,” anyone?—until Occupy came along.
Are we hurting our noggins? Internationally, are there social customs, diseases, pollutants, school policies, parental choices, drugs, diets and philosophies that cause, or are correlated with, decreased intelligence? Here are fourscore-and-a-trio of the mind-mangling menaces. A preponderance of the fearsome factors have undergone scientific scrutiny, with statistics filed in the massive archives of pubmed.gov.
The name of the deceased was “Austerity Economics,” and it was first glimpsed in a 1921 paper by conservative economist Frank Wright. Austerity died of natural causes brought on by prolonged exposure to reality. But in the nation’s capital, dead things still rule the night.
Eggs were first. Millions of years before mammals, eggs existed, their hard shells protecting the incubating embryo inside. Egg Mom wanders mobile, light in her anatomy—unlike her mammalian sister that waddles around, heavily crippled with the burden of her womb. Eggs were an evolutionary smart idea.
Both Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Nobel prize winning Keynsian economist Paul Krugman have a trait in common. They grew up fervent science fiction fans, especially transfixed by the future-historical speculations of Isaac Asimov. Gingrich wrote about this influence that helped to shape his life.
We have become so dependent on the concept of ‘human rights’ that we have become morally lazy. I propose that we need to start thinking more in terms of ‘human responsibility’.
Fire all the janitors and make poor kids clean their schools? Zap Korea with an airborne superlaser that’s never worked during testing? Ignore global warming and plan to re-engineer the entire planet with untested technology instead?
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