It has been demonstrated time after tragic time—in colonial North America, 1940’s Germany, Cambodia, former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Darfur… Large, even mainstream groups of people can be induced to slaughter other groups of people by the millions, just for political or economic convenience.
In the absence of a Creator a number of people have taken to worshipping the next best thing, creation itself. This phenomenon has been exemplified by the rise of Gainism and the Gaianists. Given the poor state of the environment today this sentiment has mutated into the kind of reverential desperatism and misanthropism that is now the all too familiar opium promoted by the deep ecologists. God may be dead, but religious sensibilities that showcase the unworthiness of man have been retained by these radical environmentalists, resulting in a worldview that perpetuates defeatism, shamefulness and self-loathing.
We are approaching a period of perilous geopolitical instability:
when weapons of mass destruction will be more varied, more deadly, more available, cheaper to obtain, and easier to hide;
when the strength (and the ambitions) of regional powers will increase rapidly while the stabilizing might of the U.S. could be in decline;
when new technologies such as genetic engineering, robotics, nanotechnology, and possibly artificial intelligence could enable radical shifts in the balance of power;
and when global climatic conditions —including increased frequency and severity of killer storms, droughts, infrastructure damage, crop failures, and even whole ecosystem collapses—will contribute to growing tensions.
The global situation is becoming a vortex, a maelstrom in which multiple risk factors will swirl and combine to create sudden new crises for which we may not have time to prepare. The act of reaching into the vortex to grab hold of and deal with one problem could send others spinning in new, ever more dangerous directions.
The political terrain of the 20th century was shaped by the economic issues of taxation, labor and social welfare, and the cultural issues of race, nationalism, gender and civil liberties. The political terrain of the 21st century will add a new dimension, technopolitics. At one end of the technopolitical spectrum are the technoconservatives, defending “human dignity” and the environment from technological progress. On the other end of the spectrum are the technoprogressives, holders of the Enlightenment faith that scientific and technological progress is liberating. Some of the key points of conflict in the emerging technopolitical struggle are the bioethical debates over human enhancement technologies. Technoprogressives such as “transhumanists” advocate for the right to use technologies that transcend human limitations, while technoconservatives argue for a strict limit on the non-therapeutic uses of biomedicine. Technopolitics has cut across the existing political lines and created odd coalitions between left-wing and right-wing technoconservatives on one side and technolibertarians and technodemocrats on the other. Future technopolitical debates are suggested that will force further technopolitical polarization.
Thirty years ago, a robotics and AI researcher named James Albus published a book called People’s Capitalism. Most of the book, as the title suggests, is about economic reform. I won’t comment on the economic ideas in the book. But Chapter 5 is very relevant to molecular manufacturing predictions.
Imagine that there are certain natural boundaries to human capacities, beyond which any increase is “enhancement”, rather than “therapy”. Does that mean we have a moral obligation to stay within those boundaries? I don’t see why. Such reasoning seems like a clear case of the fallacy of claiming what “is” also “ought” to be.
For the sake of argument, leave to one side the problem that defining a therapy/enhancement boundary may often be an impractical task, and that it may defy coherent specification in some contexts.
Nato Welch recently called my attention to John Smart’s “Laws on Technology,” over the course of a discussion on the technoliberation discussion list. I thought Smart’s Laws were interesting and useful to a point, but I’ll admit that I found their framing rather disturbing in some ways.
In the May 15 issue of Time Magazine, columnist Joe Klein takes an interesting stance. The article is called A Fair Trade for Lower Gas Prices and his suggestion is simple: raise the gasoline tax to discourage consumption, and then give the money collected back to people:
The following exchange occurs in an interview published today on Salon.com in connection with the appearance of ethicist Peter Singer’s new book (co-written with Jim Mason), The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter:
SALON: [I]f it were possible to genetically engineer a brainless bird, grown strictly for its meat? Do you feel that this would be ethically acceptable?
Singer: It would be an ethical improvement on the present system, because it would eliminate the suffering that these birds are feeling. That’s the huge plus to me.
SALON: What if you could engineer a chicken with no wings, so less space would be required?
Singer: I guess that’s an improvement too, assuming it doesn’t have any residual instincts, like phantom pain. If you could eliminate various other chicken instincts, like its preference for laying eggs in a nest, that would be an improvement too.
If we believe that nanotechnology will eventually amount to a technological revolution, and if we are going to attempt nanoethics, we should consider some of the earlier technological revolutions that humanity has undergone and how our moral principles and technology impact assessment exercises would have fared.
James Lovelock, the environmentalist and deep ecologist who popularized the Gaia Hypothesis, is as infuriating as he is fascinating. I’m still not quite sure what to make of this man, but my gut instinct tells me he’s a bit off his rocker.
Nanoscience is going to impact both commercial and military uses. From a security and defense perspective, the United States prides itself and wants to be ahead of the technology.
Nick Bostrom spoke in a panel on cognitive enhancement at a conference on “Forbidding Science” January 12, 2006 at Arizona State University. Videos and presentations from the conference are up. The panels were on “Forbidding Science,” “Is There a Right to conduct Research?,” “Pathogen Research and Biosafety,” “Nanotechnology,” and “Prospects for Governing Research.” Nick’s panel was:
Panel V: Case Study - Cognitive Enhancement
Moderator: Jason Robert, Asst. Professor, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University Video
Nick Bostrom, Future of Humanity Institute, Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford VideoPresentation
Carl Elliott, Center for Bioethics, University of Montana Video
Adina Roskies, Department of Philosophy, Dartmouth College PresentationVideo
Human population, extreme and widespread poverty, biodiversity, energy and environment, public health, world economies, global priorities—in so many arenas, humanity has reached a crossroads where decisions of monumental consequence will be made, either proactively or by default.
“The mandate we’ve given ourselves is not how do we get to an idealized future,” said Bob Citron, Executive Director of the Foundation, “but rather, what do the best minds of our current generation see as probable pathways for humanity in the long-term future?”
IEET Fellow and CRN Executive Director Mike Treder has been invited to attend and will make a presentation at this workshop.
People who undergo extreme short-term psychological stress often claim that time slowed down for them during the experience. Traumatic events like car accidents or lengthy falls often appear in slow motion to the person experiencing it.
The latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Nanotechnology Perceptions includes eleven essays from members of the CRN Global Task Force, created in 2005 to explore the societal implications of this emerging technology.
A brief summary of the articles, taken from CRN’s press release.
Reacting to the huge risks of MM, some advocate that all research be halted. Our first two essays, “Nanotechnology Dangers and Defenses” by inventor and author Ray Kurzweil and “Molecular Manufacturing: Too Dangerous to Allow?” by Nanomedicine author Robert A. Freitas Jr., explore these issues. They survey the dangers, discuss ways to mitigate them, and analyze the weaknesses of relinquishment.
“Nano-Guns, Nano-Germs, and Nano-Steel,” an essay by Mike Treder, explores the troubling topic of nanotech-enabled warfare. Tom Cowper, an expert in policing and criminology, offers his special perspective in “Molecular Manufacturing and 21st Century Policing.” In “The Need For Limits,” Chris Phoenix explains that we may face unprecedented risks as MM’s revolutionary potential dissolves the barriers that keep us safe.
After Giulio Prisco explores the real-world challenge of “Globalization and Open Source Nano Economy,” Damien Broderick provides a broad historical perspective of the relationship between society and technology in “Cultural Dominants and Differential MNT Uptake.”
Advanced nanotechnology could go well beyond making better consumer goods and better weapons. In ”Nanoethics and Human Enhancement,” professional ethicists Patrick Lin and Fritz Allhoff look into the controversial aspects of using MM to change our bodies and minds. Noted futurist Natasha Vita-More then lays out the problems our grey matter could face in “Strategic Sustainable Brain.”
Computers built by nanofactories may be millions of times more powerful than anything we have today. The potential for creating world-changing artificial intelligence is examined by scientist J. Storrs Hall in “Is AI Near a Takeoff Point?” Finally, if some of our worst scenarios become real, we may face truly existential dilemmas. These are surveyed in depth by best-selling author David Brin in “Singularities and Nightmares: The Range of Our Futures.”
Some of the problems of today’s globalized world could be eliminated or reduced by developing operational worldwide molecular design and manufacturing capabilities. Instead of shipping physical objects, their detailed design specification in a “Molecular Description Language” (MDL) will be transmitted over a global data grid evolved from today’s Internet and then physically “printed” by “nano printers” at remote sites. This would allow communities wishing to remain independent to retain their autonomy.
Conflicts, clashes, battles, and wars: this is the stuff of which history is made. The world as we know it today is largely a product of wars fought and peoples conquered.
We like to look back admiringly on other things our species has produced: great works of art, brilliant inventions, sage philosophers, brave explorers, and selfless peacemakers. But the real star of the human story is war. In fact, very often those things we admire—philosophy, technology, leadership, superb writing and speechmaking—are put to maximum use in the service of war.
The story is not yet over. Within our lifetimes, we are likely to witness battles on a scale never before seen. Powered by molecular manufacturing, an advanced form of nanotechnology, these near-future wars1 may threaten our freedom, our way of life, and even our survival.
If Wired or Technology Review were to do a cover story on “computing in 2020,” you know what you’d get: computer-generated mock-ups of what the laptop/wearable/ambient Computer of Tomorrow will look like, interviews with people working on bleeding-edge technologies, and lots of discussion of how future computers will work. When Nature does a cover story on “computing in 2020,” you get something quite different: only one of the eight feature articles talks about how future computers might operate; the rest look more at the evolution of how we use computers, a much more worldchanging topic.
O futile humans! Why does your folly teach skills innumerable, and search out manifold inventions still? But there is one knowledge you do not gain and have never sought it: to implant a right mind where no wisdom dwells. - Theseus
The “Segundas Jornadas sobre Convergencia Ciencia-Tecnología” took place in the University of Alcalá (near Madrid) from 6 to 10 March 2006. On March 9 there was a panel on “TRANSHUMANISMO: UNA VISIÓN ÉTICA DE LA TECNOLOGÍA PARA LA EXTENSIÓN DE LA VIDA” (Transhumanism: an ethical vision of life extension technology) with speakers that included IEET Executive Director James Hughes, IEET Fellow Mike Treder and IEET Board member Giulio Prisco.
The event was very successful, with more than 500 students who listened to the presentations, and asking many passionate questions about how to ensure the safety and universal availability of emerging technologies in the future. Madrid-based Board member Prisco has been receiving letters from students to thank the lecturers for opening their eyes on the human enhancement worldview. One letter says: “until now I viewed our mortal lives as something with a beginning and an end, and nothing more. But now I believe in Man and in his technology, and this gives me hope”. The students in Spain appeared to accept that human enhancement technologies will be developed and deployed, sooner than most people think, and were willing to consider this as a positive or at least acceptable trend. But they want to hear “the rest of the story”: how to solve other, more urgent problems of our world like war, poverty, hunger, public health etc.
Two philosophies dominate the broad debates about the development of potentially-worldchanging technologies. The Precautionary Principle tells us that we should err on the side of caution when it comes to developments with uncertain or potentially negative repercussions, even when those developments have demonstrable benefits, too. The Proactionary Principle, conversely, tells us that we should err on the side of action in those same circumstances, unless the potential for harm can be clearly demonstrated and is clearly worse than the benefits of the action. In recent months, however, I’ve been thinking about a third approach. Not a middle-of-the-road compromise, but a useful alternative: the Reversibility Principle.
Reviews of
More than Human by Ramez Naam
Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau
Designer Evolution by Simon Young
Rebuilt by Michael Chorost
Fantastic Voyage by Ray Kurweil
The Golden Age trilogy by John C. Wright
Better Humans edited by Paul Miller and James Wilsdon
I’ve begun to notice an ever stronger anti-corporatist slant emerging in the popular public rhetoric of bioconservatives on a number of fronts lately. I believe that this shift registers their dawning realization that arguments relying on fundamentalist conceptions of “nature” are not now prevailing, nor are they likely anytime soon to prevail, in the technoscientific cultures to which they are addressing themselves.
When Cameron Sinclair took the stage to receive his TED Prize last Thursday, he devoted a good portion of his talk to the exploration of his idea for an “open source” form of architecture. Cameron’s emphasis was on the openness of the designs and architectural innovations most useful to builders in the developing world, but the idea of open source architecture has the potential to go even further than that. It dovetails with the slow emergence of open source hardware, pointing us towards a world of individual power over design that has the potential to be extraordinarily worldchanging.
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The Dark Side of Technology
If Wired or Technology Review were to do a cover story on “computing in 2020,” you know what you’d get: computer-generated mock-ups of what the laptop/wearable/ambient Computer of Tomorrow will look like, interviews with people working on bleeding-edge technologies, and lots of discussion of how future computers will work. When Nature does a cover story on “
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