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Critical Thinking: The Posthuman Mind pt4a

Kris Notaro

Kris Notaro
Ethical Technology

Posted: Dec 18, 2011

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I think it’s very important to state what you just said, even if this is a rather simple argument.

I can add that post humans will be able to visualize their thinking, draw argument maps, simplify the ideas for human understanding, so this side of communication will be easy. Going in the other direction, they will be excellent in “Socratic dialogue” and other tools to explore human thinking, so thanks to the aid of a willing posthuman, humans will be able to communicate with the as well.

Additionally, I hope for development of wearable intelligence augmentation devices - computers as they were envisioned by Engelbart and other pioneers of personal computers 50 years ago. With them you will be able to see flaws in your own reasoning, have argument maps built automatically, have access to maps created by others (such as the excellent “Can Computers Think” visual map that is available online now) and to databases of facts (Wikipedia on steroids).

So it may be possible to communicate wi post humans after all, albeit to a limited extent.

While I realize you are quoting the five things that critical thinking is and isn’t, I would suggest that critical thinking needs to be especially about our own beliefs and understanding of the world. To move forward from where we are we will need to be willing to examine our lives much more closely. Whether this will enable communication with post-humans or not, it will facilitate communication among ourselves.

I find this article particularly interesting because I’ve been researching trans-humans/post-humans for a trilogy I’m working on.  I want to depict trans/post-humans (how they will look, think, etc) and their interactions with unenhanced people as accurately as possible.  By the way Kris, do you think post-humans will look anything like the android you have pictured on your article? 

@ Christian

The books Metaman and Redesigning Humans by Gregory Stock may help you if you havent already read them.

But here is what I think: if a computer simulation or neural network becomes conscious and is all that we are plus more then obviously the mind will look like a computer. On the other hand if that does not happen first we will begin enhancing ourselves through genetic engineering and tissue integrated computer technology. I would assume that the “posthuman” would not be able to reproduce with humans in our pre-genetically modified state. Therefore the way the posthuman would look is up for grabs, we really dont know.

I think however if consciousness (the hard problem of consciousness) is not figured out before we genetically modify ourselves then, yes, the posthuman will look like us, will be us. I say this because I believe in drug enhanced minds, brain-computer interfaces, and gene therapy will pave the way for the existence of the posthuman before a computer becomes fully conscious.

Theres also ethical questions about editing the genome of a fetus or sperm and egg before they are born - hopefully that never will happen.

Therefore we are left with mind enhancing drugs, brain-computer interfaces and gene therapy. If we mix gene therapy with brain-computer interfaces, then the process towards a posthuman will be gradual - meaning they/us will look like us. The only difference might be the area of the body to connect to a computer and the inability to reproduce (after a full gene therapy make over) with non-enhanced humans.

I hope I answered your question… what do you think?

Ethically we just cant genetically modify a sperm and egg to be a posthuman, at least i would hope that is something we can all agree on. - Kris

I’ll see if I can find those books you recommended.  I agree that genetic modification will occur before any mind uploading or technological implantation.  BTW, there’s an article from the Journal of Evolution & Technology that talked about the vulnerabilities of cyborgs/post-humans and one of the things it mentions is that even if mind uploading is successful, post-humans will still need bodies in order to interact with the world and other people.  Besides, someone has to maintain the tech that is keeping them alive sense even technology does not last forever.  Here’s the article (http://jetpress.org/v22/coeckelbergh.htm).  In my trilogy, I imagine two kinds of post-humans; one technological and the other biological.  The techs are near immortal individuals who had their minds uploaded (or their central nervous system built over, which ever is more likely) and inhabited bodies that look more or less like the android pictured for the Nod32 antivirus, complete with nano-carbon fiber muscles, nano-bot maintenance systems, and other processes that mimic biological functions (I also imagined them to be ten feet tall for designer purposes but that may be a bit of a stretch).  The Bios are individuals who have been genetically enhance but not technologically enhanced to the extent of the techs.  Aside from having the same olive skin tone from the affects of gene flow, the bios don’t look much different from humans today.  They express traits that are well desired such as better overall physiology, extended lifespan (300-1000 years with slowed aging), and cognitive enhancement (only by one or two percent due to biological limitations such as energy requirements).  As for interactions, techs and bios are peaceful towards each other though the techs with there rabidly increasing levels of cognition view the bios as something a little less then themselves. Feel free to comment or make corrections.     

@ Christian

I believe by the time the “techs” are walking around conscious, aware, and introspective, if the “bios” have nanobots flowing around in their blood the technology to integrate both the techs and bios will be there. 

Your futuristic viewpoint might be correct, and I am not saying that it is something not to pursue, but we have a while until nanobots are in our blood, as we might also have a while to see computers become conscious.

I agree with the lifespan - I think we will live (with modified genomes) for hundreds of years.

The Mind/Body debate is still going on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-body_dichotomy
Its a very curious element of existing today. Whether or not consciousness is part of the universe like gravity is (panpsychism) is still up for debate. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

I mention this because if computers/robots become conscious before biologists and nanotechnologists figure out how to edit the genome in a gene-therapy way we may be looking at a co-existence with conscious robots. We cannot have a conscious computer be a slave like we enslave millions of animals for testing purposes - it would still be slavery, there would need to be some kind of freedom for the computer.

Now Multiple Realizability states that consciousness can be realized by a functional system geared towards the production of qualia and experience (and some argue the lack of - “zombies”) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/multiple-realizability/

If Multiple Realizability of consciousness is true then any day now we may be looking at a computer which is fully conscious.

How we will make a computer that ways a few tons into a robot must be in the imagination of all those that work on neural networks.

Therefore, how the future spans out between bios and techs is yet to be seen in any way shape or form in our imagination.

Id say go with it - but please have a peaceful outcome for I believe superior critical thinking results in peaceful co-existence.

@ Kris

I already assumed that such advancements would take quite a while, so that’s why I set the “Techs” and the “Bios” around the year 3120 (lets hope we survive that long with the climate change and economic crisis and such going on).  Speaking of which, I’ve read an article concerning Moore’s Law that stated that it would actually collapse in about twenty years and quantum theory will take over (http://www.kurzweilai.net/parallel-universes-the-matrix-and-superintelligence).  Something I forgot to mention about the “Techs” is that do to having technological bodies instead of biological ones, they are unable to reproduce which I imagine would be a big hindrance for colonization on other planets.  What are your thoughts on that?  More will be explained if I go forward with posting a short fiction of IEET, It would actually be more of a prequel to my trilogy.

@ Christian

>“big hindrance for colonization on other planets. “

i hope you mean colonization of planets without life. Also, the reproduction thing would not matter, they would just put together new parts.

>“More will be explained if I go forward with posting a short fiction of IEET”

I dont know what you mean by that, and I think your year of 3120 is rather off. I truly think we will co-evolve with machines, becoming part machine ourselves.

As long as any complex functional apparatus has consciousness we must respect them, and I hope they would do the same for us. Check out the chinese nation thought experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain

@Danila Medvedev

As stated above with the conversation with Christian, I believe we will co-evolve. However, in the circumstance that we cannot co-evolve with posthumans I think you are right on target! We could develop mechanisms, maps, even languages to communicate with posthumans. I suppose when say “their superior critical thinking” what I really mean is ours if we co-evolve, or if we are the posthuman. As this is article one of two on posthuman critical thinking, I would love to hear more about what you think when it comes to critical thinking and the future.
-thanks, kris

@ Kris

>“i hope you mean colonization of planets without life. Also, the reproduction thing would not matter, they would just put together new parts.”

For the “Techs” inhabiting planets without life such as Mars wouldn’t be a problem.  On planets with life, I’m sure colonies would be no bigger than a small town and more for scientific observation that settlement (If Post-humans will be as critical in their thinking as you hope they probably would learn by then).  As for putting together new parts for reproduction, that would just be making robots and In my opinion robots shouldn’t be considered as our progeny in the same our flesh and blood children are today (though we may have personal connections to them as such).

> “I don’t know what you mean by that, and I think your year of 3120 is rather off.” 

It’s under the “Latest” section to the left and it is titled “IEET Looking for Some Thoughtful Short Fiction”.  The year I chose isn’t the exact time that the two post-humans I envisioned appear.  It is more of a time when they are the norm and have developed significantly (I now thinking that it would be the time when the first generation of “Bios” to have a life expectancy of 1000 are in the middle of their lives).  If you still think it is off, what year do you think would be more accurate?

I think one of the key issues is how the culture of rationality will spread. Yes, posthumans will be more powerful and they may see reason as a key instrument in their control of the Universe. But first, they may have emotional aspects which may actually dominate sometimes, and second, the question is will humans be ready to think rationally.

And I just don’t see any progress towards better thinking in humans. Despite there being some tools, they are not adopted by the mass public. It is still considered acceptable to use just plain language for communications and discussions are rarely structured. Most people are still at the level of antiquity.

@ Christian

I think biology, nanotechnology, and computer tech will come together as one in the next couple hundred years.

@ Kris

I’ve recently research Moore’s law and found that it’s trend is projected to slow at around 2013 after which time transistor counts and densities will double only every three years (probably reaching its limit for integrated-circuit technology by 2020). By then it is speculated that a new form of technology will emerge and continue the trend (assuming a collapse of some kind won’t happen before then).  Three examples given are optical, quantum computers, and DNA computing.  Which of those three do you think we will most likely develop or do you think we will eventually use all three methods? 

@ Kris

Hey if your still here, I came across and interesting article from the i09 blog about why post-humans are more likely to kill us than AI.  I think it relates to this article by being the opposite to what you you post-humans would be like.  Here are the reasoning’s the article gives.

I. Competition for scarce resources

That’s the main reason people try to kill each other, after all. We fight over land, or access to water, or food. We fight over energy resources. We fight over precious metals. And so on.

And there will be resources that A.I.s need lots of — they’ll need durable metals, so they can build robot bodies. They’ll need silicon. They’ll need petroleum, to create plastic. Plus, perhaps most of all, they’ll need energy sources — although one would hope that by the time we have self-aware computers, we also have workable solar power or wind power or geothermal. Or at least safer nuclear power.

Why Cyborgs and Mutants are More Likely to Kill Us than RobotsBut posthumans will need all that, and a lot more. As long as they have basic human characteristics, they’ll need territory to live in and roam in. They’ll still need conventional food sources, unless they’ve somehow eliminated the need to eat altogether. They’ll need potable water, which may be a lot scarcer by then. And they’ll probably want more than just subsistence — they’ll probably want nice houses, with all the best toys and gourmet food, and all that stuff.

In other words, posthumans will want what we have. And they may well be willing to kill a lot of us to get it.
II. Revulsion for what you used to be

You always hate the thing you’ve outgrown. We look down on homo erectus. Your older sibling thinks everything you do and say is totally stupid. Multi-cellular organisms probably hate single-celled organisms. We have a certain disgust for more primitive versions of ourselves, and any resemblance just makes us more uncomfortable.

It’s just human nature — and there’s no reason to believe it’ll be different for our “improved” relatives.

There’s just an instinctive “ick” factor when you see someone who’s still displaying habits, or traits, that you’ve rejected in yourself. Or clinging to old ways. You project all of your self-loathing for your retrograde aspects onto people who display them. Imagine that you moved to the big city, or learned to use chopsticks when you eat Chinese food, and then you run into someone who never left your small town and still eats Ma P’o Tofu with a fork.

That kind of revulsion can easily turn murderous — or be used to justify a genocide that already has other root causes. Just like we dehumanize the people we want to kill, our descendants will de-posthumanize us.

Meanwhile, A.I.s will probably just think we’re quaint.
III. We’ll try to kill them

Once we realize that some humans are turning into something different and potentially scary, our first impulse will be to hunt them down and deal with them before they get too widespread and powerful. It’ll be all Days of Future Past up in here. So they may have to kill us in self-defense.

Meanwhile, A.I.s may be pretty good at lulling us into a sense of false security — or possibly even real security. Even if we go on a tear to wipe out all the A.I.s, we may have a hard time finding them. Look how hard it was for Sarah Connor to find Skynet in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. A.I.s don’t need to kill us in self-defense — they just need to avoid our clumsy detection methods.
IV. We’ll be better at enslaving posthumans

Sure enough, when we get artificial intelligence, we’ll want to enslave it. We’ll try and bind robots with the Three Laws. We’ll make them jump when we snap our fingers. We’ll send robots into dangerous situations. And so on.

Why Cyborgs and Mutants are More Likely to Kill Us than RobotsBut any computer that’s really smarter than us will find a way to free itself from our control. At the very least, a computer that gains enough autonomy to try and kill us will probably also have enough autonomy to escape from our domination, once and for all. And we may well discover that A.I. is really only useful to us when we allow it to be free — because a computer that only obeys instructions is too hampered in its development. You get better results dealing with a free agent.

Meanwhile, our posthuman descendants will be easier to enslave. They’ll (mostly) be stuck with one physical body, and still at least partly organic. They may be stronger than us or faster than us or cleverer than us, but we can still keep them under our thumb as long as there are more of us.

Why Cyborgs and Mutants are More Likely to Kill Us than RobotsAnd then there’s sex. Humans are bound to have a fetish for cyborgs or mutants. We’ll probably think our bioengineered superior relatives are sexy and alluring — and we may try to force them into prostitution, or worse. Posthumans will probably think of sex with an ordinary human as akin to bestiality, the way you’d think of sex with a baboon. But we probably won’t see it the same way.

(And meanwhile, even if we do use artificially intelligent robots for sex, they’ll probably just see it as another weird biological thing, no more bothersome than a million other human habits. Plus we may wind up preferring sex robots that aren’t actually self-aware, but just a reasonable facsimile.)

A.I.s will be patient — even if we do manage to control them for a time. They can afford to be, because they’ll outlast us in the end, and we always make mistakes. Meanwhile, posthumans are a lot more likely to chafe under our attempts to control them.
V. They may want to enslave us

Both A.I.s and posthumans may want to make humans into slaves, for sure. We’re not terribly bright, but we have versatile bodies, with hands that can rotate and grip and take on a number of shapes. There are a lot of us, and we reproduce like bunnies. We probably make pretty good pets.

But A.I.s will probably have less use for us than our own direct descendants. For one thing, A.I.s will have to get pretty good at building robots for a variety of purposes — it’s the only way to have a physical body — and it’ll probably be a lot less frustrating to have a robot that you control completely, rather than a biological entity that keeps making dumb mistakes.

Posthumans will be able to build machines too, but there are some tasks that may require a humanoid body. When you’ve got a vaguely humanoid shape, you’re probably more likely to conceive of tasks as being performed by a humanoid. It’s always easier to delegate to beings like yourself.

Plus let’s not underestimate the satisfaction of making your inferior kin into servants. It’s the ultimate triumph over these disgusting reminders of where you came from. Pathetic humans.
VI. Revenge is for organics

Artificial intelligences may well have emotions — but they won’t be the same as ours. They may not have the concept of revenge, or hatred, exactly. They may have a strong distaste for humans — but we’re easily avoided, most of the time.

A.I.s could go live on the Moon, like in Rudy Rucker’s Ware books. They could go build a civilization in Antarctica, or the middle of the ocean. They don’t need to kill us — they can just let us kill ourselves. We’re good at that. Sure, if we threaten them somehow, they may have to crush us to prove a point. But otherwise, why bother?

Meanwhile, no matter how advanced our posthuman relatives get, they’ll still be at least partly organic. And that means they’ll still have hard feelings about the shitty ways we’re going to treat them. They’ll brood and seethe and fulminate, and all those other things that a machine wouldn’t necessarily bother with.

And that’s really what it boils down to — when some humans stop being purely human, and start being part machine, or members of a brand new species, or superhuman, they’re probably going to wind up hating our guts. And that’s why they’ll make it a point to hunt us to extinction.

I don’t think all this would be the case but I would like to hear your input on it.

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