Category Archives: Transhumanist

For years Ive been firmly in the camp of those who argue that to the degree technology distracts us from being present to those we are with, its a bad thing.

I disagree, however, that the inevitable result of technology is social disconnection or that its bad for conversation.

When social critics drag out the image of a couple ignoring each other while tapping on their smartphones in a restaurant, they are whacking a straw man. This typically illustrates the speakers discomfort with technologys evolving role in our lives and unduly romanticizes what conversation was like before smartphones.

I encountered this trope most recently during a homily at a Sunday Mass. The deacon, a kind, wise fellow, was speaking on community as an aspect of love, as illustrated by the community of the Trinity. He pointed out our modern world was in danger of losing that essential community for which weve been designed. One of the culprits? Smartphones in restaurants.

You walk into a restaurant, he said sadly, and half the people arent talking anymore, just looking down at their smartphones.

Two questions occurred to me. One, is it true? Two, to the degree that it is, is it bad?

Before addressing these questions, I will point out I am not arguing for a culture of distraction. I keep most notifications shut off on my smartphone and clear most of my home screen so Im not tempted into 20 minutes of Facebook browsing when all I wanted to do was check the weather. This comes per the recommendation of Tristan Harris and his Time Well Spent initiative. Harriss group argues that app makers, who are currently using behavioral science and big data to make our tech more addictive, have a moral obligation to stop making Cookie Jam. (Okay, they dont single out Cookie Jam, but seriously, stop sending me invites. Im not going to play.) They dont argue against technology itself, only that it should serve us, not the other way around. Watch the video, its brilliant.

If were out to dinner together, Ill silence my ringer and keep my phone in my pocket. Ill look at you most of the time. That brings us back to the two questions.

Have you ever walked into a restaurant and seen half its diners looking at their phones? I never have. Not even close. A good number of people on phones? Sure. And for fogies like us who remember the days before smartphones, does it seem like a disproportionate number? Sure. But half is an overstatement, exaggeration for effect, or misperception.

If I acknowledge its rude to check my email, text messages or voicemail when Ive made a commitment of time and attention to my dining companion, what possible excuse could I have for suggesting people ought to feel comfortable taking their smartphones out at dinner?

Your smartphone is not just a messaging device. Its a part of your intellect, your memory, your augmented consciousness. This device, with its incredible processing power, memory, connectivity and even artificial intelligence, represents a step toward a transhumanist future. Transhumanism is a movement that believes technology will enhance human intellect and physiology, and strives to push that enhancement in beneficial directions.

This is already happening. Consider chess. You know who can beat a human in chess? A computer. You know who can beat a computer in chess? A human teamed with a computer. This hybrid player concept, known as a centaur, is an example of augmented human intellect. It also probably represents the future of work for most of us and certainly our children. Ignore at your peril.

Back to dinner. Youre telling me about the amazing trip you just went on. You take out your phone to show me pictures you took of the Painted Desert. Are either one of us distracted? On the contrary. Youve just opened a window into your mind and memory, and brought me closer to the experience youre trying to share than you likely could have otherwise.

But, grouses the curmudgeon, in our day we talked, used our words to describe these things. We didnt have to rely on pictures.

Which is BS and you know it. How many of you old-timers were forced, for the price of dinner at a friends home, to sit through 4,000 grainy vacation slides? If your host could have lugged the projector to the restaurant, he would have.

Speaking of words, lets say Im trying to recall for you a beautiful poem I read earlier in the week, or an erudite passage from an op-ed column. If used in a deliberate way, this massive, near-infinite library at our fingertips is not a distraction. Its a miracle.

Technology, used deliberately, clearly enhances human exchanges rather than diminishing them. Why then are we so concerned about each others tech habits at meals, on subway trains, in parks and airports?

We are misremembering the world before smartphones as one massive, sparkling community conversation. We forget the couple at the restaurant grimly poking at their soup, going the whole meal hardly saying a thing. We forget parents at breakfast tables tucked away behind morning newspapers while the kids read the backs of cereal boxes. People on subways and airplanes absorbed in novels, praying the person next to them wouldnt turn out to be a talker.

One of the things that makes living in communities as dense as ours tolerable is our remarkable ability to ignore each other when appropriate and engage when appropriate. The smartphone enhances both of those skills.

Finally, back to the homily, the Trinity, the ultimate conversation.

I recall once, traveling alone on a hot day in Paris, waiting in line to get into Notre Dame Cathedral. My spirit soared, lifted into the great vaults and arches, drawn heavenward, craving conversation with the eternal, the creator.

I sat down before the great altar and felt moved to pray an old prayer, the Rosary. This is typically prayed with a string of beads. Not having one in my pocket, I took out my smartphone, launched my Laudate app, opened the interactive Rosary and commenced to conversing with the Almighty. And regardless of what some of my fellow pilgrims may have thought seeing me bent over my smartphone, it was an excellent conversation.

(Ernesto Burden is the vice president of digital for Newspapers of New England, the Monitors parent company. He lives in Manchester.)

Link:
My Turn: The smartphone as a social tool - Concord Monitor

Zoltan Istvan is a futurist, transhumanist, author of The Transhumanist Wager, and a Libertarian candidate for California Governor.

The constant onslaught of new technology is making our lives more public and trackable than ever, which understandably scares a lot of people. Part of the dilemma is how we interpret the right to privacy using centuries-old ideals handed down to us by our forbearers. I think the 21st century idea of privacylike so many other taken-for-granted conceptsmay need a revamp.

When James Madison wrote the Fourth Amendmentwhich helped legally establish US privacy ideals and protection from unreasonable search and seizurehe surely wasn't imagining Elon Musk's neural lace, artificial intelligence, the internet, or virtual reality. Madison wanted to make sure government couldn't antagonize its citizens and overstep its governmental authority, as monarchies and the Church had done for centuries in Europe.

For many decades, the Fourth Amendment has mostly done its job. But privacy concerns in the 21st century go way beyond search and seizure issues: Giant private companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook are changing our sense of privacy in ways the government never could. And many of us have plans to continue to use more new tech; one day, many of us will use neural prosthetics and brain implants. These brain-to-machine interfaces will likely eventually lead to the hive mind, where everyone can know each other's precise whereabouts and thoughts at all times, because we will all be connected to each other through the cloud. Privacy, broadly thought of as essential to a democratic society, might disappear.

The key is to make sure government is engulfed by ubiquitous transparency too.

"While privacy has long been considered a fundamental right, it has never been an inherent right," Jeremy Rifkin, an American economic and social theorist, wrote in The Zero Marginal Cost Society. "Indeed, for all of human history, until the modern era, life was lived more or less publicly, as befits most species on Earth."

The question of whether privacy needs to change is really a question of functionality. Is privacy actually useful for individuals or for society? Does having privacy make humanity better off? Does privacy raise the standard of living for the average person?

In some ways, these questions are futile. Technological innovation is already calling the shots, and considering the sheer amount of new tech being bought and used, most people seem content with the more public, transparent world it's ushering in. Hundreds of millions of people willingly use devices and tech that can monitor them, including personal home assistants, credit cards, smartphones, and even pacemakers (in Ohio, a suspect's own pacemaker data will be used in the trial against him.) Additionally, cameras in cities are ubiquitous; tens of thousands of fixed cameras are recording every second of the day, making a walk outside one's own home a trackable affair. Even my new car knows where I'm at and calls me on the car intercom if it feels it's been hit or something suspicious is happening.

Because of all this, in the not so distant futureperhaps as little as 15 yearsI imagine a society where everybody can see generally where anyone else is at any moment. Many companies already have some of this ability through the tech we own, but it's not in the public's hands yet to control.

Massive openness must become a two-way street.

For many, this constant state of being monitored is concerning. But consider that much of our technology can also look right back into the government's world with our own spying devices and software. It turns out Big Brother isn't so big if you're able to track his every move.

The key with such a reality is to make sure government is engulfed by ubiquitous transparency too. Why shouldn't our government officials be required to be totally visible to us all, since they've chosen public careers? Why shouldn't we always know what a police officer is saying or doing, or be able to see not only when our elected Senator meets with lobbyists, but what they say to them?

For better or worse, we can already see the beginnings of an era of in which nothing is private: WikiLeaks has its own transparency problems and has a scattershot record of releasing documents that appear to be politically motivated, but nonetheless has exposed countless political emails, military wires, and intel documents that otherwise would have remained private or classified forever. There is an ongoing battle about whether police body camera footage should be public record. Politicians and police are being videotaped by civilians with cell phones, drones, and planes.

But it's not just government that's a worry. It's also important that people can track companies, like Google, Apple, and Facebook that create much of the software that tracks individuals and the public. This is easier said than done, but a vibrant start-up culture and open-source technology is the antidote. There will always be people and hackers that insist on tracking the trackers, and they will also lead the entrepreneurial crusade to keep big business in check with new ways of monitoring their behavior. There are people hacking and cracking big tech's products to see what their capabilities are and to uncover surreptitious surveillance and security vulnerabilities. This spirit must extend to monitoring all of big tech's activities. Massive openness must become a two-way street.

And I'm hopeful it will, if disappearing privacy trends continue their trajectory, and if technology continues to connect us omnipresently (remember the hive mind?). We will eventually come to a moment in which all communications and movements are public by default.

Instead of putting people in jail, we can track them with drones until their sentence is up

In such a world, everyone will be forced to be more honest, especially Washington. No more backdoor special interest groups feeding money to our lawmakers for favors. And there would be fewer incidents like Governor Chris Christie believing he can shut down public beaches and then use them himself without anyone finding out. The recent viral phototaken by a plane overheadof him bathing on a beach he personally closed is a strong example of why a non-private society has merit.

If no one can hide, then no one can do anything wrong without someone else knowing. That may allow a better, more efficient society with more liberties than the protection privacy accomplishes.

This type of future, whether through cameras, cell phone tracking, drones, implants, and a myriad of other tech could literally shape up America, quickly stopping much crime. Prisons would eventually likely mostly empty, and dangerous neighborhoods would clean upinstead of putting people in jail, we can track them with drones until their sentence is up. Our internet of things devices will call the cops when domestic violence disputes arrive (it was widely reportedbut not confirmedthat a smarthome device called the police when a man was allegedly brandishing a gun and beating his girlfriend. Such cases will eventually become commonplace.)

A society lacking privacy would have plenty of liberty-creating phenomena too, likely ushering in an era similar to the 60s where experimental drugs, sex, and artistic creation thrived. Openness, like the vast internet itself, is a facilitator of freedom and personal liberties. A less private society means a more liberal one where unorthodox individuals and visionariesall who can no longer be pushed behind closed doorswill be accepted for who or what they are.

Like the Heisenberg principle, observation, changes reality. So does a lack of walls between you and others. A radical future like this would bring an era of freedom and responsibility back to humanity and the individual. We are approaching an era where the benefits of a society that is far more open and less private will lead to a safer, diverse, more empathetic world. We should be cautious, but not afraid.

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See the article here:
Liberty Might Be Better Served by Doing Away with Privacy - Motherboard

In Radicals for Utopia, published last month, journalist Jamie Bartlett profiles Zoltan Istvan, who ran for president under the Transhumanist Party's banner in 2016. Along with several other journalists, Bartlett traveled across the southwest on Istvan's "immortality bus" (a rickety camper shaped like a coffin-slash-log cabin), and watched Istvan preach the gospel of transhumanism to fellow futurists and skeptics alike.

"Transhumanist science is undeniably exciting and fast-moving," Bartlett writes of watching Istvan tell a half-empty auditorium in Las Vegas that humanity will conquer death within 15 to 25 years. "But the science is not almost there."

He knocks Istvan for "flit[ting] with misleading ease between science and fiction, taking any promising piece of research as proof of victory." In another scene, Bartlett channels the frustration of other futurists who have tired of the transhumanism project altogether. "Transhumanists have been promising us jetpacks and immortality," one biohacker tells Bartlett. "We're sick of [their] bullshit promises." Later, we learn that Istvan is not particularly liked by even other transhumanists, that he is terrible at leading a political party, and that the chief goal of his campaign was to get people to pay attention to him. In other words, that he is like every other person who has ever run for president.

After painting Istvan as bumbling (when the immortality bus breaks down) and unscientific (when he expresses enthusiasm for cryogenics), Bartlett describes him as something like a villain.

"Transhumanism feels like the perfect religion for a modern, selfish age; an extension of society's obsession with individualism, perfection and youth," he writes. He accuses Istvan of "ignor[ing] current problems and overlook[ing] the negative consequences of rapidly advancing technology." It's an odd claim considering Istvan's presidential platform called for "the complete dismantlement and abolition of all nuclear weapons everywhere, as rapidly as possible." Nuclear weapons were once a rapidly advancing technology, they are currently a problem, and Istvan seems to be quite concerned about their negative consequences.

It's an even odder claim considering that the people who are dedicating themselves to the problems du jour don't seem capable of actually fixing any of them. Last I checked, the Israelis and Palestinians are still at it. Al Qaeda, too. The world is less poor than it once was, but there are still three-quarters of a billion people living in extreme poverty. In the U.S., black lives still matter less than blue and white ones. Is this really transhumanism's fault? What would Bartlett have Istvan do? Go back in time and donate the money he spent on the Immortality Bus to Hillary Clinton?

Bartlett then tells us that many other technologists and intellectuals are opposed to the world Istvan hopes one day to live (forever) in. Elon Musk "declared AI to be comparable to summoning the Devil," he writes. "Stephen Hawking said 'the development of artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.'" Francis Fukuyama "called transhumanism 'the world's most dangerous idea.'" Artificial intelligence seems to worry Barlett more than Istvan's other enthusiasms. He notes that self-driving cars will likely displace human truckers and that drones will displace human warehouse workers. Apparently, no one wants to live in a world where poor little boys and girls can't realize their dreams of living out of a long-haul cab and inhaling particulates in storage facilities.

All things considered, Bartlett's treatment of Istvan the candidate is fair. Anyone who desires the powers of the presidency deserves, at the very least, to have his or her vision for the job harshly interrogated. And many aspects of Istvan's vision are pie in the sky. But the techno fear-mongering throughout the rest of the chapter feels off. Everyone can't be expected to worry about everything, and there are plenty of people in Silicon Valley worried about the ramifications of automation and sentient machines. There's Musk, and also Y Combinator, which is running a basic income experiment right now in anticipation of a world with fewer menial jobs for humans. (Bartlett also notes that AI may displace doctors and lawyers, but he reduces it to an employment problem without acknowledging that it might also mean fewer misdiagnoses and overall better care.)

Nobody in Silicon Valley, or outside it, knows which line of inquiry will prove fruitful, or when. Ascribing carelessness, or malice, to the people pursuing those experiments is a disservice to the spirit of inquiry itself. As Scott Alexander noted in May, many of these folks are working on some rather amazing, life-affirming, world-improving applications. Regardless, it is farcical to lay blame for the bad (or the good) at the feet of transhumanists, who are mostly fanboys of the next big thing, not the people making it. And it is particularly disappointing to see someone bash these people for imagining how they might enjoy a future none of us can stop.

See original here:
There's No Harm in Fantasizing About a Better Future - Reason (blog)

This genius Bizarro! comic by Dan Piraro is from a few years back.

More about Walt Disney's mythical cryonic suspension at Snopes.

When youre proud to admit you did it.

The fine young men of MegaIceTV made a live action re-enactment of the entire Pizza Delivery episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. What a fantastic way to spend a Saturday afternoon! The original is below. Dont miss their other bad/good videos either! (via r/DeepIntoYou)

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See the rest here:
Very funny transhumanist Disney comic - Boing Boing

If youre imagining a Terminator-style machine sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, think again. The president would more likely be a computer in a closet somewhere, chugging away at solving our countrys toughest problems. Unlike a human, a robot could take into account vast amounts of data about the possible outcomes of a particular policy. It could foresee pitfalls that would escape a human mind and weigh the options more reliably than any person couldwithout individual impulses or biases coming into play. We could wind up with an executive branch that works harder, is more efficient and responds better to our needs than any weve ever seen.

Theres not yet a well-defined or cohesive group pushing for a robot in the Oval Officejust a ragtag bunch of experts and theorists who think that futuristic technology will make for better leadership, and ultimately a better country. Mark Waser, for instance, a longtime artificial intelligence researcher who works for a think tank called the Digital Wisdom Institute, says that once we fix some key kinks in artificial intelligence, robots will make much better decisions than humans can. Natasha Vita-More, chairwoman of Humanity+, a nonprofit that advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities, expects well have a posthuman president somedaya leader who does not have a human body but exists in some other way, such as a human mind uploaded to a computer. Zoltan Istvan, who made a quixotic bid for the presidency last year as a transhumanist, with a platform based on a quest for human immortality, is another proponent of the robot presidencyand he really thinks it will happen.

Read more:
Could a robot be president? - Hot Air

Robotophile and transhumanist Ana Matronic took to the Inspirefest stage predicting a future where gender doesnt matter when were all cyborgs.

If you couldnt tell, the name Ana Matronic is a sure sign that someone has not just an interest in robots, but an outright fascination and love for them.

That was made clear on stage at Inspirefest 2017 when the Scissor Sisters singer, DJ and author took us back through her life from an obsession with the cult 70s TV show The Bionic Woman and writing her first self-published zine about robots, to dressing as a robot at a burlesque show in San Francisco.

However, the real focus of her talk was the fascinating philosophical questions posed to us in a present and future where the line between human and robot is becoming increasingly blurred.

And if so, what role does gender play if any when our brains are in robots or uploaded to the cloud?

During those days of creating her fanzine in college for The Bionic Woman, played by Jaime Sommers, Matronic went as far as to create her own robot-infused religion, called Bionic Love, based on the philosophies of Joseph Campbell and with Sommers as its muse and messiah.

My religion playfully painted the caring and compassionate Ms Sommers as the union of opposing forces of science and nature, she said. Shes the embodiment of the future and herald of the coming technological age and a reminder to never lose your humanity in the face of it.

It was the work of academic and writer Donna Haraway, however, that roused Matronics real interest in the topic of cyborgs and where the concept fits in with human constructs.

What triggered Matronics many philosophical questions was Haraways surprising revelation that, for her, we dont have to wait to be a cyborg in the future, as we already are cyborgs.

She wrote [a book] confirming my deification of The Bionic Woman and transformed my love of robots into something more, Matronic said.

According to Haraways argument, a cyborg doesnt have to be a half-human, half-machine entity with bionic limbs, but anyone who has had science alter their body in some capacity, such as getting a vaccination.

Quoting Haraway: In the tradition of Western science and politics, the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The cyborg manifesto is an argument for the pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and the responsibility for their construction and a world without gender and world without end.

It was in reading this that Matronics discovery and interest in the topic of transhumanism began.

An example of transhumanism would be the uploading of a persons consciousness online so that they can continue on, something that is already underway with early brain emulation software.

Unlike things like time travel and inter-dimensional travel, Matronic said, robots are here and theyre real not just as physical robots, but artificial intelligence as well.

Robots confuse the boundaries between life and death, human and machine, male and female, master and servant, thinking and feeling, ability and disability, creation and destruction, she said.

I take pleasure in the confusion of these boundaries and, as an artist, I have a unique platform to share and study these stories; and, as a transhumanist, I take responsibility of this examination and the construction of new boundaries.

So what are these boundaries being broken down and built again in a cyborg future?

For people like Martine Rothblatt working on brain emulation software and as a transgender person robots and robot bodies offer a way to detach ourselves the limitations of anatomy. Or, more simply, personhood is about equity, not equipment.

We have an opportunity in this moment to be prepared for the arrival of mechanical and digital people and I believe it is our responsibility to be prepared, Matronic said.

When robots do occupy space in our society. When robot rights and robo-sexuality is not just spoken about in an episode of Futurama.But when its actually here, humans will be forced to look around and ask how well we have done for the rights of our fellow humans.

She continued: If you dont do that before the robo-demonstrations, we are going to have problems and not just with the robots.

In a sense, Matronic argued, the rise of robots offers humans the chance to reboot our operating system in every sense.

It certainly seems as if we are moving into a brave new world.

More:
Ana Matronic: 'Robots confuse the boundaries between life and death' - Siliconrepublic.com

What's Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog?

There are so many different anime to experience, and the works have so many different styles and permutations that it helps to have some additional information and cultural context in order to determine whether or not you want to spend your precious time with a unknown title. Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog is here to help you make informed decisions. Life is brief. Art is long.

What's Garakowa -Restore the World-?

Garakowa -Restore the World- is a 2016 theatrical anime science fiction film with direction by Masashi Ishihama and animation by A-1 Pictures. The film is known in Japan as Glass no Hana to Kowasu Sekai, which is also translated as Vitreous Flower & Destroy the World. Crunchyroll describes the film as follows:

A space inhabited by multiple worlds, countless timelines and a diversity of people, where Dual and Dorothy battle the enemy viruses encroaching on the world. A world infected by a virus must be deleted. This is Dual and Dorothys responsibility and job. One day, Dual and Dorothy discover a new virus attacking a girl. They save the girl and quietly wait for her to awaken. Who is she? Where did she come from? Where will she go? The girl finally awakens. She calls herself Remo and has only one thing to say: I have to return to the flower garden

One detail that this description doesn't entirely convey is that all of the main characters in Garakowa aren't human beings, but rather they are sapient computer programs. Dual and Dorothy are anti-virus software installed in a massive database known as the Box of Wisdom, while Remo's function and purpose are unknown.

Beautiful Backgrounds.

Garakowa is a visually beautiful film with high production values, and much effort is poured into creating the film's environments. The entirety of Garakowa -Restore the World- takes place in virtual spaces, such as in the various layers of the Box of Wisdom or in the programs stored within the database that reproduce different periods in human history.

The film has spectacular background artwork, and it also uses multi-planar camerawork (where the backgrounds move independent of the foreground objects) to convey the impression of an artificial, otherworldly digital space. Director of photography Kenji Takahashi also deploys unconventional camera angles to reinforce a sense of unreality.

Transhumanist Themes.

Garakowa is essentially a transhumanist film. It deals with the idea of a digital Singularity, a computer program in which the entirety of human experience can be reproduced so faithfully that the people inside it are unaware that they are merely lines of code. As part of their core programming, Dual and Dorothy purge virus-infected programs, effectively deleting entire realities and obliterating the inhabitants within.

Hard Solipsism, Soft Hearts.

As the story develops, Dual, Dorothy, and Remo journey through programs recreating various places, cultures, and time periods in search of Remo's ultimate purpose. Along the way Garakowa tackles some heavy philosophical concepts, such as the problem of hard solipsism (How can I know that anything I experience is real?), which is aggravated by the in-universe idea that entire realities can be created ex nihilo in a matter of processor cycles.

In the process, the three programs begin to demonstrate human emotions, to question their core programming, and to wonder about the world outside of the Box of Wisdom.Garakowa's ultimate message is both humanistic and life-affirming, but the film's dramatic sensibilities make the journey toward those goals an emotional one.

Multiple Realities, Multiple Worlds.

Crunchyroll currently streams Garakowa -Restore the World- in 207 territories worldwide. The film is available in the original Japanese with subtitles in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, and Italian. There is also a Japanese Bluray with English subtitles released by Pony Canyon, which is available as an import through RightStuf.

A visually rich and intellectually challenging film, Garakowa -Restore the World- should appeal to science fiction fans that enjoy stories where the philosophical underpinnings are just as important as the action sequences. The film clocks in at a brisk 67 minutes, but if you want more Garakowa, Crunchyroll also streams the director's introduction and the Q & A session that accompanied the film's original theatrical release.

Is there a series in Crunchyroll's catalog that you think needs some more love and attention? Please send in your suggestions via e-mail to[emailprotected]or post a Tweet to@gooberzilla. Your pick could inspire the next installment of Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog!

Paul Chapman is the host ofThe Greatest Movie EVER! Podcastand GME! Anime Fun Time.

Follow this link:
Computers Trascend Humanity in "Garakowa -Restore the World-" - Crunchyroll News

With yesterdays futuristic technologies increasingly becoming todays product announcements, the progress of science seems unstoppable. Mark OConnells excellent new book To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death follows the authors interactions and interviews with self-professed transhumanists.

This eclectic collection of scientists, tech giants, journalists, and enthusiasts are prophets of a coming post-human species that embraces technology as the means to transcend present biological and psychological limitations. The book itself is masterfully and humorously written, and gives the reader a thorough introduction to the ideas and people behind the transhumanist movement.

The book serves a more important purpose than simply describing transhumanism, however: OConnells interactions with transhumanists show that modern man is not prepared to argue against transhumanism. He must either accept it or find a theological alternative.

It seems that, sociologically speaking, transhumanism springs from the same part of man that desires to create religion. Man fears death, so must overcome it in some way. From this fear, the social scientists tell us, man creates fantasies about deities and paradises, resurrection and glorification. In its own way, transhumanism becomes religious insofar as it represents another in a long line of sets of belief adopted by man in hopes of overcoming his mortality. This time, man seeks help not from mystical transcendent beings but from his own will, instantiated in technology.

Some religious sects like Mormonism have made a place for transhumanist ideas, but transhumanists like Max More have made clear that traditional Christian doctrine and transhumanism are largely incompatible, given the difficulty of reconciling both sets of claims. However, on at least one point, the transhumanist and the Christian agree: death is an enemy to be conquered. The Christian New Testament claims the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Transhumanists concur, and propose that if death can be conquered through technology, death should be conquered through technology.

I am not a scientist. I lack the knowledge to tell scientists who advocate transhumanist ideas that they are wrong about what technology can accomplish. When non-experts like myself grapple with the transhumanist ideas, we traffic in intuitions and philosophies about consciousness, personality, death, and what it means to be human, rather than in scientific arguments.

This is true of OConnell as well. In his research, OConnell encounters scientists who tell him that living to extreme ages will be possible soon, within his and his childs lifetime. Some subjects interviewed even theorize that eventually we could theoretically upload consciousness and become more machine than man. OConnell clearly sees the progression from the thought of men like Thomas Hobbes to the ideas of transhumanism. Hobbes saw man as fundamentally an organic machine, so there seems to be no reason that machine could not be upgraded.

Despite hearing the arguments and understanding their source, OConnell refuses to accept transhumanism. This is not because he thinks transhumanist ideals are unachievable, but because he cannot stomach the idea of living forever, or being himself in any other physical form. He ultimately objects not to the practicality of the transhumanist project but to the propriety of it.

OConnells resistance to transhumanism culminates in a fascinating exchange in the book where OConnell is forced to defend death and mortality as preferable to eternal life and vitality. He mounts standard arguments: Lifes brevity is what gives it value. Impending death makes our continued existence meaningful in some way. Also, life sucks; why extend it?

OConnells transhumanist companions deftly deflect his objections. There [is] no beauty in finitude, they say. They argue that OConnells qualms come from an essential human need to grapple with death and somehow justify it as good so we can avoid constant dread and despair. And, OConnell admits, the transhumanists are right. There is something palpably absurd about defending death as some sort of human good.

Despite conceding the point, OConnell concludes the book by restating his rejection of transhumanism, and the reader is left wondering why. If the transhumanists are correct in theorizing that our continued acceptance of death is just an evolutionary symptom of a disease that can and will be cured, what possible reason could we have to deny the inevitable?

In a poignant scene in the book, OConnells child begins to wrestle with mortality following the death of his grandmother. The boy is comforted when he learns that his father is writing a book on people who are trying to create a world in which people no longer have to die. What comfort is there to offer if we are to reject both religion and transhumanism? What compelling reason do we have to embrace despair when technology offers hope?

Simply put, defending death is a lost cause. Even if, as OConnell theorizes, the idea of meaning [is] itself an illusion, a necessary human fiction, man has continued maintaining that illusion for millennia and seems to persist in preferring life to death. Unless OConnell and others like him are prepared and able to convince the bulk of humanity that death is a happy end to be embraced, not fought against, it seems a choice has presented itself. This choice is between different religions that offer escape from death. Transhumanism offers the materialist a religion through which to conquer death; other religions offer the same to those who have faith in gods other than technology.

Will OConnell and others who reject both transhumanism and other religions refuse anti-aging treatments if they become available? Will they abstain from extending their lives, if given the choice? Only time, the one thing transhumanism cannot hope to overcome, will tell.

Philip is a senior political philosophy student at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, VA, and will begin graduate study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall

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The Only Way To Stop The Machines From Taking Over Is Getting ... - The Federalist

With yesterdays futuristic technologies increasingly becoming todays product announcements, the progress of science seems unstoppable. Mark OConnells excellent new book To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death follows the authors interactions and interviews with self-professed transhumanists.

This eclectic collection of scientists, tech giants, journalists, and enthusiasts are prophets of a coming post-human species that embraces technology as the means to transcend present biological and psychological limitations. The book itself is masterfully and humorously written, and gives the reader a thorough introduction to the ideas and people behind the transhumanist movement.

The book serves a more important purpose than simply describing transhumanism, however: OConnells interactions with transhumanists show that modern man is not prepared to argue against transhumanism. He must either accept it or find a theological alternative.

It seems that, sociologically speaking, transhumanism springs from the same part of man that desires to create religion. Man fears death, so must overcome it in some way. From this fear, the social scientists tell us, man creates fantasies about deities and paradises, resurrection and glorification. In its own way, transhumanism becomes religious insofar as it represents another in a long line of sets of belief adopted by man in hopes of overcoming his mortality. This time, man seeks help not from mystical transcendent beings but from his own will, instantiated in technology.

Some religious sects like Mormonism have made a place for transhumanist ideas, but transhumanists like Max More have made clear that traditional Christian doctrine and transhumanism are largely incompatible, given the difficulty of reconciling both sets of claims. However, on at least one point, the transhumanist and the Christian agree: death is an enemy to be conquered. The Christian New Testament claims the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Transhumanists concur, and propose that if death can be conquered through technology, death should be conquered through technology.

I am not a scientist. I lack the knowledge to tell scientists who advocate transhumanist ideas that they are wrong about what technology can accomplish. When non-experts like myself grapple with the transhumanist ideas, we traffic in intuitions and philosophies about consciousness, personality, death, and what it means to be human, rather than in scientific arguments.

This is true of OConnell as well. In his research, OConnell encounters scientists who tell him that living to extreme ages will be possible soon, within his and his childs lifetime. Some subjects interviewed even theorize that eventually we could theoretically upload consciousness and become more machine than man. OConnell clearly sees the progression from the thought of men like Thomas Hobbes to the ideas of transhumanism. Hobbes saw man as fundamentally an organic machine, so there seems to be no reason that machine could not be upgraded.

Despite hearing the arguments and understanding their source, OConnell refuses to accept transhumanism. This is not because he thinks transhumanist ideals are unachievable, but because he cannot stomach the idea of living forever, or being himself in any other physical form. He ultimately objects not to the practicality of the transhumanist project but to the propriety of it.

OConnells resistance to transhumanism culminates in a fascinating exchange in the book where OConnell is forced to defend death and mortality as preferable to eternal life and vitality. He mounts standard arguments: Lifes brevity is what gives it value. Impending death makes our continued existence meaningful in some way. Also, life sucks; why extend it?

OConnells transhumanist companions deftly deflect his objections. There [is] no beauty in finitude, they say. They argue that OConnells qualms come from an essential human need to grapple with death and somehow justify it as good so we can avoid constant dread and despair. And, OConnell admits, the transhumanists are right. There is something palpably absurd about defending death as some sort of human good.

Despite conceding the point, OConnell concludes the book by restating his rejection of transhumanism, and the reader is left wondering why. If the transhumanists are correct in theorizing that our continued acceptance of death is just an evolutionary symptom of a disease that can and will be cured, what possible reason could we have to deny the inevitable?

In a poignant scene in the book, OConnells child begins to wrestle with mortality following the death of his grandmother. The boy is comforted when he learns that his father is writing a book on people who are trying to create a world in which people no longer have to die. What comfort is there to offer if we are to reject both religion and transhumanism? What compelling reason do we have to embrace despair when technology offers hope?

Simply put, defending death is a lost cause. Even if, as OConnell theorizes, the idea of meaning [is] itself an illusion, a necessary human fiction, man has continued maintaining that illusion for millennia and seems to persist in preferring life to death. Unless OConnell and others like him are prepared and able to convince the bulk of humanity that death is a happy end to be embraced, not fought against, it seems a choice has presented itself. This choice is between different religions that offer escape from death. Transhumanism offers the materialist a religion through which to conquer death; other religions offer the same to those who have faith in gods other than technology.

Will OConnell and others who reject both transhumanism and other religions refuse anti-aging treatments if they become available? Will they abstain from extending their lives, if given the choice? Only time, the one thing transhumanism cannot hope to overcome, will tell.

Philip is a senior political philosophy student at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, VA, and will begin graduate study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the fall

See original here:
The Only Way Humankind Stops The Machines From Taking Over Is Getting Religion - The Federalist

Artificial intelligence. Androids. Transhumanism. Once just fodder for pulp science fiction, technological advances over the past 30 years have brought these subjects to the forefront of any discussion about the future.

Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Vaticans Council for Culture, has been trying to make sure the Church is part of that discussion.

Technology runs and proposes new things at a speed that theology and other paths of human knowledge fail to follow, Ravasi told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Sunday.

Ravasi runs the Courtyard of the Gentiles, an initiative first proposed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 to dialogue with non-believers. The name comes from the space set aside at Herods Temple that was accessible to non-Jews who wanted to speak to rabbis and other Jewish authorities about God and religion.

The Courtyard is currently hosting a series of meetings on future technology, and what effect it could have on what it means to be human.

Right now, major corporations such as IBM, Apple, and Facebook are pouring money into developing Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although the idea of a conscious computer system still exists only in the realm of science fiction, one of the major tasks people want AI for is to create bots for customer service, which should respond to people in such a way that they cant tell they arent talking to a person.

In other words, a computer which isnt conscious, but no one can really tell.

Meanwhile, transhumanism is the idea of transforming the human body through technological progress.

Some of this is already happening, and can be a good thing: Pacemakers, high-tech artificial limbs, and other new medical devices have improved the lives of millions. In a very real way, cyborgs have lived among us for years.

Other examples of a transhumanist future can be seen with Google Glass, the headset which could record what you were seeing, as well as overlay information into your field of view; and the idea of permanent implants to replace credit cards (and possibly many of the functions of your smartphone), which is already being tested in some countries.

These technologies are not inherently wrong, yet may soon present serious ethical dilemmas.

If an artificial limb becomes better than the original, is it okay for a person to upgrade?

If you can record everything you see, should you? Is it any different than an enhanced memory? And who should have access to the images?

But before you can even discuss the implications of the latest technology, yet another gadget hits the market raising new questions.

Ravasi expressed concern over the overproduction of technological gadgets, and complained of an era of bulimia in the means, and atrophy in the ends.

The cardinal said one problem is schools and universities do not cover enough general anthropology, and humanity finds itself flattened in the onslaught of technological change.

If I learn to create robots with a high level of human attributes, if I develop an artificial intelligence, if I intervene in a substantial way with the nervous system: Im not only making a big technological advance, in many cases very valuable for therapeutic medical purposes, Ravasi said. Im also making a real anthropological leap, touching on issues such as freedom, responsibility, guilt, conscience and if we want the soul.

The cardinal said the digital natives who have grown up in this new era are functionally different from older people, often overlapping the relationship between real and virtual, and the traditional way of considering what is true and false. It is as if they were in a video game.

(Ravasis concern is more prescient than even he might know: Many of the technological advances, especially in the field of virtual reality, are being made in the game industry, where the ethical questions about the technological advances are often overshadowed by the cool factor.)

Ravasi also expressed concern about how biotechnology is changing the role of humanity from being a guardian of nature into being a kind of creator.

Synthetic biology, the creation of viruses and bacteria that do not exist in nature, is an expression of this tendency, he said. All these operations have ethical and cultural implications that need to be considered.

Ravasi is not the first Vatican official to speak on these themes.

In 2004, the International Theological Commission issued a document on Human Persons created in the Image of God.

The document affirms that bodiliness is essential to personal identity, and calls for people to exercise a responsible stewardship over the biological integrity of human beings created in the image of God.

The document reads:

Because the body, as an intrinsic part of the human person, is good in itself, fundamental human faculties can only be sacrificed to preserve life. After all, life is a fundamental good that involves the whole of the human person. Without the fundamental good of life, the values like freedom that are in themselves higher than life itself also expire. Given that man was also created in Gods image in his bodiliness, he has no right of full disposal of his own biological nature. God himself and the being created in his image cannot be the object of arbitrary human action.

It goes on to list conditions for any bodily intervention:

For the application of the principle of totality and integrity, the following conditions must be met: (1) there must be a question of an intervention in the part of the body that is either affected or is the direct cause of the life-threatening situation; (2) there can be no other alternatives for preserving life; (3) there is a proportionate chance of success in comparison with drawbacks; and (4) the patient must give assent to the intervention. The unintended drawbacks and side-effects of the intervention can be justified on the basis of the principle of double effect.

Yet in many ways, the document talks past the conversation now happening, especially since those having the conversation are often working out very specific problems how to fix this medical disorder, how to create a better customer interface, how to create a more realistic game and are not considering the larger picture they may be helping to create.

Ravasi is hoping the new dialogue will help everyone stand back and see that picture, and seriously consider the implications of what they are doing.

It is essential for believers and nonbelievers to re-propose the great cultural, spiritual, and ethical values like a positive shock against superficiality, the cardinal said now that we are living through an anthropological and cultural change which is complex and problematic, but is certainly also exciting.

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Vatican cardinal on a quest for the soul inside the machine - Crux: Covering all things Catholic