48 replies to this topic

[ocsrazor]

Hi Gang,

I just caught this one page spread in the April Wired. On one level, I thought it was hilarious, I was rolling on the floor when I first saw it. I hope it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

On another level though, I was thinking that this is how we are being stereotyped by the by one of the most cutting edge magazines in popular press (OK, I know that is not saying much, but its the best we've got) Its time we start telling the world what we really stand for before these stereotypes become ingrained.

Enjoy - text is here and a scan of the original page is in the next post.

Know Your Transhumanists
"If the future can't be now, it should be as soon as possible." That's the creed of transhumanists, a growing geek subculture that can hardly wait for the first major academic confab about its beliefs to unfold at Stanford later this year. Also anticipated: Ray Kurzweil's next book, The Singularity Is Near. But not all transhumanists think alike. Here's a field guide to the two major types. - Andrew Zolli

The Extropian (Transhumanus aeternis)
Wants to live forever in a free-market, libertarian paradise, his psyche augmented by the best technology and drugs.

Currently reading
BioMEMS: Fundamentals of Implant Microfabrication

Most recent meal
Day 9 of calorie-restricted diet: 20 grams of protein, 1 gram of carbohydrates, 600 ml of water.

Last sexual encounter
On DMA at the Extro-5 conference.

Favorite tattoo
SPINAL IMPLANT GOES HERE

Saved on his iPod
Local copy of his own genetic code.

Stored in his basement
Complete set of magazine and M 2000 back issues.

Biggest fears
Death, taxes.

The Singularitarian
(Transhumanus transcendens)
Believes people will soon merge with computers and become an immortal new life-form - a "singular" event in human history.

Currently reading
Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge and The Cyborg Handbook

Most recent meal
Whatever is in the lab vending machine.

Last sexual encounter
In a Doom mod in 1996.

Favorite tattoo
EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND (KURZWEIL)

Saved on his iPod
Algorithms - lots of algorithms.

Stored in his basement
Self-evolving Al network running on 42 linked PCs.

Biggest fears
Direct sunlight, women.

[ocsrazor]

Original Page
(Yikes.. I've somehow managed to delete the original image from the wired article..sorry ocs.. was trying to make the image smaller.. here's the article from Wired's internet page::bjklein)

http://www.wired.com...tart.html?pg=12

The Extropian (Transhumanis aeternis)



The Singularitarian (Transhumanis transcendens)

[advancedatheist]

What about the Social-Democratic Transhumanists?

[Elohim]

That's hilarious. I love a good farse. lol

[Cyto]

*cough*

[advancedatheist]

I think this classification reflects a generational divide to some extent. I get the impression that the Singularitarians (a word I'm credited with coining) were born after around 1975, while the Extropians were born before that.

This means that the Singularitarians' view of the future has been strongly shaped by their experiences with personal computers, while the Extropians' view was shaped more by the early space program. Singularitarians relate better to fictional characters having subjective adventures in cyberspace, as in The Matrix, while Extropians relate better to characters having adventures in the "real" world, whatever that means, especially regarding space exploration.

I was born in 1959. While I no longer consider myself an Extropian, I do find that I better understand shows like Star Trek and Stargate: SG-1 than The Matrix, the appeal of which I don't fully appreciate because I didn't grow up playing computer games, I suppose.

Edited by advancedatheist, 12 March 2003 - 06:25 AM.

[ocsrazor]

Hi Gang,

DH - ROTFL!

Isn't that the height of irony Raëlian?

AA - I think this is a false separation, alot of transhumanists I know have a variety of the traits in the two caricatures. Where you fall in the specturum is a matter of which technology you are betting on to get there first, how soon you think it will come, and the level of your "humanity" you are comfortable altering.

Both portrayals are of an overly simplistic mindset, which I hope doesn't represent the majority of transhumanists.

Best,
Ocsrazor

[advancedatheist]

AA - I think this is a false separation, alot of transhumanists I know have a variety of the traits in the two caricatures. Where you fall in the specturum is a matter of which technology you are betting on to get there first, how soon you think it will come, and the level of your "humanity" you are comfortable altering.

Both portrayals are of an overly simplistic mindset, which I hope doesn't represent the majority of transhumanists.

Most enthusiasts for mind uploading I know of are 15-20 years younger than me. I find it amusing that they also tend to argue that we could "already" be living in a simulation, which kind of makes uploading pointless.

It's also unknown whether the brain works in a way that would make uploading into a computer possible, whereas you can make a much more plausible case for extending life in biological substrates. I think we'll get more of a payoff by working with strategies that build on what we already know, instead of speculating about doing something to a brain that might be a fancy way of committing suicide. Uploading sounds suspiciously dualistic in any event.

[ocsrazor]

AA - Agreed that these ideas are somewhat unrealistic, check out my thread on Mind Uploading That phrase is a misnomer, the technology will most likely not be uploading but a slower process of increasing degrees of interfacing over a extended period.

The arguments about simulation go all the way back to Descarte, who with Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am) showed that all can really prove with philosophy alone is that thinking exists. The point for us is that if we are already in a simulation we are not in control of it and are not aware of it. If we build a virtual world we get to define and manipulate the variables that define that world.

We are starting to get a fairly robust picture of how the mind does computation at multiple levels, and because brains are built of atoms and are subject to the rules of physics, I have no doubt that they way in which they process information can be mimicked in other substrates. I'm spend most of my day parsing these questions in a dish of 10,000 neurons growing on a chip.

Somewhat agreed on the dualism (Descarte's failure [wacko] ), biological minds are highly dependent on embodiment, and it is somewhat dubious that a human personality would not go insane from rapid transfer to a radically different set of sensory inputs. I for one believe that if you are going to attempt this, the structure of the computation would have to look as much like the biological structure as is possible (i.e. the strucutre/function/dynamics of an artificial brain/body is going to have to look very much like the real thing in order to model it with a high degree of accuracy and assure the stability of the mind)

As for the generational split, I am 12 years younger than you, and I would agree that more people are becoming comfortable with the idea of being something beyond human and that the mind is the most important thing, but these ideas have existed for a while, so I see it as more of a sliding scale.

On the professional end, the vanguard of neuroengineers is about the same age is you, and their tech developments are just now maturing. I am in the second generation, and the first generation to be specifically trained to produce these technologies.

Best,
Ocsrazor

[Thomas]

I was born in 1959 also. I know, that the Singularity will happen for the bigger part of my life. Only that now, more than a half of waiting period is over.

[B)]

[Lazarus Long]

Damn it John how am I going to top that remarkably erudite example of what I have been trying to prepare for the WTA Conference. "Tranhumanism for the Common Man"?

Well I certainly will be citing the article

Thanks AA.

Of course the entire area of association is because I am trying to match the precision and presentation that John Hughes brings to this with a paper on Human Selection. But how do I avoid the incredible humor of irony and farce when conclusions add issues such as this?

  ·        Support rights for great apes, dolphins and whales

The closest John gets to ironically even once defending an individual's liberty is when he states:

  ·        Protect scientific access to knowledge from overly aggressive intellectual property law

This isn't even a general protection, it is tacitily quiessing to excluding the vast majority of people.

Farce? We are clearly both farcial and partial.

And if we don't see through our own farce then we risk worse.

Transhumanism ultimately is everything about empowerment of individuals world wide and this randian sentiment is about as popular in the circles of real power as the ideas of islam are generally in the west at the moment. We have a lot of work to do.

[Mind]

I got a good chuckle out of the Transhumanist portrayal in Wired...Thanks Ocsrazor.

If most Singularitarians really do have emergent AI programs running in their basement, I would say the singularity is not far off.

[advancedatheist]

If most Singularitarians really do have emergent AI programs running in their basement, I would say the singularity is not far off.

Around three years ago The New York Times ran an article about a meeting of robotics engineers who were generally skeptical of a singularity. One of them joked that if the robots are going to take over, they'd better act quickly because the batteries we give them only last for half an hour or so.

I still don't see how a super-AI, if such a thing is possible, will be able to "take over the world." We do have the ultimate veto power by pulling the plug, or even by using an EMP weapon against it. (BTW, I'm hoping the U.S. military will employ EMP bombs in the coming holy war against Mystery Babylon. That should give the world something new to be frightened of: a weapon that reverts a country's material culture back to the early 19th Century by destroying everything using electricity.)

[advancedatheist]

I was born in 1959 also. I know, that the Singularity will happen for the bigger part of my life. Only that now, more than a half of waiting period is over.

[B)]

I guess you're trying to say that you're getting tired of waiting.

Well, so am I. When you're in your twenties, 20 years seem like a long time. When you're in your forties, 20 years take on a different metric. Apart from the electronics gadgets, in many ways the look-and-feel of daily life in the U.S. hasn't changed that much since the 1970's. The changes between the 1940's to the 1970's were far more profound. We're still locked into a system dependent on massive inputs of fossil fuels, which I think will become our greatest vulnerability in the next few years if world oil production begins to decline.

It's bad enough that progress in a lot of important areas hasn't happened. Now we're also seeing a social & political repudiation of certain kinds of biomedical progress that are feasible in the current context. In the U.S. a powerful religious subculture is behind the relinquishment efforts, despite the simultaneous growth of a Secular Humanist minority that might be more open to these new life-saving technologies.

[Thomas]

Around three years ago The New York Times ran an article .... because the batteries we give them only last for half an hour or so.

Since then, the batteries improved ... [B)]

- Thomas

[ocsrazor]

Hi AA,

If the super AI is smart enough, I don't think we would even be aware it was awake [unsure].

I completely agree we need to push the technology as fast as possible. In addition to the socialogical challenges, from a scientistss point of view the major obstacle to rapid technological advancement is the complexity of the ideas we are now dealing with. In my field in particular, the technology is outpacing our ability to use it. We produce tremendously more data than we can crunch and need better math and software to get a grip on it. I am hoping that synergy between current level AI and the neurosciences will produce a recursive cycle of increasing intelligence, i.e. better pattern recognition AI produces better understanding of neural signaling which produces better models for AI, repeat as necessary. I have seen this too much data effect in a number of fields.

Best,
Ocsrazor

[Mind]

QUOTE  
If most Singularitarians really do have emergent AI programs running in their basement, I would say the singularity is not far off.

I still don't see how a super-AI, if such a thing is possible, will be able to "take over the world." We do have the ultimate veto power by pulling the plug, or even by using an EMP weapon against it.

AA, I am not trying to imply that a super AI will take over the world or anything. I was really trying to say that if it is a true characterization that most Singularitarians have pet AI projects going, then it may be another sign of an approaching singularity (or rapid technology expansion and increasing intelligence). I have read some singularity related essays over the last few years and "AI projects connected across the globe" are one of the supposed signs that we are headed towards a "singularity".

[advancedatheist]

Okay, what does an "iPod" do? And can they be interfaced with PC's, or are they just Apple-compatible?

[Bruce Klein]

http://www.apple.com/ipod/

It's a big MP3 player with contacts and calendar.. not sure exactly but it looks only compatible with apple.

[advancedatheist]

Perhaps a better way to phrase the discussion question would be to ask:

Whose books or ideas shaped your worldview so that you feel comfortable calling yourself a Transhumanist?

My choices reflects my generational background, of course. I'm familiar with the more current literature, like Kurzweil's book, for example. But coming across the more recent books later in my life means that they have less significance. Frankly a lot of the newer Transhumanist literature is just recycling ideas I first encountered over 20 years ago, while the arguments the likes of Leon Kass are making against the desirability of engineered negligible senescence were disposed of by Robert Ettinger & F.M. Esfandiary over 30 years ago.

Speaking of books, here are the ones which influenced me:

(1) Robert Ettinger's Man Into Superman (1972).

(2) F.M. Esfandiary's/FM-2030's Up-Wingers (1973?). Reading this and FM's other nonfiction books and writings these days can be a weird experience, considering that he dated some of his predictions (as in something that will happen by the year 2000, like in Conan O'Brien's skit). A lot of the technological things he foresaw have come true, like the regular use of artificial conception from selected sex cells, telemedicine to monitor people's health and the conjunction of communications technologies around computers and wireless. But other specific technological predictions haven't come true yet, though they are certainly doable.

Even some of his social predictions are plausible. In Optimism One FM predicts that "In the year 2010 privacy will have far less meaning because shame and guilt and pathological fears will have greatly diminished. It will not matter to people if their conversation is overheard, their finances publicly disclosed, or their lovemaking watched." While people are still touchy about their finances, cellphones have made eavesdropping on private conversations practically unavoidable these days, and Webcams have given the prurient access to the bedrooms of strangers. So I would score this a hit, well before 2010.

His other social predictions seem less likely these days because he didn't take into account evolutionary psychology. The "mating mind" still controls how humans use new technologies, usually as surrogates for signaling reproductive fitness. A lot of the behaviors FM considered "primitive" are still very much with us, even in people who otherwise live in ways he considered advanced. For example, many of the engineers in NASA belong to fundamentalist christian churches, like Rusty Yates.

(3) Robert Heinlein's novels. Not any particular one, and I haven't read them all. But I like Heinlein's usually implicit philosophy, though I take what he says with a grain of salt because I know he was making up most of it, not basing it on his own experiences. For example, Heinlein writes repeatedly about the importance of baby-making, but to the best of my knowledge he never had children.

A few years ago Keith Henson stated that if he had gotten Heinlein cryosuspended, over wife Virginia Heinlein's objections, that would have been the most important thing Henson could have accomplished in life. I find that attitude perverse. Heinlein was just a regular guy who was good at writing stories which appealed to post-War adolescent American boys. I don't think his novels are aging all that well, considering that he wrote all of them well before it became apparent that life in the 21st Century will be dominated by computing and biotechnology. I suspect Heinlein's importance in creating Transhumanists will decline in time, as currently working writers are more in tune with the implicit entelechy of foreseeable technologies.

[cessam]

I hope that the singularity will be not far off

[Gewis]

Sorry, I'm lost. Does somebody have a reference as to the origin of this
usage of the word singularity? I'm trying to find analogies to compressions
of matter into infinitely small points, which I suppose would produce an
explosion without the necessary mass to hold it in that place. But how did
it get there in the first place? Am I completely off track in trying to apply
this model to the idea of an intelligence 'singularity,' resulting from AI?

[Mechanus]

Gewis:

This usage of the word "singularity" was first popularized by Vernor Vinge (see http://www-rohan.sds...ngularity.html), though it had been used before.

There's no literal physical singularity involved; the connection is that transhuman intelligence would lead to a situation where our normal ideas no longer apply, as in a black hole. Also, there's the graph-flying-to-infinity aspect of progress in technology and intelligence, though I'd guess most people don't think it will really go to infinity, it will just become incomprehensibly high.

[brokenportal]

Who ever wrote that is brilliant. I mean, they are right arent they?

It is much better to wander through the jungle of life with out your bug spray with the yellow fevers and misc viruses and bugs chasing you down than to do anything about it. Let the science world deal with that pesky deadly bug problem, there are soda machines and things like basketball games to get to. Right everybody? (nothing against basket ball games really but... well, enough said)

[advancedatheist]

I hope that the singularity will be not far off

The Singularity could be in a race with a civilizational collapse & Malthusian "die-off" caused by the depletion of fossil fuels. Already North America is experiencing a serious shortage in natural gas. Even the oil prospects in the Persian Gulf region don't look as promising as they used to; this year Iran has to start importing gasoline.

[randolfe]

The Singularity is utter nonsense. Human intelligence will always be the master of artificial intelligence.

Yes, perhaps artificial intelligence will be better at chess or even physics. However, artifical intelligence will always be the creation of human intelligence and will always be its property and its slave.

Since it is "not human", slavery is acceptable.

[bacopa]

That's a shortsited view randolfe...and you can't fathom the Singularity so why make a statement claiming it to be nonsense?

[MichaelAnissimov]

Wow, why better at chess or physics but not art, music, or moral decision-making? All of the above are simply complicated functions being executed by the neurological machinery of the brain - if we duplicate this machinery in a different substrate, how is it non-human? Does the human brain employ indecipherable magic to make it work? Neurologists and evolutionary psychologists claim that the human brain is simply a slightly upgraded version of a chimp's brain.

Even if AIs never become as interesting as humans, as you suggest, what's to stop them from improving themselves and (either deliberately or accidentally) eliminating humanity? Especially if they are running on accelerated substrates resulting in thinking speeds millions or billions of times the human norm? You said they should be able to do physics; if they can do physics, can't they presumably eventually invent nanotechnology, and perhaps use it to increase their brainpower, eventually consuming the Earth?

I believe that surviving the emergence of AI will require that the first self-improving AI understands morality and values all sentient beings equally. Wouldn't it be a wise idea to think about the possibilities of engineering more or less morally aware AIs, even if it turns out that human-threatening AI is impossible?

Being a member of the species Homo sapiens should not be the sole way to exempt one from slavery. Any being with an independent volition, or the ability to feel pain and humiliation should be exempt from slavery.

[Da55id]

I believe that surviving the emergence of AI will require that the first self-improving AI understands morality and values all sentient beings equally.  Wouldn't it be a wise idea to think about the possibilities of engineering more or less morally aware AIs, even if it turns out that human-threatening AI is impossible?

You are right. What would be vastly better is if HUMANS (not AI, but plain old "I") understood morality and valued all sentient beings equally. I'm continually reminded of the movie "Forbidden Planet" where the uber race of Krell are done in by their uncontrolled passions while dreaming - monsters from the ID. When are we ever going to get around to putting the Sapien in Homo?

[Lazarus Long]

You are right. What would be vastly better is if HUMANS (not AI, but plain old "I") understood morality and valued all sentient beings equally. I'm continually reminded of the movie "Forbidden Planet" where the uber race of Krell are done in by their uncontrolled passions while dreaming - monsters from the ID.

I think this movie deserves not only to be reintroduced to the public and general debate by being dusted off from being just "camp and cultish" but perhaps deserves even a 21st century Hollywood makeover so as to rise from the dead in true B Movie fashion.

Any Hollywood Producer types among our ranks?

Go get em jocko there is money to be made on this one I suspect.