[MD] Transhumanism

[Krimel]

Hi all,
It has been and extra-ordinarily interesting past few days and I lost track
of whatever was going on here. I think I was last supposed to referee
something for Bo but this was way more interesting and Bo is kind of endless
loop anyway so whatever it was will no doubt come back around soon enough.

For the past month I have been living in Boston changing diapers and
watching videos. On Hulu, BTW, for our resident TV luddite. The ending of
Glee rocked. I mean sure Sue Lester won but she hasn't shown that much
humanity since she let the kid with Downs Syndrome join the Cheerios. And
OMG the Lost ending will have graduate thesis written about it. Abrams is a
genius. Any way Friday I was watching a lecture by Ray Kruzweil from his
2009 Singularity summit. ( http://vimeo.com/7322310 ) My daughter is doing
post-doctorate work in immunology at MIT and was actually attending a
conference on immunology put on by the MIT Cancer Center. 

We got to talking about stuff other than kids when she came home and she
started telling me the most amazing things about 3D printers that can
actually print out DNA sequences. Not the sequences on paper but the actual
molecular structure. Apparently Craig Ventner last month published in
Science that his lab has created the world's first totally engineered
organism. My daughter gets all the gory details but the short version is:
this was a very primitive bacteria build entirely from continuant molecules
and it was able to reproduce. It has been maybe 4 billion years since a
creature on this planet was born without parents. I guess this will add
strength to the intelligent design wackos.

Then she starts telling my about these materials engineers at MIT who are
working with nanotech. These guys have a federal grant to find ways to use
nanotech to cure cancer but she says they are engineering geeks just looking
for a way to fund their research. They can build a nut and bolt about the
size of a protein molecule. They have already built something that can act
like a red blood cell. And they can stencil verses from Genesis on the
surface of it. 

Other folks have found a way to engineer a cell that can respond to light in
such a way that it remembers whether that light was on or off. That is it
can act as a switch. In case you didn't know, all you need to build a
computer is a bunch of little tiny programmable switches. She said this
really would not be practical for computing because a cell couldn't turn on
and off fast enough to keep up with silicon. But still...

Ok, that was pretty jumbled up but you get the idea. Her husband also has a
doctorate in immunology and is currently finishing up med school so I get
confused at dinner time a lot. Like last week she was telling me about an
experiment she is doing that involves attaching little tiny magnets to B
cells in a mouse then running the mouse blood through a magnetic field and
vacuuming up the B cells. That's what she does when she isn't cloning
knock-out mice with a microscope that has joy sticks controlling microscopic
needles. She can suck out the nucleus of a cell and then insert a different
nucleus from a different mouse.

So Friday she tells me there is this conference going on a Harvard that I
might be interested in: http://www.hplussummit.com/. It looked interesting
but at $400 I was like, probably not. But in the fine print I noticed that
it was half off with student ID. I just happen to have a valid student ID so
I figured, "why not." I mean I had just watch Kurzweil's video from 2009 and
here he was right in town the very next day. That may not be a singularity
but it sure was loaded with synchronicity. In case you haven't noticed my
mind was blasted into utter incoherence. After a month of diapers and
rocking the baby to sleep during "House" reruns, now nanotech, engineered
life forms and singularity.

You can see the list of presenters and I missed a couple of the early
morning ones but zowie. This was like a TED conference at a discount. I
think TED costs $4K so this was a bargain and some of the folks at it have
presented at TED. The H+ folks are already looking forward to a post human
future. The talks ranged from the weird: two guys looking at how you can
have your brain soaked in plastic and persevered so it can get a jump start
in the future. Like Cryogenics only cheaper and more durable. Another guy
looks forward to the time when technology will end all suffering. Even your
pet cat will eat invitro cloned muscle tissue instead of mice and you will
eat it instead of cows, pigs or other critters. 

Another dude talked about the metaphysical reasons that you will not be able
to upload your consciousness into a computer. I found this depressing but
think I know how to get around the problem. Several computer geeks were
talking about how to create what they call AGI or Artificial General
Intelligence. Despite what you may have heard from dmb narrow AI is already
passé. There are a couple of different approaches being taken in AGI but
they would ultimately lead to an AI capable of passing the Turing test. 

Steven Wolfram was there talking about his approach to creating computer
algorhythms by setting up programs that compute in all possible computing
space then he just looks at the results until he finds something
interesting. He developed a cryptographic system for generating random
numbers. He has a program on his web site that does this with music and you
can compose randomly esthetic ringtone for your phone. He was fascinating
but talked over my head a bit. I recorded it and will have to get back to
you on it.

One guy that talked about AGI both as applied to virtual avatars and robots
was Ben Goetzel. He sent an emissary to the MoQ a couple of years ago. But
the emissary got run off by the AWGI luddites as I recall. 

I woman from one version of the University of California designed a $12
million three story metal sphere. She is an artist and works with quantum
physicists and neurobiologists to project into this huge dome, visual and
sound representations of multi-dimensional spaces, like  the neuron odf the
brain and the spin of particles in hydrogen atoms.

The cherry on the cake was, of course, Kurzweil. He has been mentioned here
a few times but it seems anything that actually might actually matter gets
ignored here. His main idea is that technology progresses at a geometric
rate. Everyone should have heard of Moore's law where the number of
transistors you can jam into an integrated circuit doubles every two years.
Kurzweil says this happens in lots of other areas as well. Examples include
the resolution of fMRI scans, the size of materials we can work with,
internet bandwidth, computer users, computer hosts, interesting changes in
life forms over the past 4 billion years, cost to sequence genomes. His real
point is that medical and computer technology are converging. He claims that
by 2030 sunlight will provide all of the power we need for the planet. By
2039 a computer will pass the Turning test and sometime before the end of
the century we will conquer death.

Most of the speakers at the H+ were definitely on board with this. Sometime
last week I was trying to explain to John how the MoQ actually could matter
and be applied. It could fit into to all of this stuff to but not while
carrying to AWGI brick around its neck. For instance I was talking to one of
the AGI programmers about his notion of hierarchy. The term hierarchy
usually applies to the establishment of artificial levels. I asked him if he
thought of hierarchies as fixed rather mechanical building block structure
or as fractal dynamic systems like trees or lightening bolts. He seemed
puzzled and talked about network hierarchies and top down versus bottom up
exchanges of info. But it seem to me he was talking about artificially
conceived discrete levels without seeing that where you choose to draw the
line between the levels is an arbitrary decision to make a continuous
process discrete.

OK that's all. I know this was totally incoherent. I really only wrote this
so I could kind of sketch out an overview of all of this weirdness for later
review. And my only point for the MoQ is: for Christ sake we are arguing
about bullshit that has not amounted to diddly squat for 2500 years. In the
mean time the world is transforming itself into something astounding.
Butterfly stem cells my ass. The MoQ if it is relevant at all ought to have
something to say or some way to deal with cyborgs and chimera, nanotech and
3D printing. In case you missed the point a 3D printer is like the
replicators on Star Trek. The world is becoming science fiction and we still
don't know what the intellectual level is. You can call me a gearhead,
motorhead, geeky nerd all you want but this stuff matters. 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. 
You can understand it or be baffled by it.
It's going to happen for you or it's going to happen to you! 

Krimel