[MD] Transhumanism

[Platt Holden]

Krimel, All,

Sounds to me like a bunch of science types looking for government handouts.
Where are the seminars about the morality of these supposed
"transformations?"
The relevance of the MOQ is clear. Science has a defect. "The defect is
 that
subject-object science has no provision for morals." (Lila, 22)

Platt

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 10:39 PM, Krimel <Krimel at krimel.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>