[MD] Transhumanism

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi Mary, two responses to your comments ...

Firstly, Not sure how many of the speakers you actually listened to,
but I think you have to recognize this is a mixed community like any
other, sceptics and enthusiasts, thorough-going SOMists and those more
balanced. And the "excitement" is surely because of the
awesomely-scary slippery-slopes rather than the "mostly harmless"
projects ... there is no-way those are being overlooked in the
excitement, they are the cause of the excitement. (Incidentally, not
sure if the "conference next door" was metaphorical, but hopefully you
noticed that my response to Krim was to point out that H+ / AGI is not
exempt from the social level of "better community" too ... but it is a
young community, so it has time to learn.)

Rather than branding the whole endeavour as "hopeless" SOMism, I
believe it behoves us to point out (and support) the non-SOMist
nuggets in there, in danger of being overrun in the SOMist excitement.
(But that's true of 99% of endeavours in the current SOMist world, not
just this particular H+ / AGI community, which is just a part of this
actual world.)

Secondly, the Bo point. I ask you to ponder this. Yes it would be
wonderful IF the MOQ - or something very like it - had the authority
to stand without competing in SOMist intellectual pattern space - in
theory at least it is above that, a metaphysics. I (and others no
doubt) really do appreciate what Bo wishes for. We surely agree it is
more than "just another" intellectual pattern. What is your strategy
for providing MoQ with that authority, if not to engage in argument
and real-world interaction with existing social and intellectual
patterns ?

Regards
Ian

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Mary <marysonthego at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Krimel & Bo,
>
> Fascinating stuff.  What occurs to me right away is that yes, the MoQ is
> desperately needed to direct all this gee-whiz energy.  Some of those
> projects seemed harmless enough, in the sense that they have value with
> little risk, while others seem to be slippery-slope paths where you'd want
> to be careful what you ask for or you will surely get it.
>
> What I hope is that you just happened to not mention a parallel conference
> going on in the next room where presenters were discussing better systems of
> community.  Ways for people to find dignity and lead meaningful productive
> lives in harmony and sustainability.  I noticed that the problems of focus
> were those of the few at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and not the
> problems of those at the bottom.  That's what I hope, anyway.
>
> As carried to its logical conclusion, what I see is that Bo's arguments ring
> truer and truer.  If you place the MoQ in the mix as just another
> Intellectual pattern, then it has no hope, no authority to guide the
> frenzied SOM activity this conference represented.  It's only if you place
> it above, as a higher moral pattern, that it can do that.
>
>
> Mary
>
>> 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
>>
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