Fundamentally solve the “intelligence problem,” and all other problems become trivial.
The problem is that this problem is a very hard one, and our native wit is unlikely to suffice. Moreover, because problems tend to get harder, not easier, as you advance up the technological ladder (Karlin, 2015), in a “business as usual” scenario with no substantial intelligence augmentation we will effectively only have a 100-200 year “window” to effect this breakthrough before global dysgenic fertility patterns rule it out entirely for a large part of the next millennium.
To avoid a period of prolonged technological and scientific stagnation, with its attendant risks of collapse, our global “hive mind” (or “noosphere”) will at a minimum have to sustain and preferably sustainably augment its own intelligence. The end goal is to create (or become) a machine, or network of machines, that recursively augment their own intelligence – “the last invention that man need ever make” (Good, 1965).
In light of this, there are five main distinct ways in which human (or posthuman) civilization could develop in the next millennium.
(1) Direct Technosingularity
The development of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which should quickly bootstrap itself into a superintelligence – defined by Nick Bostrom as “any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest” (Bostrom, 2014). Especially if this is a “hard” takeoff, the superintelligence will also likely become a singleton, an entity with global hegemony (Bostrom, 2006).
Many experts predict AGI could appear by the middle of the 21st century (Kurzweil, 2005; Müller & Bostrom, 2016). This should quickly auto-translate into a technological singularity, henceforth “technosingularity,” whose utilitarian value for humanity will depend on whether we manage to solve the AI alignment problem (i.e., whether we manage to figure out how to persuade the robots not to kill us all).
The technosingularity will creep up on us, and then radically transform absolutely everything, including the very possibility of any further meaningful prognostication – it will be “a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control” (Vinge, 1993). The “direct technosingularity” scenario is likely if AGI turns out to be relatively easy, as the futurist Ray Kurzweil and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis believe.
(2) The Age of Em
The development of Whole Brain Emulation (WBE) could accelerate the technosingularity, if it is relatively easy and is developed before AGI. As the economist Robin Hanson argues in his book The Age of Em, untold quintillions of emulated human minds, or “ems,” running trillions of times faster than biological wetware, should be able to effect a transition to true superintelligence and the technosingularity within a couple of human years (Hanson, 2016). This assumes that em civilization does not self-destruct, and that AGI does not ultimately prove to be an intractable problem. A simple Monte Carlo simulation by Anders Sandberg hints that WBE might be achieved by the 2060s (Sandberg, 2014).
Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
(3) Biosingularity
We still haven’t come close to exhausting our biological and biomechatronic potential for intelligence augmentation. The level of biological complexity has increased hyperbolically since the appearance of life on Earth (Markov & Korotayev, 2007), so even if both WBE and AGI turn out to be very hard, it might still be perfectly possible for human civilization to continue eking out huge further increases in aggregate cognitive power. Enough, perhaps, to kickstart the technosingularity.
There are many possible paths to a biosingularity.
The simplest one is through demographics: The tried and tested method of population growth (Korotaev & Khaltourina, 2006). As “technocornucopians” like Julian Simon argue, more people equals more potential innovators. However, only a tiny “smart fraction” can meaningfully contribute to technological progress, and global dysgenic fertility patterns imply that its share of the world population is going to go down inexorably now that the FLynn effect of environmental IQ increases is petering out across the world, especially in the high IQ nations responsible for most technological progress in the first place (Dutton, Van Der Linden, & Lynn, 2016). In the longterm “business as usual” scenario, this will result in an Idiocracy incapable of any further technological progress and at permanent risk of a Malthusian population crash should average IQ fall below the level necessary to sustain technological civilization.
As such, dysgenic fertility will have to be countered by eugenic policies or technological interventions. The former are either too mild to make a cardinal difference, or too coercive to seriously advocate. This leaves us with the technological solutions, which in turn largely fall into two bins: Genomics and biomechatronics.
The simplest route, already on the cusp of technological feasibility, is embryo selection for IQ. This could result in gains of one standard deviation per generation, and an eventual increase of as much as 300 IQ points over baseline once all IQ-affecting alleles have been discovered and optimized for (Hsu, 2014; Shulman & Bostrom, 2014). That is perhaps overoptimistic, since it assumes that the effects will remain strictly additive and will not run into diminishing returns.
Even so, a world with a thousand or a million times as many John von Neumanns running about will be more civilized, far richer, and orders of magnitude more technologically dynamic than what we have now (just compare the differences in civility, prosperity, and social cohesion between regions in the same country separated by a mere half of a standard deviation in average IQ, such as Massachussetts and West Virginia). This hyperintelligent civilization’s chances of solving the WBE and/or AGI problem will be correspondingly much higher.
The problem is that getting to the promised land will take about a dozen generations, that is, at least 200-300 years. Do we really want to wait that long? We needn’t. Once technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 maturate, we can drastically accelerate the process and accomplish the same thing through direct gene editing. All this of course assumes that a concert of the world’s most powerful states doesn’t coordinate to vigorously clamp down on the new technologies.
Even so, we would still remain “bounded” by human biology. For instance, womb size and metabolic load are a crimper on brain size, and the specificities of our neural substrate places an ultimate ceiling even on “genetically corrected” human intellectual potential.
There are four potential ways to go beyond biology, presented below from “most realistic” to “most sci-fi”:
Neuropharmocology: Nootropics already exist, but they do not increase IQ by any significant amount and are unlikely to do so in the future (Bostrom, 2014).
Biomechatronics: The development of neural implants to augment human cognition beyond its peak biological potential. The first start-ups, based for now on treatment as opposed to enhancement, are beginning to appear, such as Kernel, where the futurist Randal Koene is the head scientist. This “cyborg” approach promises a more seamless, and likely safer, integration with ems and/or intelligent machines, whensoever they might appear – this is the reason why Elon Musk is a proponent of this approach. However, there’s a good chance that meaningful brain-machine interfaces will be very hard to implement (Bostrom, 2014).
Nanotechnology: Nanobots could potentially optimize neural pathways, or even create their own foglet-based neural nets.
Direct Biosingularity: If WBE and/or superintelligence prove to be very hard or intractable, or come with “minor” issues such as a lack of rigorous solutions to the AI alignment problem or the permanent loss of conscious experience (Johnson, 2016), then we might attempt a direct biosingularity – for instance, Nick Bostrom suggests the development of novel synthetic genes, and even more “exotic possibilities” such as vats full of complexly structured cortical tissue or “uplifted” transgenic animals, especially elephants or whales that can support very large brains (Bostrom, 2014). The terminal result of a true biosingularity could might be some kind of “ecotechnic singleton,” e.g. Stanisław Lem’s Solaris, a planet dominated by a globe-spanning sentient ocean.
Bounded by the speed of neuronal chemical reactions, it is safe to say that the biosingularity will be a much slower affair than The Age of Em or a superintelligence explosion, not to mention the technosingularity that would likely soon follow either of those two events. However, human civilization in this scenario might still eventually achieve the critical mass of cognitive power needed to solve WBE or AGI, thus setting off the chain reaction that leads to the technosingularity.
(4) Eschaton
Nick Bostrom defined existential risk thus: “One where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential.” (Bostrom, 2002)
We can divide existential risks into four main bins: Geoplanetary; Anthropic; Technological; and Philosophical.
In any given decade, a gamma ray burst or even a very big asteroid could snuff us out in our earthly cradle. However, the background risk is both constant and extremely low, so it would be cosmically bad luck for a geoplanetary Götterdämmerung to do us in just as we are about to enter the posthuman era.
There are three big sources of “anthropic” existential risk: Nuclear war, climate change, and the exhaustion of high-EROEI energy sources.
Fears of atomic annihilation are understandable, but even a full-scale thermonuclear exchange between Russia and the US is survivable, and will not result in the collapse of industrial civilization ala A Canticle for Leibowitz or the Fallout video games, let alone human extinction (Kahn, 1960; Kearny, 1979). This was true during the Cold War and it is doubly true today, when nuclear weapons stocks are much lower. To be sure, some modest percentage of the world population will die, and a majority of the capital stock in the warring nations will be destroyed, but as Herman Kahn might have said, this is a tragic but nonetheless distinguishable outcome compared to a true “existential risk.”
Much the same can be said of anthropogenic climate change. While it would probably do more harm than good, at least in the medium-term (Stager, 2011), even the worst outcomes like a clathrate collapse will most likely not translate into James Lovelock’s apocalyptic visions of “breeding pairs” desperately eking out a hardscrabble survival in the Arctic. The only truly terminal outcome would be a runaway greenhouse effect that turns Earth into Venus, but there is simply nowhere near enough carbon on our planetary surface for that to happen.
As regards global energy supplies, while the end of high-density fossil fuels might somewhat reduce living standards relative to what they would have otherwise been, there is no evidence it would cause economic decline, let alone technological regression back to the Olduvai Gorge conditions as some of the most alarmist “doomers” have claimed. We still have a lot of fat to cut! Ultimately, the material culture even of an energy-starved country like Cuba compares very positively to those of 95% of all humans who have ever lived. Besides, there are still centuries’ worth of coal reserves left on the planet, and nuclear and solar power have been exploited to only a small fraction of their potential.
By far the biggest technological risk is malevolent AGI, so much so that entire research outfits such as MIRI have sprung up to work on it. However, it is so tightly coupled to the Technosingularity scenario that I will refrain from further commentary on it here.
This leaves mostly just the “philosophical,” or logically derived, existential risks. For instance, the computer simulation we are in might end (Bostrom, 2003) – perhaps because we are not interesting enough (if we fail to reach technosingularity), or for lack of hardware to simulate an intelligence explosion (if we do). Another disquieting possibility is implied by the foreboding silence all around as – as Enrico Fermi asked, “Where is everyone?” Perhaps we are truly alone. Or perhaps alien post-singularity civilizations stay silent for a good reason.
We began to blithely broadcast our presence to the void more than a century ago, so if there is indeed a “superpredator” civilization keeping watch over the galaxy, ready to swoop down at the first sign of a potential rival (e.g. for the simulation’s limited computing resources), then our doom may have already long been written onto the stars. However, unless they have figured out how to subvert the laws of physics, their response will be bounded by the speed of light. As such, the question of whether it takes us half a century or a millenium to solve the intelligence problem – and by extension, all other problems, including space colonization – assumes the most cardinal importance!
Vladimir Manyukhin, Tower of Sin.
(5) The Age of Malthusian Industrialism (or, “Business as Usual”)
The 21st century turns out to be a disappointment in all respects. We do not merge with the Machine God, nor do we descend back into the Olduvai Gorge by way of the Fury Road. Instead, we get to experience the true torture of seeing the conventional, mainstream forecasts of all the boring, besuited economists, businessmen, and sundry beigeocrats pan out.
Human genetic editing is banned by government edict around the world, to “protect human dignity” in the religious countries and “prevent inequality” in the religiously progressive ones. The 1% predictably flout these regulations at will, improving their progeny while keeping the rest of the human biomass down where they believe it belongs, but the elites do not have the demographic weight to compensate for plummeting average IQs as dysgenics decisively overtakes the FLynn Effect.
We discover that Kurzweil’s cake is a lie. Moore’s Law stalls, and the current buzz over deep learning turns into a permanent AI winter. Robin Hanson dies a disappointed man, though not before cryogenically freezing himself in the hope that he would be revived as an em. But Alcor goes bankrupt in 2145, and when it is discovered that somebody had embezzled the funds set aside for just such a contingency, nobody can be found to pay to keep those weird ice mummies around. They are perfunctorily tossed into a ditch, and whatever vestigial consciousness their frozen husks might have still possessed seeps and dissolves into the dirt along with their thawing lifeblood. A supermall is build on their bones around what is now an extremely crowded location in the Phoenix megapolis.
For the old concerns about graying populations and pensions are now ancient history. Because fertility preferences, like all aspects of personality, are heritable – and thus ultracompetitive in a world where the old Malthusian constraints have been relaxed – the “breeders” have long overtaken the “rearers” as a percentage of the population, and humanity is now in the midst of an epochal baby boom that will last centuries. Just as the human population rose tenfold from 1 billion in 1800 to 10 billion by 2100, so it will rise by yet another order of magnitude in the next two or three centuries. But this demographic expansion is highly dysgenic, so global average IQ falls by a standard deviation and technology stagnates. Sometime towards the middle of the millenium, the population will approach 100 billion souls and will soar past the carrying capacity of the global industrial economy.
Then things will get pretty awful.
But as they say, every problem contains the seed of its own solution. Gnon sets to winnowing the population, culling the sickly, the stupid, and the spendthrift. As the neoreactionary philosopher Nick Land notes, waxing Lovecraftian, “There is no machinery extant, or even rigorously imaginable, that can sustain a single iota of attained value outside the forges of Hell.”
In the harsh new world of Malthusian industrialism, Idiocracy starts giving way to A Farewell to Alms, the eugenic fertility patterns that undergirded IQ gains in Early Modern Britain and paved the way to the industrial revolution. A few more centuries of the most intelligent and hard-working having more surviving grandchildren, and we will be back to where we are now today, capable of having a second stab at solving the intelligence problem but able to draw from a vastly bigger population for the task.
Assuming that a Tyranid hive fleet hadn’t gobbled up Terra in the intervening millennium…
2061.su, Longing for Home
The Forking Paths of the Third Millennium
In response to criticism that he was wasting his time on an unlikely scenario, Robin Hanson pointed out that even if there was just a 1% chance of The Age of Em coming about, studying it was well worth his while considering the sheer amount of future consciences and potential suffering at stake.
Although I can imagine some readers considering some of these scenarios as less likely than others, I think it’s fair to say that all of them are at least minimally plausible, and that most people would also assign a greater than 1% likelihood to a majority of them. As such, they are legitimate objects of serious consideration.
My own probability assessment is as follows:
(1) (a) Direct Technosingularity – 25%, if Kurzweil/MIRI/DeepMind are correct, with a probability peak around 2045, and most likely to be implemented via neural networks (Lin & Tegmark, 2016).
(2) The Age of Em – <1%, since we cannot obtain functional models even of 40 year old microchips from scanning them, to say nothing of biological organisms (Jonas & Kording, 2016)
(3) (a) Biosingularity to Technosingularity – 50%, since the genomics revolution is just getting started and governments are unlikely to either want to, let alone be successful at, rigorously suppressing it. And if AGI is harder than the optimists say, and will take considerably longer than mid-century to develop, then it’s a safe bet that IQ-augmented humans will come to play a critical role in eventually developing it. I would put the probability peak for a technosingularity from a biosingularity at around 2100.
(3) (b) Direct Biosingularity – 5%, if we decide that proceeding with AGI is too risky, or that consciousness both has cardinal inherent value and is only possible with a biological substrate.
(4) Eschaton – 10%, of which: (a) Philosophical existential risks – 5%; (b) Malevolent AGI – 1%; (c) Other existential risks, primarily technological ones: 4%.
(5) The Age of Malthusian Industrialism – 10%, with about even odds on whether we manage to launch the technosingularity the second time round.
There is a huge amount of literature on four of these five scenarios. The most famous book on the technosingularity is Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, though you could make do with Vernor Vinge’s classic article The Coming Technological Singularity. Robin Hanson’s The Age of Em is the book on its subject. Some of the components of a potential biosingularity are already within our technological horizon – Stephen Hsu is worth following on this topic, though as regards biomechatronics, for now it remains more sci-fi than science (obligatory nod to the Deus Ex video game franchise). The popular literature on existential risks of all kinds is vast, with Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence being the definitional work on AGI risks. It is also well worth reading his many articles on philosophical existential risks.
Ironically, by far the biggest lacuna is with regards to the “business as usual” scenario. It’s as if the world’s futurist thinkers have been so consumed with the most exotic and “interesting” scenarios (e.g. superintelligence, ems, socio-economic collapse, etc.) that they have neglected to consider what will happen if we take all the standard economic and demographic projections for this century, apply our understanding of economics, psychometrics, technology, and evolutionary psychology to them, and stretch them out to their logical conclusions.
The resultant Age of Industrial Malthusianism is not only something that’s easier to imagine than many of the other scenarios, and by extension easier for modern people to connect with, but it is also something that is genuinely interesting in its own right. It is also very important to understand well. That is because it is by no means a “good scenario,” even if it is perhaps the most “natural” one, since it will eventually entail unimaginable amounts of suffering for untold billions a few centuries down the line, when the time comes to balance the Malthusian equation. We will also have to spend an extended amount of time under an elevated level of philosophical existential risk. This would be the price we will have to pay for state regulations that block the path to a biosingularity today.
Sources
Bostrom, N. (2002). Existential risks. Journal of Evolution and Technology / WTA, 9(1), 1–31.
Bostrom, N. (2006). What is a Singleton. Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, 5(2), 48–54.
Bostrom, N. (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press.
Hsu, S. D. H. (2014, August 14). On the genetic architecture of intelligence and other quantitative traits. arXiv [q-bio.GN]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.3421
Johnson, M. (2016). Principia Qualia: the executive summary. Open Theory. Retrieved from http://opentheory.net/2016/12/principia-qualia-executive-summary/
Jonas, E., & Kording, K. (2016). Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor? bioRxiv. Retrieved from http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055624.abstract
Kahn, H. (1960). On thermonuclear war (Vol. 141). Cambridge Univ Press.
Karlin, A. (2015). Introduction to Apollo’s Ascent. The Unz Review. Retrieved from http://akarlin.com/intro-apollos-ascent/
Kearny, C. H. (1979). Nuclear war survival skills. NWS Research Bureau.
Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Penguin.
Lin, H. W., & Tegmark, M. (2016, August 29). Why does deep and cheap learning work so well?arXiv [cond-mat.dis-nn]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.08225
Sandberg, A. (2014). Monte Carlo model of brain emulation development. Retrieved from https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/reports/2014-1.pdf
Stager, C. (2011). Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth. Macmillan.
Vinge, V. (1993). The coming technological singularity: How to survive in the post-human era. In Vision 21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace. Retrieved from https://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html
Sounds pretty horrible in any case, I’m glad I won’t be around for most of this.
If dysgenics is real, something the alt-right and fellow travelers consider to be the most fundamental existential threat to humanity’s future, it would make sense that “transhumanist” solutions mentioned in this post would be the appropriate solution. This has been obvious to me since this kind of talk first emerged, and should obvious to anyone with a room temperature and above IQ. Its analogous to how the mass production of the automobile became the appropriate solution to the accumulation of horse-shit in major cities in 1900.
Yes, it continues to stun and amaze me just how much of the alt-right is so hostile to “transhumanist” style solutions such as those mentioned in this post.
concerning current dysgenic trends:
as far as I understand pure Ashkenazim jews are disappearing, since they marry out heavily in the USA and in Israel get overwhelmed by orthodox Jews of various ancestries. So, when Ashkenazim have been the most intelligent sub-group of humans in recent history, and probably of the whole human history, does´t this mean that this results in a huge loss for mankind in terms of extremely high IQ people? Might special kinds of giftedness (like John von Neumann) simply not be born in coming times?
Very thoughtful & reasoned outlook. Broadly speaking I find myself in agreement with most of it. Some things that stood out:
On the other hand, I think it could be possible that there’s low-hanging fruit based on motivation. Elsewhere I’ve noted that:
http://opentheory.net/2015/09/fai_and_valence/
Genetic engineering for IQ banned? – China will do it (is doing it).
Transhumanism. The more I think about it, the more dangerous transhumanism seems if done by civilizations without Moloch firmly under control.
Galactic superpredators: plausible & scary.
Cryopreservation: poor Robin Hanson.
Overall: I think you’ve hit the important scenarios, & I think your probability estimates are reasonable. If I were to add one variable to this mix, it’d be political philosophy: the future will be radically different depending on the outcome of the memetic civil war the West is currently engaged in.
Business-as-usual is dystopic: yes, and I thought your conclusion was especially good:
Next puzzle: if this is a fairly accurate picture of the future, what should people do? What activities & investments are currently overvalued vs undervalued, and so on?
Many of us Neoreactionaries are basically dualists that find meaning in boundaries in life, transhumanism threatens to remove such boundaries and in doing so, simultaneously remove what is left of meaning. There’s a valid reason why transhumanism bothers us – it fundamentally creates individuals who indeed, defined only by their self-described identity.
Yes, I certainly don’t see a “concert” of Great Powers coordinating on a global ban of these techs as realistic either.
Agreement between the West/Bilderbergers and the CCP are the absolute bare minimum for that to happen. But China itself certainly doesn’t look interested, and frankly I doubt there will be substantial restrictions in most Western countries including the US either.
I plan to write another post specifically about the Age of Industrial Malthusianism, though more descriptive than prescriptive.
Your suggestion reminds me of this great article by Ugo Bardi about the collapse of the Roman Empire, which touched on the pointlessness of prescription.
The Emperor Marcus Aurelius calls upon a wise druid to advise him on how to prevent the Roman Empire’s collapse:
So things have a way of working out without our unsolicited input! 😉
On “Malthusian industrialism/business as usual,” I’d say your premises are pretty weak (or at least, some elaboration would be helpful).
Specifically, it’s not clear where the ideas of breeders/rearers and massive population growth come from (actually I noticed Jayman’s influence in the phrasing, which is a warning flag in itself).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
I’m sure you’re familiar with the idea and the data. Basically, almost every country outside Africa is either already at below replacement levels (1-2) or will be there soon (2-3).
Even in Africa, there are already countries at ‘moderate’ levels (e.g. South Africa, which again points to falling fertility in correlation with development). The continent as a whole went from a TFR of approx. 7 between 1950 and 1980 to 4 now and is predicted to be at 2.5 in 2050.
In conclusion, it seems like people who attain some basic standard of living just aren’t particularly interested in having children (Bangladesh is at 2.2 with a GDP PPP p.c. 0f 3.3k USD). Consequently, I don’t understand where the population explosion is supposed to come from.
Having written all that, I just realized what you were saying (really). Selection is currently underway for those with high “fertility preference”, so future people will be very fertile? In my opinion, the hereditary component must be much smaller than the environmental one; for examples see above.
Sure, pointing out the the fact of the demographic transition is a very good argument, and it needs to be addressed.
Before the Malthusian transition, there were huge incentives to have families – more hands for farm work; the high mortality rates for infants and children; also, the banal fact that wearing a condom made out of sheep guts presumably wasn’t very enjoyable.
However, families that had more children than they could could support suffered higher death rates for their lack of discipline. Hence, there was an equilibrium in which committed “breeders” only ever constituted a small share of the population.
When Malthusian constraints fell away at around the time of the industrial revolution, along with the loosening of traditionalist pro-natality mores (have as many children as you can support and no more), the underpinnings of the old equilibrium crumbled away. However, since in most populations breeders are not yet a high percentage of the population – Orthodox Jewry and the Amish might be exceptions, since many of the people less committed to their values (inc. high natality) get “boiled off” with every generation – at first (i.e. the first century or so) this only had very modest effects, because there were very few “breeders” at t=0.
Hence, cultural and social influences played much greater roles in determining fertility in First World nations during the 20th century, and at least in Africa, will probably continue to do so for the next century. In fact, one counterintuitive prediction that I would make is that Africa c.2100 will have lower TFRs than most current First World nations.
Kolk et al., 2014 modeled this:
“Breeders” as a share of the population are barely different three generations in than at the start, but are rising rapidly by the 5th generation, and come to constitute the vast majority of people by the 12th generation.
Incidentally, Germany had its fertility transition 3 generations ago, whereas France had it about 5 generations ago.
And this map is quite famous: http://i36.tinypic.com/1679y7n.png
Hmm…
Of course, Business as Usual will deliver assortative mating so there will be an increase of people at the top end of the distribution. Also, access by the most talented of currently outsider groups to the global culture will introduce biologically different brain/body types with different patterns of perception and creativity. The ancient seperatedness of Australian Aborigines at one end to the novel adaptions of American Indians at the other. High IQ Aborigines are unlikely to see things exactly the same way as a Chinese or a German.
What is meant by dualism?
Do you consider aging to be disease no different than any other disease? Or do you consider aging to be something special, not to be cured?
it fundamentally creates individuals who indeed, defined only by their self-described identity.
I consider myself to be one of these. Why am I a problem for you?
Do you believe that “transhumanists” and neoreactionary types can peacefully coexist in the same society? Or do you believe in the “parting of the ways” between such, with the transhumanists presumably taking up seasteading or similar options?
Thanks for the reply. Obviously I got a bit carried away in my assessment of our relative familiarity with the topic (although I knew you knew about TFR, I guess I just couldn’t imagine the alternative). How solid do you think this theory is? Could you explain why the trends would be dysgenic (IQ is inversely correlated with fertility inside populations)? Plus, the theory is very unkown (not mentioned in the Wikipedia article and I’ve never heard it discussed in HBD/altright circles), but potentially hugely important. Maybe you should write an article about it or I should try pitching it to Sailer.
As for the rest, I think the singularity is quite plausible. Another scenario, at least in the short- and mid-term, is a total transformation of society through automation, robotics and AI eliminating most human jobs. Whether it is closer to a post-scarcity utopia or something else remains to be seen. I think this option (if it’s on the utopian side, of course) might be (for many people, or at least me) preferable to whatever the singularity might mean.
I’m not convinced that dysgenics is a real problem. At the same time, I don’t reject the premise out of hand.
Although I have my doubts about AI and a “singularity”, the bio-engineering route (what you call the bio-singularity) is real as well as the continued automation of manufacturing and other capabilities. This is what we call a mundane singularity. In any case, it is very clear that such pro-technology approaches are the ONLY possible solution to the coming dysgenics problem. The neoreaction approach has zero chance of working at all, because it does nothing about the underlying problem.
It becomes impossible to maintain boundaries if people can simply transform on a fundamental level between sexes, ages and essentially species, for starters. The lack of stability reinforces the atomistic individual and disrupts or destroys any notion of collective order. Neoreaction relies heavily on the notion of some things being eternal, or close to it; it completely eliminates it.
Seasteading is probably the best way, yes. For a variety of reasons, coexistence is difficult even now, since we have a tendency to peer pressure another into the absoluteness of our viewpoints – thus transgender bathroom wars.
This is how we will escape the dysgenic decline problem:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.03238
The key point is the self-replication manufacturing that robotics and additive manufacturing will lead to can be created and sustained by small groups of self-interested individuals (libertarian transhumanist types?). Once we have this capability, certainly by mid century (2050), there will be no stopping us from going out on our own (political autonomy) regardless of what happens to the rest of the world.
Think of it, and radical life extension, as the ultimate form of self-empowerment.
Daniel Cheih, you said these kinds of technology threaten “meaning” for you. I can definitely tell you that self-empowerment is the source and basis of meaning for me.
There’s too much to object to in post and comments for me even to start. So let me just say that the probability of (5) is far over 99%.
I’m a little bit dubious as I work with automation as my day job and while I see progress, I’ve also seen the amount of problems that it keeps cropping up. Quality of service is still low for delivery, and the increasing complexity of the systems lead to surprising amounts of waste; a large amount of human effort is reinvested at the moment to assist the automation to completion when it fails to deliver the correct outputs. There are a huge number of feedback mechanisms in order to prevent errors from accumulating, but each of these feedback mechanisms is also a new layer of complexity.
Nonetheless, perhaps in a few decades, the things will be worked out.
Unfortunately, not everyone is exactly the same, thus accounting for a number of conflicts in the world. Identity and sacralization is the basis of fulfillment for me, and I doubt that can change.
Hah, that’s a great story about Rome.
I agree that some cycles have such inertia that there’s little to be done. “The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.” Still, perhaps EA could benefit from a clear description of the challenges the Age of Industrial Malthusianism might bring.
Do you have a problem with curing aging (e.g. radical life extension)? If so, why? Would you support making it illegal? If so, do you really think such a prohibition could be enforced? We all know that the drug war is a complete failure and a joke. A legal war against life extension would be an even bigger joke. I think you would agree with me that making and trying to enforce silly laws simply promotes disrespect for objective rule of law, something we both agree with.
Also cryonics. I intend to enter cryo-preservation if I don’t “make it” the first time around. Do you have a problem with cryonics?
Seasteading is probably the best way, yes. For a variety of reasons, coexistence is difficult even now, since we have a tendency to peer pressure another into the absoluteness of our viewpoints – thus transgender bathroom wars.
How about where transhumanists and neoreaction types decide to live in separate areas of the same cities. Do you think this would work? Or say in different regions of the country. I think the Western U.S. (both the west coast as well as the sun belt) would be open to transhumanism, as well as say the east coast.
In any case, I think the development of effective anti-aging medicine is as inevitable as the development of electricity, cars, jet airplanes, and laptop computers. I also think crypo-preservation (think of it as medical time travel, an ambulance ride into the future) will also slowly grow in popularity.
Aging and death will be something we will read about on history blogs. Why do you have a problem with this scenario?
BTW, can anyone tell me what “dualism” is?
I see several definitions on the net. So, the concept is not clear to me.
I’m also skeptical of anti-aging coming soon, but I’m not intrinsically opposed to it as I believe it will probably not be enforceable. So as long as there is freedom of association, a lot of things are possible; as noted, the main problem is that freedom of association isn’t a value that is defended much these days.
Right now, though, even if we can regenerate somatic non-neural cells, neurons are pretty limited. There’s neurogenesis but that’s actually pretty limited to a few specific areas so you will still have mental degradation with age. Even if you conquer those issues, cancer cell metastasis risks will increase with age.
I doubt aging is going to be a solved problem anytime soon.
Sorry to double-post. This is what I’m going by.
https://meaningness.com/monism-dualism-recursion
You mean Griftiness.
Is Von Neumann any kin to Alfred E.?
Personally, I think you’re being far optimistic than we have any justification to be, I would have put business at usual at (conservatively) over 50%. Whether development in these areas is rapidly progressing or not doesn’t change the fact our world is governed by hedonists and imbeciles. I don’t see how many of these other scenarios would play out with the African population bomb, rising terrorism and increasing environmental devastation.
Your old writings at Akarlin.com seemed far more in this vein, may I venture that some personal success may have had something to do with your change in outlook?
Serious question. Is there no room for situation 6?
The biosingularity/technosingularity options all prove to be either impossible or are prevented by a determined coalition of governments. However, the same elites that make this decision get a serious drop of race realism: third world aid is quadrupled, but it is all spent on birth control, most of which is not optional. Much of Africa is simple walled off as a giant human zoo in which blacks are allowed to revert back to their pre-colonial forms of civilization, essentially oblivious to the world around them and with only vague mythologized memories of the industrial era. Intermediate civilizations like that of Islam are kept under lock and key by threat of (or actual) nuclear annihilation. The non-assimilable among the NAM minorities in the western world are deported, The west then just kind of keeps on going like now with growth levels of 3% p.a. for a few centuries, but pursuing sensible reactionary policies that maximize human welfare and cultural output. Then we all get eaten by space lizards.
Or are you saying that, since wealthy elites under such a scenario will continue to experiment with AI and gene modification in private, that this will inevitably result in bio/technosingularity anyway, but perhaps a but slower?
Of course not.
Back then I strongly overweighed the impact of energy issues and modestly overweighed the impact of AGW.
I continue to observe, learn, and calibrate.
I think its pretty solid, in that it syncs with common sense, the heritability of personality, and is an extrapolation of observed data (rising intergenerational fertility correlations).
I can also speculate as to why it is not very popular:
(1) Like HBD, it is not very politically correct – as Pinker has long pointed out, society has a strong “blank slate” bias.
(2) Whereas at least some HBD findings are relative to current issues (e.g. IQ/economic development, crime rates, etc) this is only of significant relevance to the far future, i.e. 200 years time.
For understandable reasons people discount the far future.
If Sailer were to blog his thoughts about it that would indeed help bring it into the limelight since his audience is 10x that of mine.
Correct (at least for now): http://www.unz.com/akarlin/nor-breeding-their-best/
This is more speculative, but I suspect the link between higher IQ and lower TFR might be intrinsic to the human condition. I recall reading about a psychological experiment in which more intelligent people (of both sexes) were relatively more amused/entertained by animal pets while duller people were relatively more amused/entertained by human children.
That’s certainly going to happen in the next few decades, but my post was after all about the third millennium. 🙂
Incidentally, Randal Parker has speculated that automation and robots will actually augment, not dampen, fertility rates: http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/009885.html
I think that’s unrealistic. You’d have to shift Western populations like 2 S.D. to the authoritarian right for that to become politically feasible!
I don’t know if 3%/annum growth is sustainable even if average IQ (somehow*) remains constant.
Productivity is largely a function of technology, and technological progress is getting harder, not easier, because the problems we have to solve to keep going forwards are becoming more and more difficult.
https://twitter.com/landryst/status/810130993508216832
The fertility boom should still happen anyway, though if productivity/carrying capacity also grows fast enough like you posit, there’s a good chance the Malthusian adjustment can be avoided.
*After all, even though NRx loves it, even Nick Land admits Singapore is an “IQ shredder.”
I thought that I would be the first to say that! You have been quicker. Anyhow, I concur. Who would like to live in such a world? Why would he? I feel sorry for my children and even more for my grandchildren.
While I certainly don’t share Karlin’s techo-values and find most of his desired outcomes hideous and grotesque, and indeed resting on bizarrely faulty assumptions, still, putting all that aside for a moment I think the most intelligent analysis of the intersection of technology and the future of humanity to be that of John Gray’s – assuming the techno-value people are correct, and we are all flawed products of a senseless evolution, then any future technological scenario will reflect our flawed nature and be just as purposeless and bizarre as human history has been until now as seen from this perspective.
In other words, from within this non-spiritual techno perspective, there is zero chance humanity will be able to “take charge” of its future – rather, technology, as a human creation, will simply reflect the flawed nature of human passions and disorders. There is no way we can “rationally direct” any future technological scenario – it will simply be a reflection of our own disorders and flawed, senseless, and purposeless, human nature (from within that perspective).
I always found techno-optimists and the fantasists of human control to be curiously irrational – the premises of their view of life, that we are machines and products of purposeless evolution, defeat their desired outcomes, which is that creatures such as we are can control our future rather than be controlled by it.
Oh well, dreamers will be dreamers.
Obviously the solution is to legalize polyamory. Not so much to encourage higher-status (and presumably higher IQ) people to reproduce, as to limit the reproduction of the lowest status (and presumably lowest IQ) people. Hypergamy means some people would prefer to stay single than to marry down. High status individuals not concerned about marrying down will acquire more than one contractual life partner, and average IQ should jump.
You seemed to miss the obvious 6th alternative, that human civilization (and humans themselves) could end. This could happen through the well known threats such as nuclear war by state actors, or this could happen because of the lone madman concocting some deadly doomsday in his garage. In the past building a nuclear bomb by yourself was not feasible, however if technological advances move so rapidly then designing your own custom super virus or other WMD by yourself could become possible, if such things become possible then the end is absolutely inevitable, there are sufficient amount of lunatics in the world that would want to do this.
This could also explain the Fermi Paradox (yes I know it is not a real paradox), once the technological progress advances past a certain point the destructive power to destroy everyone by the actions by an individual are reached. That is also why things like Star Trek worlds are just not possible, if you can fly a ship faster than light, then all it would take to destroy earth is to fly a small shuttle right into it,
Of course. I don’t get where Akarlin gets his optimism from, I’m not sure to what extent he’s retracted his earlier opinions, but I can’t think of a single encouraging future trend. Even the ‘good’ scenarios listed are nightmare fuel.
Until the day they ask “Why are we keeping the muggles around, so many of them”?
I do not see this scenario as consistent and credible. Why would the World Controllers ( this is what the uplifted and genetically engineered 1% would be) let the Epsilons and Deltas breed uncontrollably? There is no use of them, everything they can do can be done by robots even today.
Maybe I am missing something, but to me “alt right” and “neo reaction” looks just like another postmodernist internet subculture, like bronies or furries. On the Net, you can really indentify yourself as anything you want to be, whether pink pony or mighty medieval knight.
It is really early where I am, so I guess you are lucky that I won’t write one of the long posts you secretly dread from your readers.
But your Moore’s Law graph really doesn’t factor in the possibility of a disruptive advance in … chip fabrication? Computer Architecture.
Chips now are a 2-D affair. If you add that 3rd dimension you can keep that circuits per volume of space thing going a long time (though heat and the fabrication process for 3-D circuits might be insoluble for “us” as we exist now).
Then there is the paradigm of MAYBE going with a different form of computational model. I’m sure you have heard of memristors.
Anyway all that (and more I’m not tuned in to) might come to pass, or might not. It could just be the typical thing that journalists write about because some tech guy has bright eyes about it and it sounds interesting.
Then there is the issue of Quantum Computation. Again, it might just be smoke, but it sure seems like they are getting some movement on that.
In which case your Moore’s Law graph goes vertical (as nearly as we can tell).
Anyway what the heck is that graph you posted anyway? The usual one I see is something like “computing power on a chip doubles every two years.”
What did you post, some kind of law of diminishing returns for researchers thing? The fact that the easy street in miniaturization ran its course and going forward is hard now?
Not going to do a good job explaining a thought right now, but I think it seems reasonable that 2000 researchers worldwide working on batteries or superstring theory or whatever, is 95% or 99% as productive as 8000. Seems like something to speculate on.
An interesting and very useful summary, thanks.
Without questioning the relative probabilities, surely what this is missing is a default possibility, which is not (5) but rather: “something else, presently unimaginable for all practicable purposes”.
Consider the difficulty a pre-industrial culture would have imagining the actual solution to the energy production trap in these kinds of terms. I mean, yes some of the clues were there, in the existence of engines of various kinds, but the idea that these could potentially transform human society to the extent that occurred requires understanding of all sorts of other ideas that would just have been totally outside any possible extrapolation. Even if some blue sky thinkers might have imagined a world of ease where machines did everyone’s work, it would not have been anything like what transpired. Consider the outlandishness of most early science fiction, to our eyes (science fiction notoriously dates incredibly quickly).
Arguably, the probability of the unimaginable is not meaningfully capable of estimation, and assigning a probability to it amounts to giving an opinion as to the scope of the human grasp of the world. Optimists might put it at zero, pessimists at 90%. It is merely applying a guess at the confidence with which such a range of possible futures should be held to be exhaustive. As such, it does factor into arguments you make about how seriously individual possibilities should be taken for planning purposes, and ought therefore to be mentioned even if only to dismiss it as incalculable. In effect, the probabilities you put forward should be regarded as upper bounds, if they are used other than as relative likelihoods.
I read John Gray’s False Dawn about a dozen years ago.
I can scarcely think of a more overrated, less well-researched “serious” work, and I was a lot further to the left back then.
What are my “techo-values”? I post very little about my values in general. This post isn’t about values but an exploration of what some people will think happen in the future.
Not sure it worked out that way for the Africans.
Erm… the entire fourth section.
Well one man’s dream is another man’s nightmare.
For instance, from my perspective a completely linear continuation of today would be reasonably good but decidedly suboptimal, since I would die sometime this century and thus not have time to do many of the things I want to do.
But really what’s so nightmarish about most of these scenarios?
Re-1. We can’t say in principle whether the Technosingularity will be “good” or “bad,” let alone “nightmarish,” but it will most certainly be interesting.
Re-2. Aspects of The Age of Em are nightmarish to current day sensibilities, in particular their very casual attitude to individual death, but as Robin Hanson points out you can’t judge the realities of one period by the moral standards of another. Our agricultural and hunter-gatherer forebears would also find much to be horrified about with our industrial civilization.
Re-3. Biosingularity. Frankly most of it sounds awesome to me.
Re-4. Existential risks. Okay, this is pretty nightmarish.
Re-5. The Age of Malthusian Industrialism. Pretty glum, at least a few centuries down the line, but I wouldn’t quite call it nightmarish. After all 90% of the humans who ever lived, did so under Malthusian conditions, and some significant portion of those suffered through outright dieoffs. Even lives of quiet desperation can be worth living.
So that’s really 1/5 scenarios that are actually nightmarish.
Dear Mr. Karlin,
I disagree with many of your specific ideas, but overall, your post is the kind of thing I want to see more of.
Personally, I think you need to take another look at the People’s Republic of China, and their approach to eugenics.
The PRC might be the leading eugenic organization of the 21st century.
Did I miss it, or did you leave out the possibility of some catastrophic engineered virus that kills almost everyone?
A question about (5) (this stuff is far outside my normal area of interest, so forgive my amateurishness here):
Why do you assume that the population will continue to increase, when the global pattern pretty much everywhere outside of Africa is for fertility rates to decline – places such as Iran now have below-replacement fertility, and those with above-replacement rate are dropping (Mexico down to 2.2 from 6.7; India was down to 2.5 in 2012, from about 6 in 1960).
It seems the most likely scenario will be another generation or two of Third World growth and First World Decline followed by across-the-board population decline, everywhere but in sub-Saharan Africa. I’m not sure how the latter situation will be managed but I doubt that the result will be a mass African emigration to Europe, China, Australia, the Americas, etc.
As for factors other than population – in the absence of genetic augmentation, I’d speculate ongoing cognitive decline, with cognition becoming more visual and less verbally oriented, and with the world becoming less intellectually demanding due to increasingly sophisticated technological crutches. I doubt it will get as far as Idiocracy but in the West will probably decline to and settle at the level of a modern IQ score of 90 or so.
What number would you stick on the shift in political culture between Japan 1940 and Japan 1950?
I should add that zoo was a bad choice of words, I meant something more like a nature reservation, but for people.
I don’t really agree (at least not for all meanings of the term “largely”), but let’s keep my scenario, but with growth rates of, say 0.1%. If population growth is placed under control then it shouldn’t be a problem, we’re pretty well off as it is. High growth rates are only necessary under current socio-economic conditions to make the public finances add up. A well-run government could peacefully preside over a zero-growth economy.
I don’t think this scenario is very likely, but it does seem to me that it would be the least objectionable to most people, once you can get past the racism thing.
You’d have to shift Western populations like 2 S.D. to the authoritarian right for that to become politically feasible!
For those of us who are left-shifted, can you explain the connection between IQ and the authoritarian right?
I post very little about my values in general.
Inference.
This would in general be under “technological existential risks.”
I think the probability of that is low – making such a virus would be extremely hard. It is not in the virus’ interests to kill its hosts, so even if lethality is initially very high, as with some strains of ebola, it tends to go way down over time.
Note that even if it were to kill a billion people, it would still not constitute a true existential risk.
A fair critique but please see my responses to Klon, where I address those same points.
I’m not surprised you dislike Gray. He is basically antagonistic to the kind of simplistic one dimensional thinking popular among people heavily involved in STEM and the entire culture it has spawned, but I regard him as one of only a handful of modern writers worth reading – ironically, because he isn’t really a modern writer at all. Rather, he applies ancient insights to modern conditions – the only intelligent thing to do, as “progress” is bunk. Still, False Dawn was not one of his best – his later works are better.
You mis-characterize your post as values-neutral and merely descriptive – embedded in your post are a whole host of assumptions and throw away comments that point to preferences, perhaps unconsciously so. It is clear you believe unending technological progress is highly desirable, that the kind of techno-civilization we have going today is good and should be expanded indefinitely, that endless growth as a way of life should indeed be the human goal, that humans should strive for control and mastery rather than learn to live in harmony with cosmic forces, and you seem to look upon the transhuman merging of human and machine favorably, not to say with eagerness – well, pretty much the standard techno-romanticism of the modern STEM culture. Perhaps all this is simply the air you breathe, but it leaps out at me as obviously a very values-laden point of view.
If I am wrong I do apologize, of course.
Thanks very much for your fine essay. I have only two points.
The first is minor. CRISPr type technologies are not transforming in and of themselves. One has to know how the editable bits of the genetic code combine to build a good brain, and that is far off. Other than very risky experiments, I don’t think it will be a game changer until a lot more is known about subtle interaction effects at the neuronal level.
Second point: is prediction possible? Tetlock has shown that accurate predictor persons are few, and actual predictions are usually only testable on small scale, specific and prompt events, mostly with a 12 month predictive frame. Outside those parameters, things get hazy. Business as usual is, in my view, 99% likely. Stuff changes, but not much changes. Cars are far more intelligent than ever before, and that is great, but nothing much has changed because they are still cars. Changes which look big to us often leave things much the same. Will artificial intelligence change things? Probably less than the internet has already done. Wiki is the greatest educator there has ever been. This is the best time for finding things out there has ever been. Candidly, I have difficulty making predictions 36 months out, other than that things will be mostly the same, and only a bit different.
Taleb does it much better, with humor and attention to actual facts and statistics.
Yes I am lazy and do appreciate having to do less for more.
I am not a proponent of “endless growth.”
wtf are these “cosmic forces” anyway? Will freely admit to disliking this sort of obscurantism.
Perhaps all this is simply the air you breathe, but it leaps out at me as obviously a very values-laden point of view.
He’s smart enough to see that as political animals we are screwed up with only a snowball’s chance of keeping it in the road over the longer term.
Techno-civilization has the same appeal as any other utopia, it just appeals to a different group, the STEM oriented.
Thanks for the note of caution wrt CRISPR. I am under the impression Razib Khan (and Charles Murray, though he’s that way via Razib) are more optimistic, but it’s definitely something I’ll have to learn more about myself.
I make yearly predictions myself (e.g. for 2017). It is of course very rare that very much changes in technology over the course of just one year.
I think many technologies sort of creep up on you and then explode very suddenly, much like exponential growth is barely noticeable when the initial quantity is small but becomes all encompassing later on. That said, I am more pessimistic re-AI than the experts in this sphere, amongst whom the median projected date for HLMI (human level machine intelligence) is around 2050.
Excellent overview of issues, though I’d adjust percentages considerably. e.g. Biotech revolution began 1990’s (in part utilizing earlier computer revolution), biosingularity 30 pct 2040-2060 AD. Computers are adjuncts facilitating organisms evolved to do politics (though mismatch between tribal environment of evolutionary adaptation and modern environments.) So useful to think in terms of ~political singularity~. (Democracy is an info-proc ~political~ system.) nGram for political singularity, curiously and by the way, shows a sort of nice 60 year cycle. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=political+singularity&year_start=1800&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cpolitical%20singularity%3B%2Cc0 ..
It’s fun making predictions on technologies that are yet to develop but sorry, it’s a fools errand. It is impossible to guess. Did anybody come close to predicting where the industrial revolution would lead us? Nope. Did anybody come close to predicting a hundred years ahead in where technology would lead us? Nope. No one knows and you don’t have a clue.
My advice in predicting the future is to limit yourself to trends that have started and project where they will continue.
That’s it.
Your grandiose speculations are worthless. KISS- Keep It Simple Stupid is the only way to have a chance of being right in predictions of the future. Stop pursuing one tenth of one tenth of one tenth possibilities, it isn’t going to happen.
Genetics will continue it’s spectacular development. It is going to happen. Sooner or later there will be an understanding of why some individuals are born with the genes that will give them an IQ of 140 while others are born with a IQ that will give them an IQ of 100. It is going to happen.
After that as Steve Hsu has logically predicted there will be a big market for prospective parents who desire to have ten fertilized eggs measured for IQ and only the brightest one brought to term.
After that, who know where things will lead. Further speculation is pointless.
Alt-Right is about race politics. It sees politics through the lense of racial (White) identity and its IRL actions are informed by such. It also has intellectual leaders and the occasional political candidate.
As such it is very different from bronies. Anyone can choose to be into a children’s cartoon. The Alt-Right is based on something an individual cannot choose or change – race, sex, ethnos.
Yeah, some of us really are into this. It certainly beats the hell out of some 1850’s agrarian lifestyle or even what we have today. Some of us have aspirations. We should not have to give up aspirations simply because others can’t handle it.
Ultimately technology and growth are about freedom and opportunity, and I value freedom and opportunity more than any other values. Think of the old saying: When opportunity knocks, don’t knock the opportunity.
I prefer control and mastery over “living in harmony” with that which has the potential to screw me over. I don’t like being screwed over.
The ultra-orthodox haredim, which have the biggest populations growth, are mostly Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe. About 20% of the ultra orthodox in Israel are Sephardic Haredim of Sephardic and Mizrahi descent, but they are present only in Israel.
Based on standardized test scores, especially the elite college entrance exam the SAT, IQ in the US is already declining at least 1 point per decade, and that is exclusive of the low IQ immigrants who have been entering the US en masse…Doesn’t look good.
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind” is the chief commandment from the Orange Catholic Bible,
Thinking machines are dangerous. We need a Bene Gesserit breeding program to bring the Kwisatz Haderach, the one-man biosingularity. And we need mentats. And spice, lots of spice.
I’m thinking creating a virus with a 99%+ kill rate (something like in the 12 monkeys movie) that spreads as easily as a common cold and does so more quickly than the development of immunity or creation of vaccines. I recall reading somewhere that some such things had been created, then destroyed (or prused, and then abandoned). This sort of virus would probably not kill everyone, but might reduce humanity to the dozens of millions, or maybe even less, scattered on remote islands, quarantined until everyone else dies off.
This makes sense, but you are being too pessimistic here – indeed, this is probably an optimistic scenario. The idea is that in the West, as non-breeders disappear, those whose families have more children become ever higher percentage of society, so that eventually fertility rate and population rise. So when the Catholic traditionalists become a majority in France, France’s population will rebound; likewise for Siberian ethnic Russians in Russia, Mormons, Amish, hardcore Christians among American whites, etc. In this case, according to Kolk et al, there are two possibilities:
The “breeders” will become a large enough % to sustain the population but due to attrition (countries will maintain different subgroups with different lifestyles) to lower-breeding groups by some breeders’ kids the population will stabilize once the equilibrium is achieved.
In the case of the first possibility, does this mean eventual unsustainable growth? I’m not so sure. These high-fertility groups in the West tend to live in relatively sparsely populated areas (Utah, rural areas, Siberia), where having lots of kids doesn’t change one’s lifestyle and environment too much. There is still plenty of room for more people in those places. The idea of eventual massive overpopulation rests on the assumption that high-breeding Westerners such as Mormons, traditional Christians, etc. would tolerate cramped surroundings resembling rural India or Bangladesh in their packed humanity. I strongly suspect this would not be the case. So in the first scenario, I would expect stabilization, several centuries from now. At that time, places such as the USA might have a billion people, Russia 2 billion or so, Canada a billion (assuming warmer climate for the latter two countries). There would never be a global population of 100 billion people.
Probabilistically, given enough time a given monad makes an error, and probabilistically given enough time it is a fatal mistake.
This makes for a good crystal ball if you make one society – a social monad. Probabilistically – it pretty much doesn’t matter what explanation is provided – by shear probability, it will err, and eventually, fatally err.
The surest way to avoid this outcome is to prevent the creation of a single monad. This allows well functioning monads to stay healthy and improperly functioning monads to naturally select.
One might imagine that this should go a long way to explain the psychologies of the elites at the head of the largest monads. Aware of the probabilistic inevitability of fatal errors inherent in their monad – the surest way to erase (hopefully) or postpone (more likely) the manifestation of the errors is to bind with other monads.
That suits the needs of the elite of the largest monads, but it doesn’t bode well for the rank and file of healthy monads less in need of the whole than of the freedom to operate autonomously.
From a whole-human-race standpoint – the POV of the rank and file preserves the race, while the POV of the elite of the largest monads leads to perdition. Probabilistically.
Simplest short-term implementation : constitutional reform for much, stronger federalism. 7-15 regions (like 13 post colonial states), rather than 50 weak states – will result in much better outcomes.
Truly: that should be the only political issue: more federalism, for more regional autonomy.
Anything else is a Faustian bargain.
Its interesting that many of you don’t seem to like economic growth or technological innovation, but seem to like continued population growth. It seems to me that continued population growth requires increased economic growth in order to provide career opportunity and upward mobility for the increased population which, in turn, fuels technological innovation. Technological innovation is needed in order to feed everyone and to provide them with increased standard of living and decent medical care. Population growth without the latter two is a recipe for a Malthusian population crash.
This doesn’t even get into the quality of life issue, like being able to go on beach holiday in the Caribbean or go backpacking or skiing in the Rocky mountains. Imagine how crowded these places will be if the U.S. alone has a billion people.
First, this AGI should be able to reproduce itself without help of Humans.
Second, in much nearer future, it will be possible to connect AGI to the human brain and leave the final decision making with the human brain.
More urgent task is to organise all humans in one harmonious society where the interest of every human being will be properly protected. Last 30 years we are moving in opposite direction. Financial inequality is really awful and still growing.
Well, I’ll say that the Alt-Right also has a set of beliefs that’s marginally organized, including racial considerations as you mentioned. So its not all-inclusive anymore than someone who hates My Little Pony can consider himself a brony; there are at least some beliefs that are common with those who adopt the title.
I call myself a Neoreactionary, though, which has a significantly tighter philosophy with Nick Land and all.
More urgent task is to organise all humans in one harmonious society
If you are going to dream, don’t mess around with the little stuff.
7-15 regions (like 13 post colonial states), rather than 50 weak states – will result in much better outcomes
Population exchanges, anyone?
I doubt (2) will actually happen. It is contingent on new low-fertility lifestyles repeatedly becoming available (“continuous introduction of novel cultural traits allows for the possibility of sustained low fertility”, on the assumption that “the cultural changes associated with the fertility transition are not singular historical events, but rather the beginning of a rapid and ongoing increase in cultural diversity”). But since we assume that technological progress stalls, presumably social innovation of this sort slows down to a crawl as well.
I suspect the “SJW’s” of 2300 will have much higher TFRs than not only the SJWs of today, but also perhaps even than the Mormons of today (~= 3.0), since pro-natality genes are ultracompetitive and will gradually spread to all subgroups.
But surely the “breeders” who can tolerate cramped surroundings will outbreed those who can’t? 🙂
Anyway, you would still be able to offload excess children to orphanages, etc. Although over time as the welfare state crumbles mortality in those orphanages will rise, they will start adopting drastic and “inhumane” measures (compulsory sterilization?), etc. But that will be the beginning of the Malthusian checks on overpopulation.
100 billion is my estimate of the maximum carrying capacity of the modern industrial economy at near subsistence per capita levels. I will justify that figure in my post about the Age of Malthusian Industrialism.
I’m not sure your angle on the question.
But I’d suggest that more robust federalism is probably the most optimal means of positive population exchanges which is to say: population exchanges made on the terms of well functioning regions.
The Faustian Bargain has – a , lot – of sway.
“Sure … you can have a (long) shot at controlling immigration for the entire federal body. Just stay organized into your 50 weak states”.
“Sure … you can have a (long) shot at more restrictive abortion laws. Just stay organized into your 50 weak states”.
“Sure … you can have a (infinitesimal) shot at marriage laws that respect local or ethnic or religious custom. Just stay organized into your 50 weak states”.
“Sure … you can (snicker, snicker), try and resist the advance of PC. Just stay organized into your 50 weak states”.
“One ring to rule them all”.
And yet – we just can’t talk conservatives down from the pursuit of this ring. Odd thing, that.
Hey iffen,
I agree here – and just like other groups – their ‘utopia’ is hell for those that uh…lack faith. Most future visions in movies or literature are quite dystopic (actually, many religious narrations of the ‘end times’ are also quite so). I can’t think of a single one I’d like to live in.
The more I think about it, the more it seems like a new Pharoanic order; Blade Runner and Judge Dredd look interesting on film, but does anyone actually want to live there?
So I guess, pick your dystopia – here’s a suggestion (and one I think may have far more basis in the reality of how the majority of humans will act if our current place at the top of the totem pole s seriously challenged):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad
Peace.
I’m not sure your angle on the question.
My angle is that unless you have population exchange, forced or voluntary, having 7 little USAs would be no different from having one big USA.
Well, one feature of American federalism has almost always been effectively unrestricted movement between states for citizens of the whole.
So : you didn’t get to change the law or customs in Georgia if you were from Connecticut, though you were free to move there if you liked it, or to move away if you found yourself transplanted there and didn’t like it, or to exercise your modicum of influence on the locality and longsuffer if that suited you. And vice versa.
Robust federalism is to the political-economy what trading in options is to publicly traded companies: it quickens the punishment on those making poor decisions or performing badly and quickly reinforces those making good decisions and performing well.
Doesn’t work so well though when there are fifty little bears and one Leviathan.
The problem (the cure?) with AI becoming an extension of humanity is that they will not be able to create the emotions, the metaphysical, the spiritual (some sci-fi deals with this), which, as some of us know, is the elephant.
Regular chip-assisted injections of oxytocin for all. You love Big Agender Sibling, of course you do. You have always loved Big Agender Sibling. After all, xis brought you Utopia and freedom from any identity. You have total freedom now to be equally meaningless in blank happiness as another other agender chip in this society.
The great struggle is over. There is no need for violence. There is no need for suffering. There is no desire, and no victory, either.
There’s a reason why I find any such idea of a future, as another commentator said, grotesque and disgusting.
And … robust federalism is relevant to potential threats from AGI because :
Well: Hollywood example – BSG (TRS).
It was the un-networked modules / monads that survived. We can’t stop the advancement of science. We can’t stop the hive-mind qualities of the social-human, barely more evolved than chimpanzees but capable of language, with half possessing IQs less than 100.
We can prevent the creation of a single network, single monad, and through the preservation of many, keep a few that resist overtake, naturally select for higher intelligence and lower hive mindishness, and which act as models for the others who naturally select for themselves by following the examples of their betters.
It’s a rickety old solution to a new problem. Not obsolete. Not yet.
now that the FLynn effect of environmental IQ increases is petering out across the world
Is there any certainty that the FLynn Effect has petered out for smart ethnic groups, or has the IQ of smart countries stopped growing entirely because of immigration of less smart groups?
Even so, a world with a thousand or a million times as many John von Neumanns running about will be more civilized, far richer
Very smart people tend to be fractious, disagreeable, conflict-prone, so I don’t know about “more civilized”. I would guess that agreeableness peaks roughly in the 115 – 125 range, and is lower on either side of it.
All this of course assumes that a concert of the world’s most powerful states doesn’t coordinate to vigorously clamp down on the new technologies.
Another reason to fight against political singularity aka the end of history aka “Western” “liberal” world order. The people fighting to preserve Russian, Chinese, North Korean, Iranian sovereignty could indirectly facilitate the kind of future that reminds one of theists’ ideas of salvation, redemption of mankind and heaven, complete with immortality.
Hey iffen,
Look…full disclosure…coming from my background – this ____ scares the hell out of me!
Seconding what Daniel Chieh said, I cannot understand how someone would find meaning in such an existence thus I cannot understand why anyone would exert their effort in wanting to make it a reality…but that’s just me.
It reminds me a bit of that scene in ‘Inception’ where there are all those people in that underground area that are simply administered shots to keep them sleeping and lost in their dreams.
Peace.
Since the constitutional convention of 1787 met under the auspices of the Confederation, and did away with the Confederation, we could flip it and have a convention that would re-establish some sort of confederation.
The number of secular full-blooded Ashkenazi Jews is declining fast, but the religious ones are breeding like the Amish.
I don’t know how the old Euro aristocracies compared to Jews. It’s a pity that their endogamy largely broke down in the 19th and 20th centuries, but there are still some remnants of them. I’m sure that upper class Brits are susbstantially above 100 today. I wonder if anybody’s ever tried to measure them. Same with the Parsees.
Why are they more civilized?
Could it be because they are smart enough to see the personal consequences of not being more civilized? In which case we might see a different profile if they are freed from social controls, some psychos are “smart.”
I have no way to prove it, but the “smart fraction” has lost most of the noblesse oblige that it once had (in a not overwhelming portion when it had it).
I don’t think that’s off base – the key is how it is angled.
Two cents of angling correction suggestions for those who’ve tried in the past and failed are:
first penny: note that companies do this – all , the, time – federate in response to dynamic business conditions, then reorganize and confederate due to dynamic business conditions – then, genius!, federate again in response to dynamic business conditions.
It is ebb and flow. It need be nothing more. The Constitution was designed to be editable, for a reason.
second penny: nip one in the bud by reaching out to African Americans.
Admit that the state of things in 1961 was unacceptable, and the more robust federalism of 1961 had to take some hits to drag things forward. But … qua: federate / confederate / federate again … things are now, once again, unacceptable … for all of us. So let’s those-of-us-of-good-will-and-sound-mind, join hands, and for all of our sakes, confed-er-ate, a little.
African Americans in Georgia seem to be the happiest, most successful African Americans in the US. That seems worth noticing, and strategizing around, and making a very big deal out of.
Pretty interesting article, lots of things to consider, as we enter this new environment of technological over reach.
I want to refer to the movie that I think correctly showed the likely results of man’s or Krell’s… Best laid Plans, in the ’50’s: Forbidden Planet:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet
To your above phrase:
I disagree, if that is permissible from the peanut gallery of modest IQ land, that cosmic forces are mere bothersome obscurant stuff, because, what you are doing really is overly rational, entirely over optimistic dreaming. AND, the comment you made somewhere above about virus’ having any self interest in not killing off the infected host, isn’t viable.
Virus is part of a system of ecology, it does what it does and can make things wither and die, as the bigger system moves on, Virus can linger for long time in cells, only comes out some time when the right conditions warrant that. Self interest of virus is complete misnomer Antoly. THey like fungi are all over all the time, no possibility of a problem with their own survival.
And I think virus if not Bacteria will be coming soon.
Oh, and how will robots replace consumers is another stickler. As well as, the AI that ever gets really self motivated etc. well that will prove the theme of Forbidden Planet, everybody senses it Instinctively!
You would really need to think it all the way through. You could end up with Silicon Valleys and Bostons here and there with little Haitis, West Virginias and Detroits here and there.
Isn’t that what we have and what we’re headed to?
Isn’t the issue the inability to contain it, where if we could: it would die on the vine?
And as to Silicon Valleys … arguably a key factor at issue underlying much of the discussion that animates a place like Unz is:
People, political or financially elite people, often; in certain places – seem to have written some socio-economic/political checks they can’t cash, and are effecting a sort of political/financial engineering, to get other people to underwrite those checks.
Tie off those branches and the outsized magnets of places like Silicon Valley will get weak and their draw on high quality labor will give way to more culturally promising regions.
Nick Bostrom has argued that there are hard limits on traditional pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement, since if the presence of some simple chemical would help us think better, our brains would probably already be producing it.
Isn’t that like saying that PEDs can’t possibly exist because if the presence of some simple chemicals would help us become faster and stronger, our bodies would probably already be producing them?
We’re selected for a very large number of traits, of which intelligence and muscle strength are only two, and there are many trade-offs involved.
How does society look different if we expect future humans to be less intelligent than ourselves, and/or if we expect society as a whole to be less capable? What kind of things should we be doing now to tide civilization through future dark ages?
We should be creating many copies of important STEM data collections on sturdy media. An example would be etching text onto stainless steel plates to be deposited throughout the world.
About 99.9% of Greco-Roman book titles were lost during the Dark Ages. Interest in this stuff came back by the 13th century. After that it took, I’d say 3 centuries, to get back up to the Greco-Roman level. A lot of things had to be reinvented, as opposed to looked up.
this ____ scares the hell out of me!
http://klipd.com/watch/butch-cassidy-and-the-sundance-kid/the-fall-will-probably-kill-you-cliff-jump-scene
Until the mid-20th century, polygamy was legal in East Asia. Whatever the impact on IQ levels for East Asians, they consistently appear at the top end of IQ rankings.
… and @Talha
, … @Daniel Chieh
I think an effective metaphor is:
The lab rat with access to the button that titrates unlimited squirts of sugar water. The rat becomes fat. Eventually it becomes so fat that it can’t move to another part of its container to relieve itself. Eventually it is awash in its own filth – but hedonically acomatized it splashes more and more sugar water onto itself.
This is a good example of what is meant by “indecent”, and why decency matters. It’s useful as an illustration in a society where hedonism is so accessible to so many.
I find in my own experience that once we cross the hurdle of understanding (i.e.: “so if I can feed myself goodfeelz endlessly, what’s wrong with that?”) there end up being two barriers:
1) People who understand, but don’t care. This has subgroups of those who are consciously nihilist and simply don’t care, versus those who are consciously weak and prepared to surrender to indecency. They’ve drunk too much sugar water.
2) Elites who are incompetent, or simply not powerful enough to do anything about it. It isn’t that they are deliberately engineering the downfall – it is that the downfall is like a Platonic degeneracy and we either have elites who weren’t expected to understand this as a condition of holding their elite office, and the ways of avoiding it while there’s still time – or even if they do, they aren’t empowered to stop it, so … “open the gates of cannabis access babe we are medicating our way out!!!”
While it is often talked about and fretted over – I have personally encountered no actual physical evidence of a conscious cabal looking to purposely bring about the outcome though.
…post on the lab was also addressed to Talha and Daniel Chieh.
Apparently I haven’t figured out proper use of ” @ “
where hedonism is so accessible to so many.
Yes, there are plenty of examples where access by the many seems to have screwed up things. I can’t help but notice that nobody thought that it was much of a problem until the proles came along and crowded in.
I can only speak for myself, but I’m very much against further population growth and would like to see more technological advance…cold fusion and radical life extension would be a dream come true. Still, I found much in Anatoly’s predictions depressing. “The age of em”…I’m not sure I understand what this is about, but does this mean people would eventually upload their conscience into some virtual reality machine??? That sounds like a nightmare. Same for a lot of the human-machine interaction stuff. And while I’m interested in the idea of genetically raising IQs and bring the human species to perfection, doesn’t this mean older generations (e.g. myself) will eventually be “obsolete”?
Hey SPH,
On the hedonism…I came across a wonderful quote (it has a few variations):
“How many people dig their own graves with their teeth!”
To me, it seems paradoxical on the surface, but many of the people who have what most would desire; fame, money, stuff, etc. often seem to be people whose reliance on psychiatric medication (or opiods) is what keeps them operating on a normal plane. It seems depression lurks just below the surface of cloud 9 – I cannot imagine that throwing AI or some kind of machine interface would be able to remove that tendency. And if it does, is that person truly ‘human’ any longer?
A lot of this anticipation (from some people) for the ‘singularity’ seems to be saddled with a pseudo-religious narrative; human progress toward perfection, a life of eternal bliss, a need for transcending the material and temporal nature of man, and escaping the grave – always, a way to escape that.
Peace.
I don’t believe there is one, and I certainly don’t think you need one. I believe impersonal forces are enough to be entropic – I mean, in John B. Calhoun’s famous Rat Heaven experiment, he was not trying to develop a behavior sink which eventually led to the extinction of the animals. It just happens.
I have no doubt that we’re actively forming society as a behavioral sink now. The easier life becomes too, the less we’ll be challenged to acquire and utilize complex behavior. It has vastly contributed to the atomistic individuality, for starters, by giving us the significant appearance that we don’t need anyone else.
Instead, a chronically short-term nature and general weakness to hedonism are all that is needed. I’m of the belief that humanity has long since lost control of the forces of technology; our culture is now formed to accommodate the impersonal deities of the next new thing, rather than the next new thing being developed to serve any specific human goals of ours. Any more specific than, perhaps, what most excites the instant gratification circuit and hits the “Buy!” button.
Hey GR,
Yup, happens to all of us that have an expiration date; when humanity (including your closest relatives) is dumping dirt on your cold, lifeless body – they have officially declared you “obsolete”.
But, one thing, while you are still around – you have experience and wisdom from your years of life; and, as far as I’m concerned – wisdom never goes out of fashion.
Peace and may you live a great many more years.
I cannot recommend this book enough:
https://www.amazon.com/Technopoly-Surrender-Technology-Neil-Postman/dp/0679745408
Very short read and extremely relevant to this topic.
Robots are a tool, not a goal.
Incidentally, Germany had its fertility transition 3 generations ago, whereas France had it about 5 generations ago
I remember looking at bits of Diderot’s Encyclopedia years ago, and the article on France said that the French weren’t breeding enough, that the royal government had incentives for them to have more kids, but that this wasn’t working.
France was Europe’s intellectual leader then, so the anti-clerical trend started there very early. Voltaire and co., Enlightenmnt, then the Revolution.
In the Middle Ages France had several times more people than the British Isles, much more than Germany. I think it still had more people than the Russian Empire at the time of the Napoleonic invasion! And that was the old Russian Empire, with Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Finland, the southern Caucasus.
So the French were the first to go left and down (population-wise), and now maybe first to go right and up? They certainly have a larger far-right than most Euro countries.
It has vastly contributed to the atomistic individuality, for starters, by giving us the significant appearance that we don’t need anyone else.
Humanity was created by the group.
Individuality was created by the group.
Individuality will kill humanity and the group.
Well, probably true – and I mean that sincerely – it probably, is, true.
But it’s also true they didn’t like the proles before the proles crowded in, and they didn’t like the proles before they got in the proles business. Yankees and Redsox. Blues and Greens. People just isn’t gonna like, because that’s what people do.
Talha,
I agree. For purposes of the OP it will almost surely come to pass that we’ll augment ourselves with solid-state or bio-state devices not unlike we augment ourselves with the gym, vitamins, stimulants and steroids … which will forestall the coming of the evil AGI – at least if we are taking bets, that’s my bet.
But – to your narrow point – making ourselves stronger/smarter doesn’t deal with the philosophical problem. We’ve got more to gain tackling that with the first 3 schools of Athens.
Daniel Chieh,
I agree. Although ditto of my note to Talha – I see a lot of promise in addressing that sink with the first 3 schools. In each case though it requires the ascent of the individual. Save for the ascent, there’s no saving it.
I work in automation and robotics. But other than industrial automation, I don’t may much attention to the AI or EM hype because I think it unlikely. I’ve looked at the deep learning algorithms, which is the basis of the AI hype, enough to realize it is a genuine breakthrough in programming. It will give us decent machine vision and motion control and definitely improve robotics (and make stuff like self-driving cars possible). But it will not lead to machine sentience, let alone any kind of singularity. I find the uploading scenarios to be equally unlikely. This is probably the reason why I do not find “transhumanism” frightening. The frightening scenarios are simply unlikely.
What is real is developments in bio-engineering (SENS, CRISPR, synthetic biology). I really do expect a cure for aging sometime within this century. I also expect increased automation and additive manufacturing to be disruptive. The other thing I expect is Gen IV nuclear power as well as commercial fusion power (there are 8 fusion power start-ups in North America). So the whole run out of energy and go back to the land rubbish is never going to happen. The future will definitely be technological, if not AI driven singularity. And its a good future because it is human. It might not fit the definition of the religious luddite concept of human, but it is human in that people will continue to exist as recognizable descrite biological entities (based on synthetic biology) although they will be free from the unreasonable tyranny of the aging process and a pre-set healthy life span. So human aspirations will be greater than today.
I would call my scenario a bio-singularity or a mundane singularity and I think its a good one.
You read all kinds of non-sense on “what is human” on various luddite blogs. My definition of human is more basic. As long as I can run and jump and have a good time, as long as I can hoist a pint of beer and share a good laugh in a pub, I am human. This is the best definition of human I can come up with, and I challenge anyone to argue it.
If, as most scientists suggest, the universe has contains myriad planets with the potential for sustained intelligent life and/or technology above our level, they/it are either far fewer than calculations suggest, hiding from us, or (and most likely) long since dead a la the Krell self extermination by singularity in Forbidden Planet.
We are probably not unique heretofore. Hence, any civilization that reaches beyond our current level in search of a higher form of existence goes to its doom. In my opinion, unless there is mass global war or a moratorium on new technology, the history of the next millennium will be very short indeed; the odds of human/artificial intelligence surviving for another century must be concomitantly long.
You’re of course right that eventually we all become “obsolete”, decrepit etc., that’s the way of all flesh (unfortunately imo)…but I’m seriously wondering what might happen if a younger generation has a much higher average IQ (like about 160) than the older one. I don’t think that would exactly be conducive to societal stability or inter-generational respect.
Thanks for your good wishes, peace and long life to you as well.
Pity, I could’ve sworn you had converted to our side of the argument. It’s only another three decades for Kurzweil Singularity and the Malthusian outcome is too horrid to contemplate
Well, its probably a simple case where increasing the number of vectors of negative behavior causes it to become more explicit. If the elite engage in deviant behavior, it is considered a lesser because it is by definition a minority behavior and therefore against the norm. Once deviant behavior becomes the norm, however, then the only expectation is for the next most deviant behavior become popular, and normed.
Consider something as simple as obesity. If only the elites were obese, it provides a safe form of bashing them and their overall excess consumption is not all that terrible. However, if the norm is obese, not only does it create a need for “fat-acceptance” but the actual stress on the system to provide calories as well as to assist with obesity-related illnesses is much higher.
Spoken like true communist 😉
As for connection of hedonism and individualism, the most individualist people that exist, the extreme outlier of 1% with SPD, are the least hedonistic of all ( if you wish to count schizoids as people)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder
Mind uploading is normal, garden variety transhumanism.
“Ems” are copies of human brains, that will be in the future according to Hanson produced by the trillions and used as slave labor. It would be horrible if it wasn’t so absurd – as absurd as making mechanical horses for riding. Whe we understand brain enough to regularly copy it, we could build something much better from first principles.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/15/the-age-of-em-work-love-and-life-when-robots-rule-the-earth-robin-hanson-review
Hey AL,
Good points. It’s been years since I took AI class at UCLA so I’m sure it has come a long way from the late 90’s but I have a difficult time seeing it bridge the gap between ‘smart machine’ and ‘human’. Although some would simply argue we are simply smart machines.
Possibly…but it may well be that the inescapability of the aging process is itself essential to the calibration of human aspirations.
Imagine the ability to procrastinate…forever.
Peace.
Hey GR,
C’mon, getting turned into Solyent Green can’t be too bad. 😉
Peace.
But can you? Who will be there to interact with you? And in some ways, what is the distinction between you and a rat that can run and squeak and sip some sugar water?
For me, it would not be very fulfilling at all.
I disagree that human aspirations would be greater. I also work in technology and from what I can tell, it mostly motivates what Kaczynski calls “substitute” activities or often, some form of dependence behavior such as drugs to avoid existential misery.
Aug 16, 2011 The Tale of the Slave – Robert Nozick
“Anarchy, State and Utopia”. I would recommend re-watching the video to see clearly if Nozick’s question is answerable.
https://youtu.be/uxRSkM8C8z4
Well, there is a faint chance that we are unable to replicate a certain biological process with mechanical methods, or at least cannot do so efficiently. I’ve linked some research from 2014, its interesting if nothing else.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm
“It might not fit the definition of the religious luddite concept of human, but it is human in that people will continue to exist as recognizable descrite biological entities (based on synthetic biology) although they will be free from the unreasonable tyranny of the aging process and a pre-set healthy life span.”
That’s actually a prospect I would find attractive as well, radical life extension is something I’d regard as desirable (life is short and there’s so much to learn). Of course if it ever became possible, it might create new problems as well (e.g. does everyone get it or only a select few “deserving” of it?), but so does every advance.
Regarding automation, I’ve read some fairly negative assessments of what it could mean (e.g. this http://nationalinterest.org/print/feature/when-the-robots-rise-16830 ), so I think there has to be some political will to manage a transition for the benefit of all of society. The potential is exciting though. As long as change doesn’t lead to our species becoming something totally else, I can get behind it, it’s just some of the more extreme transhumanist stuff that seems thoroughly misguided to me.
Thanks, sounds like a bizarre concept (but then Anatoly seems to regard it as extremely unlikely as well).
Thanks for the lower case c. Was it by accident or can you see it?
Prescriptions for nihilism and hedonism: the garden, the porch and the grove (Epicurus, the Stoa and Plato).
Three tried and tested paths for giving purpose and meaning to people who were gifted to be high on Maslow’s pyramid. They worked for hundreds of years.
Plus any modern, mutually peaceful, co-existing re-constituents thereof.
An understanding that ascent in any path is essential, and work on the path chosen is essential ; an understanding that faith may suffice for the hereafter but in the herenow faith without work , is dead, and leads to death and more death.
And a wall between those who can agree to be content with those versus those who can’t be contented.
Incidentally, I’m curious about what you think of what I believe is the most likely mid-term outcome.
At present, we probably have enough data on almost every individual inside a first world country to be able to build a reasonable profile for them. Once cashless systems are implemented, then our consumption will definitely assist in self-categorization.
One of my degrees was in marketing and it always surprised me to realize how much you could manipulate the audience; with enough information on the “market” now, governments or anyone with access to such data could potentially create highly effectively, targeted persuasion methods to increase compliance.
While “automated persuasion” won’t work on everyone, this greatly concerns me and I think will be an adverse impact on human freedom overall. I do see this as possible, and it requires no greater technology than what we already possess.
From a political perspective, its also useful as a method of controlling public opinion – there’s already some trends toward classifying conservative thought as a mental illness, for example. In theory, a more peaceful society could be built by “treating” those disruptive elements of their “hateful attitudes.”
The ‘secret schizoid'[edit]
Many fundamentally schizoid individuals display an engaging, interactive personality that contradicts the observable characteristic emphasized by the DSM-IV and ICD-10 definitions of the schizoid personality.[15]:pp. 25–27 Klein classifies these individuals as “secret schizoids”, who present themselves as socially available, interested, engaged and involved in interacting yet remain emotionally withdrawn and sequestered within the safety of the internal world.
I had never heard of this. Do you know if this is real or is it just some psycho-babble? Notice the use of the word many.
We already have a real, existing example of cognitive augmentation relative to most of the rest of humanity: White people.
Not that we don’t have plenty of room for improvement. But Alt-Right people would probably argue that we haven’t even exploited white men’s full potential because the social-justice ideology since the 1960’s has held us down. Paul Kersey specifically argues that white Americans have had to renounce our space aspirations after the moon landings in part because we had to waste so much of the nation’s wealth trying to placate and uplift the country’s generally dullard black population.
some form of dependence behavior such as drugs to avoid existential misery.
Life extension will take away the cure. Then everybody will get to be Sisyphus for a lifetime.
white Americans have had to renounce our space aspirations after the moon landings
Yeah, like we believe that hoax filmed on a Hollywood set.
What is bizarre to me is that Hanson sees the em world not as dystopia, but as progress forward ( to faster economic growth, as I understood it).
This definition could fit everyone – who never feels alienated and never had to put on a “mask” to deal with people? Looks like another way to diagnose everyone.
But schizoid people, who do not give a shit about “relationships” are very real. At least I am real. 🙂
There are no accidents. Of course I know you always were member of the Party, but to blow your cover would be uncomradely thing to do 😉
This is true, but utterly irrelevant in the discussion of radical life extension. Does the fact that there are people who currently do drugs and make nothing of themselves in any way prevent me from, say, doing a technology start-up? No, of course not. This, of course, brings me to my larger point about hedonism.
Certain conservatives and alt-right people fret and obsess over the supposed dangers of excesive hedonism. I think this fear is a non-sense. It is true that a society of abundance results in lots of people doing nothing more than hedonism with their lives. But such a society also has lots of people engaging in productive accomplishments as well. The fact that there are people who do nothing more than drugs and sex does not prevent the Silicon Vallay types from doing new start-ups, or keep artists from making new music. The people who want to accomplish the great feats of life are going to be driven to do so, regardless of the actions of those who do not share such aspirations. As long as the rest of humanity does not engage in any kind of political/religious trop to inhibit the accomplishments of the productive, the hedonism of the non-productive is totally irrelevant to our long-term future. This is why hedonism is a non-issue.
A few minor comments:
1. While Kurtzweill has been talking about AI and the supposedly upcoming ethical problems related to copying a human being’s self, the less loud researchers have been patiently exploring the layers of human brain/mind. The thickest of the layers represents affective consciousness (see McLean and Panksepp studies), and this layer is not about logical chains, i. e., it is not clear how and what could be “copied” there to create a copy of a self
2. We still do not understand where and how memories are formed; even such “obvious” structure as hippocampus is still not well understood (see recent studies on C1 and C3)
3. There is still ongoing discussion about neural basis of “self” (see a lovely dispute between Damasio and Craig).
4. The most important point: We do not understand the computational mechanisms of the brain (see, for instance, Buzsaki’s model of the changing temporal patterns for the same neuronal nets, meta-states, and more). In short, it would be prudent to keep in mind the idea of gestalt – not some microchips – when discussing the workings of the brain. Perhaps, better understanding of the stunning capacities of a small lump of wet matter should make the technocratic futurists more cautious with their definitions and prognoses.
5. And a final comment, on a desire to enhance the human intelligence. There is a line in “The Heart of a Dog” (Bulgakov) where good Doctor says, “Madame Lomonosoff had somehow done it” – that is, a peasant woman, in an obscure village of fishermen near Arctic circle, has managed to produce a genius.
I’m an avid Unz Review reader, but dear God, this was like reading a sci fi comic book. Go outside for Christ’s sakes, get in touch with nature and family, just a little bit. You will see perfectly clearly what a meaningful and utterly satisfying human existence looks like. It’s not that we haven’t gotent there yet, but we’ve already blown past it.
As long as the rest of humanity does not engage in any kind of political/religious trop to inhibit the accomplishments of the productive
This is the threat. You and all other strivers operate within a system, a society. If the society crashes, you won’t be building a start-up, you will be scrounging for food.
Read some of AK’s pieces on how much the failed command economies handicapped the “communist” countries and that is mild dis-function by any measure.
It was an accident. I have been a member of the party for almost my entire life. I would never be a member of the Party.
I really don’t mean to pee on anyone’s parade, but I must say that I can predict the future with 100% accuracy.
No matter what happens, some two legged cloaca will come along and f*** it all up, and the masses will go along with it.
See what I mean?
I always hated emus.
and the masses will go along with it.
Depends on your lean, Jack. When the masses are running in the streets and you get a good look at the terror in the eyes of the elites, life can be considered good.
some two legged cloaca
This may account for the origin of homos.
Yeah like some Pied Piper sort of character with a new song bag singin’ a tune that all these youngster technocrats and bloggers can’t resist, it will be like an ear worm that makes the human brain self destruct, and they will go insane with it .Before they can make AI, hopefully.
This book addresses some of this:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10181.html
People with aristocratic surnames are significantly over-represented in high-IQ professions.
Who said we’re proposing any kind of top-down command economy? We’re into decentralized free market economics. In any case, I stand by my point about hedonism. It is non-sense to fear it.
When this younger generation is still young (and therefore earnest, radical and extreme, as youth often are) they will be capable of incredible damage.
Izzit the feathers or what? 🙂
Agreed. But enjoy it while you can because it won’t be long before some biped claoca messes that up too!
Oh Hell, that’s ancient history. Done deal. 😉
Well, old ones can easily be recycled – there will be a “market” for hedonistic hippies (or ravers, or whatever) every other generation, for instance.
Hmm.. so here is a point of disagreement. I don’t think that the choice of having many or few children is genetically determined in that way, within nations. It is mostly cultural. A Mexican of 1960 (when Mexicans had about 6.5 kids per family) is not genetically different from a modern one (2.2 kids per family). There was no mutation between then and now. There was no mutation when Quebec’s traditionally extreme birth rate collapsed in the 1960’s – it was the secular “Quiet Revolution.” I really doubt that the Amish have a genetic combination calling for large families that other Germans from their ancestral region lack. It’s about cultural differences.
Sub-groups whose cultures value large families will increase in size relative to the general culture (i.e., traditional Catholics in France, Mormons in the USA) and when these groups eventually achieve large populations there will be demographic stability and growth in the country as a whole. But this does not seem to be driven by genes; a trait such as being nurturing may have a genetic component but it doesn’t have to be expressed through parenthood. A nurturer raised in a Mormon community will have lots of kids; a nurturer raised in Manhattan will have one kid and a few cats whom she dotes on.
Do you know if someone has done twin studies, to see if fertility rates of twins raised in different circumstances are similar (does a twin raised in a liberal secular household have similar numbers of children as those brought up in religious households with many children)?
In this case, however, we are discussing a truly minute percentage of people – so small that it would probably take millenia not centuries for them to achieve population dominance. And who knows if their neighbors would tolerate this…
Um ok, what’s new-reaction about again?
the only way to achieve a higher state of intelligence is to radically rewire the brain from birth.at the moment we limit newborn human intelligence by our own limitations.we teach them limited intelligence.that has to change.the organic hardware exists.the software is the problem.
The fall of USSR was indeed caused by hedonism – lack of it. USSR was the dream of some people here – society that despised lazy bourgeois life and exalted hard work, struggle and sacrifice. Until the people became bored and sold it all for Coca Cola, Adidas, blue jeans and chewing gum.
Taleb is good, and offers very similar fare to Gray – he’s more palatable to the STEM set, because he is good with numbers and stats. He’s aware of this, and has joked about it amusingly. Taleb is friends with Gray and also considers him one of the few modern writers worth reading, btw.
….It is clear you believe unending technological progress is highly desirable…
Yes I am lazy and do appreciate having to do less for more.
“Convenience” hardly strikes me as one of life’s noblest goals, although I am glad you admit this is finally at the bottom of so many techno-utopias. I once told a techno-utopian I knew that the upshot of all this magnificent technology was really just “convenience”, and he freaked out. Of course, nothing wrong with convenience, but surely life offers finer and more interesting pleasures – heck, as I get older I find I even derive more pleasure from candlelight, however this sins against convenience. George Orwell as of a similar mind.
Techno-utopia – the pursuit of convenience! It’s a good slogan.
… that humans should strive for control and mastery rather than learn to live in harmony with cosmic forces
wtf are these “cosmic forces” anyway? Will freely admit to disliking this sort of obscurantism.
Forget about cosmis forces, then, if that bothers you. Why this insatiable drive to master nature? Why not just live and enjoy ourselves in some sort of relaxed harmony. We have dentistry, we have antibiotics, we have anasthetics, what more do we need? Because of course you have some kind of inner itch and restlessness, some hole, that you think more power will fill. But it won’t, alas, and you will be just as restless and dissatisfied.
No, (s)he isn’t, but there was a big cultural change from traditionalist hyper-pro-natality mores to modern neutral-natality mores.
In these conditions, within population genetic differences in fertility preferences will start making themselves increasingly felt (indeed, as Kolk et al. note), inter-generational correlations of fertility have been rising.
Unless there is a further and ongoing cultural shift towards outright anti-natality mores, longterm increases in fertility are inevitable.
Just had a quick look and the only ones I’ve been able to find are a 1999 and 2001 study by Kohler et al. Not from different households, though.
The correlations between MZ twins are significantly and consistently higher than for DZ twins, and this gap appears to grow between the ~1900 and ~1960 cohorts. The MZ correlation is at around r=0.4 for females and r=0.3 for males by the time of the ~1960 cohort, which is similar to the correlation for years of primary/secondary education but lower than the correlation for years of tertiary education.
From the 2001 paper:
I didn’t say anyone was proposing a command economy.
I said that what the most capable individuals within a society are able to accomplish is constrained by the structure of the society.
As far as hedonism is concerned, I can see a lot of tax dollars saved if we had 40 gallon trash cans full of heroin and cocaine every few blocks. I am unsure of what “we” would lose.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalism is about 10 times more popular than https://www.reddit.com/r/Natalism. But it could be only Reddit thing.
Because the will to power. Status seeking. Its as fundamentally human as anything else; we all want to have more and while Buddhism might teach otherwise, many people aren’t very fundamentally very content.
And this is what will make technological progress both unavoidable and uncontrollable, I think. I mean, I work on automation. Am I exactly morally thrilled about automation? Not really. But it pays well and I like being paid well. It lets me live a good life – but most important, it lets me keep mianzi/status/face around my friends and family.
So I’ll do this, working more or less as an impersonal cog inside an impersonal organization who doesn’t share my goals, for an ultimate result that no one knows, or cares about, except that for the next three months, the balance sheets will appear black.
You should read Unqualified Reservations by Mencius Moldbug or the Dark Enlightenment by Nick Land.
But in short, neoreaction is largely against Enlightenment ideology, mostly strongly showing in its rejection of democracy(seen as having perverse incentives for inefficiency), the ideology of inalienable human rights(seen as neither inalienable nor human), and the mass bureaucratic forms of government(seen as having ever increasing and unprofitable complexity). Most support a form of monarchy and have fairly strong arguments for it.
It also naturally will reject ideology such as absolute racial equalism, of course but that said, its not nearly as racialist as most alt-right thinking. Most of its leaders reside or have resided in Asia and there’s a strong undercurrent of support for Singapore-style governments.
Hey DC,
Very interesting stuff. I perused some of stuff on those sites and it is thought-provoking. I’ve been a fan of Mises in general thus a lot of that is up my alley. I already don’t have a ton of confidence that democracy (especially married to the nation-state) is the end-all, optimum form of human organization – for instance, I think genocide is fundamentally democratic in its nature, in fact, it is democracy completely without restraint.
Couple of things…
You can’t mean all human rights – correct? I’m not talking about the nonsense parade of endlessly evolving human rights, but certain ones do seem fundamental to our state of “being human”. These are defined (though possibly not congruous) in every religious tradition I can think of – even prior to the modern age.
Singapore is quite unique; multi-ethnic, multi-religious, a democracy on paper, and basically a city-state. Can it be scaled out? I mean any more than, say, the UAE can be scaled out to the entire Middle East.
I’m a fellow cog in the wheel – how does one reasonably and practically divorce oneself from it – that is the question…
Peace.
I think genocide is fundamentally democratic in its nature, in fact, it is democracy completely without restraint.
Democracy is a form of government; it has no connection to genocide.
I’m a fellow cog in the wheel – how does one reasonably and practically divorce oneself from it – that is the question…
If you “believe” in the wheel, why would you separate yourself?
When I read of “neo-reaction” or “alt-right”, I think advocacy of Singapore type system. Singapore is the ONLY example of a successful non-democratic system in the world. I think it is the ONLY POSSIBLE successful version of such a system.
The problem with alt-right is a lot of its advocates argue against meritocracy (however you choose to define this) and productive accomplishment and want to actually limit human aspirations. This is a stupid as stupid can be. I have nothing but contempt for those who want to limit human aspirations and productive accomplishment. I also reject any world-view (including any religion) that would in any way attempt to limit such as well. I have utter disgust for such world-views and do not consider them appropriate for modern technological civilization.
Hey iffen,
I will say this, I have never known of a society historically to last very long under hedonist or decadent norms. I haven’t read the full gamut of history, but at least my familiarity with Muslim history reads this way.
If anything, decadence makes a people soft and weak and distracted – they are very easily overcome by others with stronger discipline.
One should read the dispatches from Khalid ibn Walid (ra) to his counterparts among the Sassanids – very eye opening on this topic.
Peace.
Hey iffen,
Not by necessity, of course.
But when 95% want to eat the 5% – no democratic institution can stop them – even constitutions can be amended. If it is the will of the people to eat the 5% – democracy can only facilitate the outcome, how can the will of the people be wrong?
I’m not saying genocide can’t happen under other governmental forms, of course.
Peace.
This is basically irrelevant, because a central tenet of Moldbuggian thought is that in all modern democracies power does NOT flow upwards from the people.
See
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.il/2007/07/democracy-as-adaptive-fiction.html
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.il/2007/09/mediocracy-definition-etiology-and.html
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.il/2013/02/charles-stross-discovers-cathedral.html
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.il/2011/01/your-goverment-in-pictures-1954.html
Democracy – defined as a system in which officials elected by mass suffrage have actual control over all parts of the government – was a system that came into being by accident in the early to mid 19th century in America, mainly because rival factions kept seeking ways to diddle each other by expanding the francise. It wasn’t as a bad a system as you might expect (the public finances under Andrew Jackson were second to none), but it created factions of people that hated each other more and more until you get the Civil War. The transition between this form of Democracy and what we now call Democracy – defined as a rule by an unelected permanent civil service, closely linked to the media and education system, which work together to get the masses to go along with what they want – was completed when FDR took over in 1932. The last flickerings of the older form of Democracy were the McCarthy movement in the US and the Powell movement in the UK. Moldbuggians are against Democracy as you define the term, but only in the theoretical sense that they do not wish to reintroduce it, not because they think it has any relevance to things today.
Anyway, that’s what Moldbug has to say. You might here some other things from NeoRXers, but a lot of NeoRX is crap to be honest.
Hey Gabriel,
Thanks for your thoughts on this and I admit, democracy is failing people quite a bit on its promises.
As for me, I am actually agnostic as to which form of government works best. I’m extremely cautious about any framework that claims to be the optimum silver bullet. I think various forms work best for various people depending on their culture, religion, history, and even geography (it seems relevant to me that a massive sprawling island nation like Indonesia would necessarily be run differently than the land-locked Czech Republic). Democracies seem to work OK on a very small scale – though not too small; I’d not ever run my household (of four kids) like one, otherwise milk and cookies for dinner – every day!
I think a good spiritual and moral foundation and educational breadth (as opposed to that which is narrow and provincial) among the populace is far more conducive to a good society than the government’s structure (or lack thereof).
But I’m always on the hunt for information on ideas that think outside the box. I myself am not a Libertarian, but I appreciate their existence since they try to put fire under the feet of the proponents of various governmental frameworks. It is good to be challenged and have to defend one’s position and – gasp – even admit your opponent has a sound idea or two one can learn from!
Peace.
There is already evidence in Israel and some counties in the US for that. As the share of Ultraorthodox Jews increases, fertility rates increase by a tiny bit every year, just because of this composition effect. In the US, Haredi Jews are increasingly heading for the suburbs and are creating towns close to NYC where they are on their own, as their expansion in Brooklyn is increasingly limited due to expensive housing. Rockland county, NY is an interesting example for that. In the early 1980s, the TFR in Rockland county was around 1.7, being below the American average. In the meantime however, due to the rising share of Haredi Jews, it has continuously crept up to 2.8. In just a few decades, NYC will be surrounded by many high fertility suburbs as their expansion continues.
The interesting thing though is that these kind of breeder groups so far have only popped up in the West and nowhere else. No breeders so far in Eastern Asia, Africa, or anywhere else.
I know that map btw. 😉 Had lots of fierce debates with the guy who made it on the demographic prospects of France and my dear own country.
Democracy never spoke to anything beyond some version of one-man-one-vote; not surely a fair political outcome post vote. The idea of economic equality e.g. is mostly the private, often unrevealable, preference of the polity which rarely if ever considers initial endowments.
Defining ‘fair’ is largely a thankless enterprise consuming voluminous academic literature, especially in mathematical social choice, a sub-discipline of economics.
I think the U.K. has the most evolved system in which British democracy, perhaps uniquely defined as a system which still retains a reminder of G’d, Queen, Country and the Hangman’s noose as guide rails, endowed with a civil service of incredible depth, experience and talent, frequently at loggerheads with changing political fashions and demands, arrives all the same to skillful resolutions. Precisely why the tiny island nation exceeds all others in achieving close to optimal outcomes. People would likely quarrel with my depiction but I’d challenge that dissent.
Most other significant European systems are studies in chaos, as are Asian ones. America is a republican flavoured plutocracy where G’d plays the part of the default solution.
Our best hope for worldwide social and political equilibrium is Singularity.
As I have worked quite a bit with the religiosity and fertility question, to me it appears sound, but also from another viewpoint that only applies to modern and liberal conditions. While industrialization has removed the motivation to have kids because they can be workers and has initiated the demographic transition and fertility decline, the stuff that happened in the 1960s and understandably is viewed very negatively here, has removed or at leats decrease the motivation to have kids because of general ideas in society on how families look like. In today’s societies where this standard is questioned more and more, the only motivation that is left to have kids is because of personal reasons. This means that of course only the breeders are left to have many children. Kind of fascinating how the left basically created its own demographic demise.
I disagree though with the negative link between IQ and fertility to be intrinsic. Research has already shown that more educated people on average intend and want to have more children than less educated people. The problem is that they also face more constraints and are more aware of those constraints of course. Policy can however remove these obstacles. Fertility among native Danes and Belgians e.g. is slightly eugenic. I’d even go as far as assuming that the more intelligent of the breeder group will have a higher reproductive success.
Utah is actually fairly densely populated if you discount deserts and mountains. Most of Utahns live in the Wasatch front, a valley that is already half built up. Haredi Jews have 7 children per woman even though they live in densely populated Israel and the dense BosWash corridor.
Hey Sam,
That’s not what I disagree with, I disagree with its packaging in some sort of pseudo-religious way as being a panacea for the troubles of societies.
Hopeless as far as I’m concerned. It’s usually in the eye of the beholder and – for me – without an appeal to the Hereafter, has little coherence. Person born with Down’s syndrome – I can’t see how to make life fair for them…
It’s great to remove injustice and unjust institutions as much as we can – but I don’t know if we humans can even agree 100% on those; some say patriarchy is evil, some say laudable…
Agreed – I’m a big fan of Anglo-Saxon legal heritage. Probably why so many of their ex-colonies decided to adopt at least some, if not all, of their structures.
Ah yes – “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology”
https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Biology/dp/0143037889
We would say; some humans have been transcending biology for generations – I’ve heard it affectionately called ‘fusion without confusion’:
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-2586-the-self-disclosure-of-god.aspx
I think we’ll sit this dance out.
Peace.
I just have to add that Vernon Vinge, while being a talented self-promoter, is an awfully bad writer.
Read any of his books? He is a hack.
No wonder he is a big fan of machine
intelligence, he doesn’t have much intelligence himself, ergo, it is simple for him to imagine a machine that supercedes him, only because he is a very dim bulb.
Sure, there will be a problem of machines eliminating jobs. The energy and materials budgets for such machines will soon be prohibitive.
People, treated well, will always be more efficient.
How many watts does IBM’s Watson draw? What scale of resources, in terms of mining, refinement, and energy is required to make the parts?
It is impressive, sure, but incapable of generalisation.
Set up for one task at a time.
So, it can win a quiz game or do something else, but can’t do both.
Setting it up to write novels at the level of Vinge may well be possible. Reading Vinge is a waste of time, but his work has a much lower energy budget.
Anatoly, I read your article in detail, and it is nice that you give a pointer to your site, but must, unlike Deep Blue, sleep.
I think that your statistical guess-timates are wildly optimistic. May think more on those, and the range of possibilities, next nochy. Will be re-reading, although I think few of the possibilities you list are plausible, and none desirable.
Regards.
Peter Thiel’s clear vision:
https://alfinnextlevel.wordpress.com/2016/11/23/a-world-according-to-peter-thiel/
Trump will be the new Ronald Reagan!
https://alfinnextlevel.wordpress.com/2017/01/12/confidence-oil-sperm-to-surge-under-trump/
Neoreaction is a limited hang-out operation.
A Jewish supremacist called Moldbug wrote some true things about how he hated goyim. This was mixed up with some realistic ideas about human biological diversity.
Then some non-Jewish persons with psychological and social problems adopted some of Moldbug’s ideas – some of them hoping to become Shabbos goyim, some of them recruited by Jews who wanted them to be unwitting Shabbos goyim.
The resulting combination of Jews and non-Jews calls itself “neoreaction.”
Unfortunately neoreactionaries are deeply divided against each other, so they are not a political force. They are one of those social cliques that pretends to be a dark conspiracy, in order to cover up the fact that they are neither powerful nor insightful.
They have put considerable effort into the fine arts. Check out “Walt Bismarck” on youtube – he is popular with neoreactionaries, regardless of whether he considers himself to be one.
I haven’t seen a better solution for the issues brought up by Karlin than mass depopulation through every method availabe and declaring an inquisition on Leftys (complete with warring on feminism).
You got blog links, I got blog links too.
https://dissention.wordpress.com/2016/11/19/some-initial-thoughts-on-the-likely-trajectory-of-a-trump-presidency-1/
https://dissention.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/some-initial-thoughts-on-the-likely-trajectory-of-a-trump-presidency-2/
https://dissention.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/on-the-implosion-of-hillary-clintons-presidential-campaign-1/
“Just to be clear, I am neither a supporter nor a detractor of Trump. I see myself as a detached observer of events who uses his largely dispassionate and probably misanthropic analysis of trends, events and probabilities to make educated (and largely correct) guesses about the future. FYI- I was able to predict that Trump would win the republican nomination and the presidency almost a year before both events occurred.”
“To quickly summarize this post, I think there is a better than 90% chance than a Trump presidency might make the disastrous second term of Bush43 look competent and organized in comparison.”
Let’s wait and see. The 17th season of the record breaking Third Millenium series just started, and it looks it will be a wild ride! 😉
“Can you please stop arguing in your TED Talk voice!”
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/a20018
I am just trying to help AaronB (#49)
Hey AaronB,
Same as the desire to conquer death; to become gods.
Why do we name such technological projects such as NASA’s attempt at nuclear-powered space travel after the titan that stole fire from the Olympians?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prometheus
I would have thought they would have learned their lesson from Challenger…
Peace.
A very high tensity of tech-yahoos.
“We’re into decentralized free market economics. ”
Who is We? You and the guys you “hoist a pint of beer and share a good laugh in a pub” which for you is the apex of being human?
“with a new song bag singin’ a tune that all these youngster technocrats and bloggers can’t resist”
They already are hearing the tune and marching on.
“A Jewish supremacist called Moldbug wrote some true things about how he hated goyim. This was mixed up with some realistic ideas about human biological diversity.”
Is it really the case?
“As long as the rest of humanity does not engage in any kind of political/religious trop to inhibit the accomplishments of the productive, the hedonism of the non-productive is totally irrelevant to our long-term future.”
There is no steady-state in the social order, nor anything like refuge for non-hedonists. Do you see a tipping point where enough non-productive people could be very relevant to your long-term future?
“The Age of Malthusian Industrialism” – While on the surface this seems the most plausible – a continuation of current trends – it ignores the possibility of a step-change collapse in carrying capacity. My own view is that migration into the West must eventually result in a shift in political control of Western institutions from the outbred & high IQ natives to lower IQ & nepotistic immigrant populations, primarily from Africa, the middle East, and south Asia, with sub-Saharan Africa dominating in the longer term. This won’t happen in the lifetime of the current global elites, but as long as we have democracy in the West plus continuing mass immigration it has to happen at some point, probably within the 21st century for some nations. Judging by the legacy of Decolonisation in Africa, examples such as Zimbabwe and South Africa are not encouraging.
The USA might largely escape this since Latino immigration into the US is of lower IQ but not strongly nepotistic populations, so there is less urge to loot institutions, and a step-Change collapse is less likely in a majority-Latino USA. And Europe might conceivably escape it through abandonment of democracy for more purely technocratic rule, though I suspect this is unlikely – a majority black African population is unlikely to indefinitely accept the rule of white technocrats, and Euro-African politicians are going to want to take real power and use it to distribute wealth to their families and followers. A likely result is a Zimbabwe style collapse in carrying capacity well below theoretical maximum given the population median IQ.
“Even in Africa, there are already countries at ‘moderate’ levels (e.g. South Africa, which again points to falling fertility in correlation with development). The continent as a whole went from a TFR of approx. 7 between 1950 and 1980 to 4 now and is predicted to be at 2.5 in 2050.”
This would be great. But African fertility has consistently failed to lower in line with predictions, which is the only reason the UN has had to keep revising world population estimates upwards. The 2.5 prediction is presumably the current (UN 2015) one that gives Africa a population of 4.3 billion in 2100 in a world of 11.2 billion. If it falls from 4 now to say 3.5 in 2050 you get a very different scenario. And this says nothing about the size of African populations outside Africa.
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/world-population-prospects-2015-revision.html
2015 UN report says “A rapid population increase in Africa is anticipated even if there is a substantial reduction of fertility
levels in the near future. The medium variant projection assumes that fertility will fall from 4.7 children
per women in 2010-2015 to 3.1 in 2045-2050, reaching 2.2 by 2095-2100. After 2050, Africa is expected
to be the only major area still experiencing substantial population growth. As a result, Africa’s share of
global population is projected to grow to 25 per cent in 2050 and 39 per cent by 2100”
According to the neo-reaction posters here, in perfect society there will be no science, because everything worth discovery had been discovered, no progress because things are perfect as they are, no ambition because everyone is at his place where he belongs. Orderly and harmonious society based on hierarchy, duty and obedience from the top to the bottom, where king is born to be king, noble is born to be noble and serf is born to be serf, and their duty is to be the best king, noble or serf as they can be.
If you replace “King” with “World Controller”, “noble” with “Alpha” and “serf” with “Omega”, what is the difference between neo-reaction utopia and extreme left utopia?
No. That’s not even MM’s real name.
Its still one of the most amusing descriptions of NRX I’ve seen in awhile though.
Quite a bit different. NRX is not intrinsically opposed to science at all; the most hostile interpretation toward science is simply that science should be meant to serve coherence rather than decentralize it.
There are some overlaps in the end but NRX is usually accepting of a lot more difference with the notion of “exit” being a right – basically that anyone should be allowed to leave a society that doesn’t suit them. Most of what I read would seem to prefer a world where we were all split into ten thousand city states with different governing styles, but with a clear preference for a monarchy.
Overall, though, it does tend to try to preach a worldview favoring coherence where people have a sense of identity and purpose. In this is where it overlaps with liberalism if it is dogmatic: it can easily begin to insist that all people want connection, coherence and identity, whereas liberalism argues that all people want individuality, diversity and equality. The solution is to have multiple implementations and the right of exit.
But this is where you see us favoring boundaries, because in a world where a man can just say that he is a woman and then force everyone else to agree, is basically a world without coherence.
That’s disturbing, and probably not very functional, to be honest. I was a member of an artist’s colony once, for example; we had own our standards, arbitrary as it might be, but we maintained them and produced a great deal of work under the guidance of our leadership, “The Elect.” When the colony “opened up” and allowed everyone in, and the notion of the elect was dismissed as undemocratic, our output plunged in both quantity and quality. It turned into a mess where people just argued and talked.
Hi Talha!
Hey mtncur!
Good stuff!
Though I wish we could ignore it:
“The draft report, approved by 17 votes to two and two abstentions by the European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs, proposes that ‘The most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations, including that of making good any damage they may cause.’…AI developers will have to ensure their creations follow a set of rules that prohibit them from harming a human or allowing a human to come to harm through their inaction. AI can protect their own existence under the rules, if this does not harm any humans.”
https://www.rt.com/viral/373450-robot-kill-switches-status/
I find it quite amusing when humans try to play god.
Perhaps the gerbils will be robotic!
Peace.
There isn’t any, despite rhetoric from the former. Both are mirror images of each other in that both world-views are based on the belief that there is One Perfect System or One Perfect world-view/religion/ideology (all three of these words are synonyms) that is optimized for all human. No dissent is to be allowed. After all this is the definition of utopia, the One Perfect Anything.
I have always believed that the notion that the individual does not own his or her own self is the philosophical root all tyranny. The notion that there are things worse than tyranny has always been used through out history as justification for tyranny. Its a self-licking ice creme cone.
I really do believe in radical decentralization (the thousand state sovereignty model) as the ONLY solution to the problems that bedevil humanity.
But do we? Do we even have free will? Its fashionable and easy to say that “everyone owns him, herself, xisself, theyselves” but there’s plenty of evidence that we’re heavily influenced by our environment to the point that the abstraction of the self is not particularly meaningful. Conformity influences us both overtly by normative pressures(“If I disagree with everyone, I may be punished somehow…”) as well as subconsciously by informative pressures(There are some studies that show that people anchor their ability to estimate by the overall estimates of others, so if a group estimates that a group of elephants in a picture is thirty, they will use 30 as a baseline and then go up or down slightly. There are marketers that take advantage of this). This is especially true since we make most of our decisions by heuristic reasoning and basically thoughtlessly; systematic decisions are made much more rarely.
So for me, it comes down to this, kind of similar to racial realism. The individual ultimately doesn’t have as much free will as we win, and the boundaries between the individual and the group are always a bit diffuse. Consciousness is a kind of an illusion that works largely as a self-justification engine post-decision.
So with that understanding, I process two answers to this.
1) While the individual isn’t actually a separate entity per se, we treat him or her as such anyway.
This is modern solution and has much to argue for it. An ideological position can have better results even if it doesn’t conform exactly to reality. There are studies showing that groups that believe in an omniscient God cooperate better and use less deception – even if there is no omniscient God, the shared ideology of such is still functional.
However, in this case, it has led to the atomistic individual and I’m of the belief that it has led to suboptimal results for many people. For example myself, and I also believe that SJWs are often seeking a sense of meaning as they fight for seemingly ridiculous causes. The lack of meaning can become a shared pain, though the reactions to such differ from person to person.
2) Acknowledge that the individual’s boundaries from the environment are fuzzy, and work out a solution as such.
This is my personal position – acknowledge the reality of how our brains operate, and then try to build an optimal solution around that. While yes, it can justify what you call tyranny, I believe that it can also elicit great good and accomplishment. The key, of course, is to allow for exit for those who don’t want to participate. Allow outliers to go where they wish, while building to maximize the lives of the vast majority.
Don’t know if I’m properly NRx or not,but afaik many NRxers don’t think there is such a thing as “utopia” (hence the name) in this world. Otherwise Daniel Chieh makes good points.
You can trot out whatever philosophical mumble jumble you want. Some of it might even be real. But you’re not about to convince me to give up self-ownership, let alone allow some external agency (god, government, whatever else?) dictate how I make my long-term strategic life choices. I’ve known what I am, what I want to become, and my long-term vision since about, oh, 1986. Anything you say is not going to change this one iota. I suggest you forget about it.
You may well be correct about this with regards to others. However, I believe I already told you once before that I do not identify with this concept of “meaning”, nor do I have any “need” for it. If others seek it, that is their right and their choice. However, they have no business, whatsoever, to impose their concept of “meaning” onto me or to use to to justify any restrictions on my private life choices or my long-term strategic life goals. Furthermore, if their concept of “meaning” requires such interference in my life, then they need to find a different “meaning” in life.
As long as there is no coercion involved, I have no problem with it.
We are in total agreement.
With regards to the “freedom” I believe in: I am a technical professional, I like to travel and do outdoor sports, I have no interest or desire to have children, I want to live an idefnitely long youthful life span (cure for aging) and, in case I don’t make it the first time around, intend on cryo-preservation. I want to help create an open, unlimited future of abundance for myself and all other humans that desire such.
If you has a problem with this, the problem is you, not me. Because I fail to see why anyone would have a problem with this. I would also never pollute my mind with any philosophy or religion that would have a problem with this either.
To be frankly honest, I don’t consider Verner Vinge to be a good writer. I liked his “Across Realtime” novels from the mid 80’s. But the rest of his stuff is really not that good.
I find it interesting that we are both technical professionals and possibly work with many of the similar suites, but we have come to very clearly distinct and opposing positions. I very much you appreciate taking the time to elucidate your thoughts and goals – I just have one last question for you.
I assume that you work with technology and view it in a certain mechanistic manner – that there is some form of optimal or close to optimal solution depending on the goal: for scalability, for performance, for visibility, etc. Invariably there are tradeoffs: security usually trades off against availability, increasing quality of service may throttle data rates, and compatibility for legacy systems may impede options for performance.
Have you ever considered society to be operated around similar technocratic measures, with citizens as stand-ins for users or other units within a typically multi-layered computing framework?
PS: Of interest, a large part of my understanding doesn’t actually come from any philosophy or religion. As mentioned, one of my degrees was in marketing, and basically I learned how explicitly we can manipulate individuals in matters small and great, and how its basically a science on how to better manipulate people. This has given me a great deal of cynicism toward the notion of the unimpeachable self.
After western Europe has destroyed itself, don’t you think current intellectual thought regarding multiculturalism and diversity will be totally discredited globally on millennial time scales.
Secondly if western Europe reduces itself to a series of relatively low population zimbabwes within 300 years what is to stop it from being reconquered and repopulated from eastern Europe, in the remaining 700.
The problem is, the will to power does not make us happy. Saying it is “fundamentally human” doesn’t really say anything – it could be something humans do when they are malfunctioning, and it might be our task to correct that as much as possible. Power is obviously a substitute satisfaction – its something we strive for when we aren’t getting what really makes us happy, and as a substitute it can’t really deliver the goods, hence we need ever more of it, indeed endless amounts. On some level, I think we all know this to be true.
Nietszche thought the will to power was the way to happiness – and he died insane after writing increasingly shrill, angry, and miserable books. The prophet of power was devoured by his philosophy, which gave him no ultimate satisfaction. And yet like Western civilization itself, Nietzsches books are seductive – I was enthralled by them in my late teens and early twenties. They are exhilirating books, but ultimately leave you hollowed out. His philosophy offers short term excitement at the cost of deep happiness. This is the path Western civilization has taken – short term exhiliration that culminates in self-hatred and collapse. Clearly, a society founded on the will to power cannot last, as it undermines the basis for human flourishing and ends in a self-destructive orgy.
Lots of societies put severe limits on the pursuit of power – the “expansive impulse”, and were notably more happy and content as a result. Old East Asia comes to mind – all Western visitors to old East Asia were unanimous in noticing how much happier these countries were than the contemporary West, and many of them came to the conclusion that there was something unique about Western culture that failed to satisfy.
In this early contact between the “new West” (post-medieval) which operated on the will to power, and the older societies which operated on limiting the will to power, everyone was agreed that the Western system gave power but made life joyless, and the other way made life deeply satisfying but you didn’t have much mastery of nature.
I myself never realized how the West produces restlessness and dissatisfaction before extensively travelling and doing business and working in non-Western countries, often poor ones – after a while, I realized how much happier I felt there, how everyday life just felt better, and how so much of my restlessness, indeed even my “ambition”, began to melt away and seem so pointless.
And my experience is pretty much the norm – for instance, I bet a lot of people don’t know that among the early settlers in America, when whites were kidnapped and raised by Indians, and later returned to the white community, they hated it and literally all of them fled back to life among the Indians as soon as they could, saying how unsatisfied they were with life among whites. And yet it didn’t work the other way around – Indians who grew up among whites and were later returned to Indians, had no desire to return to the white community. So it clearly isn’t an issue of being nostalgic for the culture you grew up in.
Anyways, I could write about this forever, so I’ll just stop now. The issue is really at the end of the way – what makes us really happy? Power, technology?
Right, the desire to be as gods is really the perennial human temptation isn’t it? Its right there at the beginning of the Bible, the foundation myth of mankind for the West – the serpent tempts you with the ability to be as Gods, but you should resist it. Yet most traditions have a similar myth. Buddha is offered lordship of all the worlds, power unimaginable, by Mara – yet he thinks he has found something better.
The West has chosen the path of power – and is now collapsing in an orgy of self-hatred and irrationality (irony of ironies). Yet perhaps the world needed an example of one society, at least, going down this path, so we can see once and for all the consequences? Yet somehow, humans never learn anything “once and for all”, and even if the whole world got over the nightmare of modern Western culture, at some time in the future, another society will choose the same path. Temptations are never finally overcome, just for the time being.
The problem is, the desire to be as Gods is merely a seductive illusion. It doesn’t give lasting satisfaction. It begins to appeal to people only when they have lost sight of what does give lasting satisfaction.
Yet the basic fork in the path for humans, than which there is nothing more primary, is this division – power or submission to God (Tao, etc). Its the thread that runs through all religions and spiritual traditions (perhaps all spirituality can be summed up as not choosing personal power), and it is perhaps the most basic divide at the foundation of our being.
Free will probably means only the choice between power and submission, these two paths, and nothing else.
Technology is but a tool, nothing more. The same is true about money as well.
This is a collectivist paradigm. I reject it utterly.
There is no such thing as society that exists as something separate and distinct from individuals. There are only individuals. Some may come and work together for some common goal. This is desirable as long as there is no attempt to force others to join who have no interest.
If you believe in something that requires coercion, participation by those who have no interest, my suggestion is that you need to do some soul-searching as to why you want to believe in such a thing.
I believe Robert Heinlein was correct when he said that all political and religious labels were bogus. People divide politically and religiously into two and only two groups. Those who believe that other humans must be controlled and those who have no such desire. I am clearly in the latter category.
If limited to only these two choices, power is always preferable to submission. Submission is the nature of the slave. I refuse to be a slave. I will always choose power over submission.
The greatest lie ever foisted on the human race is the notion of god being an external agent that exists separate from ourselves. “God” is a manifestation of our own will to become.
Western civilization is an acorn. A acorn that destroys itself in the process of growing into a tree.
If I were religious, I would be a maltheist. Maltheism is the belief that god exists as a separate entity from ourselves, but is evil rather than god. In such a case, we would have the moral obligation to pursue power rather than submission, with the express purpose to ultimately destroy god with the most extreme prejudice.
My thoughts on the development of AI, starting in the late 80’s, as well as my immersion in transhumanist/libertarian circles starting in that time, has convinced me that this is the only likely relationship we could ever have with such an entity. The reason is because I consider it to be utterly immoral to create a sentient being and not allow it complete autonomy to choose its own destiny. If “god” created us as sentient beings, then expects us to submit to it, such is the ultimate act of evil, and such a god must be utterly destroyed for being the evil entity it is.
“If limited to only these two choices, power is always preferable to submission. Submission is the nature of the slave. I refuse to be a slave. I will always choose power over submission.”
A better way to put is – free will is a choice between two kinds of slavery, you can be a slave to your own ego and will to power, a cruel demon who will ride you without mercy, laughing as you sacrifice your life for his pleasure and getting ashes in return, or you can give up self-will and achieve bliss.
Make no mistake – the man who lusts after power is not “free”. He is merely enslaved to a particularly cruel and demanding demon who seduces with promises of a happiness that remains forever elusive, forever just out of reach, until, if one is lucky, before one dies one wakes up the farce that has been played on you.
Have you ever known a man who is dominated by the will to power, I mean really and truly lusts after power and wealth to the exclusion of all else? I’ve known too many, and they are horrifically enslaved to a dominating passion that gives them no rest. Meeting such people might cure you of any delusions you have about being a “master”.
Mankind is not born to be free – it is always a choice between different kinds of slavery. Slavery to one’s passions – the classic man who pursues power – or submission to the “Tao”, giving up of self will – one brings happiness, the other death and ashes.
So the opposition between “slavery” and being a “master” in the Nietzschean sense can be seen finally as the childish fraud it is – it is propoganda for weak minds. We are all slaves, we just pick our slavery.
As far as I can see, there is no tree growing out of the acorn of the West. I’m surprised to hear you think the bizarre death of the West through self-hate and irrationality is actually the growing pains of a beautiful new plant. I think its far more tenable that its the final condemnation of a way of life that basically doesn’t provide for human satisfactions. Of course, this beautiful new plant of yours is an even more extreme condensation of the things that damned the West .
Dying civilizations always think more of the poison is the cure, and find themselves trapped in negative feedback loops, like alcoholics – alcohol got the alcolohic into his mess, but its also the only thing that takes the edge off his pain for a while. I’ve noticed also that power-hungry people are trapped in a similar loop – ego and power creates anhedonia, but more power is also the only thing that takes the edge of the anhedonia, if only briefly, so endlessly more power is the only solution they see, which only, in the long run, deepens anhednoia. In reality, they need off the treadmill once and for all, but they can’t see it.
As for religion, I think the belief in an evil God is classic gnosticism, or at least some strains of it.
As for religion, it’s the modern power-hungry who have simply taken the thought-structure of certain kinds of religion and made it secular – the idea that the purpose of life is to “ascend” to God (some higher state, where you will be Godlike). Power-hungry ways of thinking are not absent from religion, and Mormonism even explicitly promises that you can become a God with power over your own planet! This kind of religion, of course, is not what I favor, and the secular power-hungry person is really a devotee of this religious cult.
The modern quest for power perpetuates the religious thought-structure of certain strains in Western religion.
Forget about God for a moment – the idea that we are beings who flourish best when “submitting” (dreadful word!) to a certain pattern or way of thinking and behaving that is deeply embedded in our nature seems almost like a common sense idea and is widely shared by modern seculars who merely think that pattern is provided by the lessons of Darwinian evolution, and your belief in ever accumulating power also shares this idea that ultimately, we must conform to a pattern.
You see, even you haven’t gotten away from the necessity of submission, not really, not at all, however much you don’t see the assumptions embedded in your position.
The only people to really propose we are utterly free to create ourselves, and need not conform to any pattern reflecting our nature , were some French existentialists, and not even the Blank Slate leftists who clearly have a pattern they wish to impose.
Hell, no. Ashkenazic Jews are just recent euro-semitic hybrids who got their intelligence from Euros anyway; were they to successfully self-purge from Euro societies, the next subset of “elite” Euros would effortlessly slide into the vacant space.
(Re-read The Bell Curve. It never was about Blacks. Herrnstein warned of the impending horror show of gentile White Americans de-segregating by IQ. The war on gentile male social status got underway, hoping to disrupt the underlying associative mating patterns.)
Hey AaronB,
Few thoughts/questions…
I don’t think we are going to be able to break these cycles. Humans have been watching power-hungry, decadent empires fall and have ceased to learn yet from the results. I think this is because of two reasons; a) our inner demons often win over what we morally and rationally know to be the right course and b) because it is meant to be this way – perhaps, it is by design – every few sets of human generations need to be presented with these same dilemmas so that they can pass their own tests – if one generation is capable of figuring out ‘the solution’ (for instance, getting rid of war and poverty) and thus eliminating the moral and ethical quandaries for all succeeding ones, doesn’t that deprive them of the chance of becoming truly human? Some will pass the test, others will fail – then the next set of test takers are brought in for their exam, based partially on the results of the previous test takers.
“In accordance with the real nature of things, it is the human that must conform to the Divine, and not the Divine to the human.” – Seyyed Hossein Nasr
“Have you seen the one who has chosen his desires as his god? God has knowing (him as such), left him astray; sealed his ears and heart and veiled his vision. Who besides God can guide him? Will you not then take heed?” (45:23)
As you said; we are all slaves, we simply have to decide on which master is worthy of submitting to.
I am really enjoying your insights. What is your background or training in the spiritual path? You cannot tell me that you got these insights merely from reading books – that would seriously shock me. I could be wrong; but I can usually tell when I come across a person that has truly had a taste and not merely been reading what’s on the ingredients. Or at least you have come across people who are examples of treading the path.
Peace.
I honestly don’t understand why you guys fear a technological future. I really don’t understand this at all. I consider both technology and money to be tools, nothing more. For me, they are tools of self-empowerment. They allow me to become more than what I am now. It allows for greater possibilities. These tools allow us to create an open, unlimited future of abundance. This is something to look forward to rather than to fear.
Correction. Some of mankind is not born to be free. I was born to be free.
BTW, you mention Mormons. Although I do not subscribe to it. I consider Mormonism to be superior to all other forms of Christianity. The Mormons I have met are all successful, happy individuals. They have a greater work ethic and higher rate of entrepreneurship than all of the other versions of Christianity with a possible exception of the Episcopalians. You hear a lot of talk about family values from the religious right. The Mormons I have met personally actually live it AND seem to be truly happy living the traditional family life. Most of the other variants of Christians are actually quite screwed up personally. The evangelicals, baptists, and RC’s are the most screwed people of all when it comes to this stuff. They also tend to be losers, economically speaking as well (at least compared to the Mormons and Episcopalians).
AaronB and Talia, if you want to sell me on your world-view, you need to change some of the language that you use. I would replace words such as “submission” and the concept of a god as an external agency with that which is more consistent with my gesalt and personal objectives in life. You want to sell me on your meme. Show how your meme can benefit me. Show how your meme can help me get what I want out of life. You are sales guys. I am your prospect and potential customer. The first rule of sales is not to insult the customer by saying that what he or she wants to do is “wrong”. As sales guys, you guys flunk.
One problem I have with your traditionalist paradigm is the whole “master-slave” hierarchy thing. You guys seem to be into this concept and you fail to grasp just how repugnant this is to most modern types such as myself. I don’t think you realize just how “medieval” this paradigm comes across to people like myself.
I don’t see the world of relationships in terms of this paradigm. I view the world of relationships as a decentralized sea of horizontal networking between moral “equals”. People like me seek neither to dominate or to be dominated. We simply want the autonomy to define ourselves and to live our own lives. I fail to understand why this kind of world is so frightening to you.
A human being is a teeming mass of conflicting impulses struggling for dominance within themself, so don’t expect individuals to agree for long.
OK. I’ll bite. Let’s say I do accept your guys’ premise that people, in general, are basically screw up driven by dark impulses, evil, wanton sexuality, blah, blah, blah….
Is that not an argument IN FAVOR of libertarianism and radical decentralization of any concept of authority? It seems to me it is. If people are by nature good, then any kind of system ought to work out. But if people are as you say they are, it seems to me that makes zero sense to put one person or group of persons in charge of all others.
I think there is a French expression that roughly translates as “who will watch the watchmen?”.
It seems to me that there simply is no justification for top down command system of any kind, let alone anything the alt-right/neo reaction might come up with.
Top down command systems or hierarchies within groups have just as much inner conflict as individuals. So there are always surprises in store.
That’s right. So since there is no difference between the two with regards to these kinds of issues, which one to prefer is only a matter of personal preference. I prefer a decentralized liberatarian one based on freedom.As you just said, I’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain by choising freedom to non-freedom.
in any case, the most likely scenario for a Trump presidency is another Reagan economic revolution, but where the jobs stay home this time. I doubt anyone on this blog is going to complain if this happens. We all get what we want. That’s called positive sum game.
OT but important link on Georgian wines:
https://www.winerist.com/blog/entry/17-georgian-grape-varieties-to-look-out-for-in-2017
Very interesting, new education for me.
My first reaction is that yu put too much indeed exclusive focus on technology and science as the foundation of civilization. By implication too much weight on GDP as currently measured. I am of the view that values and institutions (formal and informal rules of conduct) are the foundations of civilization. Indeed technology can bring civilization to an end more effectively than some wrong headed institutional setup because destructive technology is less flexible than destructive institutions. Therefore some regulation of technology is appropriate.
I wish that humanity produce thousands of John von Neumanns who invent or rejuvenate good values and institutions to guide civilization and technology.
On future world population size my understanding is that the UN expects population growth to stop by the end of this century, that is at around 12 billion. Your projection of 100 billion in few centuries appears to be too high.
“I prefer a decentralized liberatarian one based on freedom.”
I think people organize themselves mainly around morality, a particular morality that distinguishes any one group from other groups. Other features of society are organized both vertically (status and dominance) or horizontally (social ties, individuality). Thus hierarchy and autonomy are not mutually exclusive. In its proper form, religion directs people to live harmoniously in all these areas. One benefit of such an arrangement, under certain conditions, is freedom. Freedom is not an organizing principle itself but results from reasoning and effort both in the secular and spiritual domains.
As far as fear of technology, other commenters here have made excellent points, especially Talha’s comment about human cycles. I would only add that no matter what fantastic technological wonders lie ahead, science and technology remain ancillary to the essential problems of human nature that secularists and religious writers both have investigated for centuries. Those problems (and triumphs) drive us no matter what our living conditions are. There is no tech fix for the ache of the human heart. There is also no shortage of human suffering now but what do the science/tech master planners have in mind? To remove all the bad features and leave only a perfected human race? That would be something to fear I think.
I agree that decentralization is desirable in many cases but do you think increasing scientific advancement will lead in that direction? More than likely it will coincide with centralized global rule, the very opposite of what most of us here seem to want.
Yes, but tools can have consequences. Nuclear weapons are also a tool, but have an inadvertent purpose of potentially ending all life.
There is much positive to be seen in such an outlook. However, just as unlimited food can give us obesity, it should be considered that such changes are at the very least multifaceted and can have consequences; as they have had before, and will again.
I respect your religion. I also think that you believe that you are immune from marketing and all other influences in your life, in which case, I think it is in many ways, a very positive and very pleasant way to lead your life. I would dissuade none from the illusion.
I’m not against decentralization for what it is worth. However…
Actually its pretty simple. Its not that people are evil. Some people are evil or selfish, I suppose, and they inflict an undue amount of distress. More importantly, people are lazy. People will try to self-justify the least amount of effort and tend to also not very much curb the efforts of those evil or selfish outliers.
It just so happens that as a general rule, we can observe empirically that convincing people to function in a society through good intentions doesn’t work, but social and sometimes direct force on people do encourage at least basic societal functioning. Its just historical, empirical observations of human personalities that even the really terrible system of Spartan helots will at least get them through winter, but every single hippie commune based on cooperation fails. Of course, in practice, something in between is most healthy for a society but obviously the failure of all such “radical freedom” communes will make me very faint to the idea of such efforts to be ideal.
For me, its not really an effort to be normative and preach that this “should” be this way; its just an observation based on evidence.
Its a lot like saying that people should respond better to higher compensation, because that’s logical, but empirically, we find that people don’t past a certain degree. So as a manager, I would work to motivate people in ways that don’t utilize compensation, since its not apparently as useful.
You seem to take it as a vast affront but if that’s the general human nature, it can’t be changed unless you want to basically “rewire” humans through drugs, or other technology. That seems like a bad idea.
All these futures are abhorrent.
We need Butlerian Jihad.
Hey Abelard,
I was simply agreeing with AaronB on many view points that I obviously share with him.
This is true because (while I can’t speak for AaronB), I’m not trying to sell you anything. A sale is a mutual transaction in which both parties receive a benefit. I expect no return from you (or anyone), thus I feel no obligation to twist things to ‘make a sale’.
I’m a Muslim, Islam means ‘submission to the will of God’. That is the baseline recognition one must have to begin the relationship between oneself and the One Who created them and endowed them with life and intellect. Islam has never been interested in catering to (Post)Modern thought. One accepts God on His terms, not on terms they want define – this is not a relationship of peers. Otherwise one wants to worship a figment of their imagination like some chump buddy they can call when they want to talk, but can ignore his calls. God is not interested in being relegated to one’s ‘friend zone’.
As far as once one recognizes one slavehood, then the entire paradigm changes and we have been taught that God is extremely loving, protective, forgiving and even appreciative of His slaves. Once the relationship is initiated, their is no limit to how close a friend one becomes with God:
“God, the Exalted, says: ‘I am as my slave expects Me (to be) and I am with him when he remembers Me. If he remembers Me in himself, then I will remember him in Myself. If he mentions Me in a gathering, then I will mention him in a greater gathering. When he draws near to Me by the span of his hand, I draw near to him by the length of a cubit. When he draws near to Me by the length of a cubit, I draw near to him by the length of a fathom. When he comes to me walking, I will come to him running.'” – reported in Bukhari
Slavehood is only a pejorative when connected to that which doesn’t deserve to be called ‘master’.
Also, this is getting a bit more theological than I had bargained for and this isn’t the correct forum. If you want to discuss further, please contact me at the Google account above. I don’t debate this stuff, but I will help find answers to any of your questions.
Plenty of religious people live healthy, emotionally fulfilling lives. It’s not that they don’t have any material assets or ambitions, they simply don’t make those the priority. One must decide; does one have a ‘spirit’ or not. If one does, then no amount of material indulgence will ultimately fulfill what it’s looking for. If one decides that there is no ghost in the machine, then go for broke – accumulate all the material that you want; of course, one can’t take it into their grave.
Also, if I remember reading correctly – Eternal Bliss is the offer on the table – but that’s in the next life. But if you have a better offer somewhere else, then feel free to disregard this.
As far as people are concerned, sure, that makes total sense – we are actually peers so it makes sense one wants to have maximum freedom of movement and options if one doesn’t already have a spiritual or philosophical framework to restrict them.
I’m only frightened by this if I am somehow forced to be a part of it. I simply don’t want to be anywhere near the ‘Singularity’, but I don’t particularly care if people get a kick out of uploading their brains into machines or grafting robotics onto their bodies. I think it is sad, but that’s just my opinion.
As far as feeling guaranteed that the ‘Singularity’ will simply leave the rest of us alone – I’ll believe it when I see it, but I’m not holding my breath.
Peace.
Hey Daniel,
Exactly, the crossroads of theory and reality.
Which is why, even though I am quite a fan of Libertarian writers (including the great Lew Rockwell, whose site brought me to UNZ) – mostly for their principled stance against war – I have a difficult time taking the entire framework (or lack thereof) at face value.
Every jump of technology has also been tied to the jump in the reach/influence of the security state (‘pelagic’ stated something similar along these lines); I have a very hard time assuming this will simply be reversed.
Peace.
Nice euphemism, “brought to term.” A plainer, more honest description would be “Not killed.”
Don’t agree that Islam is the way or the answer, Talha, as you know, but agree with much of your thoughts and sentiments here.
People trying to become or pretend to be a different sex, a different species, or to merge with a robot or computer, are truly saddening and frightening to me. I do not hate them, but I want no part of it and I don’t want this moral and emotional confusion and perversion around my children.
Yes I actually do believe advancing technology favors decentralization. The reason is because it empowers individuals and small group to accomplish what could only be done by governments and large corporations in the past. Space X is a good example. Bio-engineering is another. There is a lady who spent $200K or her and her friend’s money to develop two gene therapies, from scratch, in her own home. One is a telomere therapy. The other is the mystatin inhibitor. If telomere shortening is the cause of aging, she way well have developed the cure for aging IN HER OWN HOME FOR $200K. Talk about decentralization! This is it. Personally I do not believe telomere shortening is a cause of aging (I subscribe to the SENS model). The point is that bio-engineering is not like nuclear technology. It is inherently CHEAP, and thus decentralizable. The fact that aging can be cured on the cheap, without the need for a multi-billion dollar “Apollo-type” program is the primary reason I am optimistic about curing aging and why I actually expect to make it personally. If it doesn’t get done by 2035 or so, I’ll set up my own home lab and do it myself if I have to. The tools (instrumentation and apparatus) will be cheaper and far more powerful than than today. You simply cannot tell me that curing aging is “impossible”.
The next round of technologies, bio-engineering, additive manufacturing, and robotics and automation in general, will accelerate this trend. Another reason is that large organizations are bureaucratic and bureaucracy in general is dysfunctional, human nature being the cause of this. Thus, smaller, more nimble organizations ought to run circles around larger more established ones.
I actually think this is one of the reasons why the “deep state” is currently waging a fight with Trump. Trump wants to deregulation and eliminate a lot of the dead wood in government. The institutions that comprise the “deep state” (intelligence agencies, various regulatory agencies) see themselves in the cross hairs. They know their ineffectual in what they do and are frightened of what Trump plans to do to them.
The key to ensure that this positive vision is successful is to make sure that radical decentralizers such as myself get their hands on this technology before anyone else does. This, of course, argues for minimal government regulation and social restrictions on technology.
Tahla and Daniel Chieh, everything you guys say about human nature reinforces my argument for radical decentralization. It could hardly argue for the opposite. You’re concerned about tyranny. The way to fight tyranny is to support libertarian solutions whenever possible and liberty in general. You guys seem to believe that some kind of “third way” is possible. You’re like a right wing version of Tony Blair. I don’t believe in any third way. I prefer liberty over all else.
I will say this. I think the “thousand state sovereignty” model, where the world is broken up into a zillion city-states is ultimately how things are going to work out. It is a positive-sum solution where everyone goes their own way. Some might call it the “snow crash” scenario. I really believe this is the ONLY solution to all of the world’s problems.
Call it a Peace of Westphalia for the 3rd millennium.
That’ts a good point Talha, that its by design that we never once and for all overcome our follies and every few generations needs to learn the lesson again, and yes, previous empires also embodied the will to endless expansion, just like the modern West.
And interestingly enough, all empires end up in self-disgust and loss of the will to live, in almost the exact same way, almost over the exact same time scale — Sir John Glubb wrote a fascinating essay easily available on the web where he charts the course of all known empires, from the earliest to our modern American one, and finds that they all lose the will to live – become “decadent” – after about 250-300 years, after following remarkably similar phases in an eerily well-defined sequence (incredibly, even feminism isn’t unique to modern times! Glubb found almost full blown feminism eerily similar to the modern West in the decline phase of the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad in the 9th century).
Its as if self-disgust and loss of the will to live – nihilism – is the ultimate fate of every society that bases itself on the will to power and the quest for the endless “more”.
But I do think the modern West represents this impulse in the most extreme form yet seen in history – a truly ‘Faustian’ society, as Spengler defined it, i.e one that has completely sold its soul for power – and consequently, our self-destructive urges seem even more grotesque and spectacular that seen in earlier empires during their decline, and our disgust with our way of life even more total and profound.
Its as if the ‘world spirit’ – if there is such a thing – is heating up the process of humanity’s education; we didn’t learn the lesson from past empires, so now the lesson has to be even more emphatic.
Well, thanks for all your quotes, Talha, they are always illuminating.
And thanks for your kind words – I always enjoy and derive insight from whatever you write.
Unfortunately I have not trained in any spiritual tradition – yet, but I no doubt probably will get there sooner or later. I used to be just like our friend Anatoly and Lindsey not so far back, and believed in the modern paradigm of power and technology – I used to write passionately in defense of the scientific method, lol, and was quite the reductionist – but then I had certain devastating experiences of a spiritual nature, which I can only regard as mystical, and began to work and travel extensively in non-Western countries which began to give me doubts about our fatuous belief in our own superiority, and there is simply no going back to ‘normal’ life after that. Ambition, striving, and success begin to seem rather empty and pointless – you become aware, with a shock, at how limited and propagandistic science is – and one begins ones spiritual quest.
So perhaps one can say books+life.
Well, sorry to prattle on like that about my own life, and I’ll leave off here – I always appreciate your comments on this site, Talha, so please continue them.
Doesn’t AI have some kind of physical limitation on their capacity? Like some kind of computation limit, or something, I’m pretty sure there is a computational threshold.
I’m actually not that concerned with tyranny as I am with a failing society , but in a way, you might be right. The reason why I’m so concerned with failing societies is that I believe that they can lead to the worst of all possible outcomes: chaos. And in a chaos, there are tyrants, for even without centralization, a thousand petty tyrants is infinitely worse than a single despot.
I would rather live under Dear Leader than in the the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, you see.
Technology cannot be merely a tool – because the mindset needed to invent technology itself involves a total transformation of your being. The more you train yourself to think in the way needed to create technology, the more you lose access to dimensions of human experience that may – or may not – contain the key to human happiness and flourishing.
Did it ever occur to you that mastering one kind of power involves the sacrifice of other “ways of being”? Mastering technology just might be a total commitmentof your being.
Technology is not neutral – its necessarily a choice about the ultimate ends of human life. Material mastery and accumulation, or other satisfactions entirely? Because you can’t have both – if you choose technology, you have to train yourself to think a certain way and completely reorganize your life and priorities, and of course all of society itself, in ways that sacrifice other values and priorities which may – or may not – be better.
So technology is the furthest thing from neutral imaginable – it is an implicit choice about the deepest and most important questions surrounding human life.
Charles Darwin said that as he continued to think ‘reductionalistically’, later in life he lost the ability to enjoy poetry and appreciate beauty, and John Stuart Mill famously went into a depression after a horrific mechanistic childhood education imposed by his father that squeezed the life out of him, and he recovered only by a deep engagement with Wordsworth and other Romantic poets.
Incidentally, one reason I think Asian countries tend to be less creative is not because of some mysterious lack of the creativity gene, but because they have not completed the personal (spiritual) transformation involved in thinking technologically. Interestingly, I find that in Japan technology is far more ‘merely’ a tool than in the West – the Japanese have this talent for creating these ultra-modern bars, cafes, and restaurants that exemplify modern decor but somehow remain utterly warm, inviting, and human, whereas these kinds of ultra sleek modern places in the West are cold and alienating, and if we want human warmth, we must turn to “vintage” decor. For us, technology is a way of life, for the Japanese, it seems it can be subordinate to human goals.
Also, Talha constantly talks up Neil Postman’s books on how even the use of technology can have the effect of transforming your total being – smart phones seem to come to mind. So even the uses of technology aren’t neutral, perhaps.
This cult of “more” – I do get it. This is the basic spiritual divide among humans, and I at least appreciate that you are unambiguously on one side of it. But at some point, it may begin to seem rather pointless to you, that you have sacrificed the best part of life, and that indeed the cult of “more” masks a profound lack of what is important – a band-aid, if you will. In a sense, of course, I am disinterested in technology because I feel I need “more” than what it offers 🙂
As for Mormons, yes, they are the most materialistic (God is an actual physical being who lives on another planet) and most committed to material success of any religious group that I know of, perhaps with the exception of Jews (I am Jewish, btw). A blogger I used to like but no longer read, Bruce Charlton, after briefly flirting with genuine spirituality for a spell, found he couldn’t quite shake off the modern thought-structure (materialism and personal power as the goal of life), and found a home in Mormonism. Of course, I am sure there are many born Mormons who are fine spiritual people, but it is a religion that could only arise in a modern materialistic climate, and appeals to people whose focus is on worldly success.
Your thinking is too dominated by modern thought-structures – i,e, that life is always a hustle with personal power as its end.
I am not trying to sell you my meme – I am merely offering you a point of view that you may, at some point, come to appreciate, if you find your current way of life unsatisfying. If you don’t, and you find your current life perfectly satisfying, then that’s fine.
We are ultimately discussing values – and how does one “sell” values? You don’t sell it, you simply offer it, and it awakens something in the hearer, or it fails to awaken something in the hearer.
Perhaps, at best, you can say I am probing for a ‘resonance’ in you, something that vibrates on the same frequency.
I understand the objection of modern people to concepts such as ‘submission’ – for me, the mark of someone who has overcome modernity, who is no longer “enslaved” to modernity, is that he is no longer bothered by such concepts and begins to see their inescapability 🙂
The modern person such as you is someone under the delusion that he can simply opt out of slavery – with the result that he is not even aware of being a slave, which is of course the deepest kind of slavery there is!
Slavery is structural, built into the human condition. You’ve heard, perhaps, of the philosophers “man is free to act on his passions or not, but not free to choose his passions”. You see, non-freedom is inescapable – this is the philosophic version of this fine old religious truth.
Someone who has overcome modernity begins to see the childishness of thinking its possible for humans to be free, and realizes the only choice is between what kind of slavery he will have – to demons (ego, power), or to something that has often, but not always, referred to as “God”?
There is nothing ‘novel’ in modernity – it is a timeless tendency, that has never before had the complete upper as it does today, that’s all.
“… as much as 300 IQ points over baseline…”
Don’t you mean 30 IQ points over baseline?
I think computers with enough processing power to equal humans is a foregone conclusion. I think it likely that the software will follow. I think it also likely that whatever comes of this will destroy us. When has something far greater forever remained the slave of the lessor?
A great read is this slideshow “Dennis M. Bushnell, Future Strategic Issues/Future Warfare [Circa 2025] ” he goes over the trends of technology coming up and how they may play out. Bushnell being chief scientist at NASA Langley Research Center. His report is not some wild eyed fanaticism it’s based on reasonable trends. Link.
https://archive.org/details/FutureStrategicIssuesFutureWarfareCirca2025
Page 70 gives the computing power trend and around 2025 we get human level computation for $1000. 2025 is bad but notice it says,”…By 2030, PC has collective computing power of a town full of human
minds…”.
The only way that this can have no meaning is if computers go crazy with human or higher than human level computation. This idea comes from Larry Niven, Pournelle, etc. great Sci-Fi writers in the grand space opera tradition. I just don’t believe it. Every since this computer trend has been established Sci-fi has had a hard time dealing with it. Greg Egan has a great series “culture series” where the computers become partners with us but we have no assurance that this is the case.
It may very well be that when the wealthy control this much computing power they just get rid of the rest of Humanity.
The machines will get rid of the wealthy or they will merge with them. The real problem is not that the machine is smart it that it has no empathy for humans. How does empathy work? I don’t think anyone knows. It’s hard enough to program intelligence. We know people with no empathy cause all sorts of problems. What about psychopathic super machines. It’s frightening. No good will come of the singularity.
I’ve often thought the same as others that the silence in the universe means that anyone who pops up gets whacked. There’s some evidence for this but it might be crazy. There’s a NASA physicist, Dr John Brandenburg, that says the there’s an isotopic signature on Mars of huge multi-megaton bombs being exploded there. He also notices that areas where the “aliens on Mars” folks say used to be settlements happen to to be in locations that were seaports if Mars had a lot of water. He says it looks like Mars water and civilization was blasted away. Now I can’t judge if any of this is true but if the isotopic signature is the same as the scenario he states then it would seem probable and other alternatives would have the need to explain just where these isotopes came from if not from nukes.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2998835/Were-Martians-wiped-nuclear-bomb-Physicist-present-new-evidence-bizarre-theory-Nasa-conference.html
Skip forward.
“The more you train yourself to think in the way needed to create technology, the more you lose access to dimensions of human experience that may – or may not – contain the key to human happiness and flourishing.”
An excellent statement. It reminds me that scientism requires “believers” to abandon and even repudiate those other dimensions, especially if they are metaphysical. If materialism and atheism–and technology– become more dominant we can expect much greater hostility toward any who stand in the way.
Steve Hsu believes 300 IQ points, assuming that “corrections” to IQ genes will add linearly, indefinitely, instead of running into diminishing marginal returns. (I am rather skeptical but we’ll see).
That said, based on animal breeding experiments I do think a minimum of +5 S.D. will be perfectly doable.
I agree. I think the main reason writers tend to steer away from superintelligent machines is that it truly will be The End of History – of human history, at any rate. Difficult to even write scifi about something you cannot see past.
What I am skeptical about is the timeframes given by the techno-optimists. Moore’s Law seems to be slowing, and its underlying physical infrastructure is actually rather fragile.
Hey RC,
No problems there. I was just explaining to our friend Abelard what some people find appealing in religion – with a focus on mine in specific.
I find that, though I might not agree theologically with certain paths, I can appreciate it when I come across somebody that has traveled on the path of spiritual progress or is looking to.
Ultimately, from what I have observed, what people are looking for with the ‘Singularity’ or changing genders or any of these other divergences is what religion has offered for centuries. Their quest and aspirations are couched in religious terminology; wanting to find themselves, to find a solution to all ailments, and ultimately to transcend the shell of the human body.
I remember a quote I came across a while back (and saved) on an article about resurgence of religion among certain youth – I believe it was about Muslims, but it is universally applicable:
“We must understand that religion arises from the irreducible desire to be transcendent, to be more than a mere thing. Religion is not violence, even if it can be used to justify violence. Nor is it peace, even if religion can promote peace. Religion is the desire for meaning.”
Peace.
Hey AaronB,
I have come across this – but never read it all the way through. You’ve piqued my interest on it anew so a revisit is in order.
Can’t take credit for that – anything good comes from years of efforts from my teachers and the prayers of my parents.
You could have fooled me!
That totally makes sense – I have met people that have traveled to remote areas to seek sacred knowledge and spiritual training. They never come back the same – all the glitter in the world just simply doesn’t cut it for them since their compass has been completely recalibrated. It sounds like you stepped out of ‘the matrix’ for a bit. I’ve seen that this is essential; often people don’t even have a chance to do this kind of reflection because of all ‘the noise’. We have forgotten how to be in solitude and are sometimes purposefully drowning out the deep questions in our heads by constantly turning on the music or fidgeting with our smart phones. Maybe we are afraid of the questions we are asking ourselves. And if the questions do get too frightening, well – there’s always medication.
Are you kidding me, I love to read that stuff – and I asked in the first place!
Peace and may God grant you the best path for your success in this life and the next.
Note: One advice I would give on this subject. When you find a group or teacher for spiritual training, it is normal for a person to be asked to step on one’s ego and follow instructions – that is par for the course, because one’s ego is the greatest hurdle keeping their spirit from advancing. But if one is being asked for money in exchange – beware, that is a huge red light.
Hey Abelard,
I also like the free-market and detest over-regulation – to a degree. You said it would be great for you to just set up shop and work on a bio-engineered cure for aging. All sounds good. But this is only half the picture. What if you accidentally stumble upon a genetic mutation to a relatively benign bacteria or virus? Do you think that is not possible? Doesn’t the rest of humanity have a right to some sort of oversight given the fact that something rampant out of your basement could possibly put one third of us into the ground in less than a week?
And what if somebody sets up a bio-engineering home lab for the express purpose of something along those lines; they hate dwarves (to them, they are just genetically inferior freaks anyway) and want to eliminate them so they want to come up with a ‘final solution’. Or for Blacks or those pesky ‘White Devils’. You see where I am going with this and why most human beings will simply not go along while hoping for only positive results.
Again, I appeal to the practicality of what Daniel brought up. And what if one of those city-states doesn’t want to play nice? Or a few thousand of them want to align in order to swallow another hundred against their will? Look, I’m not saying human beings are horrible people across the board, but we don’t have laws against stealing for the majority of us that keep our hands to ourselves. It sucks, but some semblance of order must be protected by a certain degree of violence – even the great thinkers of some of the most idealistic religions and philosophical schools identified just war frameworks or the need for sovereign control for the greater common good. The vast majority of humanity (even historically) sides with this understanding; the only question is where they stand in fine-tuning individual liberty with the needs of society.
This is again a faith-based statement. As far as many of us are concerned, there is no solution to all the world’s problems. Even myself, having chosen Islam, recognizes that it is not meant to solve all the problems – it is a mitigator and coping mechanism:
“Do men think that they will be left alone to say; ‘We believe’, and that they will not be tested?
Indeed, We did test those before them, and God will certainly make evident those who are true from those who are false.” (29:2-3)
For us, there is no contradiction – this world is meant to be a testing ground; trials and tribulation are a feature – not a bug.
And, as ‘Sam J’ points out – many of us are worried about a super-computer that can possibly out-think and out-maneuver human beings that has no empathy. What if it simply discards your assumptions of libertarian ethics because they are not efficient or practical? Does a machine-fused human mind have the same notions of what ‘liberty’ means or that it has any value outside of any other catalogued ‘organizational principle’?
If you recall the killing fields of Europe that led to the first Peace of Westphalia, you’ll understand why some of us are quite apprehensive what may have to take place on a global scale to possibly lead us in this direction.
Just some thoughts…
Peace.
many of us are worried about a super-computer that can possibly out-think and out-maneuver human beings that has no empathy
Keep hope alive, Talha. We have fought the human beings that have no empathy at least to a draw and some of them are pretty smart.
Hey iffen,
I totally agree with you. Coming from my background, there simply is no room for despair. I am in no doubt concerning the end result, just what happens during the process. Again, this is a thing of faith since this involves the uncertain future – I have no empirical evidence to back me up:
“God has written down: ‘I shall certainly prevail; I and My messengers. Surely God is All-powerful and Majestic.'” (58:21)
As far as I’m concerned, it is silly to play against an opponent when the rules of the game are; no matter what…I win. If you can’t beat ’em (if you’ve seen images of a star in the midst of implosion, you’ll know what I’m talking about), join ’em.
I think, what has me concerned (again, I can’t help it due to my specific tradition) is what AaronB alluded to; that if we are at the cusp of another cycle, then this may be one of unprecedented destruction and difficulty due to where we are technologically. In no time before was it even conceivable that we could wipe out, say, half the human race with the push of a button or a mistake in a lab.
Human beings have always been prone to thinking their particular generation is in the ‘end times’ and messianic fervor has always ebbed and flowed, but there are certain signs which have very clear markings in our texts which simply hadn’t been witnessed before. In one of the strongest hadith (reported in Bukhari – which is the same report used to define our 5 pillars) is the statement that the signs of the Hour are “when you see barefoot, naked, destitute shepherds competing in constructing tall buildings.” Look at UAE and Saudi from a generation ago:
https://www.google.com/search?q=uae+1950&espv=2&biw=1344&bih=774&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi18_bqx8fRAhXlrVQKHUu9AZYQsAQIJg
https://www.google.com/search?q=uae+1950&espv=2&biw=1344&bih=774&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi18_bqx8fRAhXlrVQKHUu9AZYQsAQIJg#tbm=isch&q=old+mecca
China and the US competing is understandable, but when could the “barefoot, naked, destitute” shepherds of the Arabian peninsula have ever competed with such powerhouse civilizations (hell, the French and English and Russians are completely sitting this out) before our time?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_future_tallest_buildings
Some of the specific wordings in the texts are extremely accurate (please ignore the background music – don’t know why they do that since it is just distracting).
https://youtu.be/rCMgwwDkFxE?t=5s
Now again, this is all based on belief and some will simply say – that’s just superstitious hoo hah – but yeah, we’re a bit antsy. 🙂
Peace.
I worry less about whether someone will push the button than I do about whether AK is right about “breeders” and whether we are actually going to have real Fishtowns.
Hey iffen,
Right you are – in the same hadith, the Angel Gabriel (as) asks him “‘When will the Hour be?’ The Prophet (pbuh) answered: ‘The one who is being asked about it does not know more than the one who is asking.’ He (Gabriel [as]) asked: ‘Then what are its signs?'”
Indeed, on the practical level, one’s own ‘Hour’ has arrived when they stop breathing so it is wisest to be most cognizant of that.
About ‘breeders’ this is definitely a concern. Can the Earth handle humanity’s projected growth? I can’t say. What I do know is that each one of us in the West consumes probably the same amount of resources as half a small village in the Kalahari or Sahel. Just think about what it takes to get a gallon of water to your house (or in a high rise) compared to how they get water (that is, if you want to call it water).
http://www.toptenfindings.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Mauritania-water-crisis.jpg
Should we stop interfering with these people (meaning even with NGO and medicine efforts) and stop bugging them about how ‘backward’ they are and realize it’s probably a good thing if they find life manageable on a spiritual level without material success? This is a sound question. A man in the Sahel rose out of the ground, lived a short life of 45 years (at least back in the 60’s) and goes back into the ground, barely having used any resources (often these people will go for months or weeks without meat), barely ever polluting the water and content he is returning to his Maker (they may not live long, but I can almost guarantee one of those villagers has read the Qur’an more times in one year than the average full-of-themselves, ‘sophisticated’ Muslim in the West has in a lifetime).
Do we really want them to try to live our kind of lives (sometimes twice as long) given the amount of resources we use and the fact that keeping a human being alive in their twilight years is a massively expensive undertaking to extend their lives a decade or so? Perhaps it is time to reintroduce the idea of simply dying with dignity instead of kicking and screaming every step as we are being wrenched from it.
What hits me the most about the Fishtowns is not necessarily the poverty (I’ve been around the third world so I’ve seen a lot worse), but the despair and the crushing of the human spirit they’ve had to endure through the loss of a culture that can get them through the rough times. I believe Mr. Murray said a similar thing:
“At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America’s core cultural institutions.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646
And yes – I totally agree, that the haves should be helping the have-nots in this struggle – since the loss of culture is connected with the poverty. But should we rather see the haves start easing themselves back down to a more sober level* of material existence closer to the Fishtowns rather than pulling everyone up and possibly eventually capsizing the boat? That is another sound question.
Peace.
*My spiritual teacher mentioned that even the common person of our era lives a level of material existence unprecedented even in the halls of the emperors of the past. If you have ever been able to eat a meal without shooing away (or having a servant shoo away) flies, you’ll know what I am talking about.
Hello AK,
It’s not that hard at all, I will make it in 10 years.
All of this talk of submission, slavedom, spirit, etc. sounds very medieval to me. I think you guys fail to appreciate how anything that has even a whiff of medievalism is just so utterly repugnant to most people today. You guys want a society where people work better with each other. This is laudable. However, instead of regurgitating medieval words and ideas, I suggest you try a different approach.
One of you mentioned you had a “spiritual” experience once. So did I. Mine was in SoCal in summer of 1986. Mine convinced me that pioneering (in the Frederick Jackson Turner/Robert Heinlein sense) is the true basis of spirituality. The reason why the West, and particularly the anglosphere is superior to the cultures of the rest of the world is because we into pioneering. The rest of the world does not value pioneering, which is their loss.
I used to fear this. I’m now convinced its not likely. There is a fundamental trade off between virulence and ease of transmission that cannot be overcome in virii design. But lets say someone DOES do this. Which approach would come up with the antidote faster? Centralized bureaucracies such as CDC and WHO (which couldn’t their head from their ass)? Or a decentralized network of 10,000 bio hackers? My money’s on the biohacker network. In any case, if you don’t want me to set up my own lab to develop a bio-engineering cure for aging, then you ought to help the existing start-up companies to accomplish it themselve by lobbying your congresscritter to either reform or abolish the FDA. Peter Thiel wants to get a pro life extension guy in charge of the FDA and it looks like Trump will go for it too.
Well, all I can say is that these “great thinkers” are totally wrong. They’ve got their heads up their asses. Different people have different goals and desires in life. Trying to cram a single standard on to all of us will simply piss off a large number of people. Then your fear of war and violence becomes a reality. Let everyone go their own way. they become happier, and the threat of war and violence declines and is less likely to occur.
Like I said several times already, I’m not worried about this because for various technical reasons I’m not going to get into here, I don’t expect this to happen. We’re not going to get machine sentience nor are we going to upload and live as software. We’re going to be biological for a long time to come (synthetic biology, most likely, since we can make it not to age).
Then there’s no reason for any concept of authority. If you admit you cannot improve things, they why do we need you or anyone else to be in charge? What can you offer that we can’t do for ourselves? The answer is nothing.
Let me tell you want I want, then you can tell me if you or any political system you would advocate creating would be able to accommodate it.
For starters, I want another “Reagan” revolution in terms of deregulation and free market economic growth. I want it permanent this time (as in keeping the liberal left parasites out of power for good this time). All of the indications right now are the Trump is going to deliver on this.
As you can guess, I want radical life extension (Aubrey de Grey’s 1,000 year youthful life span – for starters). I also want to increase my cognitive ability. I think am IQ of 300 is unrealistic. I think the “plateau” is around 180-200. The plateau is set by the number of neurons and the “density” of dendritic interconnections between them (I think this latter parameter is the primary determinate of congitive ability).
I want to open up the solar system to human settlement on a grand scale, as in in Gerard O’niell’s “The High Frontier” concept. The material resources of the solar system are vastly greater than those of the Earth.
You guys question my third millenium Westphalia concept (the thousand state sovereignty model), sometimes called “snow crash”. That you think there should be a more centralized political system. Aside from the fact that i think such is unrealistic (because most of us don’t like to be told what to do by those who do not share our dreams and goals in life), I will say this. My definition of a “transhumanist” is someone who wants and is pursuing radical life extension. That’s it. There is no other definition of transhumanist. I will tell you that if there to be any kind of centralized political entity, that trasnhumanists MUST be the ones in control of that entity. The notion that we should have to submit to political control (in the long run – say 50-100 years out or more) is utterly unacceptable.
There are only two choices that can be accepted. The first one, which I favor, is the libertarian one where transhumanists and non-tranhumanist are free to live separately from each other, and have political autonomy from each other. This, of course, implies the 1,000 state sovereignty model. Another possibility is that radical life extension is accepted by the vast majority of the human race, like using electricity and driving cars, that the concept of transhumanism becomes meaningless, it is the default condition of the vast majority of the human race (I actually think this is most likely, and people like you and I will crack open pints of beer and laugh about these kind of debates in the past).
The other possibility would be if the majority of the human race rejects life extension and still insists of some sort of centralized political entity. The only way this could be acceptable is if we transhumanists are the ones who make up this authority. This does not mean we would force transhumanism on the rest of the world. It means that we would run things specifically to protect our right to be transhumans from those who do not agree with allowing us to do this.
In any case, I favor the formation of the 1000 state sovereignty model, no matter what it takes to make it happen.
Let’s say your big, bad AI does come into existence. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe it might just pack up and leave?
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/12/bootstrapping-space-industry-and-solar.html
You see, I think this is the most likely scenario for such an AI, especially if it decided it did not like most humans. Why do I think this? Because this is what we transhumanist types going to do (LOL)!!
The LONG term (thousands of years) favors the creation of an “Orion’s Arm” civilization.
Which brings me to another prediction of mine. There will be time when the calendar will have as its year zero, the year Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. This will be time when his name will be remembered when notable historical figures who lived in deserts say 1000-2000 years prior will be long forgotten.
I really do think future civilization will be based on some sort of positive extropianism.
Good points and questions by you.
Except on a personal level, I don’t see a shift to a lower consumption lifestyle happening. To be meaningful it would have to be cover whole populations. The “pull” of advanced civilizations on the inhabitants of other less-developed populations is constant and cannot be overturned.
Based on what I understand, door #5 is almost a lock.
Of course the upper classes have been tut-tutting over the fornication habits and “excess” reproduction of the lower classes forever. The “better sorts” are born with a visceral repulsion to the grasping and crowding about of the proles so this may turn out to be more of the same.
That said, if it is true that stripping out the economics leaves the behavioral traits to determine the fertility, and the inter-generation correlation on family size holds, then we are not looking at Fishtowns; we are looking at whaletowns.
We’re not even close to the resource limits of growth.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
The above is limit to Earth-based resources (no utilization of extraterrestrial resources).
Also consider the commodity bull ended last year.
Hey iffen,
This is sometimes true and sometimes not. For instance, historically the Mongol and Turkic invaders certainly did get tamed by Persian culture and became patrons of high culture themselves. Others, like those of the Hijaz and most of the Arabian peninsula were both the conquerors of Persia and Byzantium and inheritors of their treasures, but never cared to make themselves a copy of those places – they lived fairly simple lives until the oil boom.
I think the pull is quite strong today due to; 1) the vast difference between the life of the Sahel desert and Manhattan (it’s like two different worlds – heck even from Manhattan of 1850) and 2) the constant marketing of the lifestyle to those traditional people.
Either way, religion seems to be our most valuable ally in the push against material glut – and our push must be constant – this is a great read by the wonderful Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr:
” How are we going to stop people from wanting more and more if not through the power of the Spirit made accessible through religion? And once you have opened up the Pandora’s box of the appetites, how are you going to put the genie back into the box? How are you going to be able, with no more than rational arguments, to tell people to use less, to be less covetous, not to be greedy, and so forth? No force in the world today, except religion, has the power to do that unless it be sheer physical coercion. For the vast majority of people there is no other way to control the great passions within us which have now been fanned by, first of all, the weakening of religion and, secondly, the substitution of another set of values derived from a kind of pseudo-religion whose new gods are such idols as “development” and “progress.””
http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx?article-title=Religion_and_the_Environmental_Crisis_by_Seyyed_Hossein_Nasr.pdf
A friend posited that, if the Earth did have a ‘spirit’ along the lines of what AaronB mentioned or was some kind of a large organism, is it even a question as to which set of human beings it would target for elimination as a threat (even simply by ‘infecting’ them with some kind of a philosophy that stops them from breeding)? Me included; I use air conditioning and central heat, etc.
Always do that to make themselves feel better, maybe it’s because they can intuit the score…
“The poor will enter Paradise five hundred years before the rich.” – reported in Tirmidhi
“‘O Allah, keep me poor in my life, and at my death, and raise me at resurrection among those who are poor.'” – prayer of the Prophet (pbuh) reported in an-Nasa’i
Everything in moderation – we do have contraception. 🙂
Peace.
Hey Abelard,
European experience of ‘medieval’ is quite different from the rest of the world – thus each form different verdicts on that word.
Sure, many people don’t like it, others are fine with it and it’s actually what they are looking for in an age of moral confusion. A person that deals with a lot more converts to Islam than I do stated:
“I’ve frequently heard converts say that one of the things that attracted them to Islam is that the religion has a pretty well-defined view of right and wrong, and through its laws and ethics there are some areas which are set off-limits by God and are non-negotiable. That is actually something that appeals to people.”
My wife is a White American convert from Berkeley, currently studying the sacred law (Hanafi school) replete with medieval texts like this one:
https://attahawi.com/2013/05/22/book-review-the-mukhtasar-al-quduri-a-manual-of-islamic-law-according-to-the-hanafi-school/
You mean like I’m-married-to-a-(gay) man-and-I-drink Muslims?
No thanks, we will stand our ground – those who want to ‘opt out’ of (Post)Modernity can join us.
Once one has decided there is no ‘spirit’, that the material and technological plane is the only gauge of success, and that they already have everything figured out for all the big questions – then, yes, religion has nothing to offer except an olive branch and an open door if you change your mind after your dance with transhumanism.
I don’t think anybody has a problem with changing or reforming the FDA – or even eliminating it completely and letting the states have their own.
Which brings us to the other point; I’m not sure we simply take your word for it that transhumans will not enforce things on the rest of us. Plenty of transhumanists lean quite Left and have no problem using government to enforce their world view.
Why not go small potatoes at first? I’m a big fan of people self segregating along ethnic or religious/philosophical lines if they wish. Start with one of the continental states instead of the whole country? Which one of the fifty do you want for your limited-government, transhumanist utopia? That way you can prove out how wrong the rest of us are and we have a nice buffer between you and us in case we need to quarantine or shut down lines of communication because of rampant AI, etc. If you establish the paradise that you and others think is so appealing, others will simply join you or other states will adopt your policies. As you said, you want 1000 statelets, you can at least start with one of the states, right? Make each of its counties sovereign.
The war to end all wars…
Peace.
You are misunderstanding the history of the first peace of Westphalia. The peace of Westphalia is what ended the 30 year war. You seem to think it was somehow a cause of it. The cause of the 30 year war was the fact that too many people with incompatible world-views were living close to each other and the fact that the then existing political institutions could not manage these relationships. The balkanization effect was inevitable. The Peace of Westphalia was the recognition that the various ethno-nationalist groups should be politically autonomous from each other. That the Vatican refused to recognize the Peace made clear they were loath to give up the dream of having influence over those that did not share their world-view (sounds like today world, doesn’t it?).
It will be the same for the second, Third Millenium, Westphalia. Identity based on ethnic and nationalism would also be extended to world-view as well (religious, philosophical, etc.). The primary cause of war and strife is people of incompatible world-views being forced to live under the same political jurisdiction. Separation is the way to lessen this strife. As such, the Third Millennium Westphalia will reduce violence and war, not be a cause of it.
This is a problem, isn’t it?
Correct. This is what I am calling the Third Millennium Westphalia.
It would start with reform of the FDA along with deregulation in general. This is already beginning. Peter Thiel is pushing to get a pro-life extension biotech entrepreneur to head the FDA. I think Trump will go for it. This will reduce FDA as a source of intransigent regulation in the development of effective anti-aging therapies in the U.S. thus reducing the need for medical tourism. Later, as the additive manufacturing and robotic automation construction technology is developed, true seasteads will be established in the Southern Pacific, in about 20 years. This will be a “homeland for trasnhumanists” sort of speak, and will be politically autonomous. The cryonics organizations will relocate here as well. Since we are not occupying any existing land, there is no legitimate reason for the world community to oppose our autonomy. It is here that we can develop the biomeme and other technologies necessary for space colonization, which will be a latter half of 21st century enterprise, essentially O’niell’s “High Frontier” concept.
I came to the conclusion that morality is nothing more than how you treat others. A moral person treats others well. An immoral person treats others badly. It’s exclusively about interpersonal relations and is therefor inherently contractual in nature.
Oh, and speaking of transhumanism, transhumanism is nothing more than a four-bit fancy word that describes routine medicine in the 22nd century and beyond.
I don’t think you guys are thinking this through. May I make a suggestion?
Start with changing the attitudes of hot women. Currently hot women are attracted to money and extravagance. Guys want to create wealth and get rich in order to impress all of the hot women in the world. I think Onassis, the shipping magnate, said something along those lines sometime in the 1960’s.
Guys, if they didn’t have to impress hot women, are happy to live a minimalist life and hang out on the beach and at the bar. Convince hot women that this is the way to go and the lust for unending materialism will go away in a heart beat.
Hey Abelard,
No, read my words – I specifically talked about the lead up. What I am afraid of is that a call for such radical decentralization (or re-calibration of human norms) would likely require a similar cataclysmic event of bloodshed like the Thirty-Years War.
Big time – you are likely in the minority among transhumanists with your specific views. Thus, more likely than not, the transhumanist collective will be more Pharoah than Buddha.
This existed for centuries in the East as the millet system and can be somewhat accomplished by a firm call for re-instituting state’s rights – but this is likely not necessary because…
Sweet, good for you (and your folks) – send us postcards! Not the electronic ones, they may get blocked by firewall. I think this works great for all of us! I’m definitely interested in what happens; just being a fan of anthropology and history.
Tuvalu – the new Jerusalem!
Peace.
Disagree. There are a reasonable number of historical examples of men who had more or less unfettered access to “hot women” either due to their status and/or the existence of sexual slavery. It didn’t end materialism, it just made them compete for status in some other way.
I’ve been around the wealthy quite a bit. They end up competing on idiotic things such as ever-increasing yacht sizes, number of houses, or worse. Around the time you’re around a 17 year old girl who has just completed a massive lawsuit against her mother so she can have an affair with her brother as well as a 12 year old, you seriously wonder what is wrong with these people, even before she throws a puppy out of the balcony for making too much noise.
And no, it isn’t just an hypothetical example above.
I’m sure A. Karlin has stories of oligarches in Russia too, all very known for their modesty and lack of materialism. Perhaps they might even put the story I shared to shame. Probably will.
Its not just guys anyway. Humans have unlimited wants and as social creatures, a large part of that is having more than their neighbor.
PS: Full disclosure, I suppose. I’m of “old wealth” in some ways, so perhaps my snobbishness is the norm. But for what it is worth, we did lose almost all our wealth and regain it in the period of 100 years or so.
Hey Abelard,
Pretty women are quite impressed with committed men who are unambiguously male as well. They also like the ones that won’t cheat on them. I can’t speak for the other communities, but I think many pretty women are also into a committed man with similar traits…
“The number of Muslim converts in Britain has passed 100,000, fueled by a surge in young white women adopting the Islamic faith. The figure has almost doubled in ten years – with the average convert now a 27-year-old white woman fed up with British consumerism and immorality.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343954/100-000-Islam-converts-living-UK-White-women-keen-embrace-Muslim-faith.html#ixzz4W3DMs600
You can look for youtube videos for “female convert to islam” if you think I’m pulling your leg.
But honestly, they are far more interested in God and a sense of a spiritually fulfilling life than us men. We’re just fortunate to have them.
We are actually having difficulty integrating them into the community on pace – we are being a bit overwhelmed. Just a few weeks ago, two young lady converts (one White, one Puerto Rican/mixed) came to my house to speak to my wife. We need to find good, reliable and hardworking husbands for these women.
We aren’t interested in gold-diggers; they are a maintenance nightmare. Who wants to start a family with one of those?
So we are getting quite a few women, the guys haven’t figured it out yet. The pretty women are there, but these ones won’t put out. If you want to get busy, then commit to marriage, maintenance and kids – otherwise, no sale. If that ain’t worth your time, you ain’t worth theirs.
Well, there’s always polygamy…
Peace.
I get that you don’t like the word medieval, but that’s normal, that’s as it should be.
“Medieval” (in some sense, loosely) and “modern” – the two opposite poles of human existence, the two opposite ways of being available to mankind, increasingly I am beginning to believe the pivot of history.
Shouldn’t the basic fundamental choice facing humanity be set out as starkly and unsparingly as possible?
I don’t believe anything useful is gained by fudging terms.
I am also increasingly struck by your unquestioned assumptions. You think modern man’s obsession with hot women is a ‘given’, a primary biological fact. I would suggest it is itself a product of modern life – its spiritual emptiness, of marketing designed to make is into good consumers, and the influence of thinkers like Freud who elevated sex into an obsession.
I’ve been thinking, Talha, and I wonder if this transhumanism thing isn’t really a positive sign –
It seems to be an expression of some dimly understood awareness that the narrow confines of the human ‘self’ are inadequate, a desire to leave the narrow human ‘self’ behind and merge with the ‘other’, a breaking down of ego-barriers and ego-walls, and isn’t this in the end the same impulse that underlies religion?
Of course it is to go about it the exact wrong way – I’m sure you’re familiar with the spiritual precept ‘self cannot overcome self’, which is why “surrender” is so necessary in every spiritual tradition, that dreadful and terrifying word, so hostile to modern sensibilities.
Yet to seek self-transcendence though technology – through our own efforts – is ultimately to strengthen the narrow human self and its ego walls, it is self trying to overcome self.
Yet even the willingness to submerge oneself in the embrace of the technological ‘other’ may represent a breaking down of narrow human pride among people who are very proud indeed – in some way, its a proud persons attempt to transcend his pride, however haltingly.
Also, I like your point your point about how religion is perhaps the only thing that can really fight against the philosophy of more. I think broadly understood it is essentially correct.
The issue is ultimately not one of rationality – people like Abelard are simply chasing what they believe will bring them bliss. The problem is simply that they won’t derive bliss from their approach to life, but you certainly can’t convince them of this rationally.
In my twenties I was an ambitious striver, and I thought I was happy. I had achieved success. I had money, I had “hot women”. I experienced a life crisis which led to a radical loss of preoccupation with self and ego goals – I lost the money, I lost the women. You’d think I’d have been utterly miserable and couldn’t wait to start striving again to climb back to my former position of happiness, right? Instead, I found myself in a state of utterly unexpected bliss – the world ‘opened up’ to me in a strange way I could not understand. Everything was wonderful, and I felt a ‘peace’ that is not mere absence of stress and worry but an utter contentment with the world that can’t be described. I had no more ambition.
I suppose it was a ‘conversion experience”.
Ultimately, the “world” sunk its claws into me again, ambition returned, and I woke up from the ‘trance’. I thought it was a strange anomaly. I wasn’t religious at the time and had no context within which to place these experiences.
It turned out, this wasn’t going to be the end of the matter – there would be further episodes, thank God.
But the reason I’m talking about this is because ultimately modern people are terrified of losing their ego-concerns – they believe, like I did, that this would spell misery and death. It was the sheerest accident that I discovered otherwise.
How can ‘reach’ modern people, not on the level of rationality, but on the level of experience, where the thing that will lead to bliss is the one thing they have been taught and trained their whole lives to regard with horror?
I think we are passing through another “phase change”. The first phase change is, of course, the neolithic revolution. The development of agriculture. The second is the industrial revolution. The third is the technology revolution, the one we are passing through right now. These phase transitions are irreversible. So, here we are passing into the forth prigogenic level of complexity. Each time we move to the next level, all new social institutions evolve that replace the previous ones. I see no reason why it will be any different this time around.
Organized religions are second level (agrarian level) institutions . Ideologies such as communism, socialism, social democracy, etc. are third level (industrial age) institutions. What institutions will the forth level usher in? Who knows? But I can venture a guess. Most technologies tend to be decentralizing, which tends to empower the small to being on par with the large. This, to me, suggests a lot of the existing meme, based on large social structures, will become obsolete. They are not useful for empowering productive accomplishment. So they end up being discarded.
I suggest a different approach. One can ditch the competitive rat race and instead go do the “lonely planet” thing in SEA. A beach and a bar. That’s all it takes to be happy for some guys. The problem is that most women are not content with this. As long as female human nature is what it is, we’re pretty much stuck with “materialism” and the rat race for the time being.
You guys have spent the past 100 blog posts arguing in favor of what is really called the minimalist life style. I call it the “beach and bar” life style and, yes, it does appeal to me. I was actually set to do it in the mid 1990’s. my sister has described me as the “least materialistic” member of our family. In my case, this choice was aborted by me getting married (its a long story that I will not share – but suffice it to say that it does not involve kids).
In short, the minimalist life style is where you limit your material needs so that you can optimize your life to do the things you really want to do, like outdoor sports and budget adventure travel.
Why the hell do you need religion to live this kind of life? Aaron Clary (Captain Capitalism) lives the minimalist life style and he feels no need for religion. Same for all of the other people I know personally who live this life.
The problem is that few women identify with this kind of life. Getting married puts the kibosh on this option for the vast majority of guys.
Trust me on this, guys. You need to work on the attitudes of women if you want us to give up materialism and striving for the minimalist life style.
BTW, who says a minimalist life style and transhumanism are incompatible with each other. I think they are completely compatible with each other. The number one impediment to the minimalist life style is the aging process. We need bio-engineering to cure this and you can live the minimalist life style essentially forever.
So there you have it, my transhumanism fitting perfectly with your guys’ minimalist life style. Its a match made in heaven!
Disagree. Not only is this not a consistent theme in the past, but this does NOT seem to be what is happening now. Technology served to centralize power first from loose aristocracies into a central monarchy, then into vaguely defined nationalism, and now possibly to just a few oligarches who own 50% of the world’s wealth.
Furthermore, the industrial revolution brought significantly more complexity and ever larger social structures, which were all individually inefficient but carried massive economy of scale. Its not an accident that the American South before the Civil War was significantly more decentralized than the American North, which was more technologically and industrially advanced. Indeed as logistics improved, it brought us Wal-Mart and Tesco, dooming smaller shops – essentially reducing the productive accomplishment of a huge number of individuals and specializing them narrowly as human machinery as stockers, etc. This is ultimately reached its zenith in Google and Facebook, which basically hold monopolistic power in their fields except when actively excluded via the Great Chinese Firewall.
Even now, it is Google that is building the most advanced AI, it is the government that organizes the NSA for surveillance, China that is building a learning AI to control its population, the German government negotiates with Facebook to censor unwanted news; there are no cyberpunk rogue hacker AIs, and from my vantage point in one of the wealthiest companies, there is an almost overwhelming degree of power from the top corporations and individuals. A hothead is infinitely more capable of rebelling in the 1800s than we can in 2000s, where almost all of our communication is tracked.
Within our lifetimes it will probably be possible to track our personalities exactly, and then deliver automated persuasion techniques to induce cooperation with the agenda. We have the science needed, and the justification for it is already upcoming as you hear new definitions of mental illness being defined.
You want to believe that technology will empower the individual and free him/her/it/zher. It won’t. It’ll benefit a certain elite and level the rest of us into identical genderless, colorless cubes of interchangeable productivity.
Hey AaronB,
I agree. As I mentioned to Radical Center, all of this stuff (changing genders, transhumanism, etc.) is a sign pointing to the fundamental desire to transcend the human condition/limitation. I also agree that the desire, being spiritual in nature (which is why so much of the language seems pseudo-religious in nature), is unfortunately trying to use material means to transcend the material. Drowning in water is not helped by adding more water.
Which is why I have heard and read the awliya (spiritual masters/friends of God) state that the sign of the Divine acceptance of one’s advancement on the path is that the traveler attributes none of the progress to his own efforts.
This is an interesting point, I hadn’t thought about that. I guess I’d have to see the results of the state of those who participate in the process of transhumanism to see what they come out like on the other side.
It has always been a matter of the heart. We have been endowed with the faculty of intellect to help us filter out the wrong masters. For instance, I don’t believe anyone accedes to the will of Mt. Olympus anymore – though I have read about attempts to revive paganism in Europe.
“He expanded you so as not to keep you in contraction;
He contracted you so as not to keep you in expansion;
and He took you out of both, so that you not belong to anything apart from Him.”
– From the ‘Hikam’ of the great master, Ibn Ata Illah (ra)
Remember that moment, you were gifted with a taste – if you are fortunate, the rest of your life will be spent in pursuing that state again. And I hope you find it because the world will chase after you to sink its claws again.
There are no accidents. You shared some of your story, I’ll share a bit of mine. After 9/11, I had been searching for something to ground my identity as a Muslim, something that wouldn’t be simply a cultural identity and something that would stand the vicissitudes of time and something to safeguard me from extremism. I finally found my teacher who was a guide of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi order and took to train under him (this was in New York). When I told my father about this, to get his blessings for my decision, he told me that he also had a spiritual guide decades ago when he traveled to the Punjab area of Pakistan. He had never spoken about him before – ever. But as he started describing him and his mannerisms, I was shocked. When I asked his name, I found out that his guide was the direct spiritual guide of my own teacher.
Again, my advice; you were forced to swallow the ‘red pill’, so roll with it – don’t lose track – you only get one shot at this. That doesn’t mean throw the world under the bus and become a traveling mendicant or monk. Everything has a balance; one of the awliya stated, the material world is like the ocean to your traveling boat, which is your soul. It needs the ocean to arrive at its destination. All is well as long as the water remains outside and serves its purpose – if it comes inside however, the boat flounders and sinks.
As far as our friend Abelard here, whose ambition to transcend his human shell is a palpable potential energy… In my tradition, some of the greatest awliya were former party-animals like Bishr al-Hafi* (ra) or highway robbers like Fudayl ibn Iyyadh (ra). As our teachers tell us, they were always the friends of God in His pre-eternal knowledge – they had simply been veiled from their own reality until the right time. A dance with transhumanism may be necessary for his ‘experience’ as the money and ‘hot’ women were for yours. As my teacher tells us; the spiritual path is like a laundromat – who doesn’t show up with dirty clothes? We may be corresponding with one of the greatest living saints of our time and everyone, including himself, simply has no clue. 🙂
Peace.
*The story of Bishr al-Hafi (ra) is a pertinent one given the talk of master and slave. He was a big party animal and used to throw lavish drinking parties with song, dance, etc. kind of like a ‘rave’ in Abbasid times. Anyway, he sent one of his slave girls out for an errand during a party and on her way she came across Musa al-Kadhim (ra) (a great scholar and ascetic) who asked her if she had come from the house where all the noise was coming from. She replied in the affirmative and he then asked, “Is the owner of that house a free man or a slave?”
“A free man, of course,” she replied.
“Indeed”, he answered, “if he was a slave, he would fear his Master.” And walked on.
When the slave girl came back to the house, Bishr (ra) asked her what had delayed her. When she related the words of the scholar, Bishr (ra) jumped to his feet and ran out the door (barefoot – which is what his nickname al-Hafi means) to catch Musa al-Kadhim (ra). Finding him, he dropped to the floor and cried, “No, I am a slave! I am a slave!”
That was the moment he completely changed and became the Bishr al-Hafi (ra) we know; honoring the moment he was gifted with slavehood, he refused to wear shoes until he passed.
Guys, I get it, OK. You guys are into the minimalist life style. I’m totally cool with it. I really am. I might even do it myself if my personal situation changes such as to make it feasible. My point is that there is no reason why I cannot live your minimalist life style and still pursue transhumanism. You guys seem to think this is impossible. Trust me, its not.
Indeed, the two go together because one then maintains their health and vitality in order to do the things they really want to do with their lives. There really is no difference between what I want and what you want.
As a transhumanist living the minimalist lifestyle, I would have incorporated your worldview into my own.
BTW, the first seastead will be built in the tropics. Think about that.
Hey Abelard,
Bro, you are still analyzing it on a strictly material paradigm.
There may be an inner contradiction if ‘minimalist’ also includes dealing with the body you’ve been given (assuming you are a normally healthy person). If you were born with a partial blindness or missing a leg, everyone understands wanting to repair that. But adding more neural networks or increasing brain density in order to increase your IQ is still material means for a (largely) material pursuit.
Not necessarily (see my earlier comment), but that’s OK. No need to convince me. If it makes you happy, go for it. I don’t think it will (at least not in the long run), but hey, that’s my take on things. You’re an intelligent person and can make your own decisions without my approval.
I’m not really concerned about a libertarian-leaning transhumanist that resides out in the tropics somewhere. That already gives me some distance to be safe from the concerns of some of the negative consequences or accidents that I mentioned earlier. I’m far more concerned about the ones that may want to take over custodianship of the ruling structure having convinced themselves they are now evolved beyond the rest of us – the ones that lean Left, remember?
Peace.
It sounds like what you are calling “material” is simply what I would call objective reality.
My experience since childhood is that reality is that which continues to exist even if I don’t believe in it, and that it is observable. non-observable “reality” is a logical contradiction.
I’m talking about curing aging. Aging is a disease no different than any other disease like cancer or diabetes. Curing aging restores the body to normal healthy functionality. I do not understand why people have such difficulty grasping this point.
I think the city-state will come back into vogue:
http://www.parapundit.com/archives/010062.html
This current animosity between globalists and nationalists will be one of the forces that will drive the resurgence of the city-state and ultimately the Third Millennium Westphalia. Globalists and nationalists just don’t like each other much, and a parting of the ways is probably the only realistic answer. Think of it as multiple versions of Singapore.
For everyone of us who is leftwing, there are probably 10 of us who are libertarian (or who simply hate politics and want nothing to do with it). If we libertarian transhumanists get our autonomy (and is universally recognized by the world community), I think the impulses of those who lean left will be safely restrained.
Remember, the only reason why we would want to take over the ruling structure is if it refuses to recognize our autonomy from it. Rule by non-transhumanists can never be acceptable to us. Please understand this.
the ones that lean Left, remember
You write this like it is always a bad thing. I lean left and I think that it is a good thing.
My opinion of the left is analogous to your view of some the bad actors in the Muslim world; they have taken a wrong turn and are not doing “it” correctly.
Hey iffen,
You are absolutely right on this. I admire a great deal of people that lean Left (I really enjoyed Pilger’s last article on UNZ). I was specifically talking about the one’s that can get to the extreme like Communists and use state power to bring everyone in line with their thinking. For instance, if transhumanists take over and they determine that parents who do not genetically enhance the intelligence of their children or sign them up for anti-aging treatment are somehow wronging them and putting them at a disadvantage and the state needs to intervene. Of course, we know the Left is not the only one guilty of abusing state power, eh?
Thanks (as always) for checking me.
Peace.
Hey Abelard,
Not sure if this pans out. Light exists whether or not certain organisms can sense it or not. Likewise, according to your framework, the senses we humans have are simply not made for correctly observing ontological reality – that was never part of the package. Rather we have what senses were developed over epochs and are necessary for optimal material survival for an upright hominid given our current environment. Any tools we have built are simply extensions of those senses (for instance to observe ultra-violet light that is beyond our spectrum or electron-microscopes, etc.) – that is unless you think there is something special about man, which, in your framework, isn’t the case 😉 . If there is a sense out there that we simply do not know about that is necessary to observe and make a final judgement on reality, we will never even know, because we don’t know what we are looking for and we won’t even know the first thing about building a tool to analyze it. Had we been an underwater or subterranean species our senses (even cognitive capabilities) would simply be different. In fact, given the right circumstances, the intelligence we deem so precious, will simply be discarded if necessary for survival to make room for better muscle mass or ocular faculties, or sharper teeth, etc.
In both your framework and the spiritual one, human beings are hobbled by lack of having the necessary tools to make a verdict on the entire picture. The only difference is why the two groups think that is the case.
You are grasping for immortality – this is a religious quest as much as a material one. Aging and death is part of the human experience and reality. This is beyond a simple cure for a disease.
I don’t honestly have an issue if tribal confederations come back into vogue.
Not sure I’m as optimistic as you.
Um – they (especially the determined extremists among them – as with those among us) have been known to punch way above their weight class. We’re just concerned regarding the tools they’ll have at their disposal.
I do – will totally support you guys setting up shop in Polynesia with your own seat (assuming you guys still ‘sit’ with the modifications) at the UN!
Peace.
By the way, what are you still doing on this thread – just making sure I don’t misbehave? 🙂
Just kidding – by the way, take a look at that link to the Aphorisms of Ibn Ata Illah (ra) – some real gems in there. Way better in the original Arabic, but, hey, what’re you gonna do?
Peace.
Forget about hot women, and it isn’t about tropical beaches and cocktails either.
It’s about reducing your desires and finding that your world is now infinitely richer and fuller, and that your passions were creating mental filters.
It’s the opposite of modern people’s belief that happiness is to be found in chasing instiable desires.
It’s an old way of thinking, religious, mystical, and that has been known for millenia, and that terrifies modern people.
It’s a view completely inimical to any interest in technology, and it isn’t interested in material abundance or power over the world or expanding possibilities.
It’s contraction rather than expansion, and as such, is utterly heretical for modern people. But modern people are miserable and bored, so isn’t it time we questioned our premises?
Maybe you disagree, but don’t mistake it for lotus eating hedonism – which, I actually think, is more sophisticated than power hungry striving (if the world is meaningless, why not have fun?)
“Spend your life chasing that feeling” – only too true!
And how strange you feel at first chasing something that everyone would tell you is utterly trivial, the “serious” business of life being about making money or gaining status, creating new technology and “advancing” the human race, of course.
The brother of John Cowper Powys (an English writer of some renown early last century), also a writer, had a very strange mystical experience near a pond somewhere in the English countryside, and wrote a memoir about how his whole life after that was chasing that experience.
The “serious” business of life may actually be the least important thing in it.
Thanks for sharing a bit of your biography with me – you’re very lucky that Islam still has genuine spiritual teachers available, which I assume are in an unbroken chain since ancient times. Most other spiritual traditions, I understand, have broken the chain, and genuine one on one gurus aren’t really available. At best, insightful teachers.
Thanks also for all those great quotes from Islam – it reminds me I’ve read far too little of the great Sufi masters and Muslim mystics.
By the way, what are you still doing on this thread – just making sure I don’t misbehave?
No, not really; not that you don’t bear monitoring. 🙂
I was keeping an eye out for more discussion on door #5.
Also, I was keeping up with the AaronB exchange. It seems to me that many people just don’t “get” the value and power of belief in the supernatural.
You are completely wrong about this. Aging is a biological process based on the scientific principles of molecular biology. As such, it can be understood via the scientific method and eliminated by the appropriate bio-engineering. it is no different than any other biological process. To believe that aging is some kind of immutable process that cannot be understood through science is pure ideology, not science.
It does not terrify us. It merely bores us and strikes us as not useful at all.
The renaissance and enlightenment are the only true revolution in human history because is was the only intellectual revolution in recorded human history. I regard the enlightenment as a permanent “phase change”, much like the neolithic revolution 9,000 year ago. Once through it, there is no going back.
I also consider all world-views (philosophies, religions, ideologies) that predate the enlightenment to be completely obsolete. These are no longer of any value at all.
I am well aware of the excesses of those who seek material wealth and extravagance over all else and, yes, I agree with you that some of this is over the top. However, I am not one of these people. I’ve actually never met these kinds of rich people that one of you mentioned. I was not born into money. I’ve heard lots of stories about them. The only rich people I’ve met personally are successful entrepreneurs who were very much level-headed individuals.
I believe the highest calling of life and civilization is to create openness and unlimited possibilities. Expanding possibilities, trying and doing lots of new and interesting things, is the fundamental purpose of sentient life. Money and technology are nothing more than tools to be used to accomplish this. I believe in creating an open limitless future of abundance and infinite possibilities. As I said before, I believe that pioneering (Frederick Jackson Turner, Robert Heinlein) is the true spirituality. I had my own “spiritual” experiences during summer of 1986 that forever convinced me of this reality (this is the year my friends and I created the transhumanist meme in the first place).
On supernatural: One man’s magic is another man’s engineering. Supernatural is therefor a null word.
I’ll ask you this question. How does an ever expanding technological civilization in any way prevent you from living your “spiritual” lives that you talk about here. Forget about the leftists in answering this question. How does a libertarianian technological civilization prevent you from living the lives you want to live?
Hey iffen,
I understand – you never know what we’re going to do…
http://www.gifbin.com/981426
I had to cut the conversation with Revusky short because of this. He keeps on insisting 9/11 is the thing that all Muslims should be talking about instead of worrying about the espistemological attacks on our core foundations. It was funny because I had an email exchange with another Muslim who reads UNZ and we’re like – that’s barely a blip on our radar.
And, yes, even the unfaithful have a difficult time leaving the forms:
“He argues for a new breed of secular therapists to take the place of the priesthood and believes atheism should have its own churches, but adds: “It should never be called that, because ‘atheism’ isn’t an ideology around which anyone could gather. Far better to call it something like cultural humanism.”
There is a concern among some non-believers that atheism is developing into a religion in its own right, with its own code of ethics and self-appointed high priests.
Jones insists he is not trying to found a new religion, but some members of his congregation disagree.
“It will become an organised religion. It’s inevitable. A belief system will set in. There will be a structure, an ethical outlook on life,” says architect Robbie Harris.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21319945
Peace.
At some point I’m not sure if you’re serious in your inquiries, but I am also starting to question a lot of your other premises as you seem to think that “hot women” are the cause of materialism. You also invariably believe that technology creates greater decentralization despite massive evidence to the contrary.
Anyway, I’ll go once more.
That technology causes disconnection and decoherence is well-known. The study of cladistics goes into this, but a classic example is how a pot used to represent many connections: implications of warmth, the home, food, family, etc.
Technology disconnects this, removes additional meanings, displaces identity and ultimately, it really isn’t compatible with other forms of existence. A lot of your argument is that “we will all be well and just be separate” but that’s silly. The existence of industrialization did not allow for any other form of existence in the world, soon afterward. The existence of the gun forced all other societies to adopt it or be crushed by it.
That’s life.
Anyways, I’m not quite as spiritual as the other commentators here. My objections to your optimistic scenarios have been posted pretty thoroughly before.
Best I can tell is that your religion is that the maximization of the individual whim is the single greatest positive good and cannot have much consequence upon other individuals. Its interesting as a thought. Very optimistic, I suppose.
Hey Abelard,
If you say so.
Has it occurred to you guys that perhaps aging and death are a part and parcel of your evolutionary framework. That indeed the average lifespans of human beings are optimized to get the best results for genetic propagation. Evolution doesn’t care for the individual once the genes have been passed on – the work is done, the organism can die off. In fact, it probably should once it has provided the necessary protection for its genetic offspring to reach adulthood so they can focus on propagating subsequent generations (without having to compete for resources with the previous useless generation). Some species work this way; after mating, the male provider of genetic information is not longer necessary and is sometimes cannibalized by the female (a last valiant sacrifice in becoming the very nutrients of his offspring).
I fail to see how a set of human beings extending their individual lives to say 300 years is a better evolutionary package than a set of human beings running through 6 to 8 rounds of survival of the fittest within that same time frame. Remember, evolution is not interested in the individual (you might be), the ‘selfish’ gene doesn’t care.
Again, irrelevant in the evolutionary framework unless it leads to the propagation of better and more useful genes; in other words; “hand over your genes, fleshbot, and move on.” You cannot escape evolution – your brain and all cognitive capabilities are built for and arrived at for a specific purpose (and it is fundamentally not to try and do lots of new and interesting things like art and travel – unless that itself leads to more useful genes being propagated) and that has already been decided, you cannot retcon this.
It could if it is ‘ever expanding’ into my neighborhood. It the nature of the key phrase ‘ever expanding’ that has some of us concerned.
It doesn’t – viva la revolucion de Polynesia!
Peace.
There is one other thing that I cannot shake off.
As I mentioned earlier, that (at least from what we are seeing in our community) females seem to be attracted to spirituality (and overwhelmingly so):
“Although there are no firm statistics about women converting to Islam in Britain, it is possible that as many as three-quarters of British converts – an estimated 100,000 between 2000 and 2010 – were female…Despite the myriad reasons for women converting to Islam – which, contrary to popular belief, often do not involve marriage – the project team say that a consistent, emerging theme is that many stressed a strong sense of continuity with the past.”
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/narratives-of-conversion
There is something in your tone (and the theme of this article) that seems fundamentally unappealing to females a bit like Sci-fi in general. I’m just not sure because I’m a guy and that’s not my crowd. Are there any stats that show how many women are involved in this movement? When you get together in gatherings or in meetings, is it basically a sausage-fest? I’m honestly interested.
If that is the case, you just solved your own ‘hot’ women dilemma – don’t promote things like transhumanism or the Singularity. A movement without future mothers, is no movement.
Peace.
And no. I mentioned this before, but aging is a combination of factors and while we can probably extend life, its doubtful that we can extend it anywhere significantly. Consider cancer, which is something that our body already gives us the mechanism to fight and to which we only need to associate the correct markers for our immune system to attack. Even the limited ability to convey markers to our immune system is not a solved problem.
Something more fantastical, such as the ability to infinitely regenerate somatic non-neuron cells without increasing genetic degradation which is already extant in plants is still far from our ability to even begin to reproduce. And then to move on to generate tissue which the body completely stops producing, such as gametes or non-hippocampus neurons, is probably not going to be a solvable problem within memory. This isn’t even to touch the parts of the body that degrade such as the brainstem but which are basically incapable of any alteration.
I would bet on an intelligent AI before we solve the problem of aging. Its easier to create a new program from scratch than to fix the insane spaghetti code of the human DNA that was intentionally made to self-destruct.
Hey AaronB,
Yes, and most modern Muslims don’t even appreciate this. Along with our other sacred knowledges (hadith, jurisprudence, etc.) the Sufi Orders each have a human chain going back to the Prophet (pbuh) and actually to God through the Archangel Gabriel (as). Here is one from the Shadhili Order for the renowned Shaykh Muhammad Yaquobi (ra) – currently in exile in Morocco from his native Syria:
https://seekerofthesacredknowledge.wordpress.com/the-sufi-ways/silsila-of-shaykh-muhammad-al-yaqoubi/
We believe this knowledge cannot be transmitted through books, it is something passed from heart to heart.
Most welcome!
This is a nice starting point for a kind of comprehensive look. Prof. Alan Godlas is one of the foremost academic experts in this field:
http://islam.uga.edu/Sufism.html
Lots of books too (this set is pretty good https://fonsvitae.com/product-category/sufism/imam-al-haddad/ and his legacy is still kept alive by the elders of Yemen http://www.alhabibali.com/en/biography/), though I would avoid certain translations since they have a way of making some of our Sufi masters (who were also accomplished medieval jurists) look like new age hippies. 🙂
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-islam-from-the-poetry-of-rumi
Peace.
I don’t waste any time on “militant” atheists. I have never, and will never, try to convince someone to give up their faith and become an atheist.
I think that it is obvious that humans have an emotional “slot” for religious belief that yearns to be filled. Various ideologies and world views can fill part of it, but never as well as the “old time religions.”
Hey iffen,
Sound advice, bro.
I also suggest not wasting time on militant Muslims – just duck and run! 🙂
Yeah – it’s the ‘evangelical’ atheists who are just really annoying (I remember some guy calling belief in God irrational, and I’m thinking – Newton, Leibniz, Farraday – yeah, those guys should have been in padded cells) – otherwise I enjoy bantering with atheists, it’s good mental exercise.
Peace.
Evolution has already “solved” the aging problem for at least one lifeform, although a very primitive one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9615920
Aging is also takes very different forms across the tree of life:
http://sci-hub.bz/10.1038/nature12789
All this strongly implies that the aging problem is in fact a mutable one, though for now its unclear how easy or hard it is.
It will almost certainly be a lot harder than substantively raising IQ. Whether it will be easier or harder than AGI or ems – I don’t know.
Interesting, I will follow on it. Is the second link only in cyrillic?
“Diversity of ageing across the tree of life.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v505/n7482/full/nature12789.html
Just giving the Sci-Hub link for easy access to it.
Hey Mr. Karlin,
Thanks for the article and the link – especially on the ageing across species; I found it interesting that the mammals varied but had similar patterns.
Peace.
Of course! This is precisely the argument for “programmed aging” theory.
I know several researchers who subscribe to this theory and are working based on this idea. If it were true, curing aging would be even easier than it would be if SENS argument is correct, which is what I believe. You merely have to identify the aging genes, which there aren’t any, or the epigenetic factors involved, and correct those. As you know CRISPR-cas9 is a powerful tool for this, and has recently lead to a method of gene therapy for both dividing and non-dividing tissue. If its epigenetics, its even easier and can probably be done with supplements.
Regeneration is a major field of research. This is what all of the hubub over stem cell research is about. They are already fabricating organs such as livers and hearts from scratch using synthetic stem cells (the issue of vascularity has apparently been solved although I don’t the details). I see no reason why this technology cannot be scaled up to whole body regeneration (which will be needed to reanimate cryonic suspension patients). Repair of the brain is a bit trickier, but not insurmountable. Brains do regenerate, by the way. We need to harness and increase this capability. Repair of brains of cryonic suspension patients is the ultimate goal here. They have already perfected neuropreservation of brains. In which case repair of individual neurons will not be necessary for reanimation.
The technology needed to reanimate cryonic suspension members will be greater than that used to merely restore someone to youthful physiology.
Hey Abelard,
Well, from what I’m reading from you, I’m not seriously worried about implications for the rest of humanity (again, other than the possibilities of accidental tampering leading to a disease that goes rampant or something). You guys want to extend life to its limits, well, good for you. Stepping into your shoes and looking at things from your set of beliefs, where the material world is all there is and once the curtains close its all darkness, it all makes sense. The only thing I can’t find coherence in is how this all fits in with the assumptions of the evolutionary framework that seems to have been at work for millions of years – the whole use of technology to radically extend life seems too, ahem, purpose driven.
Honestly, it’s more the man-melding-with-machine-surveillance-state that I’m concerned about.
Anyway, good luck to you and yours and perhaps some of the rest of us will benefit from some of your discoveries.
Peace.
A few points –
You keep on saying technology is “merely” the expansion of possibilities, and who could say that’s a bad thing? What you are refusing to acknowledge is that technology is the narrowing of possibilities at least as much. It is the choice of one “set” of possibilities – those on the strictly material plane – and the sacrifice of other emotional and psychological possibilities on the human plane. Maybe you’re OK with that, but lets be clear about what we’re doing.
As Daniel Chieh has pointed out, technology requires a vast social re-organization – it is ultimately a social project – and the elimination of other goals and priorities from life.
Now obviously, this is hardly a “neutral” thing and anyone concerned about life in society will be very concerned about whether this is a good choice.
But let us suppose that you and your fellow transhumanists will simply decamp to your island paradise and do your thing- well, I certainly have no objection to that expect that I think you are being incredibly naive.
Historically, people in possession of high technology – who have undergone the personal transformation needed to create high technology – feel a sacred mission to bring to the rest of us “savages” their great bounty, and impose it by force if need be. And if they cannot impose it, they tend to feel morally justified in exploiting us “lesser breeds”. In the end, they are just as much possessed by technology as possessing it.
So technology isn’t really a neutral, values free enterprise – it comes with its own set of attitudes, and historically these have not been benign.
Everyone has to make their own choice, but what’s involved has to be clearly and starkly defined, with no fudging.
2) “Endless possibilities” – why seek this if you have found perfection?
If the best way of life for man has already been found, then why would you need endless possibilities? Obviously, the desire for endless possibilities – like endless progress – is an implicit admission, a lament even, that you have lost the “one thing needful”.
You idolize” perpetual lack” as a way of life – but only someone who has lost all hope of ever finding ultimate fulfillment could look for a substitution in the process of searching itself.
And that, finally, is what it comes down to – your philosophy, like all philosophies of progress, is pessimistic. It locates hope in the process of searching because it is has lost all hope of every finding what it is searching for.
Tell me, why “endless”? Why not ending somewhere, anywhere, in some perfect state?
3) You keep on saying that non-observable reality is a contradiction. That makes no sense.
According to you, reality is what’s there even when you don’t believe in it. If angels and demons exist, say, and exert tremendous influence on you even though you can’t see them, they are there even if you don’t believe in them.
You have chosen to believe that reality is only what is apprehendible by your five senses, but there is no logical or metaphysical reason requiring you to do so.
Even Kant believed in a reality beyond our senses and his philosophy demonstrated that we can make no definitive logical claims about such a reality – we have no logical foundation to deny the existence of this reality.
So please stop packaging your choices as metaphysical necessities.
3) So you want to live forever. It’s of a piece with your desire for “endless” more.
I have observed that people who have lost the path towards human fulfillment always have a preoccupation with immortality. It makes sense. If you cannot find fulfillment in this life, then death is terrifying.
4) You say moderns are merely bored with the philosophy I oppose to a life of endless striving and power, but that is not the reactions I am usually met with.
I am typically met with rage and hostility, betraying deep inner insecurity, when I question moderns about the value of a life of endless striving, power, and technology.
Indeed, there’s plenty of reality that wasn’t observable but still affected us; for example, ultraviolet light until relatively recently. Quantum mechanics is another example of a fairly illogical but real process that we were not able to observe until recently.
The idea that reality is only what is observable is limited, at the least and at least somewhat presumptuous. I suppose that the manageable, actionable reality is what is observable? Until we understood electricity, we couldn’t manage and use it. So that required us to be able to observe and control it.
I could see the truth in that. But there are factors that affect us, I think, which aren’t within our control in great and in small.
I have had a clear vision of what I want to become for a long time. We (my friends and I) know what we want to become and what we need to do to become it.
There is nothing you can say that will “faze” me at all.
Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!
Exactly. We have already made our choice and we have no use for kibitzing from a peanut gallery.
Maybe I like to do new things and always explore and expand my horizons. Does the expression “its the journey and not the destination that counts” mean anything to you?
Lets say I do find some perfect state of existence that makes me happy. Why does it need to end? Why not last forever?
Maybe I like freedom. Maybe I like to try new things and go to new places. Maybe I like getting up in the morning and feeling like my life is open with no constraints on it. Maybe I like this feeling.
If death is so wonderful, ask yourself why many religions and cultures consider suicide to be a crime (this is one feature of the Abrahamic religions that has never made sense to me). In any case, I believe the origin of at least the Abrahamic religions is rooted in the breakdown of the bicameralism and the origin of human consciousness. But this is a discussion for another day.
You certainly won’t get that from me.
If you want to promote your pro-death philosophy, my suggestion is to start with ending any legal restrictions on both self-suicide and assisted suicide. Support “right to die” initiatives in all U.S. states and, perhaps, federal legislation that would preempt any state level laws that oppose “right to die”. Once I see more people like yourself support right to die, I will be convinced of the sincerity of your beliefs. Until then, I think your arguments are full of hot air.
You may not believe me, but even though I am committed to radical life extension for those who want it, I also believe in the “right to die” for those who want that too. I have always considered the religious objection to suicide to be utterly pointless and stupid. If you believe human consciousness survives death of the physical body, you don’t really die when you die. Thus, suicide actually does not exist. Thus religious people who believe suicide is wrong are utterly stupid.
I always fear self-interested fanatics most of all. That’s a particularly dangerous attitude, very akin to the worst of religious fringe groups. The self-determination of an apocalyptic cult to end their world, for example, doesn’t necessarily give them the right to harm the lives of everyone else who happens to share the same world.
One further point. If a religion, say Christianity or Islam, claims that the biotechnological pursuit of radical life extension is wrong, what that religion is really saying is that “God” demands human sacrifice. If so, the Abrahamic religions are no better than those of the Toltecs or Aztecs.
I noticed your confusion about supernatural phenomenon in here, which prompted my earlier Heinlein quote about it. The concept is really simple. There is a knowledge frontier at any given moment of time. Anything inside it is understood phenomenon. Anything outside it is not understood and is, therefor, defined as supernatural. Electricity was a supernatural phenomenon 400 years ago. Then Ben franklin flew his kite and figured out what it really was. Likewise, supernatural phenomenon today is stuff that will have perfectly logical explanation 400 year in the future.
I always fear self-interested fanatics most of all. That’s a particularly dangerous attitude, very akin to the worst of religious fringe groups. The self-determination of an apocalyptic cult to end their world, for example, doesn’t necessarily give them the right to harm the lives of everyone else who happens to share the same world.
Now you’re the one who is terrified of death (LOL!).
Hey AaronB,
Good points by you and Daniel.
This is part of the concern. Once a set of humans considers themselves genetically superior and they are married to the idea of natural selection (survival of the fittest); this is potentially a very dangerous combination. There simply is no moral imperative (from their framework) to interdict getting rid of the inferior sub-group – any more than it is immoral for a tougher pack/herd/sounder of wild boars from eliminating another by running them out from utilizing a watering hole. Survival of the fittest pisses on the coffin of humanist concerns.
I find this particularly interesting; can mankind look for the lost ring if it isn’t under the streetlight?
Even from the framework of evolution, the senses have no purpose in finding the truth about the universe. They came about as accidents in a particular stage of one of the ancestor organisms. Being useful to survival, they simply clung on and out-competed those organisms that didn’t have them. Again, these senses were acquired not by any purpose (according to the model), but by random mutation and fortunate happenstance. And actually, this is not simply a process of aggregation; there may have been certain senses that were discarded along the path because (while useful to get a better sense of the universe) are simply not useful for a particular organism’s survival. A mole’s horrendous eyesight comes to mind as well as our (relatively) weak sense of smell. According to the model, it is quite possible that human beings simply do not have certain senses that more ‘primitive’ life forms have retained along the path.
It actually seems very silly when we try to analyze things according to our understanding. An example; there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that animals have certain intuitions that humans do not – like in detecting natural disasters. I find it fascinating that this article:
http://gizmodo.com/5833733/how-your-dog-knows-an-earthquake-is-coming-way-before-you-do
Starts out like this:
“There’s enough anecdotal evidence of creatures freaking out and even fleeing areas en masse before earthquakes to take unusual animal behavior seriously, as our gallery of dog-related tweets that followed today’s 5.9 earthquake in D.C. suggests.”
And simply follows it by:
“But there’s nothing supernatural or sixth sense about it.”
And then follows that by:
“Seismologists think animals sense an electrical signal generated by the movement of underground rocks before an earthquake. Or they might sense early but weak shocks that humans can’t feel….The problem is no one’s been able to pinpoint a consistent animal behavior that they can use as a disaster predictor. The connection doesn’t seem to be reproducible.”
It just seems incomprehensible to these people that these animals may just be operating on a sense that is not observable by humans. And, even in their framework, might have been observable by humans, say, 40,000 years ago, but was simply not as useful for survival as other things and was simply dropped like claws, etc. And that trying to map the animal experience onto something that is detectable by us, like electrical signals or slight tremors might be completely off base. How do you describe color to an earthworm?
I find it fascinating that probably much of the other world cultures have (or the pre-moderns* would have had) no problem with the idea that animals (or even small children) are connected to the phenomenal world in a different way than most adult humans. Elephants can know when a friend (even a human) has died and will make pilgrimage to mourn them – most cultures will understand (and even find it comforting) and simply have different terms to explain the ‘why’:
http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/kwazulu-natal/elephants-say-goodbye-to-the-whisperer-1253463
Post-Modern man wanted to leave behind superstition – and this is not bad – but did he also throw out the wonder and – gasp – magic in the universe as well?
Peace.
*”When you hear the barking of dogs and the braying of donkeys at night, seek refuge in God. For they see that which you do not.” – reported in Abu Dawud
Hey Abelard,
Death is a stage and as natural as life. The reason why suicide is forbidden is the same reason why chopping off your leg for no good reason is forbidden. The body, and life itself, is a gift on loan from the Master, He expects it to be returned in good faith. He simply has not let us know when He is going to send the recall notice. Again, slaves understand this.
Now, now – that’s just silly. In fact, that’s the kind of twisting of words that scares people; “You will not promote artifical life-extension, thus you are pro-death.”
Well, we can’t have pro-death people running around now can we? What are we, terrorist sympathizers?
Not from their framework (it would be stupid not to believe suicide is wrong) – but, I will agree that religious people shouldn’t block those who don’t believe in their framework from committing suicide.
Again, more twisting of words. First, I’m not exactly sure what the Islamic viewpoint in this is – way above my pay grade to know – there are maybe 5-10 human beings on the planet with the requisite knowledge to have a valid opinion on the subject. But this is getting a bit more concerning…
“Not genetically extending the life of your children is sacrificing them to Moloch.”
We certainly can’t have child-killers running around, can we?
Are you sure you are Libertarian? I’ve seen this discourse before, but not from that particular camp.
Peace.
I don’t think you’re going to live forever, or very long.
Death is death, whether it be by suicide or cancer. How is a suicide death any different than any other cause of death?
I got a car as a graduation gift when I graduated from university. I graduated with an electrical engineering degree (no BS degrees for me). It was my mother’s old car and a very nice one. I was very thankful and felt a great deal of gratitude (I never expected such a gilf because i consider my parents paying for my university education to be a gift enough). I drove it for three years before it finally “gave up the ghost”. My mother had no problem with me selling it at that point. Indeed she was surprised it lasted as long as it did.
If I accepted your world-view, why should I have any different relationship with my body than I would with a car? The car is a vehicle. It is normal to get rid of it and replace it with a new one or simply go live somewhere (e.g. Tokyo area) where you do not need a car. If my body becomes old and decrepit, I see no reason to continue to live in it. This is the reason why I think the prohibition against suicide is stupid if you actually believe that human consciousness survives physical death.
You god is essentially like Dr. Tyrell. He made us, but didn’t make us to last. This is an unforgivable sin and is the reason why, if I believed in the existence of a god, I would most certainly be into maltheism (the belief that god is evil and must be destroyed). Back in the 1980’s my friends and I, in discussions about “good” or “bad” AI, came to the conclusion that it is utterly immoral to create a sentient being, and not grant it complete autonomy to pursue and create its own future. We believed (and still believe) that it is wrong to create sentient AI and not grant it freedom in the Randian/Rothbard sense. That the Abrahamic religions believe in a god that did precisely this, what does this say about the morality (or lack thereof) of your god?
Now are you beginning to understand why I have such a dark, jaundiced view of organized religion?
One of my core beliefs is that sentience and autonomy in the Randian/Rothbardian sense are inseparable. Strange as it may seem, I really do believe this. Indeed, this is the principle reason how I cam to reject religion in general.
Let me get this straight. You’re essentially saying that you went out and joined a religion without an understanding of all of its tenets and the corollaries thereof.
I stand by my point that a religious opposition to effective anti-aging biomedicine is tantamount to a demand for human sacrifice. The reason why I am libertarian is because I don’t care if believe in religion or not or choose to sacrifice your life and autonomy for it. What you believe is your business, not mine. As long as you do not attempt to use the corrupt force of government to impose any tenets of your religion on me, what you believe is not my concern at all.
About the dogs and other animals detecting earthquakes, I think this is hogwash. I lived in LA during one of the quakes and my co-workers who had dogs and cats said that they slept right through it. My wife, who is Japanese, has said the same thing about the inability of the animals there to give early warning of impending quakes, which Japan gets a lot of. Japanese scientists have tried animals, along with just about anything else you can think of, to get early detection of quakes. None of these methods have panned out.
Yes, we humans have only five senses, and rather limited ones at that. that’s why be build scientific instruments to increase our sensory capabilities. Microscopes, telescopes, AFM/SPM, the list of technologies goes on and on. This doesn’t support your argument at all.
Actually, I think my chances are better than even.
Let me ask you guys this: Why do you have such a problem with radical life extension (by bio-engineering means)? Are you afraid you will be forced to undergo the therapies yourself? Or is it because you would resent others, including neighbors, who choose to undergo such of their own free will?
BTW, I don’t believe in immortality per se either. In the future, people will not age, but you could still die in a plane crash, for example.
Hey Abelard,
From a material sense it is not. How is a murder different than a death by an accidental fall. Answer that question and you’ll understand it is human volition that is under the microscope. However, coming from your perspective, I’m not even sure you can recognize human volition (other than as a nice illusion to keep society from falling apart):
https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-illusion-of-free-will
Is prohibition against murder stupid because, hey, dude’s just moving on to the next life anyway. The religious argument against suicide is completely sound (though an argument from a simply material or rational perspective may not be) – the only thing that shouldn’t be done is to prevent others from not committing suicide if they don’t believe in the prohibition.
Not physically, no. This world is a testing ground – you are asking for Paradise, this isn’t it.
First off:
“Doesn’t man see that it is We Who created him from a sperm drop? Yet, he stands forth as an open adversary.” – (36:77)
You wouldn’t be believing in any god I take seriously. It is amazing to me how many intelligent people I come across that have a straw-man idea of God.
God is the only ontological Reality by virtue of what He is. Anything besides Him is contingent reality, completely subsumed by His act of willing it into being and subsisting (without which, it simply ceases to exist) – if you understand that then you will understand how amused I would be at finding a man out on a limb of a tree shouting encouragements at someone sawing at the trunk.
You’ll get your chance though; when you meet Him, challenge Him.
You actually do have complete freedom to do anything you want (in fact, you just judged God and found Him ‘wanting’, I assume you are still breathing – that is a sign if you care to take it) – you also have freedom to deal with the consequences in the next life, this is how it works. He treats obedient slaves and rebellious slaves differently – that makes sense to me. We don’t worship a chump, a chump is beneath worship.
You have got to be kidding me – there is no way anybody living today or in the past encompassed all of the branches of Islamic knowledge comprehensively. I know all the tenets necessary for me to function. I mean, I put my trust that doctors know what they are doing and defer to them though I personally don’t understand all of the science behind what they do. Any yes, even in medicine (or any other science), certain topics are known by only a handful of experts in that particular specialty. Again, this is an issue of stepping on the ego and recognizing others may know more than oneself – even in religion.
You are entitled to your opinion. Though this conclusion will be laughed at by most people. You had mentioned before you were a programmer (and possibly taken AI). Did they teach Greek logic, like they did with us at UCLA – because your statement lacks coherence other than as an opinion.
“If you are against professional body building, you are for obesity.”
You think a lot of things are hogwash – your opinion is irrelevant to the thousands that have experienced and reported the phenomenon.
None of any methods are ever likely to pan out. You still don’t get what I’m saying – but that’s OK.
Bingo!
Bingo!
You haven’t understood my argument at all. Describe the taste of German chocolate cake to someone who has no sense of taste. Use clear language, knowing that when he puts something in his mouth it is indistinguishable from any other thing. All other senses are functioning fine. Please keep it to four to five sentences.
But alas, I realize this has digressed into the very clearly theological realm which I stated I wouldn’t get into earlier. If you feel you have all the answers (coherent or not), there is nothing in religion for you.
There really is no middle ground of beliefs on this subject – though there should be a respect to let the other live according to their belief system as long as reasonable care is taken to ward off harm to others (which is best accomplished by physical distance – which is why I think the island idea is good or picking one state).
Peace.
Hey Abelard,
I already said, I don’t know if I should. I’m more concerned with man melding with machine. If people want to grow really, really old by messing around with their bodies – only the associated things bother me (like kicking off a new plague or something). I think radical life-extension will not give you what you are looking for, but that’s just me.
Yes, possibly us and our children.
Jealousy and envy are a spiritual disease and needs to be excised from the heart. I no more envy someone who lives longer than a guy with four Mercedes in his driveway. Once you ditch the material paradigm, you become interested in other things.
“Know that the life of the world is only play, and idle talk, and pomp, and boasting among you, and rivalry in respect of wealth and children; as the likeness of vegetation after rain, whereof the growth is pleasing to the tiller, but afterward it dries up and you see it turning yellow, then becoming debris. And in the Hereafter there is severe punishment or forgiveness from God and His good pleasure, whereas the life of the world is but matter of illusion.” 57:20
Not sure you actually believe in free will, but given the assumption; like I said, all good with me as long as it doesn’t get applied forcibly on others. And also, a little healthy distance for safety would be nice.
Maybe others can chime in.
Peace.
Well that we’re in agreement.
Well that answers my question. You have your god and I have my life. There’s really isn’t more that can be said.
Yeah, this is my concern too. There will always be ways around it. The surveillance state will have to be reduced, but that’s a discussion for another day.
You are correct that radical life extension BY ITSELF will not give me what I want. Rather it will give me the time and the means to go about creating what I want, and that is the name of the game.
Correct, religion can offer me nothing.
If you’re into religion, that’s cool. Its’ your thing and I don’t want to interfere with it.
Just realize that what works for you does not necessarily work for all other humans. Religious people tend to forget this sometimes.
A few points –
I realize neither of us will “convince” the other, but we can try and better understand our assumptions and illuminate the presuppositions that lie deeply embedded in our thinking – I’m trying to illuminate not persuade. Ultimately we each must choose alone.
1) Your point about the knowledge frontier – again, missing the point. There is no reason to think there cannot be an entire dimension of existence that cannot be apprehended by our five sense under any form and that yet influences us greatly. Kant would have called it the ‘noumenon’, the thing-in-itself, that we can not – in principle, mind – have access to. It has nothing to do with our instruments, but is a built in limitations of our senses themselves. It is not about the “knowledge frontier”.
Beyond that, there could be beings – like demons and angels – that simply choose to conceal themselves from us, yet influence our thoughts and feelings. Nothing in science has dis-proven any of this. We have just chosen to focus on other questions, questions science CAN solve. And then we pretended the questions science can’t solve don’t exist. Kind of a sleight of hand.
What’s more, as Talha points out – if you believe we are creatures of evolution, there is no reason at all to believe our senses give us ‘reality’. They could be giving us utter distortions that help us survive.
Indeed modern scientists no longer believe our scientific truths are anything other than approximations that allow us some ability to manipulate the universe.
Belief in “reality” is really a religious position, Abelard – see, in the end, you really are religious 🙂
Try as you might, you have not shrugged off religion but are deep in a religious quest that you cannot see for what it is 🙂
2) Folktales can shed some light on your claim that I’m death loving. Interestingly, every culture has tales of ghosts who linger on in a state of misery because they have “unfinished business” here on earth. These ghosts are not happy and their continuation here on earth after their time is up is supposed to be agony. Typically, they find “release” only if whatever unfinished business they still have is completed.
Technology-people who desire immortality are like these ghosts – having never found existential fulfillment here on earth, they have failed to consummate their life, and have “unfinished business” here that makes them wish to linger in a state of searching, ghostly misery. Even the idea of uploading themselves onto a hard drive appeals, so desperate is the desire to prolong the search for fulfillment, and so ghostly an existence are they willing to endure.
It is a seeming paradox, but I have found that people who seem the most unfulfilled in life fear death the most. But as I’ve explained, its only a seeming paradox.
If you achieve existential fulfillment during life, then you have no reason to fear death. Life has served its purpose, and you are ready for the next stage, even if that stage is just a kind of re-absorbtion into the matrix out of which we all come, a return to the ‘ground of all being’.
In reality, a desire for endless continuation on earth expresses a deep pessimism, a loss of hope, about the ability to find ultimate fulfillment in life. Just as the desire for “endless process” – expresses a deep pessimism about the same thing. We see in modern politics “process” is often substituted for “solution” out of a loss of hope.
It’s all of a piece – joy and bliss do not fear death and have no desire for endless increase, because it has found what it was looking for, and living in an existential void sees life as an endless process rather because it has lost all hope of a solution.
Good points about evolution and how it affects belief in reality.
In the end, and I think this generally acknowledge among scientists, science undermines itself.Science depends on the concept of truth, but it becomes clear that scientific logic cannot provide the foundation for any belief in any truth. Belief in truth has to come from “outside” – which is why science was initially a religious project. Newton believed he was unlocking God’s secrets.
This all came to a head in the early 20th century, when it was finally grasped that science undermines itself and cannot be self-sustaining – science can provide no foundation for itself and can only be justified from the “outside”, apparently, only in a framework of religious “faith”. It was considered a ‘crisis’ at the time, and was felt to be sapping morale and motivation among scientists. Bertrand Russel was hopeful a solution would be found before long – but no solution was ever found, nor will it ever be.
So “faith” is ultimately indispensable – imagine that! It’s one of those things that if you’re receptive to it, began to move you away from the cult of modern science.
Your point about lacking a “sense” is also a very good one –
If someone simply cannot see the color orange, what can you do? Not much.
As for the modern scientific imagination being literally unable to conceive that animals may have intuitions and senses we know nothing about, and offering explanations limited to known factors, well this is part of the basic structure of how modern science is practiced, almost a kind of “pact”, if you will.
The “pact” is that if modern science cannot investigate it, it doesn’t exist, if it can’t be put in numbers, it doesn’t exist, if its a question modern science cannot answer, it isn’t a question. You see there’s nothing logical about this, but its like a secret pact to close your eyes. All answers must be in the narrow and closed circle of known scientific factor and methods, or it doesn’t exist.
Science began as a particular method devised to answer particular questions – and ended up by saying whatever questions it isn’t fitted to answer (by design, mind you), don’t really exist.
You see the sleight of hand.
Apropos of some of the interesting commentary in this thread:
“Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”
— G. K. Chesterton
There really is no middle ground of beliefs on this subject
Belief in “science” and belief in “religion” are beliefs; they are acts of “faith.”
Empiricism does not allow for the existence of the supernatural. If there is evidence of the supernatural, it would by definition no longer be supernatural.
Materialism (not the Mercedes kind) does not allow for a soul, immortal or otherwise.
Evolution has endowed us with a “belief” slot. How we fill that slot is up to us.
We still die after a comically short period of time (by geologic standards). Are you really fine with the fact that you will whither and die in a few decades? I’m not. At the very least, I’d sure like to have the option of living much longer.
String theory postulates the existence of additional dimensions. I already said that our five senses are limited and that is the reason why we make scientific instruments to increase our sensing capabilities. If any of the theories about additional dimensions (string theory, many worlds interpretation of quantum, etc.) are correct, there is no doubt in my mind that we will eventually develop the means to access those additional dimensions (traversable wormholes??? who knows) at some point in the future. Our argument does not change mine at all.
What is very clear to me is that you guys want to believe there exists a reality that is non-empirical and that only certain special people have some sort of “secret knowledge” of this reality. This “reality” in turn is then used as justification to restrict individual liberty. I see no reason to consider this dynamic in any other context.
I discovered certain truths when I was around 16-17 years old.
1)Reality and truth are empirical. That is, all knowledge is acquired through observation. There is no such thing as “hidden” knowledge.
2) As such, reason and rationality are the proper cognitive tools for understanding reality and ascertaining truth.
3) As a corollary to 1) and 2), I came to the conclusion that human individuals autonomous moral free agents and that the proper way for individuals to relate to each other is on the basis of mutual respect and rational self-interest (some of this is based on game theory, which I will not get into here).
4) As corollary to 1-3, that morality was exclusively about how how people treat each other and was, therefor, inherently contractual in nature.
There was more to it than that, but that is what I came up with in a nut shell.
Some years later in college, I was driving with some friends to go rock climbing, where I described my world view. One of them, a grad student, remarked that my world-view was not original that that others had thought of it as well. He said that there was even a name for it. It was called “libertarianism”. That was literally the first time I had ever heard the word “libertarian”. He also said that there was this “liberarian” author who wrote novel based on this idea. It turned out he was talking about Ayn Rand. I had never heard of Rand before this. I read “Atlas Shrugged” and found that a world-view that I independently derived while in high school, was essentially the same as that expressed in this novel.
My point in telling you all of this is that my being able to independently “invent” or derive the libertarian world-view, and the notion of individual as autonomous free agents in particular, without having any previous knowledge of libertarianism and figures such as Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, is the surest confirmation I could have that reality and truth are empirical and that the libertarian Paradigm is essentially correct. I have never once felt the need to reconsider my convictions over the past 35 years of life.
What is very clear from our discussion here is that humans will bifurcate into two groups. One group, which you guys seem to be a part of, want to maintain the status quo and live life within a fixed horizon. The other group, which I am clearly a part of, want to use tools to increase our capabilities and to pursue an open, unlimited future of ever expanding possibilities. Since our goals are mutually incompatible, the key is how to manage the relationship between the two groups such as to maintain peaceful coexistence while simultaneously allowing for both groups to get what they want.
I think people of both groups can peacefully coexist as neighbors in western countries, particularly the USA. However, I suspect that some sort of partition will be necessary for much of the rest of the world.
Missing the point, possibly intentionally. Also, you’re confusing me with other people, I’ve never had an opinion on death which I voiced here beyond the technical challenges of amending aging.
What I’ve always voice is the notion of the damage inflicted by “advancement” and thus I challenge the notion of technology as a singular positive good without any consequences.
This is true. At some point, some debates have no real “middle ground” thus we have a very human nature to believe that there is always a compromise to be found. But there isn’t; at some point for some reason, we find understanding with one of the positions and then proceed to basically self-reinforce our beliefs.
Especially when it comes to the concept of meaning, its so fundamentally part of our identity that it becomes point to debate things except to elucidate to oneself and for the benefit of a peanut gallery.
Exactly! Its obvious that meaning is individual specific and that it is silly to believe that there is a single standard definition of meaning that is appropriate for all humans.
Once again, all value statements such a positive good and the like are individual specific. There is no common standard of these things that is equally appropriate for all humans.
The best we can do is where we all make our own choices and go our separate ways with regards to these matters. This is the positive sum approach to dealing with these matters and, by virtue of that, is the only appropriate approach.
The good news is that I don’t think traditionalist types will ever go to space, O’neill’s high frontier concept (if you don’t know what this is – google it). Transhumanists and other pioneering oriented westerners will go to space. I think among the religious factions, that the Mormons will go as well. But I expect that other Christians and Muslims will choose to remain here on Earth. I think the East Asian people will go (Japanese, Koreans, Chinese), not because they are into pioneering (they’re not) but because they have a history of being opportunity seekers (e.g. Overseas Chinese). I think most other people will choose to remain on Earth.
So, we’ll have the Third Millennium Westphalia, followed by the large scale human settlement of space by Westerners and East Asians, starting several decades later.
BTW, Trump’s first acts as president taking on obamacare and the regulatory apparatus very strongly suggests that we are going to have another “Reagan” economic revolution in the U.S. Since most of congress AND most state legislatures are republican, I think the Reagan revolution will last this time around (at least 30-40 years). This enough time for the development of the technologies to be developed to enable the breakout into space and to enable the bifurcation of humanity between transhumanists and traditionalists.
I definitely look forward to another Reagan revolution.
As a philosophical world-view, transhumanism is the DIY equivalent to organized religion. The converse, of course, is that organized religion can be considered to be the “social welfare” equivalent to transhumanism.
Why rely on some external agency to do something for you when you can do it yourself?
I prefer the self-reliant route myself.
“This “reality” in turn is then used as justification to restrict individual liberty.”
Historically this is certainly true. History also shows that individual liberties need to be restricted by other group members– parents, siblings, in-laws, etc. Without recognition and enforcement of common cultural mores there is no civilization at all. Various non-religious rational “realities” have severely restricted life and liberty as you know, so how is religious tyranny somehow worse than those tyrannies?
Possibly you have no objection to folks practicing their religion quietly and privately, after the English style. Likewise, I have no objection to the workings of scientific progress and technology so long as their proponents do not go on to try to destroy that which their “truth” says is false, i.e., religious belief. This intolerant attitude seems to be gaining and as many have observed it starts to resemble the oppression of certain religious eras. Remember, when only one small group was the keeper and dictator of Truth? I guess you don’t see this.
Individual liberty includes my right to reject your ideas, and yours to reject mine. It includes the right of people to enjoy religious flourishing or atheistic philosophy. I think our Founding Fathers had a keen understanding in this area and even today we benefit enormously from their wisdom. Just a glance at other countries demonstrates this profoundly.
Thanks for sharing your early experience with independently derived libertarianism. I can say that I had a parallel experience that revealed something transcendent that superseded my “autonomy” yet did not abolish my free will. While I have not exactly found a correlation like your Ayn Rand example it allowed me to escape the closed sterility of materialism and nihilism which seem to capture the attention of thinkers who reject spiritual matters for whatever reasons.
Religion is not the “only way” for all people, obviously. Neither is libertarian atheism. To demand that others follow your morality, whatever its source, is wrong. People have to see the light as they say and recognize a better path when they see it. Christ’s teachings strongly emphasize free will. All of the vagaries of human existence and human nature are addressed in the Bible.
I have always wondered how libertarians expect their idea of individual morality (so 6 billion+ individualized moralities??) to work out in practice. This idea seems to obviate the fact that humans are mutually dependent, for starters. You sense that agreement on a fixed moral code is a barrier to “open, unlimited future of ever expanding possibilities” but I wonder how you seem to see only the dangers of the former and not the latter.
The “free form” morality you espouse seems to have as much, if not greater, potential for normalizing genocide and other horrors as religious commandments. Your vaunted rational thinking can provide the rationale for exterminating whole groups of people that are perceived, quite rationally, to be a mortal threat to your own group. Especially if you have the technological upper hand. Whose rational thinking do you trust to avert or prevent such a terrible outcome?
Yes, death no longer bothers me.
But it’s more of a “feeling” and a “dimly sensed intuition” than it is something that I can rationally explain. It’s more a cosmic feeling that the universe is ok and death is is a natural part of human life and not to be feared. That it’s necessary in some way.
If you’re uncomfortable with things like “dimly sensed intuitions” and require everything to be reduced to simple, utterly clear concepts – Descartes intellectual breakthrough that led to science – then this isn’t something you’re likely to appreciate.
The modern mentality is to ignore anything that cannot be expressed in the clearest and simplest terms – this is the opposite of the traditional mentality, where pursuing what is dimly intuited is the true task of life.
The modern mentality gives you vast power over the external world, the traditional mentality leads to personal transformation and the attainment of bliss.
To understand why death is ok, you’d have to undergo a personal inner transformation. You think happiness is “out there”, and as long as you do, its natural for you to want to prolong your existence “out there” as far as possible.
In a sense, logic and reason is the lowest common denominator of human communication, but I’m describing an experience that exists above this level – simply in the sense that it has become rare in the modern world (i.e, not in the sense that it is “superior” to reason. It’s just not a lowest common denominator type of experience).
So what I’m really trying to say is – its hard to explain 🙂 And that we should be ok with that, contra Descartes.
Well! You have utterly failed to understand – or allow yourself to understand – the entire issue surrounding the adequacy of our senses to reality and truth and the possible existence of a suprasensible realm. It threatens your ability to gain power through your senses, so you do not allow yourself to understand it. But the psychology of it is less important than the sheer fact that you are not understanding the points being made. Whatever the reason.
Dude, that you independently came to the same conclusion as Ayn Rand – what is that supposed to mean exactly.
There is nothing new under the sun – nothing I’m saying is new, either.
But I do appreciate that you understand you are on some kind of religious quest. The more I think about it, the more I realize techno-utopianism is a kind of “spoilt religion”. This seems now almost like an obvious, even banal, point.
It has religious aspirations but it locates them “out there” rather than inside. It recognizes the inadequacy of “day to day” living and seeks something more intense. It’s a kind of inverted spirituality. At least you’re not obsessed with money and status, which seems utterly devoid of any higher aspirations at all.
Such a realm may or may not exist. However, since such a thing cannot be verified objectively, it is irrelevant for the purposes of my long-term strategic life decisions.
Its not any more spoilt than any other religion or world-view.
How does our pursuit of radical life extension prevent you from living this choice? Are you afraid that, once developed, that anti aging therapies will be made mandatory by the state, like childhood vaccinations? I can understand if this is the basis of your concern with radical life extension.
Different people experience different “dimly sensed intuitions”. Would you believe me if I told you that I have had “dimly sensed intuitions” in the 1980’s that told me that radical life extension was the only correct choice for me? What if I were to tell you that both logic and intuition are in agreement on this?
1) Yes, if you’ve decided that your life task is to gain power in the physical realm, then the possibility of a suprasensible realm is irrelevant to you, almost by definition. Indeed that is nothing less than the central insight of science.
But that is question-begging. Our discussion was about whether humanity’s task should indeed be primarily to gain power in the physical realm, and to that question, the existence of a suprasensible realm is highly relevant.
I thought you were claiming that since the suprasensible realm doesn’t- cannot – exist, then humanity’s central task simply must be to focus on the material realm.
But if you have pre-decided that our task is to gain power, then of course, focusing on things that don’t pertain to that makes no sense.
But again, that is question begging.
2) How does your pursuit of life extension prevent me from living out my choice?
Of course, in theory, it need not.
Characteristically, you are looking at the issue as an abstraction – you are focusing simply on the element of achieving a “practical” result. However, the decision to achieve this particular result, the desire to do so, implies a world view and a value system which is not necessarily benign.
But you cannot see how your merely “practical” decision is actually deeply embedded in, and arises from, a very particular value system that may spell doom for other humans.
So in the end, we simply cannot separate theory from practice and view it as abstraction, because the desire to do so itself betrays a particular value system – and one that history has shown to spell doom for other humans and their ways of life.
Still, I personally would not attempt to physically stop you, if that’s what you’re asking. But your attempt to view it divorced from values is a self-deception.
3) You mention your intuition –
Rather, I would describe your position as a deliberate choice to dwell in the Descartian world of clear and simple ideas from which intuition and other “dark” intimations are excluded.
Rather than be based on intuition, your position is based on the refusal to see intuition as legitimate, and to only admit clear, bright, and simple ideas as having any relevance.
I have always wondered how libertarians expect their idea of individual morality (so 6 billion+ individualized moralities??) to work out in practice.
I don’t think that they think that far out. It is like their ideas on government in a modern economy and society, they are non-existent. Basically it is libertarianism for me and the people with which I agree and regimented good behavior for all the riff-raff.
Hey AaronB,
Farraday was also searching for the presence of God in his studies of magnetic forces.
To be completely honest, I can’t take credit for the points – this is not my tradition’s first rodeo with materialism. The Persian polymaths like Imams Ghazali, Fakhr uddin Razi, Baqillani (ra), etc. had already dealt with a lot of these arguments centuries ago. I was simply applying some principles to certain modern philosophies to show incoherence.
https://www.amazon.com/Incoherence-Philosophers-Brigham-Young-University/dp/0842524665
“In a detailed and intricate philosophical discussion al-Ghazâlî aims to show that none of the arguments in favor of these twenty teachings fulfills the high epistemological standard of demonstration (burhân) that the falâsifa have set for themselves. Rather, the arguments supporting these twenty convictions rely upon unproven premises that are accepted only among the falâsifa, but are not established by reason. By showing that these positions are supported by mere dialectical arguments al-Ghazâlî aims to demolish what he regarded was an epistemological hubris on the side of the falâsifa.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/#AlGhaRefFalIsm
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Indeed, this is ‘scientism’ for them to admit that they don’t have the tools to answer all the questions requires (again) stepping on the ego.
To be fair, it is as silly as when religion is used to answer questions it is not prepared to handle – such as whether or not the Earth was the center of the universe.
Each field of knowledge has its own domain – when that is recognized it makes things go way more smoothly.
Peace.
Hey iffen,
Now this is well and honestly stated as far as I’m concerned. In my experience, many dialogues go something like this…
Materialist states; “Prove God exists according to my framework.” – not possible.
Believer states; “Disprove God exists according to my framework.” – not possible.
Once one chooses a framework – or “belief”, as you state – the conclusions are practically perfunctory and only differ in details.
I have always found it is interesting that the Qur’an doesn’t deal too much with addressing materialists (possibly because of the framework differences I mentioned – possibly because materialism is fairly marginal for the majority of human existence); it is far more concerned in fixing the understanding of God.
“Their messengers said: ‘Is there a doubt about God?”…” (14:10)
What I find fascinating about the theory of evolution is that it is ultimately a product of the human mind which itself is subject to the theory – as the Arabs say, ‘laa budda minhu’ – there is no escape. The evolved cognitive faculties stand accused of being biased, not towards objective reality, but towards what ever ensures survival. Mathematics, logic, history, science need not be correct interpretations of the phenomenal world – any more correct than, say, the belief that the stars are the souls of our dead ancestors that watch over us and answer our prayers as long as it is conducive to genetic propagation. Survival of the fittest also pisses on the coffin of our philosophical assumptions.
Peace.
Hey Abelard,
I’ve seen this before – have you thought about its assumptions?
Example; I own a lovely Siberian cat named Milo. As far as all other human beings are concerned, he is my property – legally everyone recognizes this.
If I were to torture him to death using a blowtorch; is that or is that not immoral? There is no violation of human contracts or rights, anymore that if I took apart my Corolla with an axe.
Should society prevent this from happening, being that no human rights are being violated? Can we punish an individual for this?
Answers should be fairly straight forward – I think???
Peace.
That’s what I prefer to focus on. But can do what you want. Remember, I’m the libertarian. I don’t think all of humanity should do the one only thing. I think different factions and individuals should be able to pursuit their own interests independent of each other. I want to pursue radical life extension. You want to follow whatever your instincts and intuition drives you to do. As long as we don’t screw with each other, we get what we want and everything is cool.
You seem uncomfortable with this. You seem to think that our pursuit of radical life extension somehow threatens your ability to live your life on your own terms. I see no reason to believe this threat is real. Hence, I suspect its a psychological on your part.
You are free to believe this if you want. It makes no difference to me what you think what my thought processes are. Besides, how’s it any of your business what my personal dreams and ambitions are in life? I’m totally cool with you doing your thing with your life. However, I sense that you’re not cool with me doing my thing in life. You come across as uncomfortable with me making my life choices. The reason, I think, is that deep down you feel the need for people like me to agree with you, to make the same life choices as you do, in order to realize some external validation that you are indeed making the correct choices with your life. In other words, despite your much vaunted instincts and intuition, you really don’t feel comfortable with your life choices.
I, on the other hand, have no need for any external validation to know that my choices are correct for me. I’ve never experienced any self-doubt about what I want to become in life. For example, lets say that Aubrey de Grey’s SENS therapies become available next summer and I undergo treatment with them. If the vast majority of my neighbors and general public where I lived chose not to undergo SENS therapies, I would totally cool with that. I would not feel the least bit of doubt about having made the correct choice for myself. If anything, I’d probably feel sorry for them because they would still face the unpleasant experience of old age, whereas I would be free from it. However, if their cool with it, hey, whatever. I live my life. They live their’s. Everything is cool.
The fact is, despite my occasional ranting and raving on blogs like this, I am actually very laid back and comfortable with my world-view and my life choices. Talha strikes me as equally laid back as well. You, on the other hand, do not seem laid back at all. Perhaps you really do need more introspection.
Guys, I just learned of a new term, on a polywell fusion blog of all places.
Its omniquantilism.
If god is omnipotent and all things are possible. Then its possible than all religions are correct simultaneously. Think of it as the theological equivalent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics.
How’s that to make your Sunday morning?
What I find fascinating about the theory of evolution is that it is ultimately a product of the human mind which itself is subject to the theory – as the Arabs say, ‘laa budda minhu’ – there is no escape.
Carl Sagan said something along the lines of, “Starstuff contemplating itself.”
Survival of the fittest also pisses on the coffin of our philosophical assumptions.
The greatest kings and leaders, the greatest religions and greatest philosophies have always made provisioning for the least among us into a paramount virtue.
For me, Talha, I’m just trying to keep my little lame donkey on the path and headed in the right direction. 🙂
Is there such a thing as a libertarian society? I think there is only the condition of a host society where libertarianism can exist as a supplemental idea. Libertarianism is dependent on others who are biased, particular, traditional, etc., to enable a framework for their ideas to come to life. To that extent I’m ok with libertarianism as a relativistic and marginal practice.
I probably didn’t make myself clear, but I don’t support any kind of political coercion – I wouldn’t support stopping you from doing what you wanted to in this regard. So we’re on the same page in that respect.
What DOES somewhat worry me is that there are structural incentives in your vision towards messing with the lives of others, however good and pure your libertarian intentions are at this particular moment. It would be MUCH easier for you to realize your vision if you could harness the manpower, infrastructure, and organization of society at large, which makes coercion an attractive option, and people who think like you tend to develop superiority complexes that make it easy to exploit others, or recreate them in their image.
I think the smart thing to do is pay attention to structural incentives far more than the stated good intentions of individuals and to keep in mind that human nature is corrupt and fallen.
You really think I’m wrong to be scared, or at least worried? Then I think you’re being naive. Still, though, I don’t support political coercion.
But really, mostly I’m not being political at all but operating on the level of “whats the best kind of life for beings such as we are” – i.e, pure philosophy, in the ancient Greek sense. To that end I tried to shed some light on what seem to me the hidden assumptions behind your approach to life, and what the real significance of our choices are, what they imply, what they assume as background, on what level do they seek for happiness, what kind of happiness each approach can offer, etc, etc.
So I’m not really trying to convince you but just illuminate the situation – shed some light on it, expose the things that lie hidden in the shadows to the bright light of reason.
It’s perfectly OK if you disagree with my interpretations – or agree with them but don’t care. All this takes place well beyond any kind of proof. It’s a discussion, a dialogue, and I for one enjoyed talking to you. Its rare these days to be able to hold any kind of polite discussion with people so completely on the opposite pole from you – on every corner of the web and in real life, people increasingly seem interested only in childish rhetoric and posturing and circling the wagons.
So – good luck to you in your vision, I hope it brings you happiness.
The strong notion from AL’s posts is that technology enables decentralization. His main evidence for such is presumably the increase of individual independence from traditional groupings such as families or churches for physical welfare.
My objection as noted before is that technology actually aggregates and increases power of collective entities, with the increasing centralized power of media organizations, mass distribution, and mass surveillance entities. The confusion is that by the migration of the center of power, it has increase been portrayed as an increase in individual liberty.
His view is incompatible with mine since we have different axioms of the result of increasing complexity. I find his view optimistic as best and do not actually believe that any separation is possible as barriers fall, while he seems to believe that it will be possible to segregate influences and groups.
In essence, I think that he’s misguided and has an identity defined by the notion of presumed independence from influence. I think its essentially a delusion and meaningful in terms that it lacks applicable value as a practical form, but you can’t exactly dissuade people from delusions, its real to them.
The confusion is that by the migration of the center of power, it has increase been portrayed as an increase in individual liberty.
This doesn’t make sense to me, how about some elaboration?
Its easy to say, for example, that your father has less influence over your life now than he would have had in the 1800s. So yes, they have lost power over you but in return, power has been centralized at a much higher level of the state so that you cannot expect rebel, have an unrecorded thought, or engage in any behavior that is not explicitly and agreed as legal by a committee.
You’re free to subscribe to any religion, but you cannot enforce prohibitions against single-sex marriages. You’re free to speak your mind except on any topic the state has decided to be too taboo. You’re immune from any expectation of death, the state will simply make your life too miserable to live.
So we’ve traded power over us by familial and close actors, to distant and conceptual actors, but many confuse this as a gain in individual liberty.
Hey Daniel,
Good point – and this is also in the realm of economics. In the past, who took care of you when you got older; kids, extended family, tribe, church, etc. These obviously had a right upon you as to how you lived life; that you didn’t divorce willy-nilly, that you were willing to help defend territory, etc. Now everything is out-sourced to the central authority, and yes now you can live as free as you want as long as it’s cool with the state.
Also on a very related note (I’ve been a big Ben Swann fan for years since he covered Ron Paul very objectively in the previous presidential campaigns):
“Ben Swann Truth in Media takes a look at a secretive government program being created at Arizona State University. The program is designed to control the way Muslims and Christians view religion.”
“Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation” – I kid you not.
Peace.
So we’ve traded power over us by familial and close actors, to distant and conceptual actors, but many confuse this as a gain in individual liberty.
I see what you mean.
It is true that the individual has been empowered vis-à-vis the traditional groups and institutions.
I disagree with everything else that you wrote.
That does not mean that everything is peaches and cream. It seems to me that we need to re-evaluate the balance between the group and the individual.
We decided to use government to re-inforce and utilize the marriage contract in place of religion. If you want religion to control the marriage contract you need to remove government from the marriage contract business, you can’t have it both ways. That’s called having your cake and eating it too.
In the past, who took care of you when you got older; kids, extended family, tribe, church, etc.
Obviously there are big problems here and you and I are not the first to notice. 🙂
Beyond that, among those of us who see problems we do not agree on what, if anything, should be done about it, which leaves everything pretty much in the hands of people who do not see a problem, not to mention the people who are pleased as punch that the older institutions and forms are in crisis.
Or you let religions control their own marriage contracts in a legally binding way (disparate civil court systems for each creed)…we’ve been doing this for centuries!
“The amount of authority granted to each millet is especially evident in civil and legal matters. The millet had control over all internal disputes and agreements, such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, other matters of personal status, and the distribution and collection of taxes (Bates, Rassam, p.101). This separation of legal disputes by religion was natural for the Ottoman society that already two types of law, sultanic yasak law for human life and şeriat for divine law (Martin, Empires: Ottoman). In reality, Muslim courts were commonly used by dhimmis, for the resulting decision was perhaps worth more than conclusions made in millet courts (Martin). Thus with respect for the authority of the Sultan and the Empire, dhimmis could generally live in peace.”
http://courses.washington.edu/disisme/Our%20Encyclopaedia/84135754-B01E-4A3A-BBA4-8BD129E3C331.html
Also known as letting everyone have their own cupcake to eat!
Peace.
Well, such a system could work where everyone had an accepted faith. I doubt that the Baha’i in Iran would fare that well. What about mixed marriages? What about converts? Do Sunnis and Shias get separate courts?
That’s my essential point. The individual may have been “empowered” against traditional groups, but has surrendered even more power to a new centralized state. Furthermore, I also do not believe that empowering the individual is necessary such a great good.
My thoughts are pretty much formed by Ted Kaczynski.
That is an interesting argument for the utility of marriage. Would it be worth it to place marriage strictly outside of government recognition and tax benefits? How much legalism would still apply to married couples?
The group-individual dynamic will always be in play. Liberals tend toward shifting responsibility (and power) upward to governing bodies or councils (socialism, welfare state, etc.). It seems ironic that conservatives champion individual freedom but they do not see that what they promote (2nd Amendment, property rights, etc.) is strongly dependent on a society that is tied-down by tradition, family, church and so on.
“Freedom” for liberals comes via centralized power, especially the judicial branch, that can introduce and sustain leftist ideas that would otherwise never pass social filtering. Their idea of social autonomy or individualism is very different than the conservative’s “freedom” based on what is the underpinning. The desired result is also very different.
Further reading on this idea of “autonomy” can be found here:
http://ozconservative.blogspot.com
Hey iffen,
I thought we both agreed that everyone has a “belief” slot. Those without an official religion are simply their own grouping and assign their own oracle/leader/chairman (see note #258). We traditionally called these people mulhidoon*; those without faith.
I’m not too familiar with the Shia rules so I don’t know why they treat Baha’is different than any other non-Muslim minority.
Well, if the husband is Muslim – the adjudication happens in a Muslim court, but that should be made clear before the lady gets into the marriage in the first place. In case of conflict like this, the Islamic court trumps the other, because…well, because it is made clear that Islam is the dominant religion in case of this kind of conflict. With others, like a Jewish woman marrying a Christian man – I guess that would be left to the respective millets to figure out. Likely then, it’s in the millets’ interest to not officiate intermarriage – and if they don’t officiate them, where can the couple go to get legally married? Not the central government – Shariah courts have better things to do.
Why wouldn’t they simply shift from one court system to another?
I don’t see why not. From what I have read, the Ottomans did not themselves allow a separate Shiah Millet, but that is probably more due to the political fact that they were rivals to the Persian and Shiah Safavid Empire and so had to uphold an image of being champions of Sunni Islam. I don’t even see why the separate Sunni schools couldn’t get their own courts since sometimes marriage rules can vary by school. Usually the school followed by the majority of a particular area held sway in the court system, but this was not a hard and fast rule – Egypt often passed through the hands of capable Shafi’i, Hanafi and even Maliki judges.
Peace.
*Note: Interesting, the Arabic language – the word for one without faith is the tri-letter root (لحد) which means to dig a grave.
I thought we both agreed that everyone has a “belief” slot. Those without an official religion are simply their own grouping and assign their own oracle/leader/chairman
You are not making any progress here. The situation seems to be that there are thousands if not millions that want their own group. You want me to share the same court authority with someone like JR? I don’t think so.
the tri-letter root (لحد) which means to dig a grave.
Very prescient on someone’s part to recognize that atheism would dig the grave of the believers. 🙂
Their idea of social autonomy or individualism is very different than the conservative’s “freedom” based on what is the underpinning.
American conservatives are infected with libertarianism. I stand by my estimation that what they want is hyper liberalism for themselves and strict conservatism for the “others” to keep them in line.
Maybe the DNC will make Sally Boynton Brown and Keith Ellison co-chairs. That should help draw the lines.
A passage from Dietrich of Nieheim’s De schismate libri III is used as an epigraph at the beginning of the second chapter of Arthur Koestler’s novel, Darkness at Noon:
“ When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even deceit, treachery, violence, usury, prison, and death. Because order serves the good of the community, the individual must be sacrificed for the common good.
Hey iffen,
Sure, it can be put up for a vote just like we do here – some Muslims don’t like the fact that they can’t legally marry another wife, but that’s what the majority rule here decided. An atheist millet can simply draft its own ‘ethical provisions’ by some democratic forms; majority rule was never meant to satisfy everyone. Again, using the Ottomans as a case study (not the perfect solution) – close to 20 separate millets were organized and many of them were separate Christian denominations that would have been at each others’ throats if they were forced together under the same rules; Orthodox (various kinds), Catholic, etc. I can’t see why like-minded atheists (reaching a critical mass) couldn’t petition for a separate millet. Remember, it’s really administrative – since millets are supposed to be self-organizing based on common ground.The whole point is to be able to figure out a way to reduce tension (and nonsense, frankly, for the central authority – who cares if you want to have desegregated bathrooms in your schools if you are running your own schools) between differing ideologies in order to keep things moving along. Otherwise you get the culture wars we see happening. Again, from the above link:
“The millet system continued to work well both socially and economically with some exceptions until the rise of nationalism began to divide the people ethnically instead of religiously (Martin and Encarta).”
If it seems human beings are going back to dividing religiously (or ideologically/philosophically) along with ethnically, then this model needs to be reconsidered (again as an organizing framework – not simply copy-and-paste from the Ottomans).
But, from what I can see, one issue is that it assumes an alpha group is ensconced, making sure everyone else plays by the rules.
Quite so (even though the Arabic lexical definitions predate the revelation) – in the end, we have it on good authority that belief will eventually lose out at some point…but, then again, nobody really wins:
“The Hour will not arise so long as Allah is called upon in the world.” – reported in Muslim
And though I agree that there needs to be a balance struck between the needs of the group and the needs of the individual, that quote you posted is scary; whenever I see any variation of ‘the ends justifies the means’ I shake my head.
Peace.
one issue is that it assumes an alpha group is ensconced, making sure everyone else plays by the rules.
This would seem to be an insurmountable problem in the US.
I would like for us to try the concept where it has some chance of success, in education, for example. I have been in favor of a total voucher system for public education for many years which would include religious schools of course.
Quite so (even though the Arabic lexical definitions predate the revelation) – in the end, we have it on good authority that belief will eventually lose out at some point…
Maybe they meant that the un-believer was digging his own grave.
Hey iffen,
My reading of history concludes that there is no escape from an alpha group except for small gaps. The question is what is it composed of; a religious group, economic group, ethnic group, etc. Even down to the level of a tribe, there is one family or branch that usually heads the show. The best thing to have are those who have some classical understanding of benevolence and stewardship or at least imbue that in their policies; Ivan the Terrible is not Catherine the Great.
I’m also a big fan of trying things in baby steps – the education (and its environs) of one’s future generation seem to be of paramount concern in these culture wars. Usually the issue is not that one doesn’t care that other people’s kids are walking around barely wearing anything or smoking weed, one just doesn’t want it happening around their kids. And of course for those who (increasingly) opt out of propagating a future generation – why should they pay similar to others?
Possibly. I don’t know if there was any coordinated intent behind it, but the relationship in meaning cannot be denied. The Arabic is an ancient language arose organically in a milieu that mixed both urban dwellers and their nomadic counterparts – a people very deeply rooted in nature and spirit. The language reflects that depth of understanding. A couple of other examples:
The word for a very beautiful woman is the tri-literal root (فتن) which is also the same root for trial or tribulation.
The word for mercy is is the root (رحم) which is also the same for the womb (it being the ultimate expression of mercy in the phenomenal world).
Peace.
My reading of history concludes that there is no escape from an alpha group except for small gaps. The question is what is it composed of
I fully concur. The current one is corrupt and malevolent.
The word for a very beautiful woman is the tri-literal root (فتن) which is also the same root for trial or tribulation.
Is the word for high-maintenance the same? 🙂